When I set out to study the inner workings of police stations in Scotland, the plan seemed clear. I had my methodology, a list of formal contacts and the support of supervisors well-versed in conducting similar research. I therefore, quite naively, expected a linear process: send an email, attend meetings, get a pass. I should have perhaps known that in the world of policing, “access” isn’t a single door; it’s a series of hurdles. In this post, I want to pull back the curtain on the messy, frustrating and often ‘right-place-at-the-right-time’ process of obtaining access. I’ll share how I navigated the barriers of police bureaucracy and why, in the end, my most important breakthroughs didn’t come from formal processes — they came from capitalising on chance encounters.
Despite the supposedly public nature of institutions like the criminal courts, there is an ever-increasing resistance faced by researchers attempting to observe these environments (Travers 2022). Unfortunately, the experience of researchers attempting to study police custody is no different. The police institution has experienced a similar turn towards bureaucratisation and image-consciousness, driven in part, in Scotland, by unification of police forces under the authority of Police Scotland. The gatekeepers to access are therefore no longer high-ranking Sergeants or Chief Constables but a faceless administrative team.
The major hurdle for this project was in this organisational approval, sought from Police Scotland’s academic research team (Research & Insights 2025). This involved assessment of the alignment of project with the portfolio strategic priorities and, for carceral environments like police custody, the ‘additional sensitivities’ that had to be overcome. Traditionally in this context, research would only be conducted in collaboration with the In-house Service Design team or with partners at other law-enforcement agencies. An important fact, which rather frustratingly only became clear to me following multiple rounds of meetings, e-mails and months spent justifying the ethical and resource considerations that had already been taken into account in formulating the project. The conclusion of these conversations seemed to be that the majority of empirical research conducted into custody was only being done by recognised bodies, where, for example, the power to scrutinise service-provision is given legislative footing (Police and Fire Reform (Scotland) Act 2012)
At this point, I began asking myself how it could be so hard to even get past the first hurdle. Although I felt uniquely disadvantaged, this experience is likely a familiar one for most engaging in police research. Institutionally and culturally, the police are distinctly risk-averse, which does not tend to translate to openness to research or scrutiny. In this context researchers are prone to being seen as unwelcome outsiders, ‘inspectors’ in disguise, or worse, a liability. Whilst this closed-off approach was often couched in a concern for welfare, the outcome of it seemed to me, to be of an even greater risk to those in custody. If dependence upon well-trodden, formalised routes of access limits external eyes from looking at what happens in custody, what would this mean for the suspect in an environment where inherently coercive and oppressive power dynamics prevailed and the conduct carried out within it often never saw the light of day?
The increased formality of access I came up against perhaps, counterintuitively, meant falling back on informal access, personal relationships and methodological messiness. In seeking out police organisational engagement with the project there was a notable disparity between the enthusiasm and willingness of individuals within the organisation who wanted to grant access to custody and the risk-averse organisational response. I quickly learned in this process that some contacts are far more valuable than others - whilst a high-ranking officer might give you permission, if the gatekeeper doesn’t trust you, you aren’t getting any further than an email thread. Therefore, carrying with me the knowledge that the kind of door you knock on mattered almost as much, if not more, than the lengths you went to open one that was already firmly closed, I began to approach other custody actors for access.
I spent weeks perhaps even months getting nowhere until, in passing, the name of a solicitor whose work revolved primarily around custody was mentioned by an officer during a tour of a disused child-custody facility. This chance encounter formed the first successful route to access, providing me with the opportunity to observe custody through the lens of defence solicitors at work. The uncertainty however, was by no means resolved. Once in the field one contact simply wasn’t enough. I had to be pragmatic in lingering around the courts and approaching other solicitors to make my presence known and make clear the immediate need to facilitate the research.
In capitalising on these encounters, it seemed almost essential to already be in the field. This was especially true, as my name, organisational affiliations and the resulting impact of the research was for the most part, unknown to potential access givers. Without this existing status and where there hadn’t been a sense of immediacy created by my presence, facilitating my observations in the context of a solicitor’s workload, risked seeming like an unjustifiable, additional burden. I was also faced with a distinct lack of solicitors able to offer experience relevant to the research. This could perhaps be explained by the now, rather limited number of lawyers attending police custody. The disillusionment I observed, in addition to the dwindling number of those willing to do police station work, resulted in an diminished commitment and value found amongst defence solicitors, in a project that aims to improve, what has been for many years, a persistently struggling criminal justice system (JUSTICE Scotland 2018). Yet, through the enduring sense of commitment to the craft of a select few, who took personal responsibility for facilitating my access, I was able to gain in-depth insights into the workings of this strained and fractured system that will ground the call for reforms that are so sorely needed.
The enduring uncertainty that has characterised my experience, as an apparently unavoidable consequence of the restrictive and risk-averse response of police to being the subject of research, raises worrying questions around the foreclosing of opportunities for research in this area. Especially so for smaller projects and early-career researchers, where the time, funding and/or status necessary to build trust and collaborative professional relationships that could serve to overcome the increasingly narrow avenues for access, do not exist. For this project, however, uncertainty hasn’t proven a death-sentence. Whilst largely thanks to persistent determination and pragmatism it has also been thanks to an ability to capitalise on chance. Here are then perhaps, some ways, taken from my own experience, that we as ethnographic researchers can work with chance:
- Show up: You can’t have a chance encounter from your desk. Being physically present in the field increases your surface area for luck.
- Listen more, pitch less: Instead of leading with my research “ask,” I started leading with curiosity about individual’s day-to-day struggles.
- Embrace the pivot: When one door closes, don’t just knock harder. Look for the side entrance that a chance conversation might have just unlocked.
References
JUSTICE Scotland. 2018. Legal Assistance in the Police Station. https://files.justice.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/06170420/JUSTICE-Scotland-Legal-Assistance-in-the-Police-Station.pdf.
Police and Fire Reform (Scotland) Act. 2012.
Research & Insights. 2025. https://www.scotland.police.uk/about-us/how-we-do-it/research-and-insights/.
Travers, Max. 2022. ‘Court Ethnographies’. in The Oxford Handbook of Ethnographies of Crime and Criminal Justice, edited by S. M. Bucerius, K. D. Haggerty, and L. Berardi. Oxford University Press.