Author: Peter B Ainsworth
ISBN No: 1 903240 44 1
Review date: 16/12/2025
No of pages: 0
Publisher:
Year of publication: 11/09/2012
Brief:
First, from the June 2002 print issue of Professional Security, a question and answer article between us and the author Peter Ainsworth.
1) Re your chapter on recruitment and selection – staff turnover in the security industry is chronically high, higher than the police. (Many suitable security officer and supervisor applicants may have a criminal record.) Can psychology testing reduce staff turnover for manned guarding companies – an industry about to have its officers licenced by a Private Security Industry Authority (which means higher staff overheads)’
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2) Re the chapter on interviewing suspects – how does it compare with security industry investigations eg into staff frauds, where PACE does not apply but should be regarded as best practice (so the Fraud Advisory Panel says). I am thinking that a false confession could land an organisation in hot water in the courts’ and indeed leave the fraudster at large?
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1) Yes I think that psychological testing could help by, for example, identifying those who are most suited to the job and
those who are least suited. Providing the industry could come up with accurate information about the sorts of qualities needed by employees, psychologists could provide instruments to measure these. However as you will see in my chapter there are still problems associated with testing. It might be worth your while
speaking to some police psychologists who currently use tests routinely.
2) I think that all the factors that can lead to false confessions in the police interview room could also lead to false confessions in the private industry. Indeed if the industry is not ‘constrained’ by the PACE rules one might argue that false confessions are MORE
likely! As you note the problem them is not only that the wrong person is punished but that the true culprit is free to commit further crimes!
If policing involves interacting with others, and psychology is the study of behaviour, a book uniting the two – Peter Ainsworth’s Psychology and Policing – has much to offer. Ainsworth may disappoint all those amateur psychologists out there. There is no Pincocchio’s nose, he says. Sorry, but you cannot spot a liar by their hand fidgeting, and whether they meet your gaze or not. The skilled criminal might be the one who has trained himself to meet your gaze; an innocent person interviewed in a fraud investigation might confess to protect another, or because of pressure in the interview room. (While the Police and Criminal Evidence Act does not apply in civil proceedings, it should be regarded as best practice, in, say, a fraud investigation, the Fraud Advisory Panel comments.) In the field of interviewing suspects (who, Ainsworth repeats, are not ‘obviously’ guilty) as in other fields of policing, Ainsworth comments that old habits die hard. Your belief in your ability to spot a liar is unfounded.
In ten chapters, the author – Director of the Henry Fielding Centre at the University of Manchester – covers:
– interpersonal skills (if everyone needs some personal space, what then if you break that space to arrest them or move them on?)
– prejudice and stereotyping (
– recruitment, selection and training
– aggression and violence
– perception and memory (how officers and witnesses alike store information)
– interviewing suspects (can you tell if someone is lying’)
– stress (stressed officers can hinder their organisation)
– crime patterns and offender profiling (asking where are crime hot-spots and why – what is going through the offenders’ minds?) and
– hostage taking and negotiation.
All the chapters have nuggets and will prompt security managers to question whether the way they and their staff do things – only because it’s the way they’ve always been done – is in fact the best way. Some of the subjects overlap – in recruiting, for example, when screening should a manager look to rule out those with prejudice against minorities? Or screen out dyslexics or people with a criminal record, however trivial? If you are a white, middle-aged male recruiting officer, do you have stereotypes (what qualities if any are you asking for in your job adverts?) Its all very well to do psychological tests on recruits, Ainsworth says, but to be valid those tests should correlate with job performance. Selection, then should be linked to training – because the organisation needs to know what skills suitable candidates are lacking, and provide training. Given that the security officer and manager, like the police officer, is multi-tasking, has your organisation put job descriptions in writing? Ainsworth admits that law enforcers might resist input from psychologists, who will have to prove their worth.
In the chapter on aggression and violence, Ainsworth goes through the various theories about why people are so aggressive and violent, which are not directly of use to the security personnel dealing with young men on a drinking binge or football hooligans. Ainsworth admits that no single theory can account for violence. He is of more practical help when he looks at violence by police. As police are one of the few bodies with the state-given power to use force, the question then becomes whether such use of force is excessive. Who says what is ‘reasonable’ force? Again, Ainsworth suggests answers lie in training. Linked to violence is stress that officers may feel as a result. Yet Ainsworth quotes US research that observing a colleague’s act of corruption is as stressful as (say) a hostage situation, which suggests that loss of control (being passed over for promotion) is stressful, as much as a physical threat. In an male-dominated organisation that prides itself on its toughness in an unpredicatable job, how sympathetic are colleagues to stress? If you admit stress to managers, will it harm your chances of promotion?<br><br>
Throughout Ainsworth makes a good case that an appreciation of psychology is not only good for the staff, but the organisation – debriefings after harrowing events, how to be sensitive to victims, how to handle a crime gone wrong that has turned into a hostage situation without wading in. Echoing a point made by Colin Braziel in our January 2002 issue, Ainsworth says that while hostage negotiation is a specialised skill, it is important that the first on the scene, such as a patrol officer, does no harm. Ainsworth writes: ‘One of the things that negotiators will try to do is present a model of calm behaviour to the hostage-taker? – in the hope that the hostage-taker will emulate that calmness, leading to dialogue. In three words the theme of hostage negotiation and Ainsworth’s book is ‘talk to me’.<br><br>
Psychology and Policing (2002), by Peter B Ainsworth.
