Senior Investigating Officers (SIOs) are police detectives progressing serious crime including homicide investigations within England and Wales, to do so they must make effective, insightful critical-decisions (Cook, 2019)
Stereotypical images of police leaders including SIOs controlling outcomes (Mastrofski, 2002) adds to stressors facing contemporary SIOs, individuals can face unrealistic expectations to achieve desired results (Davis & Silvestri, 2020), with this stressor potentially generated by SIOs themselves
College of Policing (CoP, 2022, p.1) doctrine states: “the Senior Investigator leads as the Senior Investigative Officer on specified crime investigations. They are accountable to chief officers for the conduct of the investigation”
Responsibilities routinely absorbed by SIOs are described as creative skills (Carson, 2009), with (Tong & Bowling, 2006) labelling it a science, described within the SIOs Handbook (Cook, 2019, p.3) as: “a craft and art form that is not the easiest to learn and master. It most certainly carries with it a sizeable amount of reputational risk and personal accountability”
The SIO role can be considered the pinnacle of professional investigators’ career aspirations, and ultimate test of investigative skillsets (Tong, 2011). Cook (2019) articulates the attraction and corresponding challenges by demonstrating potential for SIOs to provide positive impact within serious crime landscapes, whilst simultaneously forcing them to occupy lonely, publicly accountable positions, attracting significant personal pressure
Contemporary studies (Espartero, 2023; Lokman, 2023) focus on stressor coping-mechanisms, failing to account for stressor appraisal, other studies explore links between work-demands and perceived stress (Oliver et al., 2023), or health amongst patrolling officers (Granholm Valmari et al., 2023), rather than SIOs. This provides an opportunity and need to understand the SIOs role (Smith et al., 2000) and focus on their well-being and recovery mechanisms (Foster, 2024)
The Thin Blue Line 