Minority Status and Spirituality among Police Officers: Blacks and Women in a Metropolitan Department

This paper addresses two questions: (1) What are the sources of spirituality among police officers? (2) Can spirituality alleviate police stress? These issues are examined in a secondary analysis of the dataset Police Stress and Domestic Violence in Police Families in Baltimore, Maryland, 1997–1999. The study extends research on law enforcement spirituality to include the structural sources of spirituality. Minority status easily emerges as a source of spirituality with the highest levels present among African Americans and females. Contrary to previous research that has found either non-existent or positive relationships between spirituality and work-related stress among law enforcement, this study finds that spirituality is weakly associated with lower levels of burnout after controlling for demographic factors. However, the weak relationship between spirituality and perceived stress disappears when controlling for burnout and demographic factors, thus undermining the ability to make any overarching claims about the influence of spirituality that can cover all kinds of police stress.