An integrated approach to crowd psychology and public order policing

TLDR

The paper argues that police should focus on understanding the collective identities, priorities, and intentions of different crowd groups, giving equal priority to facilitating lawful intentions and controlling unlawful ones, and uses recent advances in crowd psychology to develop new public order policing guidelines. The authors develop new public order policing guidelines by applying recent advances in crowd psychology. The study finds that treating all crowd members as inherently irrational and suggestible is incorrect and dangerous, as it can provoke policing strategies that alienate the crowd, leading non‑violent members to align with conflictual groups and escalating collective conflict.

Abstract

This paper uses recent developments in crowd psychology as the basis for developing new guidelines for public order policing. Argues that the classical view of all crowd members as being inherently irrational and suggestible, and therefore potentially violent, is both wrong and potentially dangerous. It can lead to policing strategies that respond to the violence of some in the crowd by clamping down on all members, and therefore lead all members to perceive the police as hostile and illegitimate. In such conditions, even those who were initially opposed to violence may come to side with more conflictual crowd members and hence contribute to an escalation in the level and scope of collective conflict. This paper argues that police officers need to concentrate on understanding the collective identities, priorities and intentions of different groups in the crowd and give the same priority to facilitating the lawful intentions of some groups as to controlling the unlawful intentions of others.