The book provides an introduction to new methods for exploring leadership and decision-making in critical incidents. It will be an essential resource for developers of police training in leadership and decision-making, senior police officers involved in critical incident management, organisational psychologists who work within policing, and for students whose area of study covers policing, decision-making or criminal investigation.

Figures and tables

List of abbreviations

Acknowledgements

About the contributors

Foreword by William Griffiths BEM QPM

Preface by John Grieve CBE QPM

Introduction

Laurence Alison

Interpretive frameworks

Decision inertia

Forensic psychology: prison or forum?

2 The journey

Jonathan Crego

Electronic debriefs and simulations as descriptive

methods for defining the critical incident landscape

Marie Eyre, Jonathan Crego and Laurence Alison

Introduction

Existing methods in decision-making research

A specialist domain: understanding the landscape

  of policing

10kV

Hydra

Contributions of 10kV and Hydra

Potential criticisms

Conclusion

The current state of police leadership research

Allison Wright, Laurence Alison and Jonathan Crego

Leading critical incidents

Leadership and management - definitional issues

Why are effective leaders important?

Major approaches to studying police leadership

Leadership during critical incidents

Conclusion

Command, control and support in critical incidents

Kate Whitfield, Laurence Alison and Jonathan Crego

Directive and supportive leadership

Dimensions of directive leadership

Dimensions of supportive leadership

Conclusion

Leading, co-operation and context in Hydra syndicat

Laurence Alison, Jonathan Crego, Kate Whitfield,

Andrea Caddick and Laura Cataudo

The Hydra exercise: scenario and syndicates

Data analysis: interpretative phenomenological analys

Frequencies of coded behaviours

Interpreting the results

Conclusion

Appendix: Coding dictionary of team co-operation

7 Towards a taxonomy of police decision-making in

murder inquiries

Sam Mullins, Laurence Alison and Jonathan Crego

A model of decision-making in murder inquiries

A pragmatic definition of decision-making

Hierarchy and 'distance' between decisions and action

The context of murder investigations

Summary and conclusion

Heuristics and biases in decision-making

Louise Almond, Laurence Alison, Marie Eyre,

Jonathan Crego and Alasdair Goodwill

Heuristics

Biases

Conclusion

9 The emotional legacy of homicide investigations

Jonathan Crego, Laurence Alison, Jennie Roocroft and Marie Eyre

Introduction

Researching emotions

Emotions and decision-making

Emotions in police investigations

Emotions and critical incidents: a 10kV study

During the investigation

Conclusion

Postscript

General definitions of emotion for the case study

10 Decision inertia: the impact of organisations on critical

incident decision-making

Marie Eyre, Laurence Alison, Jonathan Crego and Clare McLean

Introduction

Decision avoidance and organisational context

Current study

Inertia in practice

Inertia in theory: omission and status quo biases

Inertia in theory: conflict theory and the trade-off

   avoidance hypothesis

The impact on multi-agency teamwork

A model of decision avoidance

Avoiding decision avoidance? Looking for the positives

Moving forward

Conclusion

Appendix A: Existing problems

Appendix B: Suggested improvements

Index