Organisational justice in online harms management in UK police services: enacting a feminist ethics of care

This article presents a novel integration of two theoretical concepts traditionally examined and applied separately in policing scholarship: feminist ethics of care and organisational justice. Drawing from pioneering empirical work on online harms management in UK police organisations, we analyse 52 interviews with managerial personnel from four partner forces to problematise the emphasis on organisational reputation in online harms management. By applying a feminist ethics of care lens, we theorise and demonstrate how care-based principles, such as attentiveness, relationality, and contextual responsiveness, can underpin organisationally just management strategies in practice. We propose embedding networks of care structures and dependencies within police organisations and advancing a politics of care to enhance perceptions of organisational justice among police personnel, while ensuring managerial officers are supported in and through their care relations. This theoretical integration offers new visions and actionable approaches to care which empowers police personnel and potentially translates into wider public good through more democratic policing. Our policy-oriented recommendations for online harms management are generalisable to international policing contexts and other public-facing professions beyond policing.