Culture is a means of life, different countries, different countries or even different young families have their own cultures. There is certainly one occupational culture inside the police force, that that which you called "Cop Culture". Relating to Reiner (2000), law enforcement officials occupational cultures can be defined as a kind of share values, beliefs, norms, working methods, and informal guidelines, police officers use these ethnicities to justify their works in their world. In this essay, we will speak about the principal features and characteristics associated with "cop culture", also we will further discuss the key recent critiques of the previous scholarly understandings of "cop culture".
Culture is the way of life which differs from location to place, or changes over period. It is accessible in many forms like, behaviors, frame of mind or norms, etc. "Cop culture" can be an organizational culture within the police force, it is not the formal guidelines but still widely spread within the make. These informal rules and share ideals will not be released as written manuals. There will not have a wedding ceremony to declare these rules, but when new recruits type in the system, during the recruitment and training period, they will be socialized and find out about the culture. New police officers are then engaged in following the informal rules as they are all assumed to attain the same goal. With this inescapable socialization, police force and cop culture are always closely interdependent.
Many studies always utilize "cop culture" as the key debate in contemporary policing, for the reason that open public concerns that, authorities is the experts in our modern culture, their works entail threat and risk. They may be paid to safeguard the public safeness and prevent criminal offense, so they have to take these responsibilities. Consumer expect and demand cops the best standard of work, however they do not truly understand the difficulty of law enforcement work. Working between this ambiguous difference, there is a need for police officers to work out a special life-style to sustain the whole system.
"Cop culture" includes different underlying beliefs, these may have an impact on or guide the police's working habit. It could be seen as the reference point for police to comprehend more about just how of work and the policing style of its corporation, or we might say it is a sort a learning action. As much criminologists mostly concern about "the way the cop-culture shapes the ways in which officials use their discretion?" we can use the police culture to help expand understand and interpret how the authorities use the discretion electricity. (Westmarland, L, 2008) Discretion electric power requires an important role in the authorities role, police utilize this specific authorized electricity when they have to make decision for his or her operation. As everybody knows, it is impossible to use the law fully, there still have distinctions between "law used" and "law theoretically". We can not write down every single case in a rule book, and ask the police officials to follow them strictly. In cases like this, authorities need to make good use of the knowledge learnt from the training school and encounters from the older officers as recommendations. Police have to face thousands of decision making process at their work, for example, whether to arrest or alert a careless driver. Discretion power provides them an array of solutions to enforce the law correctly. In cases like this, cop-culture may impact their understanding about the unlawful tendencies or the criminals. Finally, it could change and control the results or even the justice directly.
To incorporate different scholars' studies about "Cop culture", they attempted to list a numerous of features to characterize "cop-culture". These are "a sense of mission", "cynicism/pessimism", "machismo", "suspiciousness", "internal solidarity/interpersonal isolation" and "conservatism".
Robert Reiner (2000: 111-114 ) firmly emphasized the central feature of cop culture is "a sense of objective". Law enforcement officials have a strong sense to safeguard the general public and the poor, as it isn't only their job but their way of life. They may have strong commitment to the valuable work. About the "cynicism/pessimism", it dominated the personalities of cops. Because their work makes them the exposure to dangerous conditions, they become mistrust to the public or even everyone. "Machismo" is "a product of the masculine ethos of the pressure and the tension developed by the work" ( Jewkes, Y. & Letherby, G. , 2002 : 276), it is an extremely typical sketch atlanta divorce attorneys police force. Having a cult of masculinity and the strong and extreme do it yourself- images, this has great influence electric power on their frame of mind and manners towards offenders, victims and offense.
Moreover, Skolnick (1966) created other three main characteristics to make of "cop culture", they are simply suspiciousness, internal solidarity linked with cultural isolation and conservatism. It is all started from the job nature of law enforcement, the task of police force is meticulously related to threat and risk. With this nature, police firstly are more suspicious of everyone in the population, probably, they are simply trained to be dubious concerning stop the risk matters at the earliest opportunity, dubious manner thus lead to "social isolation" which includes isolation from families, friends or the mainstream of community. They could think that all people except their colleagues do not understand their works. As inside solidarity is associated with social isolation, they will also be mutually reinforced. It is easily to comprehend that because of this external interpersonal isolation, they will become more rely on their working partners, they will believe that only cops will know and support their works, and therefore enhance their inside solidarity. "Conservatism" is related to the original image of law enforcement, because they are the authority information which upholding strong legitimate power in the culture, their working style will be traditional too. They will not be easily affected by other norms, such as they should not have any sympathies towards any criminal offenses related people. Also, conservatism makes the authorities organizations lack of incentive to improve and reforms. All of above features are not written as formal guidelines but they are all known by any police officers.
According to Skolnick (1966), law enforcement officials view themselves as the safeguards of world, they are working in danger and they're necessary to be suspicious. They need to use their government bodies to enforce the law as to protect the society. Within this construction, Skolnick (1966) pointed out the authorities always face a issue that "we are working under pressure to attain results by means of police, but were restricted by the guideline of laws to enforce the law" Also, as their work are closely watched by the public every day ( Newburn. T & Reiner. R, 2007: 918), these supply the police work higher pressures, and thus provide them a host to develop a couple of unique culture for coping with their works. And people could 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 mentioned "Racial prejudice" as a feature of cop culture. It is shown that police are targeted a specific races as their policing focus on informally. They believe they will be the approved moral judges locally, so they may be permitted to do some prejudge prior to the formal due-process. The important point is the fact that they usually give attention to the minorities and create a certain "unfair" or "discriminative" attitude to deal with them.
You may ask in what ways the police officers discuss these cop culture, and does it really so long-lasting? Regarding to Andrew Dark brown (1995:26), culture is a product of 'historical process'. When years and years pass, this has become a group of identical working style within the business. Experiences are accumulated day by day, and be the "record" today. The distributed norms and beliefs are easily pass on between section and officers.
However, many criminologists wrote to criticize the existence of "cop-culture". The majority of their studies focused on issue of races and gender discrimination, and it brought up the general public attention on "police mistreatment of discretion power" or even more serious problem like, miscarriage of justice. Different scholars got brought out their claims about the "cop-culture", and have advocated kind of "reform" to stop the spread and development of the "cop-culture".
Is that basically so serious that we need to restrict this inner culture within the authorities firm? Some recent scholars like, Chan (1996) and Waddington (2004) began to look "cop-culture" with a different angles and paint a new picture for this. They challenged the previous scholars about their conception of the "cop-culture".
According to "Law enforcement (canteen) sub-culture: an understanding" of Waddington, P. A. J (2004), he tried to provide us an alternative solution view of "cop culture" which opposed the previous scholars' understanding and criticisms about "cop-culture". Waddington(2004) explained that it is merely a "canteen culture" whereas we can address it as an oral phenomenon, he emphasized the variations between "talk and action"( Waddington, 2004 : 364), we do not need to pay too much attention on the "private discussions" in such private backstage like canteens where far away from open public. He argued that this is merely an act of "storytelling". In some case is that senior officers make use of the channel to talk about their "war tales" with some exaggerate manners. However, we ought to consider the professional training as those police officers have abilities to find out its simple fact and make a decision whether to adopt it as reference point or not.
In addition, it's rather a positive thing which gives them opportunity to express their emotions as they have already suffered from ruthless on their daily work. This police force occupational culture also provides them a concept of spirit, it fosters a solid sense of cohesion between officers and thus increases their working frame of mind. Officers believe that there's a mutual understanding making them find their own worth within the business and community. Waddington (2004: 375) also detailed this "canteen culture" is merely developed by a condition of "speaking a good deal with", 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 unneeded to web page link this with the condition of competition or gender discrimination. Also, those characteristics are just just how of law enforcement lives, we have to not comment it as "negative" or to "reform" their way of lives. It is meaningless to concern about the "talk" aspect, or we should pay more attention on the "action" indeed.
Another key critique about "cop-culture" is proposed by Janet Chan (1996) just lately. She made 4 main criticisms about the prior conceptions about "cop-culture" and its own abilities to clarify "cop-culture". Firstly, Reiner (1992: 109) explained that the "cop culture" is not "monolithic, widespread nor changing". But Chan (1996) argued that the prior meanings are" too simple" and "not universal". She concerns "the failure of existing definitions of law enforcement officials culture to take into account internal differentiation and jurisdictional distinctions. " (Chan, 1996: 111) She mentioned that there has to be different degree of police sub-cultures inside the organization, but the previous scholars usually just give attention to the culture of "street level", but they neglected the culture of "management level". She criticized that the prior scholars could not provide a full explanation and comprehensive 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 didn't make an precise explanation about "socialization" of cops. Every police officer has their own choice to choose whether absorb and convert the values, they'll not follow those casual rules blindly. They are able to separate which are "hero stories" and which can be "real works and real world".
Thirdly, Chan (1996: 112) proposed that "A theory of police culture must, therefore, situate culture in the political and social context of policing. " As the authorities is closely related to the population, it is impossible to extremely segregated them. However, Chan (1996) found that the previous scholars failed to do this. No matter the street level and management level officials also need to respond to the public reaction. About those problems of "injustice" or "corruption", authorities group still have to react to these scandals.
The last criticism is meticulously linked with the previous criticisms, regarding to Chan (1996:112), "an all-powerful, homogeneous and deterministic conception of the authorities culture covered from the exterior environment leaves little scope for a ethnical change". She explained that the previous scholars were didn't examine the opportunity and possibilities for changing this "cop-culture".
Almost thirty years back, people are started to pay attention on the police occupational culture which we named as "cop culture" nowadays. Law enforcement take an important role in our society, a minor difference between their behaviors may effect very differently. A lot of the studies are give attention to the "street cop culture", especially those "patrol officers". "Cop culture" is the shared values and norms within the authorities officials, although this culture will be varies from location to place, you may still find some standard features in general. However, many scholars always identified "cop culture" as something "negative" and "destructive" to world. After a period of the time, some current scholars argued that those earlier criticisms about "cop culture" might not exactly be correct in all cases, and made a recently and clear method for us to understand the concept about "cop culture".
