Protest arrests and future protest participation: The 2004 republican national convention arrestees and the effects of repression

• Date: 22 February 2011
• Pages: 141-173
• Published date: 22 February 2011
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1108/S1059-4337(2011)0000054009
• Author: Jennifer Earl

PROTEST ARRESTS AND FUTURE

PROTEST PARTICIPATION: THE

2004 REPUBLICAN NATIONAL

CONVENTION ARRESTEES AND

THE EFFECTS OF REPRESSION

Jennifer Earl

ABSTRACT

Protests surrounding the 2004 Republican National Convention (RNC)

resulted in over 1,800 arrests. Scholarship on repression is divided about

the likely impacts of arrests on subsequent activism. Interviews with RNC

arrestees are used to examine potential effects. Findings offer twists to

social movements and socio-legal hypotheses: (1) while many arrestees

were less willing to protest after their arrest, for many of these individuals

deterrence was selective, not wholesale; (2) many factors that were

expected to neutralize repressive impacts either resulted in deterrence or

set the stage for radicalization; and (3) individuals who were radicalized

shared strong preparation for their arrest experience.

Law and society scholarship and social movements research are often

focused on the nation-state and legal change, and yet, scholarship drawing

Special Issue: Social Movements/Legal Possibilities

Studies in Law, Politics, and Society, Volume 54, 141–173

Copyright r2011 by Emerald Group Publishing Limited

All rights of reproduction in any form reserved

ISSN: 1059-4337/doi:10.1108/S1059-4337(2011)0000054009

141

on both traditions is far more rare than one might expect. Moreover, when

these traditions are woven together, it is often to understand the relation-

ships between social movements and the civil legal system. For instance,

a number of major studies have examined how social movements might or

might not benefit from civil rulings (e.g., Rosenberg, 1991; McCann, 1994).

Scholars have also examined how legal remedies or legislative actions

sought by social movements are sculpted by the organizations being

regulated (Edelman, 1992, 2005; Edelman, Fuller, & Mara-Drita, 2001)

and how individuals understand and exercise their rights (Marshall, 2003,

2005a, 2005b). Research on cause lawyering often locates itself at the

intersection of the legal profession, civil litigation, and social movements

(e.g., Barclay & Fisher, 2006; Jones, 2001; Sarat & Scheingold, 1998;

Woods & Barclay, 2008).

Although important, this focus on the civil side of the legal house

tells only part of the story about how social movements and legal systems

interact. Classic research by Balbus (1973) and Barkan (1984) suggests

that these research traditions can also be productively wed through

investigations of arrests and prosecutions of protesters or, more broadly,

by examining the repression of social movements. And yet, most research

on social movement repression is not deeply informed by socio-legal

concepts or findings (save notable exceptions on protest policing such

as Gillham & Noakes, 2007; Noakes & Gillham, 2007; Vitale, 2007;

Fernandez, 2008; Lovell, 2009). The surprising lack of connection between

these traditions, then, is occurring from both scholastic directions: socio-

legal scholars are often interested in the civil side of social movement

interactions and repression researchers are not often also law and society

scholars.

In this chapter, I hope to illustrate the utility of socio-legally informed

repression research to both social movement scholars studying repression

and law and society scholars interested in social movements. Specifically,

I examine the impact of protest-related arrests on the willingness of arrestees

to participate in future activism. Whether repression deters or catalyzes

protest has been a critical issue in social movements research and yet has

not received much attention from socio-legal scholars. Results from this

study show support for multiple effects of repression, with selective

deterrence effects predominating. Analyses attempt to distinguish the many

potential mechanisms that could drive deterrence, radicalization, or no

effect. Data are drawn from interviews with a small random sample of the

over 1,800 individuals arrested during the 2004 Republican National

Convention (RNC).

JENNIFER EARL142

SOCIAL MOVEMENT RESEARCH ON REPRESSION

Repression can be thought of as attempts by state or private actors to

control or constrain protest, with the vast majority of research on repression

focusing on violence by state agents (Earl, 2004). However, over the past

several decades, police in the United States (as well as many European

countries) have substantially reduced their reliance on violence and have

instead increasingly relied on arrests. Specifically, McCarthy and McPhail

(McCarthy & McPhail, 1998; McPhail, Schweingruber, & McCarthy, 1998)

have argued that before the late 1960s and early 1970s, most police

departments used an ‘‘escalated force’’ model for protest policing in which

police violence was a primary tool for protest control. However, by the

early 1970s, departments began to adopt the ‘‘negotiated management’’

approach, which used pre-event permitting processes to negotiate away

potential conflicts between protesters and police and used minimally

invasive policing at events to control protests. If conflict at an event could

not be resolved through negotiation with organizers, then police were

expected to use arrests instead of violence to end the conflict.

Although some have questioned whether this transition to negotiated

management was as complete as McCarthy and McPhail claim (e.g., Soule &

Davenport, 2009), or have argued that police intermix multiple models

of protest control depending on the event (Vitale, 2007), it is nonetheless

clear that arrests have played an increasingly important role in protest

policing. Moreover, this reliance on arrests is likely to continue. Noakes and

Gillham (Noakes & Gillham, 2007; Gilham & Noakes, 2007)argue that post-

Seattle changes to protest policing models include mass arrests as a common

tool to incapacitate protesters. Therefore, it is important that scholars

understand how arrests, in particular, may operate as a form of repression.

Law and society scholars are in a good position to forward this line of

inquiry because a number of classic works in the field have focused on

protest or riot-related arrests (not to mention the large volume of work on

the political trials that follow some of these arrests). For instance, Balbus

(1973) examined arrests following several riots to show that arrests were

used as a particularly potent form of punishment and as a way to remove

potential rioters from the street in hopes of removing enough individuals

that the riots would cease. Barkan (1984) famously argued that when

boycotts were policed using legalistic techniques, including arrests, the

boycotts tended to fail. Police violence tended to mobilize support

from bystanders in favor of protesters, leading to greater chances of

movement success; arrests did not similarly arouse bystander sympathy.

Protest Arrests and Future Protest Participation 143