Understanding the culture of craft: lessons from two police agencies

Abstract

When it comes to changing American policing, the police culture is invariably a target for reform. However, characterizations of traditional police attitudes and beliefs as suspicious of outsiders, authoritative, and at odds with the law, often overlook what police officers themselves value about the work they do, that is what constitutes its quality. Using survey data from two police departments, this paper seeks to understand the contours of the police craft culture. Our findings suggest a more textured assessment of police culture is warranted than the ‘warrior’ outlook implies. While some of the views of our respondents were consistent with features of the traditional police culture, officers did not display the kind of cynicism about the public, rush to judgment, preoccupation with coercive tactics, indifference to rules and regulations, and deep skepticism about science consistent with this portrayal of the police. We then consider how these insights might be used by those seeking to improve street-level police work.

Keywords:

• Police culture
• craft
• performance
• reform

Notes

1. Bayley and Garofalo asked for three names ‘to guard against partners being named exclusively’ (1984, 4). Everdene and Newbury patrol officers normally work in one-officer units, so we asked for only two names.

2. Our pattern of results is similar to that observed by Bayley and Garofalo (1989, 4), who found that the maximum number of votes any officer received was seldom more than eight.

3. A coding protocol to classify responses was created for each category. A sample of the graduate student’s coding was checked by one of the authors for consistency. Questionable codings and ambiguous responses were discussed and resolved.

4. Officers were presented with the following: ‘Please think about the sorts of situations in which a patrol officer pulls over a driver for a traffic violation, such as speeding. We would like to get your view on the importance of several potential performance elements in this situation. We recognize that each situation is different, so please focus on the most typical situation. For each item below, please indicate what priority it should receive in evaluating the quality of an officer’s performance.’ Next officers were asked: ‘Now please think about a domestic dispute between two people where no violence has occurred, but people are upset. We recognize that each situation is different, so please focus on the most typical situation. For each item below, please indicate what priority it should receive in evaluating the quality of an officer’s performance.’

5. Undesirable was left to the officer to decide. The particulars of what is undesirable is unimportant for our purposes.

6. These options were drawn from the literature on police culture and decision-making. Intolerance of disrespect, punitiveness, assertion of authority, maintaining control, and following intuition are well documented as powerful policing tendencies. Several items were drawn from the procedural justice literature on soliciting citizen input (Tyler 2004). Muir (1977) and Bayley and Bittner (1984) write about careful diagnoses, which includes taking time and gathering information.