“TECHNICALLY YES, BUT…”: POLICE DEVIANCE TECHNOLOGY, AND THE LEGITIMACY PROJECT OF THE SINGAPORE POLICE FORCE

Abstract

Frontline uniformed officers, being accorded huge discretionary power while working under conditions of low visibility, are presented with ample opportunities to engage in deviant behaviour. Once exposed, police deviance can severely undermine the legitimacy of the organisation. As such, police agencies have turned to technologies as instruments of social control to curtail police discretion and police deviance. Focusing on the Singapore Police Force (SPF), this thesis adopts Manning’s dramaturgical framework to first document how different technologies introduced into frontline policing delimit police discretion, followed by the various counterstrategies employed by officers to circumvent these technologies. The oft-cited “Technically yes, but…” accounts of the officers demonstrate that police deviance is still commonplace in the SPF – if not institutionalised. Nonetheless, the management takes little action against police deviance and continues to invest in these technologies. A deeper analysis of this phenomenon reveals that these technologies are part of the SPF’s image management strategy which sustains the rhetoric of police accountability to generate public trust in the police. Drawing upon Ashforth and Gibb’s notion of substantive and symbolic legitimation, this thesis attempts to explain how these social control technologies, while unsuccessful in curtailing police deviance, are ultimately part of a larger legitimacy project of the criminal justice state to win symbolic legitimacy for the effective governance of its people.