Toward the development of a roles framework for police psychology

The past two decades have seen major transformations in the way police departments conduct business. These transformations have impacted all aspects of policing from evidence collection to how officers perform their duties while on patrol. One aspect of policing that is still in the throes of transformation is the role of the police psychologist. Picice psychologists have moved from a beginning of counseling police officers involved in critical incidents (see Kurke & Scrivner, 1995) to a broad range of law enforcement related activities. The traditional aspects of their jobs such as providing assistance to crisis negotiation teams, conducting counseling sessions for officers, and developing and presenting in-service and cadet training are part of an ever-changing picture of the police psychologist. Today's police psychologists operate at all levels of police department. Some of the newer roles to emerge in recent years are organizational and management consulting, counseling crime victims, and coordinating community involvement. This paper provides a framework for looking at both new and old roles of police psychologist and to argue for an expanded and better defined role within the policing profession.     

Tension on the thin blue line: Police officer resistance to community-oriented policing

While over 60% of police agencies in the United States are either implementing or planning for community policing (Annan, 1995), actual implementation of community policing practices is disjointed and has produced more problems than solutions. One such problem is the resistance among officers to the philosophy itself. In a study of the orientations of noncommunity policing officers in the largest public safety department in the US, it is determined that elements of the organizational culture of the police agency are not significant predictors of support for the community policing philosophy. Rather, individual orientations toward citizen involvement in crime prevention and job involvement are predictors of officer support. Implications for police managers are discussed.     

Organizational Climate, Perceived Citizen Support, and Job Satisfaction of Police Officers: Findings from the Post-Grand Reform Era in South Korea

Two major police reforms were introduced in South Korea in 1991 and 1999 to help bring about a shift from a colonial style of policing to a form more prevalent in developed economies pursuing the rule of law, observance of human rights, and the practice of democratic policing. We conclude that the findings from the present study, drawing on a survey of a national sample of 406 South Korean police officers, offer modest support for the efforts of the Grand Reform in its impact on police officers?? satisfaction with promotion and salary and benefits. While few demographic characteristics, with the exception of age and years of experience, were associated with job satisfaction, there is strong evidence for the relationship between organizational characteristics and job satisfaction. Management support and perceived citizen support of police are associated with both measures of satisfaction, promotion and salary/benefits, while the police officers?? relationship with their supervisors is less than stellar. Finally, officers who believe that the primary operating philosophy of the police is to serve the government appear to be satisfied with their jobs relative to their opportunity for promotion, which is perhaps a more critical measure for them than salary and benefits, reflecting the presence of a police organizational climate that is still rooted in the historical military culture of Korean police. The findings from this study suggest that more efforts are warranted in improving organizational climate if officers are to believe their primary goal is to serve the citizen, a fundamental element of democratic policing.     

Job satisfaction: The gender perspective among police officers

Although women constitute more than 50% of the United States’ population, their percentage among police officers is approximately 9%. Despite being relatively new to policing as fully accepted officers, their growth in numbers should be higher. Nevertheless, such growth may be stagnant. The reasons for this phenomenon are still under examination, and any research that can shed light on this quandary is useful. This article examines job satisfaction among police officers and whether there is a difference by gender. The belief is that if job satisfaction among women police officers is low, this could reflect why more women are not entering law enforcement. However, the data analyzed from a purposive sample of 2,309 male and 309 female officers suggest that there is little difference in job satisfaction solely by gender.     

Policing in small town America: Dogs, drunks, disorder, and dysfunction

A handful of researchers examined the activities of law enforcement in rural areas. Much of the research on rural policing activities involved well-constructed ethnographic methodologies including observational studies, case studies, and in-depth interviews. These studies demonstrated that rural police officers faced a number of problems that their urban counterparts did not. Building on this past research, this article reports the results of a content analysis of law enforcement activity in one rural community over a two-year timeframe. In all, 948 police calls as described in one community's published media crime reports were analyzed. Results of the analysis suggested that rural policing requires officers who are trained as generalists and able to respond to an assortment of departmental and social/community needs. Implications are provided.     

Crime as a negotiated commodity: The police use of informers

Criminologists have long been interested in the relationship between policing and community participation. Traditionally, it has been argued that law enforcement agencies are dependent upon the general community for crime information. Recently, however, there is a growing interest among criminologists to explore the dependency relations police create within different subpopulations, especially diverse street subcultures. This study explores the social organization of police-street hustlers relations. Using qualitative data on 70 hustlers and 50 police officers, we examine how crime is manipulated as a commodity in advancing the interests of informers and the police. It is argued that although separate and unrelated situational factors are important, a more comprehensive understanding of the nature of these exchanges warrants an investigation of social networks and law. It is concluded that the informal contexts of law significantly pervade the informal contexts of these encounters. This topic demands considerable attention given the lack of organizational policies or standards which jeopardizes public confidence and erodes the informer's constitutional protections.     

Role Conflict and the Psychological Impacts of the Post-Ferguson Period on Law Enforcement Motivation,Cynicism, and Apprehensiveness

In the wake of high-profile deadly force cases in the post-Ferguson era, a number of negative psychological outcomes have been depicted by law enforcement officers. We examine if negative post-Ferguson outcomes predict current cynicism, motivation, and apprehensiveness. Further, we account for whether role orientations, specifically support for a law enforcement orientation or a community policing orientation, mediate the psychological effects of the post-Ferguson period. Since the law enforcement orientation, exercised through strict enforcement of the law, has been called out of favor in the post-Ferguson area, supporting this role may negatively impact officers via role conflict. The opposite may be observed for those supporting a community policing orientation. We test these arguments using results from an online survey of law enforcement officers in the USA, administered 6 months following highly publicized incidents in Dallas and Baton Rouge where police were targeted and killed. Results showed that post-Ferguson psychological impacts continued to affect current levels of cynicism, motivation, and apprehensiveness. Support for law enforcement or community policing orientation did not mediate the effects of post-Ferguson sentiments. Nonetheless, role orientations played a significant role in predicting current cynicism, motivation, and apprehensiveness and provided support for the theory of role conflict.     

Job satisfaction among frontline police officers in China: the role of demographic,work-related,organizational and social factors

This study was intended to add to information about the underinvestigated policing studies in China. The possible impact of demographic characteristics, work-related variables, and organizational management and social variables on police job satisfaction was investigated. Data were collected through a self-report survey administered to a sample of sworn police officers training in a national police university in China (N?=?393). Results indicated that work-related characteristics associated with variety and stress, and organizational variables associated with professional development and peer cohesion were the most important predictors of job satisfaction in this sample of police officers.     

The Context of Minority Group Threat: Race, Institutions, and Complying with Hate Crime Law

A wealth of research suggests a direct association between minority group size and government social control, such as arrest or imprisonment rates. Prior work in this vein, however, gives scant attention to (1) types of law that explicitly address intergroup conflict and (2) regional variation in the salience of minority group threat. At the same time, research on organizational responses to law indicates that institutional linkages to legal environments dictate policy innovation and compliance, yet the relevance of such linkages for law enforcement agencies is less clear. The present research investigates these themes by focusing on law enforcement responses to hate crime in the United States. Data from a sample of large municipal and county policing agencies and their degree of compliance with the federal Hate Crimes Statistics Act are analyzed. Main effects models show that compliance with federal hate crime law is less likely in places with larger black populations, an intriguing finding in light of extant work suggesting that both formal social control and race-based hate crime offending are typically more prevalent where more blacks reside. This effect of black population size on compliance with hate crime law, however, is contingent on region. A positive correlation in the Northeast contrasts with an inverse association in the South. The findings also suggest that organizational facets of law enforcement agencies, notably their engagement in community policing, are associated with compliance. The results elaborate and qualify group threat explanations of government social control and contribute to a burgeoning literature on the utility of organizational theory in the realm of law enforcement.     

Whatever Gets you Through the Night: Officer Coping Strategies after the High-Profile Line of Duty Deaths in Dallas and Baton Rouge

The policing profession has recently experienced events that affected officers across the nation. Several high-profile cases involving police and members of minority communities intensified the tensions among these groups. Amid public criticisms of policing, law enforcement officers have become targets of attacks. Multiple cases of officer ambushes and assassinations have further troubled the already stressful occupational position of law enforcement. This study investigates what coping strategies officers used after the deadly attacks on police in Dallas, Texas and Baton Rouge, Louisiana that occurred in July, 2016. We also investigate how the coping strategies used affects job motivation among officers. Our findings suggest officers turned to three coping strategies: support networks, stoic self-help, and self-medication. These coping strategies were found to be ineffective mechanisms for protecting officer job motivation; however, some strategies adversely affected motivation more than others. Understanding how officers are coping and why effective strategies are not being employed adequately is imperative for both the safety of officers and the public.     

A career stage analysis of police officer work commitment

This study examined police officer attitudes toward their work in an effort to determine whether a three-stage model of career development has utility in broadening the understanding of police officers' commitment to their work. One-hundred-sixty-four officers were surveyed using a variety of measures of work commitment including: affective, continuance, and normative organizational commitment; job involvement; Protestant work ethic; and career commitment. Data were also collected on officer intentions to remain with—and their perceptions of conditions under which they might leave—their current agencies. Results showed support for a two-stage rather than the traditional three-stage model of career development, with the trial stage being uniquely different from later career stages. The findings are discussed in light of the applicability of career-stage research to the law enforcement profession.     

Female officers and the ethic of care: Does officer gender impact police behaviors?

Most of the empirical literature on gender and policing has assessed gender differences in arrest levels and police use of force. While simple gender differences in police behavior are important for understanding skills men and women bring to the policing occupation, research must also determine under what conditions gender differences emerge and what factors impact the relationship between officer gender and behavior for this knowledge to be constructive. Although sexy, arrest and force decisions occur when police discretion is often limited, adding little to the knowledge of how gender affects everyday police-citizen encounters. Using data from systematic social observations of police-citizen encounters in St. Petersburg, Florida and Indianapolis, Indiana, this article replicates past analyses of gender differences in police utilization of controlling and supporting behaviors, but also extends the analyses by assessing the possible impact of intervening situational and organizational characteristics, determining under what conditions female officers utilize different behaviors from their male counterparts. The findings provide mixed support for the general hypothesis of gender-specific responses. Consistent with previous literature, this research suggests that women are much less likely than men to utilize extreme controlling behavior, such as threats, physical restraint, search, and arrest. Surprisingly, the findings do not confirm that women are more likely than men to use supporting behaviors, even when controlling for women's greater likelihood to hold community policing assignments. These findings, while unexpected, are important. Simply assuming female officers manifest stereotypically feminine traits in policing tasks is clearly an overly simplistic conceptualization of the meaning and impact of gender in policing. The implications for female officers, policing, and future research are discussed.     

Policing: The patrol sergeants’ perspective

Implementing community policing is a complex and difficult task for police departments. Patrol sergeants are essential in accomplishing any organizational change and so their observations should be used to modify and finetune community policing efforts. A group of twenty patrol sergeants were interviewed regarding the change strategies which helped or hurt implementation of community policing. Several statistical analyses are discussed with age being the only factor which was significantly related to supervisor’s attitudes toward community policing.     

Officer work orientations, perceptions of readiness and anticipated effectiveness of an agency-wide community policing effort within a county Sheriff’s office

Across occupations of every form, including those in criminal justice, administrators, managers, and supervisors frequently introduce changes to the structure and/or processes of the work environment. These changes may be seen as necessary to enhance worker productivity, but may be viewed by some workers as an unwanted disruption to their routines. Should employees interpret changes in such a manner, they can, and often do, negate these reforms. Employee work orientations (i.e., philosophical approaches toward work) undoubtedly play a role in such an interchange because they influence both how employees behave on the job and how they perceive their job. The move toward community-oriented policing constitutes a major paradigm shift to the practice of law enforcement. This structural and procedural change to the routines of policing could be perceived as threatening to those law enforcement officers whose work orientations are inconsistent with the philosophical foundation of community-based policing. The presence of a sufficient number of such officers could doom this movement to failure. This study uses survey data collected from a sample of sheriff’s deputies involved in an agency-wide community policing effort. In this study we examine the effects of deputies’ work orientations on their perceptions of the agency’s readiness for and the anticipated effectiveness of this initiative. The findings suggest interesting differences in the efforts of a traditional crime control orientation versus a more progressive community service orientation toward policing.     

Racial profiling and searches: Did the politics of racial profiling change police behavior?*

Research Summary Scholarly research has documented repeatedly that minority citizens are disproportionately stopped, searched, and arrested relative to their baseline populations. In recent years, policymakers have brought increased attention to this issue as law‐enforcement agencies across the United States have faced allegations of racial profiling. In the 1990s, the politics generated by accounts of racially biased policing placed heightened pressure on law‐enforcement agencies. However, to date, few studies have explored whether the increased social and political scrutiny placed on police organizations influenced or changed their general pattern of enforcement among black and white citizens. Using data in the search and citation file from the North Carolina Highway Traffic Study, this research specifically examined whether the politics generated by the media coverage of racial profiling and racial profiling legislation in North Carolina influenced the search practices of officers of the North Carolina State Highway Patrol's drug interdiction team. The findings suggest that media accounts and the passage of new legislation were particularly powerful influences, which thereby reduced racial disparity in searches. Declines in the use of consent searches and an increased probability of finding contraband also were influenced by the politics of racial profiling. Policy Implications The results of this study suggest several important policy recommendations. First, law‐enforcement agencies must monitor the policing practices of their officers because such supervision can influence officer compliance with fair and unbiased policing policies. Next, supervisors need to familiarize themselves with enforcement data to identify potential problem officers and organizational practices. By doing so, police organizations will not only increase officer accountability but also will potentially improve communication with their local communities. Such communication can empower community members to file charges against officers who violate their civil rights. Next, the media and political effects documented in this study suggest that external oversight can be particularly influential on police practices. Therefore, police agencies should consider developing a citizen complaint board, which is an external oversight board that would be responsible for investigating allegations against officers who engage in racial profiling or other racially biased enforcement practices. Such a board could assist police administrators in identifying problem officers as well as in making recommendations for corrective action. Finally, external social and political pressure must continually be placed on police forces to improve equity in police behavior. These external forces can assist in creating opportunities for police to increase the overall quality and efficacy of policing.     

The Reconstitution of Law in Local Settings: Agency Discretion, Ambiguity, and a Surplus of Law in the Policing of Hate Crime

An important yet poorly understood function of law enforcement organizations is the role they play in distilling and transmitting the meaning of legal rules to frontline law enforcement officers and their local communities. In this study, we examine how police and sheriff's agencies in California collectively make sense of state hate crime laws. To do so, we gathered formal policy documents called “hate crime general orders” from all 397 police and sheriff's departments in the state and conducted interviews with law enforcement officials to determine the aggregate patterns of local agencies' responses to higher law. We also construct a “genealogy of law” to locate the sources of the definitions of hate crime used in agency policies. Despite a common set of state criminal laws, we find significant variation in how hate crime is defined in these documents, which we attribute to the discretion local law enforcement agencies possess, the ambiguity of law, and the surplus of legal definitions of hate crime available in the larger environment to which law enforcement must respond. Some law enforcement agencies take their cue from other agencies, some follow statewide guidelines, and others are oriented toward gaining legitimacy from national professional bodies or groups within their own community. The social mechanisms that produce the observed clustering patterns in terms of approach to hate crime law are mimetic (copying another department), normative (driven by professional standards about training and community social movement pressure), and actuarial (affected by the demands of the crime data collection system). Together these findings paint a picture of policing organizations as mediators between law‐on‐the‐books and law‐in‐action that are embedded in interorganizational networks with other departments, state and federal agencies, professional bodies, national social movement organizations, and local community groups. The implications of an interorganizational field perspective on law enforcement and implementation are discussed in relation to existing sociolegal research on policing, regulation, and recent neo‐institutional scholarship on law.     

The inchoate nature of community policing: Differences between community policing and traditional police officers

Over the past 20 years, police departments across America have adopted a community—or problem-oriented—policing philosophy. Community policing has not been implemented wholesale, however. Most departments have assigned some officers to community policing roles but kept the majority in traditional motorized patrol assignments. Pertinent literature suggests that these two groups do not see eye to eye on their respective roles and duties. In this study, work-redesign theory is used as a conceptual framework to explain officer functioning in both community policing and traditional motorized policing settings. Findings indicate key similarities between community policing officers and officers assigned to traditional motorized patrol, despite differences in job satisfaction, perception of impact, and policing style.     

The relationship of work-family conflict with job stress among Indian police officers: a research note

Law enforcement is often described as a challenging occupation, and working in law enforcement can result in work–family conflict. This exploratory study was undertaken to examine how the different dimensions of work–family conflict are related to job stress among Indian police officers. There are four major dimensions of work–family conflict: strain-based, behavior-based, time-based, and family-based. Data was collected from a survey of police officers in the Sonipat and Rohtak districts of the Indian state of Haryana. Bivariate results revealed that an increase in any one of the dimensions of work–family conflict was associated with increases in stress from work. Multivariate analysis, however, revealed only three of the four dimensions of work–family conflict had a significant association with job stress. Specifically, strain-based conflict, behavior-based conflict, and family-based conflict were significantly associated with higher levels of job stress. These findings provide support for the job strain model.     

The perceived levels of job satisfaction among police officers: A descriptive review

Whereas job satisfaction is a popular research topic among industrial and organizational psychologists, police organizational researchers have all but ignored the area of job satisfaction. Considering its link to many organizationally important factors, such as productivity, morale, and personnel turnover, research on job satisfaction in policing should be important. The identification of how satisfied police officers are with various jobrelated factors can be extremely useful to the police executive. This article examines perceived satisfaction of a purposive sample of 2611 police officers, with respect to 23 job-specific and three global job satisfaction items.     

Police officer support for quasimilitary stress training and orientation toward outsiders and nonlaw enforcement functions

This paper is about the meaning of police officers' support for the traditional socialization model of the quasi-military stress academy and its effects on their attitudes toward outsiders and non-law enforcement functions. More specifically, it examines consequences of quasi-military training on attitudes toward civilians in police departments, on serving minority groups and the community, and on criticality ratings of job functions such as mediation, crime prevention and community policing. Based on part of a larger job task survey conducted under the auspices of a state criminal justice training council, it includes over 70 percent of all patrol officers and their first-line supervisors in a rural New England state.