The ‘us vs them’ mentality: a comparison of police cadets at different stages of their training

ABSTRACT

Any depiction of police culture includes a strong ‘us versus them’ element, but research has been unable to satisfactorily explain its development and evolution. In particular, very few studies have focused on the training period, between when an individual chooses a police career and his/her first day as an officer. A total of 1,979 pre-university students from seven colleges in Quebec (Canada) completed a self-administered survey where they had to answer general questions about the police followed by specific questions about four realistic videos of fictional police interventions involving use of force. Unsurprisingly, the analysis suggests that students in Police Technology tend to think they are more supportive of the police and the use of force than students in other programs. However, students in Police Technology increasingly indicate that the majority of people would report a more negative opinion than they have, suggesting that police candidates increasingly disidentify with the rest of the population.

KEYWORDS:

• Police use of force
• attitudes about police
• us versus them mentality
• professional socialization

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. The education system is different in Quebec than in most jurisdictions: students pursue secondary education for five years, followed by CEGEP (Collège d’enseignement général et professionnel; ‘pre-university college’) for two or three years (depending on the program), followed by undergraduate studies. With very few exceptions, police cadets have to obtain a three-year CEGEP degree before they begin their 15-week training at the academy.

2. We learned during data collection that most students in human technologies programs, with the exception of students in Police Technology, are in internships during the last semester of their third year. As a result, third-year students are rarely at college, and it was difficult to arrange data collection for this group.

3. Statistics Canada defines visible minority as follows: ‘Visible minority refers to whether a person belongs to a visible minority group as defined by the Employment Equity Act and, if so, the visible minority group to which the person belongs. The Employment Equity Act defines visible minorities as “persons, other than Aboriginal peoples, who are non-Caucasian in race or non-white in colour”. The visible minority population consists mainly of the following groups: Chinese, South Asian, Black, Arab, West Asian, Filipino, Southeast Asian, Latin American, Japanese and Korean.’

4. Cadets at the Police Academy were also surveyed during the research process but their answers are not analyzed here because there was no control group -corresponding non-police respondents-, so comparisons were not possible.

5. Van Maanen went on to do field research with patrol officers in the United States and England, and became a leading researcher in organizational ethnography but without giving much attention to professional socialization.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada [430-2014-0213].

Notes on contributors

Rémi Boivin

Rémi Boivin has a PhD in criminology and is Associate Professor at the School of Criminology, Université de Montréal. He is also deputy director of the International Centre for Comparative Criminology. His research interests include decision-making, police use of force and crime analysis. His recent work has appeared in the Journal of Quantitative Criminology, the Journal of Experimental Criminology, the Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, and Police Quarterly.

Camille Faubert

Camille Faubert is a doctoral student in criminology at the School of Criminology, Université de Montréal, and a research assistant at the International Centre for Comparative Criminology. Her doctoral dissertation is about attitudes towards police use of force.

Annie Gendron

Annie Gendron has a PhD in psychology and is researcher at the Strategic Research and Development Center, École nationale de police du Québec (Police Academy). She is also a regular researcher at the International Centre for Comparative Criminology.

Bruno Poulin

Bruno Poulin has a M.Sc. in Human Kinetics and is use of force expert at the Knowledge and Expertise Centre, École nationale de police du Québec (Police Academy).