A Little Respect: Swearing, Police and Criminal Justice Discourse

Methven, Elyse

doi:10.5204/ijcjsd.v7i1.428

Cited by 12 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 7 publications

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“…Central to the video’s exposure of processes of criminalisation and law enforcement was the revelation through unlawful police directions to stop filming, that civilian filming of police operations in public was indeed lawful (Mahony, 2013). These interactions showed how ‘trivial’, gateway offences such as offensive language (Heilpern, 1999; Methven, 2017, 2018; Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, 1991; Summary Offences Act 1988 (NSW)), can escalate to the more consequential charges of resist arrest and assault police (Crimes Act 1900 (NSW)). The capacity through audience repeat viewing to isolate the elements of cases of police excessive force (Goldsmith, 2010) and evaluate their legitimacy emphasises the primacy of the dynamic image as a meaning-making tool to bound legitimate police use of force.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

More than a trivial pursuit: Public order policing narratives and the ‘social media test’

Ellis

2020

Crime, Media, Culture

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Social media has transformed public discourse on policing and the contest of control over the police image. This article draws on original, empirical research to conceptualise the phenomenon of the ‘social media test’ – the evolution of social media into a legitimate measure of police performance. Through in-depth interviews with police and non-police respondents the article maps the genealogy of, and provides perspective on, one of the first viral cases of bystander video of police excessive force in Australia filmed and uploaded to YouTube. The study shows the video’s impact on hegemonic mainstream and police news media narratives, processes of criminalisation and police accountability and the merit of narrative criminology in unpacking these phenomena. Police alluding to the ‘social media test’ in in-depth interviews shows that digital media in general and social media in particular can no longer be dismissed as peripheral or subsidiary to public discourse on policing in a digital society.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

More than a trivial pursuit: Public order policing narratives and the ‘social media test’

Ellis

2020

Crime, Media, Culture

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“…Fines accord police considerable discretionary power and the capacity to issue punishment without recourse to the court's decision-making processes. As Methven (2018) notes, police officers are often both the witness and the "victim" of an alleged offense-for example, where offensive language crimes are concerned, the police themselves are frequently recorded as the targets of swearing. For this reason, fines can be understood as a technology of policing which, with very little to no oversight, can be used to enact racism and other forms of group-based harm.…”

Section: Finesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“Extraordinary powers for extraordinary times”: A conjunctural analysis of pandemic policing, common sense, and the abolitionist horizon

Brooks,

Lorange

2023

Crime, Media, Culture

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In this paper, we offer a conjunctural analysis of policing and incarceration, examining their expansion in relation to structural economic conditions over the last 50 years and interrogating how the sudden onset of the Covid-19 pandemic enabled extraordinary growth in policing powers in the Australian jurisdictions of New South Wales (NSW) and Victoria (VIC). We examine how popular support for police-led responses to crisis and fines as a common-sense solution to social problems were sought during the period that the Public Health Orders were in effect in the two states. We argue that the discursive project of naturalizing the police-led response to the pandemic—via official communications from the state governments as well as media coverage of the pandemic—attempts to further entrench a vision of law and order governance in which infrastructures of discipline and punishment are necessary and inevitable. We identify this vision as a direct barrier to abolition and a significant limit on the capacity to imagine alternative frameworks for justice. We end by considering a small archive of tweets from users in NSW and VIC published on the social media platform formerly known as Twitter (now called X) in 2020–21. We argue that this archive registers the way the common-sense status of the fine as an efficient, effective, and equitable punishment gives way to punitive fantasies about police and prisons. We read this archive alongside the broad refusal to pay Covid-related fines and the ongoing legal disputes contesting the legitimacy of their issuance, concluding by proposing that the conjunctural moment of the Covid-19 pandemic has given rise to unresolved contradictions between the naturalized logic of law and order crisis management and the potential for this logic to come undone.

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“…34 This branch is also the home for research about laws which govern language use. These laws may protect certain language practices and prohibit others, for example, protecting free speech but criminalising offensive language; 35 or require certain language practices, for example that bilingual signage always displays Language A on the top line and Language B on the bottom; 36 or nominate one or more official language for a state (a move Australia has not made). 37 Further, research on laws which govern language use may also examine the domestic application of international laws relating to language, such as the ICCPR provision that minorities 'shall not be denied the right, in community with other members of their group, to enjoy their own culture [.…”

Section: The Executivementioning

confidence: 99%

Bringing linguistic research into legal scholarship and practice

Grey

Smith‐Khan

2020

Alternative Law Journal

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This article suggests a cohesive articulation of the shared basis upon which the interdisciplinary research field of law and linguistics is developing, organising the research around the familiar three branches of the state: legislature, executive and judiciary, thus providing a map oriented towards non-linguists and legal practitioners. It also invites interdisciplinary scholars to critically reflect on future directions for this research area. This effort to redress the lack of recognition within the law of relevant linguistic research is part of our pursuit of an alternative and more collaborative approach to legal scholarship and law reform addressing issues of communicative barriers and linguistic injustice.

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A Little Respect: Swearing, Police and Criminal Justice Discourse

Cited by 12 publications

References 7 publications

More than a trivial pursuit: Public order policing narratives and the ‘social media test’

More than a trivial pursuit: Public order policing narratives and the ‘social media test’

“Extraordinary powers for extraordinary times”: A conjunctural analysis of pandemic policing, common sense, and the abolitionist horizon

Bringing linguistic research into legal scholarship and practice

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