Patterns and profiles of complaints against the police

Complaints systems can be designed to serve a variety of purposes – to deter police misconduct in general, to control or remove deviant officers, to help maintain public confidence, to satisfy individual complainants, and so on – and particular aims may be more important in some kinds of case than in others. Between 1979 and 1987, the annual total of completed cases in England and Wales varied only narrowly, between a minimum of 16,206 and a maximum of 17,376. Complaints are distributed somewhat unequally between police forces, not only in terms of absolute numbers, but in relation to the numbers of officers employed. A fairly typical example of a complaint arising from an ‘immediate’ arrest occurred when the police, called to an incident in a pub, had arrested the complainant’s friend and were allegedly mistreating him. Few people who make complaints against the police take this decision lightly.