Police culture revisited: The implications for voice, silence, and other harmful outcomes

Session Submission Type: Pre-arranged Panel

Abstract

Following decades of research, policing scholars suggest that the police culture is changing and is no longer monolithic. Despite these claims, enduring aspects of police culture remain as a challenge to police reform. These include officer solidarity, isolationism, and continued endorsement of traditional masculine traits (e.g., aggression, toughness, competition, and dominance). This panel explores how these lingering elements of police culture contribute to various sub-cultures that demand conformity, seek to assign blame, and denigrate any signs of weakness through a masculinity contest that is played out at work. We illustrate how such cultural norms compel officers to remain silent about issues and concerns and to refrain from sharing ideas and suggestions for change. Further, we discuss how masculinity contests enable gender and race-based harassment and other forms of mistreatment to persist. We also highlight how the association of emotions with weakness can cause officers to lose empathy and suffer greater emotional distress. Drawing from police reports and data collected from police services, the panel offers a few points of intervention. First, we suggest that encouraging voice should help penetrate the ‘wall of silence’ and permit officers to ask for help and raise other concerns. Second, we show that ethical supervision and the enactment of institutional courage by individual leaders can lessen the harms of masculinity contests. In other words, officers selected to supervise others, and the ethical actions and role-modeling of these officers, can substantially shape whether harmful cultural norms fuel silence and other negative outcomes.

Subtopic

• Topic 5: Social Control and Criminal Justice / Policing and Law enforcement (Policing WG)

Chair

• Angela Workman-Stark, Athabasca University

Individual Presentations

• ‘Fitting In’ or Falling Out: The challenge of difference and the costs of conformity in reforming policing cultures in the UK - Sarah Charman, University of Portsmouth

• Another blue brick in the wall: The silencing of police blame culture - Denise Martin, Northumbria University

• Losing empathy? Rethinking moral injury in policing through professional deformation - Laura Keesman, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam; Holly Campeau, University of Waterloo

• Redefining courage: How police supervisors can disrupt masculinity contests - Angela Workman-Stark, Athabasca University