Researching Police Deviance: A Personal Encounter with the Limitations and Liabilities of Field-Work

Accounts of field-work occasionally reveal the stress, the deep personal involvement, the role-conflicts, and the time-consuming nature of observational studies for the researcher (e.g. Whyte, Wax, Hofland, Johnsonl). Clarke' has written of the anguish of certain anthropologists, causing some even to abandon the field setting; while Van Maanens has contrasted the rich oral tradition among academics, centred on what ostensibly 'really' happened in the field, with the self-censored material in publications on their research experience. That experience may appear incoherent, blurred, or stressful at the time and researchers may have considerable difficulty portraying the story behind the story of their field-work (perhaps because it is embarrassing or else it is considered unsuitable for a 'serious' publication). Reading Van Maanen's insightful work stimulate* me to take out an article I had written several years ago, but which I had been unable to publish fully at the time, and to rework it in an attempt to convey in depth both the constraints encountered in the field and my reflections on the research experience long after departure. My initial account was somewhat gloomy and reeked of weary disillusionment. Now I can take a more dispassionate look at the research I conducted with the Amsterdam Police in the period 197X1980. My purpose in this paper is to focus on three elements of that fieldwork. First, I wish to convey the strain I experienced in a demanding field setting; second, I want to communicate my acute awareness of the limitations of research in penetrating sensitive areas of institutional life; and, third, I hope to illuminate some of the ethical dilemmas encountered in the field (which one may only fully be conscious of in retrospect). And perhaps I should add that, however rough the passage, the experienced field-worker has almost a moral obligation not to discourage others but rather to incite them to get out into the field. For there is something irreducible in the mundane dilemmas of even the most unproblematic field situations that forces academics to