Culture in the Police Force

Culture in the Police ForceCulture is a way of life, different nations, different countries or even different families bind their own cultures. There is one occupational culture inside the law force, that what we called collect Culture. According to Reiner (2000), guard occupational cultures sess be specify as a sympathetic of sh are value, beliefs, norms, kick the bucketing practices, and informal rules, police officers will office these cultures to merelyify their works in their world. In this essay, we will talk ab forth the principal features and characteristics associated with toss off culture, also we will further discuss the main young critiques of the previous scholarly understandings of cop culture.Culture is the way of life which varies from place to place, or changes over period. It exists in many forms like, behaviors, attitude or norms, etc. gain vigor culture is an organizational culture within the police force, it is non the formal rules but still widel y mobilise within the force. These informal rules and share determine will non be published as written manuals. There will not have a ceremony to announce these rules, but when new-made recruits enter the system, during the recruitment and training period, they will be socialized and learn more or less the culture. New police officers are then engaged in spare-time activity the informal rules as they are all assumed to achieve the same goal. With this unavoidable socialization, police and cop culture are always closely interdependent. many an(prenominal) studies always part cop culture as the key debate in contemporary policing, it is because existence concerns that, police is the professionals in our society, their works involve hazard and risk. They are paid to protect the public safety and prevent crime, so they should take these responsibilities. Public expect and demand police officers the highest standard of work, but they do not truly understand the complexity of pol ice work. Working amidst this ambiguous gap, there is a need for police officers to work out a special way of life to sustain the whole system.Cop culture involves different underlying values, these whitethorn affect or guide the polices working behavior. It commode be seen as the reference for police to understand more about the way of work and the policing style of its organization, or we may say it is a kind a learning behavior. As many criminologists mostly concern about how the cop-culture shapes the ways in which officers use their judgement? we can make use of the police culture to further understand and interpret how the police use the discretion male monarch. (Westmarland, L, 2008) Discretion power takes an important role in the police role, police use this specific authorized power when they have to make decision for their operation. As we all know, it is impossible to implement the law fully, there still have differences amid law in practice and law in theory. We c annot write down every single case in a rule book, and ask the police officers to follow them strictly. In this case, police need to make good use of the knowledge learnt from the training school and experiences from the older officers as references. Police have to wait thousands of decision making process at their work, for example, whether to arrest or warn a careless driver. Discretion power provides them a wide range of methods to implement the law correctly. In this case, cop-culture may affect their perception about the criminal behavior or the criminals. Finally, it may change and control the results or even the evaluator directly.To combine different scholars studies about Cop culture, they tried to list a numerous of features to characterize cop-culture. They are a sense of mission, cynicism/pessimism, machismo, suspiciousness, sexual solidarity/social closing off and conservatism.Robert Reiner (2000 111-114) strongly emphasized the central feature of cop culture is a sense of mission. Police have a strong sense to protect the public and the weak, as it is not only their subscriber line but their way of life. They have strong commitment to this valuable work. About the cynicism/pessimism, it dominated the personalities of police officers. Because their work makes them the impression to dangerous conditions, they become mistrust to the public or even everyone. Machismo is a product of the masculine ethos of the force and the tension built up by the work (Jewkes, Y. Letherby, G., 2002 276), it is a very typical sketch in every police force. With a cult of masculinity and the strong and aggressive self- images, this has great influence power on their attitude and behaviors towards offenders, victims and crime.Moreover, Skolnick (1966) introduced other three main characteristics in making of cop culture, they are suspiciousness, internal solidarity linked with social isolation and conservatism. It is all started from the job nature of police, the work of police is closely link to danger and risk. With this nature, police firstly become more suspicious of everyone in the society, probably, they are trained to be suspicious as to stop the danger matters as soon as possible, suspicious manner thus lead to social isolation which includes isolation from families, friends or the mainstream of community. They may think that all the people except their colleagues do not understand their works. As internal solidarity is linked with social isolation, they will also be mutually reinforced. It is easily to understand that because of that external social isolation, they will become more rely on their working partners, they will feel that only police officers will know and support their works, and thus enhance their internal solidarity. Conservatism is related to the traditional image of police, as they are the authority figures which upholding strong genuine powers in the society, their working style will be conservative too. They wil l not be easily affected by other norms, such as they should not have any sympathies towards any crime related parties. Also, conservatism makes the police organizations lack of incentive to change and reforms. All of above features are not written as formal rules but they are all known by any police officers.According to Skolnick (1966), police view themselves as the safeguards of society, they are working in danger and they are required to be suspicious. They need to use their authorities to enforce the law as to protect the society. Within this framework, Skolnick (1966) pointed out the police always face a dilemma that we are working under pressure to achieve results in the form of law enforcement, but we are restricted by the rule of law to enforce the law Also, as their work are closely watched by the public every day ( Newburn. T Reiner. R, 2007 918), these give the police work greater pressures, and thus provide them an environment to rise up a set of unique culture for de aling with their works. And public may see this culture as deviant but it has been accepted and justified as normal in the cop-culture.Some other studies (Wortley, R, K., 1992) also noted racial prejudice as a feature of cop culture. It is shown that police are targeted a specific races as their policing target informally. They believe they are the authorized incorrupt judges in the community, so they are allowed to do some prejudge before the formal due-process. The important point is that they usually focus on the minorities and develop a certain unfair or discriminative attitude to deal with them.You may ask in what ways the police officers share these cop culture, and does it authentically so long-lasting? According to Andrew Brown (199526), culture is a product of historical process. When years and years pass, this has become a set of identical working style within the organization. Experiences are accumulated day by day, and become the history today. The shared norms and val ues are easily spread betwixt surgical incision and officers.However, many criminologists wrote to criticize the existence of cop-culture. Most of their studies focused on problem of races and gender discrimination, and it raised the public anxiety on police abuse of discretion power or even more serious problem like, miscarriage of justice. Different scholars had brought out their complaints about the cop-culture, and have advocated kind of reform to stop the spread and development of the cop-culture.Is that really so serious that we need to restrict this internal culture within the police organization? Some recent scholars like, Chan (1996) and Waddington (2004) started to look cop-culture with a different angles and paint a new picture for it. They challenged the previous scholars about their conception of the cop-culture.According to Police (mobile canteen) sub-culture an appreciation of Waddington, P.A.J (2004), he tried to offer us an alternative view of cop culture which op posed the previous scholars understanding and criticisms about cop-culture. Waddington(2004) give tongue to that it is only a canteen culture whereas we can do it as an oral phenomenon, he emphasized the differences between talk and action( Waddington, 2004 364), we do not need to pay too much attention on their individual(a) talks in such private backstage like canteens where far away from public. He argued that it is only an act of storytelling. In some case is that senior officers make use of the channel to share their war stories with some exaggerate manners. However, we should believe the professional training as those police officers have abilities to determine its humankind and decide whether to take it as reference or not.In addition, it can be a positive thing which provides them opportunity to express their emotions as they have already suffered from high pressure on their daily work. This police occupational culture also provides them an idea of spirit, it fosters a strong sense of cohesion between officers and thus enhances their working attitude. Officers believe that there is a mutual understanding which makes them find their own values within the organization and community. Waddington (2004 375) also described this canteen culture is simply developed by a condition of talking a good fight , officers just want to glorify themselves, it is also related to their personalities of machismo. The process of glorification can definitely increase their self-esteem which makes them work harder and more efficient as to achieve the same goal and to maintain their internal working spirit.Moreover, Waddington, P.A.J. (2004) argued that cop culture is just an in-group culture, it is unnecessary to link this with the problem of race or gender discrimination. Also, those characteristics are just the way of police lives, we should not comment it as negative or even to reform their way of lives. It is meaningless to concern about the talk aspect, or we should pay more attention on their action indeed.Another key critique about cop-culture is proposed by Janet Chan (1996) recently. She made 4 main criticisms about the previous conceptions about cop-culture and its abilities to explain cop-culture. Firstly, Reiner (1992 109) stated that the cop culture is not monolithic, universal nor changing. But Chan (1996) argued that the previous definitions are too simple and not universal. She concerns the failure of existing definitions of police culture to beak for internal differentiation and jurisdictional differences. (Chan, 1996 111) She stated that there must be different level of police sub-cultures inside the organization, but the previous scholars mostly just focus on the culture of road level, but they neglected the culture of management level. She criticized that the previous scholars could not provide a full definition and nationwide conditions of cop-culture.Secondly, Chan (1996) argued that police officers are not like what Reiner (1992 109) described as passive and being cultural dopes She also criticized Reiner did not make an detailed explanation about socialization of police officers. Every police officer has their own choice to decide whether absorb and transform the values, they will not follow those informal rules blindly. They can separate which are hero stories and which are real works and real world.Thirdly, Chan (1996 112) proposed that A theory of police culture must, therefore, situate culture in the policy-making and social context of policing. As the police is closely related to the society, it is impossible to extremely separated them. However, Chan (1996) found that the previous scholars failed to do this. No matter the street level and management level officers also need to respond to the public action. About those problems of injustice or corruption, police organization still have to react to these scandals.The final criticism is closely linked with the previous criticisms, according to Chan (1996112), an all-powerful, homogeneous and deterministic conception of the police culture insulated from the external environment leaves little place setting for a cultural change. She stated that the previous scholars were failed to examine the scope and possibilities for changing this cop-culture.Almost thirty years ago, people are started to pay attention on the police occupational culture which we named as cop culture nowadays. Police take an important role in our society, a minimal difference between their behaviors may result very differently. Most of the studies are focus on the street cop culture, especially those patrol officers. Cop culture is the shared values and norms within the police officers, although this culture will be varies from place to place, there are still some standard features in general. However, many scholars always defined cop culture as something negative and destructive to society. After a period of time, some current scholars argued that those previous criticisms about cop culture may not be correct in all cases, and made a newly and clear way for us to understand the concept about cop culture.