An attestation of the spatiality and saliency of police culture: a cross comparison study of croatian and cypriot novice law enforcers

ABSTRACT

It is often maintained that factors such as the multifarious and exigent nature of the police profession, the diversity of police personnel, and the dissimilar socioeconomic and political settings which surround the sphere of policing, fragment the shared values, beliefs, and norms of police officers. As a result, the spatiality and saliency of such values (police culture), is doubted, if not denied. Such being the case, the article sets out to examine whether or not police culture, as documented to exist in Anglo-American police organisations, is reflected in two disparate settings, namely the Croatian and Cyprus Police. For attesting the foregoing, quantitative research was undertaken in these two settings. Upon analysing the responses of novice law enforcers (n = 185), it was found that the core constituents of police culture (isolation, suspicion, brotherhood, and cynicism), besides cynicism – which was partially supported – manifested in both police organisations.

KEYWORDS:

• Brotherhood
• cynicism
• isolation
• suspicion

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Angelo G Constantinou

Angelo Constantinou is a member of the Cyprus Police and alecturer in Criminology/Policing at the Open University of Cyprus.His research concentrates on criminal law, human trafficking, crimedisplacement, police culture, police discretion, police corruption,crowd control, and criminological theory.

Ksenija Butorac

Ksenija Butorac is anAssociate Professor of Criminology, Penology and Addictions at theCroatian Police College of the Ministry of Interior, at the Faculty ofEducation and Rehabilitation Sciences, University of Zagreb, and atthe International University Libertas, Zagreb. Her areas of researchinclude phenomenology and aetiology of the modern crime andperpetrators' profiles, especially drug related crime and terrorism.