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This chapter offers an account of the principal theoretical perspectives on police culture. It starts by elucidating why it is important to assess police culture, before reviewing a number of the classic ethnographies that continue to exert considerable influence over this area of study. Then, it describes the works which have subsequently followed and prepares a thematic discussion of the central characteristics of police culture. Towards the end of the chapter, it examines the recent challenges to its conceptualization, before going on to discuss the issues associated with police change. Furthermore, it supplies a platform on which to consider the relevance of the renowned features of orthodox accounts of police culture for the altered context of policing. Data show that critiques imply that police culture may be losing its expediency as a concept.

This chapter provides an evaluation of the current condition of police culture. It reviews the key findings that have been presented throughout this book and describes the implications of the research. The argument postulates a tension between the transformations that have clearly occurred in the policing landscape, and the persistence of police cultural characteristics as observed by earlier scholars. It starts with a discussion by calling into question the dominance of current thinking on police culture. It also returns to three central themes which cut across preceding chapters. The first is the apparent survival of police ways of viewing and carrying out their role as found in the classic accounts. The second addresses how reconfigurations around questions of diversity have crystallized in the dispositions and practices of police officers. The final theme considers further the enduring, but often neglected, dimension of class. There is no doubt that there have been momentous changes in the policing landscape and organization—and these offer some possibilities for reform.

This chapter offers an assessment of the current condition of English policing culture. This entails revisiting Raymond Williams' threefold typology of cultural forms — the dominant, the residual, and the emergent — sketched towards the end of Chapter 2 and which has quietly guided subsequent efforts at interpretation. In recapitulating the principal themes that featured in Parts II and III of this book, the chapter aims to further a sociological and political analysis of the mix of lay, professional, and governmental sensibilities that struggle with one another to constitute (and re-constitute) English policing culture.

This chapter considers policing — how its nature and the demands on police have changed and are changing; the significance of the reforms that have already taken place and those which are now proposed; and the implications of elected commissioners for police and crime. It examines the mechanisms by which police are accountable to the public and the importance of their accountability also to the law. The chapter goes on to discuss the government's and the public's expectations of what police should and should not do, and the need to manage those expectations, especially at a time of shortage and austerity. It reflects on the connections between police bureaucracy and culture, and concludes by identifying some of the considerations that will have a critical influence on the future of policing in England and Wales.

This chapter considers how many of the classic themes have survived the period of transition. In particular, it leaves aside seminal questions of ethnicity, gender, and sexuality and examines the contemporary relevance of other classic themes of police culture for the altered context of policing. The interactions and cultural characteristics analysed in this chapter occur within distinct geographical and social contexts. Then the stage of these two policing environments is set. The dominance of a masculine ethos within the occupational culture is illustrated. The discourses and interactions described and analysed reveal the powerful endurance of cultural characteristics noted by earlier works.

This chapter exposes a contradiction which emerged between the police organizational emphasis on diversity and axes of class. It specifically questions the current dominance of diversity within policing agendas by illustrating that issues of class remain crucial in understanding policing discourses and practices. It begins by appealing for a rethinking of police culture which recognizes how class continues to permeate cultural knowledge and everyday practices. It focuses on the importance of class in a ‘low’ policing context; that is, class as it was policed in the routine and mundane dimensions of police work. It is noted that notions of diversity promote a better public image of police organizations, but they can obscure the enduring realities of routine policing.

The events and the consequences of a case study from July 1997 are presented in this chapter. These events left had ramifications for many years. This book gives an account of the lives of five officers from the Emergency Service and the Bomb Squad who participated in the raid of 1997. It looks at their lives from that point until the attack on the World Trade Center in 2001, which forced them to revisit their past experience with terrorism. The analysis of the raid and its aftermath confirm the dynamic and varied nature of police culture and also the persistence of certain views. The book also gives a brief account of Joan Barker's Danger, Duty, and Disillusion, on a qualitative account of the occupational socialization of patrol officers in the Los Angeles Police Department, highlighting a five-phase process that marks the transition in attitude about the job from the time of being a police graduate from the academy to their retirement.

Police departments incentivize officer behavior through a variety of organizational mechanisms. This chapter focuses on one such mechanism—official departmental awards—to explore what kind of police work is formally rewarded within the police department. Using five years of departmental award data from a police department in the United States, this chapter shows that departmental awards perpetuate the value of dangerous, masculine crime fighting often equated to “real” police work that is aligned with a so-called “Warrior” mentality. In contrast, awards for “soft” or “Guardian” behaviors, though less common overall, make up a larger proportion of awards given to female officers. These findings highlight the salience of departmental awards in the perpetuation of a policing ethos that is out of step with contemporary calls to temper policing’s traditionally enforcement-centric operations. Structural changes that can incentivize police behaviors more in line with a Guardian approach to policing are considered.

Not infrequently, police officers will swear in an abusive manner during street encounters with individuals. This chapter suggests that the use of such language reflects attributes of the occupational culture of law enforcement, and that it is intended by the officer as a means of exerting control over the interaction. Swearing—particularly by those in positions of authority—is a powerful signal of role transgression. As such, it additionally signals the possibility of further role transgression, including the potential police use of physical force against the subject. The individual sworn at in this context experiences the interaction as hostile and threatening, and the coercion inherent in such an interaction taints the entire episode, including police requests that the subject acquiesce in a search. Lawyers and judges need to be sensitive to the ways in which such police language can undermine the voluntariness of a later “consent” to search.

Chapter 1 examines exiting research on policing pluralization, community policing, and police culture. Early studies of police occupational culture found that community policing and other types of ‘soft’ policing methods (such as partnership work) were not highly valued within the organization. However, this method was to revolutionize policing in the twenty-first century. In addition, ever more aspects of ‘police’ work are now undertaken by other actors in both the public and the private sectors. Consequently, what was once an insular and guarded organization is now more open to collaboration with outsiders, and it seems to appreciate better the ‘soft’ side of policing. However, as Police Community Support Officers are employees of police forces with a police-like mandate, these staff have been seen to present a greater danger to job security and the ‘purity’ of the police officer’s role.

This chapter accounts for the capacity of local police officers to act as policy mediators who help to determine the nature of policy outputs generated by police development assistance projects in BiH. A multi-site, single case study is used to contrast the progress of two community policing units working to implement a Swiss-inspired community policing model from the ‘bottom-up’ in Sarajevo Canto in 2011. The chapter argues that some local police officers, when motivated and relatively unconstrained by institutional and environmental factors, can use their agency to translate relevant elements of ‘off-the-shelf’ community policing models into culturally and contextually appropriate policing practices. Equally, it establishes that this agency can also represent a source of resistance to change and even contribute to potentially harmful and exclusionary policy translations.

This chapter looks at how bureaucrats shape the criminal justice relationship between Australia and Indonesia in the context of cooperation between their national police forces. Adapting Mathieu Deflem’s theory of bureaucratic autonomy, it argues that the close cooperation between the Australian and Indonesian police since the late 1990s is due to their relative independence from national politics and the professional subculture that they share. At the core of this police culture is a common policy interest in combating transnational crime. The chapter also suggests that other bureaucrats from the two countries may share professional subcultures that facilitate cooperation between them.

Video evidence of use-of-force incidents has changed the conversation about policing in the United States and undermined faith in law enforcement. This chapter presents a critical discourse analysis of police efforts to maintain a positive public image. First, the chapter identifies three rhetorical strategies used by law enforcement in pursuit of image repair. When they cannot control the original creation and framing of an image through embodied gatekeeping, officials negotiate its recontextualization by controlling the narrative, explaining procedures, or appealing to the public’s respect for authority. Many departments are also crafting their own visual messaging, with social media accounts that highlight good deeds caught on badge cams or with lighthearted in-house video productions such as the 2018 Lip Sync Challenge. A close reading of the Lip Sync Challenge finds that its productions tended to reify, rather than dispute, the white, militaristic, hypermasculine culture that police accountability activists condemn.

The chapter uses contemporary policing problems and challenges to evaluate how well training prepares recruits, auxiliaries, detectives, and managers for the police role. It reviews patterns of police corruption, misconduct and complaints against officers and considers whether, and how well, training helps police forces counter such problems. It also notes instances of positive responses to failures of service delivery. The discussion moves on to examine the challenge that diversity poses for the police, both at a cultural level and in respect of the specific experience of female officers, ethnic minority officers, and officers with alternative sexual orientations. The lessons of sickness, stress and injury on duty are considered in relation to how effectively training and supervision helps counter these. A discussion of public confidence and trust is used to address the concept of police legitimacy and to place it in relation to the acquisition of professional competence.

This chapter assesses the impact of policing on urban order. It argues that the nineteenth-century police forces were especially attentive to local perceptions of nuisance and improvement in their efforts to tame urban popular culture and to sanitize urban public space. Police efforts to impose public order were modified by structural constraints, exercise of discretion in law enforcement, and resistance on the part of the public. And yet, the psychological repercussions of street order policing were profound, as large sections of the urban population came under an unprecedented level of official scrutiny. Hence, this chapter argues that—faced with a highly officious and, at times, repressive form of police authority—the urban public became ‘police-conscious’ in the nineteenth century.

This penultimate chapter of the book brings together the research described so far and analyses its significance for an understanding of the occupational culture of Police Community Support Officers (PCSOs) within the pluralized field of public policing. The two phenomena of institutional undermining and complementary/competitive teams discussed previously in the book are combined through a theoretical framework developed by Chan (1997) to analyse police officer and PCSO culture. This highlights the processes of developing and enacting an occupational culture through storytelling, and it highlights its artefacts (two distinct aspects of occupational culture which are often conflated). Both PCSOs and police officers experience these processes and generate cultural artefacts. The chapter explores how these processes and artefacts for the two groups, while at times appearing similar, have significant differences, which reveals a unique PCSO occupational culture.