Covert Police Work

This book explores how the police use covert techniques to investigate serious and organized crime. It draws on a two-year ESRC-funded ethnographic study of covert policing in an English police service, focusing on a secretive department known as “Specialist Operations”, whose main function is to conduct prolonged and intrusive investigations into serious and organized crime. The book examines how, and why, the police use of covert resources contains an intrinsic level of risk, which creates a series of dilemmas for practitioners. The book, then, provides a rich description of the bureaucratic and statutory frameworks that guide how the police use covert techniques. In the final chapter, the book develops a theory of control in covert police work that explains how, and when, this type of police work becomes prone to abuse. The book draws on direct observations of police officers at work, including observation of live operations, and makes an important contribution to the public debate about the function of the police in a democratic society.