By William Downs

Who handles complaints against the police?

A member of the public can make a complaint if they are dissatisfied with the police. 

There are three crucial actors in the police complaints system:

• Professional standards departments (PSDs) are specialist teams based within every police force in England and Wales. They are responsible for handling most complaints for their force.

• The Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) is an independent body that oversees the police complaints system. It also conducts independent investigations into some of the most serious police complaints and conduct matters.

• Local policing bodies (either the police and crime commissioner or the deputy mayor for policing and crime, depending on the area) are responsible for monitoring their force’s complaint handling and conducting some complaint reviews.

By MAHESH K. NALLA, DAE H. CHANG, LISA SUTTER, and WAYNE W. DUNNING

In 2001, the Universidade Catolica Portuguesa3 published a report regard- ing victimization in the city of Lisbon. The survey was requested by the mayoral office as a means to examine crime rates in the city. Previous research had depended entirely on official police reports4, and it was felt that these failed to adequately measure victimization in the city. In a study of 3,505 residents, the victimization rate was relatively low; approximately 17% of the respondents had been victimized during 2001. Comparatively, the fear of crime was higher. Respondents were asked about how safe they felt in Lisbon and in their neighborhoods. More than 60% of respondents reported feeling unsafe to very unsafe in the city, and over one third of the respondents report- ed feeling unsafe in their neighborhoods. With such a low rate of victimiza- tion, what contributed to these feelings regarding respondents' safety? In their multi-level theory of victimization, Wilcox et al. (2003) posit that contextual factors, and more specifically measures of social disorganization in addition to victimization, influence an individual's fear of crime.

However, given the low victimization rate in Lisbon, where there is little racial heterogeneity° , it is arguable that conditions of social disorganization as stipulated by Shaw and MacKay (1942), Sampson and Groves (1989), and more recently Sampson et al. (1997) exist in Lisbon. Therefore, a different perspective needs to be adopt- ed to explain the observed relationship between victimization and fear of crime.

Official Journal for the American Society of Criminology, Division of International Criminology, Volume 30, Number 1, Spring 2006, 143p.