Cautionary Tales and Useful Instruments

Despite being a prominent feature of policing work, it has only been in the last 20 years that researchers started a rigorous documentation and analysis of the importance of vulnerability in policing and policing research. In our earlier work, we have scoped the field of vulnerability; from conceptualisation through to evaluating policing and public health strategies to reduce vulnerability. In this chapter, we use our decades of experience in engaging with vulnerable people as part of our research of vulnerability in policing practices. We consider research practices and theories, as well as the organisational and ethical challenges created when we treat vulnerability as an artefact of specific bodies/minds, and not as a universal human condition that shapes all encounters with police.