Self-Governance or Professionalized Paternalism?: The Police, Contractual Injunctions and the Differential Management of Deviant Populations

Contractual injunctions have emerged as key instruments of social control. They provide agencies such as the police with unique powers to manage deviant persons by forcing the recipients, via the threat of criminal sanction on breach of the injunction, to engage in self-control of their behaviour. This article develops understandings of how contractual injunctions are actually used in practice by the police. Analyses of the different ways contractual injunctions are directed at certain social groups are developed in relation to police occupational cultures that place limits and possibilities on their application. It concludes by locating the broader social effects of contractual injunctions with issues of urban marginality and growing powers to criminalize social predicaments.