‘Finding Them is Just the Start…’ Critically exploring police perceptions of successful missing persons work.

Abstract

Missing persons police work is a complex and high demand area of the wider policing mission reliant on effective multi-agency collaboration across increasingly contested organisational boundaries. When a person is reported missing however, it is the police who have a duty to take the lead in bringing them home. Focussing on notions of what is good, and what matters in policing, this thesis builds an in-depth authentic account of how police conceptualise what it means to be successful across the diverse roles and context within which missing persons police work takes place.

Adopting a multi-site ‘follow-the-thing' ethnographical approach, data was collected over 9 months as an embedded researcher in two policing areas in the UK. Interviews and focus groups with those for who missing person was daily work are combined with collated closed case files and over 500 hours of participant observation creating a comprehensive picture. Four themes are constructed from the data: Outcome-, Process-, Protection- and Impact Success, echoing similar found by Brookman and Innes (2013) in their study of homicide investigation.

Adapting the theoretical framework of benevolent (in)justice to policing for the first time, the potential for unjust, disproportionate outcomes when striving for policing success is then critically explored. Finally, exclusionary narratives found in the data are examined, providing new insight into how use of ‘ideal victim’ tropes and frustrations related to contested organisational boundaries and demand pressure interact and can disadvantage some of the most vulnerable groups of missing people.

Date of Award	2025
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	University of Dundee
Supervisor	Jonathan Mendel (Supervisor), Nicholas Fyfe (Supervisor) & Penny Woolnough (Supervisor)