Abstract
This paper presents an analysis of the way Danish community police officers talk about and label citizens. It is shown how these labels, (customers, clientele, good Danish citizens, and the general public) function as guidelines for police discretion, and how officers interpret and treat similar acts quite differently depending on the label of the actor. The crucial distinction here is whether the citizen is “known” to the police, and even though police officers mainly deal with “known customers”, leniency seems to be reserved for the “unknown” citizens. Thus, by judging the man more than the act, police practice and discourse maintains and reinforces a distinction between lawful and unlawful people rather than between legal and illegal acts.
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