Change and Stability in Police Recruits’ Role Orientations

• In Event: Police and Recruitment Issues

Abstract

Extant research shows that police officers vary in their conceptions of the police role: some espouse a definition that is confined largely to fighting crime and enforcing the law, while others embrace a broader role that extends to order maintenance and service. Role orientations bear a logical and intuitive relationship to role enactment, with some theorizing about the “warrior” mentality and its “guardian” counterpart holding that officers’ performance is influenced by how they prioritize among police functions. The etiology of officers’ role orientations is not well understood, but training and early-career socialization are, a priori, among the influences on these outlooks. Insofar as training influences officers’ understanding of their role, it can serve to shape the agency’s culture. We analyze panel survey data on multiple classes of New York State Police recruits to examine stability and change in recruits’ role orientations from the beginning to the end of their basic training, patterns of associations between role orientations and other occupational outlooks, and variation by recruits’ gender, race, and ethnicity.

Authors

• Beau P. Holladay, John F. Finn Institute / University at Albany

• Robert E. Worden, John F. Finn Institute / University at Albany

• Sarah J. McLean, John F. Finn Institute