Police, police identity, and fragmentation: new dividing lines in the police

• In Event: POL Panel 18. Police identity, culture and change

Abstract

In this presentation the police identity and police mission are primarily seen as a social construction that has been created, objectified and internalized by police officers and other relevant stakeholders. A main, often implicit, assumption is that despite important differences in police work and between police units, all police work is based on this shared and collective police mission or identity. Police officers often describe this as a common blue feeling or identity that is being shared by all police members. The main issue of this presentation is that this often taken-for-granted police identity is now increasingly under pressure. This is not only because of external social developments, as has often been assumed (the often mentioned, increasing complexity of the social world). More recent internal developments in the police are at least as important for understanding the rise of new forms of fragmentation in the police. This presentations concentrates on three of these internal developments. First, the digitalization and datafication of the police, resulting in the rise of new (data)professions in the police organization. Secondly, changes in the dominant institutional logics in the police, less reactive and incident-driven and more proactive and risk- and data-driven. Thirdly, the introduction of new social-cultural contradictions because of an increasing diversification in the social (class) and educational backgrounds of police officers. Each of these changes has created new conflicts and contradictions in the police organization, or what may be called new fracture lines. One of the main consequences is that it has become much more difficult to maintain an integrated identity or a shared feeling of a collective ‘blue’ mission among police officers. This raises still another question of why an integrated police identity and mission might still be important, even in times of individualization, cultural fragmentation and social differentiation.

Author

• Jan Terpstra, Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen