Pitched! Informants and the covert policing of football fans in Scotland

ABSTRACT

This paper offers a new perspective on the policing of football fans by exploring the recruitment and use of ‘informants’, or ‘Covert Human Intelligence Sources’ (CHIS), in this area of police practice. Drawing upon semi-structured interviews with both football fans and police officers in Scotland we foreground fan experiences against a backdrop where intensive police surveillance has become a routine feature of football events. In particular, our research uniquely provides accounts of fans whom the police sought to recruit as informants, a process known colloquially in policing as being ‘pitched’. In doing so we highlight the impact this tactic has on football fans, both individually and collectively. In understanding police perspectives, we note how the use of informants in football policing is frequently justified as a ‘legitimate’ means to provide intelligence to prevent violence and disorder amongst fans. Cautioning upon the dangers of further ‘surveillance creep’, we highlight that the use of informants in the policing of football fans and events raises both practical and ethical issues. In particular, we argue that the use of informants in the covert policing of football fans, if this tactic is to be used, must be grounded in a clearly articulated threat of violence and disorder that is accepted by football fans and the wider community. In the absence of this, the use of such tactics is likely to be considered unnecessary and disproportionate by football fans, feeding a wider narrative of criminalisation and a perception of illegitimate and disproportionate forms of policing.

KEYWORDS:

• Football policing
• covert policing
• informants
• surveillance

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 For a more specific review of literature on the use of informants in policing and law enforcement, see Atkinson (2019).

2 A particular critique here is the construction of a ‘British’ account, in the absence of research from Scotland.

3 For an interesting international comparison here, see the Mexican account given by Magazine and González (2017).

4 This situation is indicative of a broader malaise in the study of covert policing, despite its growing importance (Mac Giollabhuí et al, 2016, p. 631).

5 This genre has also been an outlet for the disclosure of the stories of undercover police officers who covertly infiltrated networks of football ‘hooligans’ in England in order to detect and disrupt their activities (see Bannon, 2014).

6 Miller and Selva’s research (1994) reports and reflects upon on the activities from the perspective of an informant in the United States of America (USA). Moreover, Miller’s more recent work (2011) on the process of ‘becoming an informant’ draws upon data obtained from in-depth interviews with eighty-four former informants in the USA.

7 For Lowe (2011), this has justified the use of covert research methods in such settings. More recent research, however, has demonstrated the possibilities for overt research in this area (see Bacon, 2016).

8 Airports have become sites of surveillance – and consequently sites of insecurity and suspicion – for communities beyond football fans. Blackwood et al (2013), for example, have highlighted the problematic experiences of Muslims at Scottish airports; sites where they have been subject to routine surveillance and interrogation, with resultant feelings of ‘rejection, of hurt and of humiliation’. Importantly, wider research on the experiences of British Muslims at airports has also noted the use of such sites for the purposes of informant recruitment (see Choudhury and Fenwick, 2011).

9 The concept of antisocial behaviour as it intersects with constructions of football fandom and ‘risk support’ has already been traversed in the literature (see James and Pearson, 2014).