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Paper short abstract:

If 'public service provisions' register inhumane to those using or receiving them: How does that feel for service-providers? A (digital) sensory ethnography with South Wales Police asks this by illumining conflicts of 'acting accountably' and responsibilities to 'make people (feel) safe'.

Paper long abstract:

South Wales Police (SWP) have the self-acclaimed task to "make people (feel) safe". From a Sensory Ethnography (SE) angle, this implies a co-production of 'safe places' through interactions with others (Pink, 2009). Empirically, SWP rely on their skills of 'reading people' and engaging with them at face-level to make them feel cared for as 'one of them': An unarmed, friendly community service, responsible to serve the community they belong to.

Within (discursive) networks of attitudes that position 'communities' against 'the police', however, officers' professional decision-making is being increasingly policed and standardised. Rather than relying on their 'human' skills to make split-second decisions, care about and respond to people's situational needs, protocols and guidelines diminish officers' Discretion. Moreover, the goodness of their performance is measured in statistics and tracked with 'machines' of various kinds.

Based on (digital, sensory) ethnographic work with SWP, this paper highlights how demands of 'paperwork' make officers feel that they are no longer allowed to be (seen as) 'human' on-duty but forced to police like 'robots'. These sentiments are interlaced with narratives that equate transparency with accountability and responsible policing (Brucato, 2015), as well as erratic assumptions about predetermining human behaviours and identifying 'safe places' via crime statistics. Conflicting notions of digital and offline 'safe (place-)making' affect what it means to be a 'responsible' police officer externally and internally. This paper zooms in on the 'humanness' and self-identified vulnerability SWP rely on and feel in need of defending.