Weather, Light and Darkness in Remote Island Policing: Expanding the Horizons of the Criminological Imagination

Abstract

Abstract The conceptual development of criminological scholarship has been inextricable with the city. This is particularly apparent in relation to policing, where foundational ideas about police work and culture are derived almost exclusively from research in cities. But how has the ubiquity of the urban context limited our criminological imagination? Drawing on a major ethnography of policing in two remote Scottish archipelagos, this paper explores how the remote island context brings new phenomena within the scope of criminological inquiry, illuminating the selectivity of its dominant preoccupations. It explores the centrality of (1) the weather, light and darkness and (2) immersion in the physical environment in the way island officers perceive the places, people and problems they encounter, and the implications for how they exercise state power.