How video drama can improve the culture of the Metropolitan Police

Last week a friend challenged me to describe how Drama for Change, (a culture-change campaign built around video drama), might be brought to bear on the problems of the Metropolitan Police.?I did touch upon this in my previous article, but I was understandably reluctant to go deeper as what one hears about the Met makes it a subject so fraught with pain and conflict one feels unfit for the task.?Today I’m accepting the challenge.

‘A profoundly sick force’

Let’s recap on the situation: A 2022 report from the Independent Office for Police Conduct found ‘shocking evidence of a profoundly sick force’. Currently, the Met is facing a variety of cultural problems, including allegations of institutional racism and discrimination, lack of diversity and inclusivity, and a lack of trust from the public. There have also been concerns raised about the use of force by police officers, particularly in relation to stop and search practices, and issues related to the treatment of women and minorities within the force. These issues have led to calls for reform and a review of police practices and culture. All this is in the context of policing in England and Wales having lost 20,000 police officers and 40% of community support officers in recent years. (Re-recruitment is currently underway).?

Needless to say, I‘m not suggesting Drama for Change can solve all of this, rather I’m seeking to intelligently project where we might deploy it to good effect.?A thought experiment if you will.?But to get to that point I needed a vision of how the force might recover from its present crisis.?

The research

The best resource I found was the excellent Eat Sleep Work Repeat podcast hosted by Bruce Daisley .?The relevant episode, ‘Can organisations repair toxic culture? Two experts say how they would fix the Met Police’, features Dr Megan O’Neill and Dr Simon Holdaway.?

O’Neill is a social sciences reader at the University of Dundee and an associate director of the Scottish Institute for Policing Research. Her work involves researching policing and working with police organizations to improve their practice. Holdaway is emeritus professor of criminology at the University of Sheffield. Before becoming an academic he served as a police constable and police sergeant.

A solution is possible

Holdaway is particularly interesting here because he is the person who ‘discovered’ the police occupational culture when, in 1983, he published ‘Inside the British Police: a force at work’.?

The ‘force at work’ he was referring to is the occupational culture. Despite this, he is scathing of critics who insist that the Met is institutionally racist and sexist. He says this is unhelpful because no one knows what is meant by it, so it provides no clues for action. Holdaway would rather say that the racist and sexist outcomes are precipitated by repetitive action by constables.?And the key to changing this is to put emphasis on the development of their direct managers, the sergeants. This resonates with an observation by former member of the police inspectorate Zoe Billingham who observed, “When an organisation is under pressure, when supervisors can’t do the job well, when there is limited training and when there’s a sense of we’re all in this together because it’s such a battle against adversity, then you are likely to see a more toxic culture,”

O'Neill and Holdaway agree that changing the traditional hierarchical model of policing is difficult and that creating a supportive and inclusive workplace culture is important. They also emphasize the importance of training.?

Procedural and organisational justice

The strongly hierarchical nature of the Met’s structure is clearly at odds with a vision of an internal environment with better communication up and down the management structure, but O’Neill points to successes seen in the Durham police.?Here a model of organisational justice has been used which gives officers a structure to embrace a set of fair internal values. This new, more open internal culture fits better with the public-facing policy of procedural justice, a more human rights-oriented approach to policing.?Procedural justice places emphasis on ensuring that encounters with the police are handled fairly and that individuals feel heard and valued. In summary, more fairness within the organisation has enabled a policing policy with an emphasis on fairness.?

The sergeants are the key

The further you get down the rank of command, the more discretion you have. Written law and policy are not the same as the law and policy in practice. Management can write as many directives as they like but without buy-in from lower management, the sergeants and inspectors, it will all come to naught.?

Holdaway says the real leaders are sergeants and inspectors. So, give them the status, the skills and the knowledge to be able to meaningfully manage their constables.?

Top management, he says, have shown little ability to confront overwhelming media pressure and to support the lower ranks who are accused of being individually racist and sexist. ?A clear distinction needs to be made between the notion that practices and structures have discriminatory outcomes and the bigoted character of individuals in the force.?And this must be accompanied by a systematic re-design of how the law is applied.

This does not, of course, preclude the need to eliminate those members of the force who have demonstrated repeated discriminatory behaviour.?Indeed, just last week saw the headline “London’s police force steps up crackdown on rogue officers”.

Drama for Change

Research complete, it seems the obvious place for Drama for Change to find traction in the Met is in the development of sergeants.?As Holdaway says – empowering sergeants will have a disproportionately transformative effect. They clearly have a tough job, deftly managing morally grey areas and making critical choices under pressure.?Assuming there is a tilt towards procedural justice, sergeants will need to think carefully to mentally rehearse new responses to familiar pressured situations. And they will need to feel supported in this.

Drama for Change is perfect. Challenging situations can be modelled as video dramas. Drama is immersive in terms of problem solving because simply by introducing characters and putting them into difficult situations viewers naturally wonder what they do in that circumstance. This is how we enjoy a drama and how it works in learning. By designing dramas around situations with no one correct answer the thinking stimulated goes all around the problem.

The other main element of Drama for Change is the stimulation of discussion around the drama. This can be facilitated face-to-face discussion, or perhaps in a moderated WhatsApp group. Ideas are socially tested with other sergeants, and new, thoughtful solutions become embedded as the new common sense.?

A Drama for Change campaign is far more detailed and methodical than this, but hopefully you can see the principle: Embody the problem in a drama that has no clear resolution, stimulate and enhance discussion and finally, listen. Drama for Change uses two-way communication to join the dots between policy and application.?

Drama for Change can make a real difference, one drama at a time!

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