Police legitimacy in relation to equality, diversity and inclusion: an analysis of a strategic plan

It has been argued that the legitimacy of criminal justice is not static but rather operates in a state of flux in terms of a dialogue between power holders and their relevant audiences Bottoms and Tankebe (2012). This dialogic perspective has recently been the subject of empirical investigation with respect to the use made of social media by the police service in Scotland (Ralph, 2022). This paper reports on a study that also examine the way in which police legitimacy is dialogical with a wider public. However, in this case that public is much more amorphous in terms of being the public-facing nature of a strategy document on equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI). Here the public nature of the document sets out how the police service itself will incorporate EDI into its own internal operations as well as how it will adopt this in policing within communities. This is set within the context of a legitimacy crisis in policing in the UK and specifically in this case in Scotland. Several high profile cases have been reported in the media that have raised serious concerns about the culture of policing in terms of racism and sexism. The response to this has been to formulate a strategic plan to tackle this culture. The paper examines the ways in which this strategic plan seeks to repair or overcome that legitimacy crisis in terms of the rhetorical deployment of particular discourses within the document. The result is a document that seeks to reassert the power-holder status of the police with respect to their authority over citizens.