RT Article
T1 ‘We were the Guinea pigs’: Police uncertainty enforcing coronavirus regulations in the UK.
JF International journal of law, crime and justice
VO 72
A1 De Camargo, Camilla
LA English
YR 2023
UL https://krimdok.uni-tuebingen.de/Record/1840151064
AB The regulations introduced under the UK's Coronavirus Act 2020 to help curb the spread of COVID-19 caused considerable confusion due to conflation between what was regarded as ‘guidance’ and what was ‘law’. The fast-paced nature of the pandemic meant that restrictions on public liberty and increased police powers to enforce the new ‘rules’ led to accusations of over-zealous enforcement behaviour of some officers, including a record number of Fixed Penalty Notices (FPNs) issued. This paper explores the experiences of police officers in a range of English police forces, using 28 h of qualitative interview data at two research points in time (2020 and 2022). The extracts presented here illustrate some of the challenges that officers faced enforcing the frequently changing rules and regulations during the COVID-19 pandemic in the UK.
K1 Covid-19
K1 Coronavirus
K1 Fixed penalty notices (FPNs)
K1 Police Legitimacy
K1 Policing
K1 Public Trust
DO 10.1016/j.ijlcj.2022.100566