Clifford Stott

Keele University · School of Psychology

Objectives To systematically review the effect of social identity and social contexts on the association between procedural justice and legitimacy in policing. Methods A meta-analysis synthesising data from 123 studies (N = 200,966) addressing the relationship between procedural justice and legitimacy in policing. Random effects univariate and two...

Across a range of recent terrorist attacks in the United Kingdom, the question of how crowds behave in confined public space is an important concern. Classical theoretical assumptions are that human behaviour in such contexts is relatively uniform, self-interested and pathological. We contest these assumptions by reporting on a study of public resp...

This briefing document is part of the ESRC-funded project ‘Perceived threats and “stampedes”: a relational model of collective fear responses’ (project reference ES/T007249/1).

Discretion is a key feature of policing, yet its surrounding research has historically been heavily reliant upon exploring interpersonal or dyadic encounters between individual officers and members of the public. More recently, studies have explored how discretionary decisions by police officers impact upon and interact with group-level and organis...

Across a range of recent terrorist attacks in the UK the question of how crowds behave in confined public space has become an increasingly important concern. Classical and popular theoretical assumptions are that human behaviour in such contexts is relatively uniform, self-interested, and pathological (e.g., mass panic). In this paper, we further c...

Recent research has shown that multiagency emergency response is beset by a range of challenges, calling for a greater understanding of the way in which these teams work together to improve future multiagency working. Social psychological research shows that a shared identity within a group can improve the way in which that group works together and...

In this chapter we introduce the issue of football-related violence and disorder in Britain, popularly known as ‘hooliganism’. We chart the rise of the issue as an apparently singular, identifiable, phenomenon in political and media discourse from the 1950s to the 1980s and argue that the label actually covered a host of different and often unconne...

This chapter considers the key legal measures that have been designed to confront football crowd violence and disorder, or those that have been used to this end. It sets out the statutory stadium safety framework, along with football-specific and public order offences, in both their historical context and current operation, and considers how the co...

This chapter introduces and analyses six observational case studies derived from our most recent programme of work. The observations took place across the two years leading up to the outbreak of Covid-19 in 2020. The data was gathered during our ENABLE fieldwork and as such was to a large extent gathered using large teams of observers, some of whom...

In this chapter we set out the case for reconceptualising major incidents of football ‘hooliganism’ as crowd behaviour or collective action within crowds. We argue that this change in perspective is valuable because it enables a reanalysis of the same problems from a new psychological perspective. We therefore provide a summary of the nineteenth-ce...

In this chapter, we set out detailed proposals for improving football crowd management and regulation. In line with the arguments we have set out in this book about the importance of viewing football crowd management as an intersection between law and policing, we argue that reforms are needed to both of these strands. We argue that legal reforms a...

In this chapter we explain how the development of Public Safety and Public Order Policing in England and Wales since the death of Ian Tomlinson in 2009 led to a move towards approaches more explicitly based on the facilitation of the legitimate intentions and dialogue with crowd participants. However, while these developments, including the introdu...

This chapter sets out the relevance and importance of human rights to football crowd policing and law. It argues that while rights and freedoms under the European Convention on Human Rights have been applied to the policing of protest, the freedoms of expression and peaceful assembly have been largely overlooked when it comes to the policing of foo...

This chapter focuses on the target of football crowd regulation and policing: the football fan. We detail how fandom has developed, challenge the idea of an overarching ‘fan culture’, and highlight the importance to football policing operations of understanding the interpretations, understandings, and behavioural norms of ‘carnival fans’. We place...

In this chapter, we extend our argument by exploring the history of policing of football matches in England and Wales. We trace its origins within the development and centralisation of public order policing in response to protest and urban disorder that took place from the 1960s onwards and identify how local autonomy over football policing operati...

Recent research has shown that multi-agency emergency response is beset by a range of challenges, calling for a greater understanding of the way in which these teams work together to improve future multi-agency working. Social psychological research shows that a shared identity within a group can improve the way in which that group works together a...

Our case study explored a Local Resilience Forum's (LRF) civil contingency response to COVID-19 in the United Kingdom. We undertook 19 semistructured ethnographic longitudinal interviews, between March 25, 2020 and February 17, 2021, with a Director of a Civil Contingencies Unit and a Chief Fire Officer who both played key roles within their LRF. W...

Our case study explored a Local Resilience Forum's (LRF) civil contingency response to COVID‐19 in the United Kingdom. We undertook 19 semistructured ethnographic longitudinal interviews, between March 25, 2020 and February 17, 2021, with a Director of a Civil Contingencies Unit and a Chief Fire Officer who both played key roles within their LRF. W...

Shopping behaviour in response to extreme events is often characterized as “panic buying” which connotes irrationality and loss of control. However, “panic buying” has been criticized for attributing shopping behaviour to people’s alleged psychological frailty while ignoring other psychological and structural factors that might be at play. We repor...

This chapter explores the relationships between crowd theory, police psychology, and the policing and dynamics of crowds. This chapter begins by providing an overview of research on police understandings of the crowd and their relationship to public order policing. We will highlight how a body of 19th century crowd theory still informs and dominate...

Objective: We conducted an exploratory study testing procedural justice theory with a novel population. We assessed the extent to which police procedural justice, effectiveness, legitimacy, and perceived risk of sanction predict compliance with the law among people experiencing homelessness. Hypotheses: We did not develop formal a priori hypothe...

Our case study explored a Local Resilience Forum’s (LRF) civil contingency response to COVID-19 in the UK. We undertook 19 semi-structured ethnographic longitudinal interviews, between 25th March 2020 and 17th February 2021, with a Director of a Civil Contingencies Unit and a Chief Fire Officer who both played key roles within their LRF. Within the...

Shopping behaviour in response to extreme events is often characterized as “panic buying” which connotes irrationality and loss of control. However, “panic buying” has been criticized for attributing shopping behaviour to people’s alleged psychological frailty while ignoring other psychological and structural factors that might be at play. We repor...

The policing of peaceful public assembly during the Covid-19 pandemic has been one of the most central challenges to police legitimacy. This is arguably because mass gatherings are assumed to carry a high risk of contagion yet, at the same time, peaceful public assembly is a protected human right. In this article, we explore this issue by using a c...

Recent research has shown that multi-agency emergency response is beset by a range of problems, calling for a greater understanding of the way in which these teams work together to improve future multi-agency working. Social psychological research shows that a shared identity within a group can improve the way in which that group works together and...

Waves of riots are politically and psychologically significant national events. The role of police perceptions and practices in spreading unrest between cities has been neglected in previous research, even though the police are significant actors in these events. We examined the role of police interventions in the spread of rioting to one English c...

Waves of riots are politically and psychologically significant national events. The role of police perceptions and practices in spreading unrest between cities has been neglected in previous research, even though the police are significant actors in these events. We examined the role of police interventions in the spread of rioting to one English c...

This paper contributes to the literature on Procedural Justice Theory (PJT) by exploring its capacity to explain the dynamic interactions between police and citizens within the context of police detention. Analysis is based on observation and interviews in police custody suites (i.e. locations where arrested citizens are formally processed and held...

This article reviews the behavioural risks and possible mitigations for re-opening large venues for sports and music events when Covid-19 infection rates and hospitalizations begin to decline. We describe the key variables that we suggest will affect public behaviour relevant to the spread of the virus, drawing upon four sources: (1) relevant evide...

Background Covid-status certification – certificates for those who test negative for the SARS-CoV-2 virus, test positive for antibodies, or who have been vaccinated against SARS-CoV-2 – has been proposed to enable safer access to a range of activities. Realising these benefits will depend in part upon the behavioural and social impacts of certifica...

The policing of peaceful public assembly during the Covid-19 pandemic has been one of the most central challenges to the legitimacy of policing. This is arguably because mass gatherings are associated with a high risk of contagion yet, at the same time, peaceful public assembly is a protected human right. In this paper we explore this juxtaposition...

Police organisations have a wealth of experience in responding to emergencies, but COVID-19 is unprecedented in terms of the speed, scale and complexity of developing doctrine and its implementation by officers. The crisis also threw into sharp relief the fact that police policy and, crucially, practice are always implemented within wider social, p...

Background Covid-status certification (certificates for those who test negative for the SARS-CoV-2 virus, test positive for antibodies, or who have been vaccinated against SARS-CoV-2) has been proposed to enable safer access to a range of activities. Realising these benefits will depend in part upon the behavioural and social impacts of certificati...

Background Covid-status certification – certificates for those who test negative for the SARS-CoV-2 virus, test positive for antibodies, or who have been vaccinated against SARS-CoV-2 – has been proposed to enable safer access to a range of activities. Realising these benefits will depend in part upon the behavioural and social impacts of certifica...

The Covid-19 pandemic presents a unique set of challenges for UK emergency responders due to the scale and complexity of the response required. The emergency services and partner agencies across the UK have come together within their Local Resilience Forums (LRF) to put a response in place. These usually independent teams have been required to work...

Social identity is a core aspect of procedural justice theory, which predicts that fair treatment at the hands of power holders such as police expresses, communicates and generates feelings of inclusion, status and belonging within salient social categories. In turn, a sense of shared group membership with power-holders, with police officers as pow...

This article reviews the behavioural risks and possible mitigations for re-opening large venues for sports and music events when Covid-19 infection rates and hospitalizations begin to decline. We describe the key variables that we suggest will affect public behaviour relevant to the spread of the virus, drawing upon four sources: (1) relevant evide...

Objective: Drawing on work into the dynamics of authority-subordinate relationships, we examined whether police procedural justice, legitimacy and deterrence predict compliance with the law among people experiencing homelessness. Hypotheses: We hypothesized that people living on the streets of London will be less attuned to the relational and value...

Objective: Drawing on work into the dynamics of authority-subordinate relationships, we examined whether police procedural justice, legitimacy and deterrence predict compliance with the law among people experiencing homelessness. Hypotheses: We hypothesized that people living on the streets of London will be less attuned to the relational and value...

Social identity is a core aspect of procedural justice theory, which predicts that fair treatment at the hands of power holders such as police expresses, communicates and generates feelings of inclusion, status and belonging within salient social categories. In turn, a sense of shared group membership with power-holders, with police officers as pow...

We explore the relevance of Procedural Justice Theory (PJT) for understanding the relationship between police and marginalized groups and individuals. Analysis is based on ethnographic research into the policing of the street population in an inner London borough, through shadowing policing patrols and embedding observation within the homeless comm...

We explore the relevance of procedural justice theory for understanding the relationship between police and marginalized groups and individuals. Analysis is based on ethnographic research into the policing of the street population in an inner London borough through shadowing policing patrols and embedding observation within the homeless community....

It is important to recognize that the publication of this study is the outcome of a pioneering approach developed by the editorial team of what has recently become one of the world’s most highly ranked policing journals. As part of their underpinning strategy, the editors have chosen to publish invited original research articles on important issues...

Across the latter half of 2019, Hong Kong became the focus of world attention as it was rocked by a wave of increasingly violent confrontations between police and protesters. Both inside and outside the Territory, several powerful political actors have argued that the paramilitary-style police interventions used to manage the protests were necessar...

Introduction Do we always do what others do, and, if not, when and under what conditions do we do so? In this paper we test the hypothesis that mimicry is moderated by the mere knowledge of whether the source is a member of the same social category as ourselves. Methods We investigated group influence on mimicry using three tasks on a software pla...

The United Kingdom has a wealth of experience in planning for and responding to major incidents and emergencies. Recent diverse examples include the suicide bomb attack at Manchester Arena and the Grenfell Tower fire, both in 2017; and the Salisbury nerve agent attack in 2018. Despite this, the Covid-19 pandemic presents a unique set of challenges...

This is the third in a series of ongoing reports that aim to understand the current challenges faced by Local Resilience Forums (LRFs) during the Covid-19 pandemic in the UK, with the goal of supporting the ongoing development of good working practice.

This briefing is divided into three parts. First, we outline the factors which lead to incidents of collective disorder (or riots). Secondly, we consider how the overall response to the coronavirus outbreak and the role of the police within this response will impact the probability of such disorder. Thirdly, we apply these understandings to three s...

Making an Impact on Policing and Crime: Psychological Research, Policy and Practice applies a range of case studies and examples of psychological research by international, leading researchers to tackle real-world issues within the field of crime and policing. Making an Impact on Policing and Crime documents the application of cutting-edge researc...

This is the second in a series of ongoing reports that aim to understand the current challenges faced by Local Resilience Forums (LRFs) during the Covid-19 pandemic in the UK. The goal is to support the ongoing development of good working practice

In this paper, we analyse the conditions under which the COVID‐19 pandemic will lead either to social order (adherence to measures put in place by authorities to control the pandemic) or to social disorder (resistance to such measures and the emergence of open conflict). Using examples from different countries (principally the United Kingdom, the U...

Despite widespread empirical support for Procedural Justice Theory, understanding the role of police psychology in shaping encounters with ‘citizens’ is relatively opaque. This article seeks to address this gap in the literature by exploring how officers talk about themselves and their colleagues and deploy social categories to understand their int...

This is the first in a series of ongoing reports that aim to understand the current challenges faced by Local Resilience Forums in the Covid-19 pandemic, with the aim of supporting the ongoing development of good working practice.

Notions of psychological frailty have been at the forefront of debates around the public response to the COVID‐19 pandemic. In particular, there is the argument that collective selfishness, thoughtless behaviour, and over‐reaction would make the effects of COVID‐19 much worse. The same kinds of claims have been made in relation to other kinds of em...

Research on patterns of crowd violence across diverse events (including urban riots, protests, and football crowd 'disorder') suggests that shared social identity both specifies appropriate conduct (and hence explains common limits) and is the basis of changes in relations between crowd members and outgroups (hence explaining empowered action and p...

This review draws together articles from a range of different disciplines to highlight the central role played by social context and policing in the dynamics of crowd conflict. Accordingly, the review highlights the importance and value of interdisciplinary dialogue both in attempts to advance theoretical understanding of the dynamics through which...

Previous research has shown that riots spread across multiple locations, but has not explained underlying psychological processes. We examined rioting in three locations during the August 2011 disorders in England to test a social identity model of riot diffusion. We triangulated multiple sources to construct a narrative of events; and we analysed...

In August 2011, over four days, rioting spread across several cities in England. Previous accounts of these riots have indicated the roles of police racism, class disadvantage, and spatial affordance. However, what remains unclear is how these structural factors interacted with crowd processes spatially over time to govern the precise patterns of s...

Report on the ESRC 'Beyond Contagion' project, examining what happened in the 2011 riots and how they spread.

Across the last 10 years, the policing of demonstrations in the UK has witnessed substantive change in terms of both statutory guidance and operational practices. With this study, we highlight how the policing of football crowds in the UK has, to date, yet to undergo similar change, despite being covered by the same statutory guidance. On the basis...

Evidence of the value of increased supporter involvement in football governance is limited and existing work focuses primarily on the boardroom, rather than on managing problems associated with fan behaviour. This paper addresses these limitations by documenting and analysing the role of the Supporter Liaison Officers (SLOs) in Sweden, a country th...

The policing of football crowds in Sweden is underpinned by a national coordination approach based upon a set of conflict reducing principles and supported by crowd theory. The approach is referred to as the Special Police Tactic (SPT). While focused on police capacity to exercise force, the SPT also gives primacy to tactics based upon communicatio...

Contemporary research on policing and procedural justice theory (PJT) emphasizes large-scale survey data to link a series of interlocking concepts, namely perceptions of procedural fairness, police legitimacy and normative compliance. In this article we contend that as such, contemporary research is in danger of conveying a misreading of PJT by por...

Procedural justice theory (PJT) is now a widely utilised theoretical perspective in policing research that acknowledges the centrality of police ‘fairness’. Despite its widespread acceptance this paper asserts that there are conceptual limitations that emerge when applying the theory to the policing of crowd events. This paper contends that this pr...

Theoretical perspectives that give primacy to ideological or structural determinism have dominated criminological analysis of the 2011 English ‘riots’. This paper provides an alternative social psychological perspective through detailed empirical analysis of two of these riots. We utilize novel forms of data to build triangulated accounts of the na...

This article explores the origins and ideology of classical crowd psychology, a body of theory reflected in contemporary popularised understandings such as of the 2011 English 'riots'. This article argues that during the nineteenth century, the crowd came to symbolise a fear of 'mass society' and that 'classical' crowd psychology was a product of t...

This paper reports upon the first formal academic analysis of the deployment of a dialogue based and explicitly non-coercive ‘Police Liaison Team’ (PLT) within the public order policing operation surrounding a football fixture. The study uses an approach based upon Participant Action Research to first generate changes to operational practices and t...

As a field of social science research, policing has been fortunate to have a number of influential academic researchers and a rich history of significant writing. This is something to be celebrated. Our Revisiting the Classics series aims to bring together leading commentators to review books that contribute to the core of police studies. There wil...

There is considerable evidence that psychological membership of crowds can protect people in dangerous events, although the underlying social–psychological processes have not been fully investigated. There is also evidence that those responsible for managing crowd safety view crowds as a source of psychological danger, views that may themselves imp...

In November 2012, the government department responsible for policing football released its annual statistics. These figures showed a dramatic 24 per cent reduction in the number of arrests in the context of football in England and Wales. Perhaps more strikingly, across the whole year there were just 27 arrests among the 100,000 or more fans that tr...

Exposure to crowding is said to be aversive, yet people also seek out and enjoy crowded situations. We surveyed participants at two crowd events to test the prediction of self-categorization theory that variable emotional responses to crowding are a function of social identification with the crowd. In data collected from participants who attended a...

Disaster myths are said to be widespread and consequential. However there has been little research on whether those involved in public safety and emergency response believe them. A survey examined how far police officers, civilian safety professionals, sports event stewards and comparison samples from the public believe the myths 'mass panic', 'civ...

This article provides further analysis of an emerging ‘liaison’ based approach to the policing of public order in England and Wales (Gorringe, H., Stott, C. and Rosie, M. (2012). ‘Dialogue Police, Decision Making, and the Management of Public Order During Protest Crowd Events.’ Journal of Investigative Psychology and Offender Profiling 9(2): 111–12...

Emergency planning often includes assumptions about crowd behaviour. These assumptions matter, as they can operate as rationales for emergency management practices. We examined the extent to which crowds are represented in UK emergency planning guidance as psychologically vulnerable or as contributing to psychosocial resilience. A systematic search...

Crowds in the 21st Century presents the latest theory and research on crowd events and crowd behaviour from across a range of social sciences, including psychology, sociology, law, and communication studies. Whether describing the language of the crowd in protest events, measuring the ability of the crowd to empower its participants, or analysing t...

Despite a history of violent incidents, the crowd events surrounding the fixture between Germany and the Netherlands at the 2004 European Championships in Portugal remained very peaceful. This paper provides an analysis of the social psychological processes among German football fans in relation to the policing carried out by the Portuguese Securit...

In the wake of the 2011 ‘riots’, public order policing tactics in England and Wales have once again been brought into question. Yet, the riots came two years since police regulatory authorities in the UK called for fundamental reforms to the policing of public order. Questions are raised about why the change called for appears to have been so slow...

Following the major riots within England in August 2011, the efficacy of public order police decision making was brought into a sharp focus. None the less, the reform of this mode of policing within the UK was already underway with a strong emphasis upon policing through consent and the need to facilitate peaceful protest through dialogue and commu...

The concept of prejudice has profoundly influenced how we have investigated, explained and tried to change intergroup relations of discrimination and inequality. But what has this concept contributed to our knowledge of relations between groups and what has it obscured or misrepresented? How has it expanded or narrowed the horizons of psychological...

This paper situates contemporary social scientific studies of crowd events and crowd behaviour in their historical and ideological context. The original ‘crowd science’ developed from definitions of ‘social problems’ that emerged in the late nineteenth century – in particular the concerns among the French establishment about the threat of the ‘mass...

This article describes a training programme for the ‘Event Police’ developed through cooperation between researchers at Aarhus University and East Jutland Police, Denmark. The Event Police and the associated training programme is a research-based initiative. It is designed to enhance the policing of major events and is an approach developed from th...

This paper explores the relevance of the Elaborated Social Identity Model of Crowd Behaviour and Procedural Justice Theory to an understanding of both the presence and absence of collective conflict during football (soccer) crowd events. It provides an analysis of data gathered during longitudinal ethnographic study of fans of Cardiff City Football...

Purpose This study seeks to examine what theory of crowd psychology is being applied within public order police training in England and Wales and what accounts of crowds, police strategies and tactics subsequently emerge among officers who undertake this training. Design/methodology/approach The study uses a multi‐method approach including observa...

Social psychological research suggests that where police hold a theoretical view of the crowd in line with the ‘classic’ crowd psychology of Gustavé Le Bon this can lead to police practices that inadvertently escalate public disorder. This research reflects debates within the criminology literature which suggests that a primary factor governing pol...

There have been important developments in psychological theory of crowd dynamics (Reicher 200111. Reicher , S. 2001. “Crowds and social movements”. In Blackwell handbook of social psychology: group processes, Edited by: Hogg , M. and Tindale , S. 232–258. Oxford: Blackwell. View all references). When this body of knowledge has been combined with...

This paper contributes to the science of crowd dynamics and psychology by examining the social psychological processes related to the relative absence of "hooliganism" at the Finals of the 2004 Union Européenne de Football Association (UEFA) Football (Soccer) Championships in Portugal. Quantitative data from a structured observational study is inte...

Much public order policing is still based on the assumption that crowds are inherently irrational and dangerous. We argue that this approach is both misinformed and counter-productive because it can lead to policing interventions that increase the influence of those advocating violence in the crowd. We challenge traditional assumptions about crowd...

This paper presents an analysis of collective behaviour among England football fans attending the European football championships in Portugal (Euro2004). Given this category's violent reputation, a key goal was to explore the processes underlying their apparent shift away from conflict in match cities. Drawing from the elaborated social identity mo...

Recent studies suggest that crowd conflict needs to be understood as an interaction between the crowd and out-groups such as the police. This paper describes a questionnaire survey in which 80 police officers from 2 United Kingdom forces were asked about their perceptions of crowds, appropriate “public order” policing methods, and attributions of r...

This article provides a critical analysis of the UK legislation on football banning orders. The historical development of this legislation is outlined and concerns are raised about its impact upon civil liberties and human rights, particularly with respect to Section 14B of the Football (Disorder) Act 2000. The article then outlines a body of resea...

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...

This paper addresses the hypothesis derived from self-categorization theory (SCT) that the relationship between groups and stereotyping will be affected by the social structural conditions within which group interaction occurs. A mixed design experiment (n=56) measured low-status groups' stereotypes and preferences for conflict with a high-status o...

This study is concerned with understanding the nature of police stereotypes and expectations and their potential role in shaping the intergroup dynamics of “hooliganism” involving England fans during the football European Championships in Belgium and Holland (Euro 2000). The paper uses a questionnaire survey of Belgian Gendarmerie officers to explo...

This paper is concerned with how people involved in ‘local’ protest might come to see themselves as part of wider social groupings and even global forces of resistance. An ethnographic study of the No M11 Link Road Campaign in London examines participants' definitions of their collective identity boundaries at different stages of involvement. Cross...