Between order and chaos lies the thin blue line - we need it more than ever

I have had a long fascination with how groups (gangs) and crowds behave. In my early career I studied armed robbery teams and spoke to many people in prison who perpetrated crimes in a group. I looked at how groups form, what leadership and hierarchy looks like and how people act and take risks with others as opposed to how they behave on their own.

Psychologist Kurt Lewin was at the forefront of the scientific movement studying the behaviour of groups in the 1940s. He coined the term ‘group dynamics’ to describe the way groups and individuals act and react to changing circumstances.

Sometimes a group forming involves both identifying with some individuals and explicitly not identifying with others. This goes to the heart of our own individual and innate need to belong. We are all in groups of one sort or another either online or in person, it’s part of the human condition, we are social creatures. Most often groups are positive, give us the chance to meet like-minded people, to achieve something together. Sometimes they evolve into something more negative, more toxic.

Then we get to the crowd. A crowd is never as simple as its dictionary definition of ‘a large number of people gathered together in a disorganised or unruly way’. Researchers identified more than eleven types of crowd including spectator, demonstrator, violent, escaping, dense or suffocating crowds. Then there is the crowd within the crowd – the different type of people who make up the crowd, often with differing intentions and motivations.   

I love watching crowds at football, emotions turning in an instant as a collective. It can be like watching a starling murmuration, the movements, the rise and the fall. It’s hypnotic. I remember speaking to someone who had invaded a pitch after a particularly memorable win, he said, “I don’t even know why I did it, everyone else was doing it, and I just followed.” Followers - every leader needs them, and there are many stories in the justice world of people who cite being in with the wrong crowd, never an excuse.

Policing has developed huge expertise of how crowds come together and how they are predicted to behave depending on other factors, even how police officers are equipped can change how a crowd reacts. Following the London riots in 2011 we saw huge leaps in understanding and technologies predicting the behaviour of crowds. But crowds remain high risk and complicated to police, and the ability to defuse and to manage high octane situations is the greatest skill. The fear and potential for injury is high for both officers and the crowd.

Some crowds defy the ability to be managed and must be contained. Many of us will have looked at the stories about riots last week with a range of emotions from disbelief to horror and revulsion, but that fades into nothing in comparison to the fear of those threatened, assaulted and burnt out of their buildings. Many will now be facing significant charges and sentences, and some will feel satisfied that they achieved their aim.

Policing, so often under the spotlight, faces one of its greatest challenges – in a complex, volatile environment. The thin blue line between order and chaos has never been so needed.

 

•         Karyn McCluskey is chief executive of Community Justice Scotland