The readings of this week mainly argue that working personality and subculture of police force have an effect on not only police behavior but also occupational perspective of individual officers. Not only that, they imply that this unique working personality and subculture of police force even affect shaping their view of the outside world. The details of the main point of the readings can be summarized as follows:
• Police force has a very different working personality and subculture with other governmental organizations (Skolnick, Herbert).
• Because of the dangerous characteristics of the work of police officers, they tend to dislike unpredictable situation that might be potential threaten to their life and they tend to like maintaining …show more content…
If I only consider these four articles, it is obvious that there are more qualitative studies (Skolnick, Herbert, and Maanen) than quantitative studies (Haarr) on this subject. Specifically, Skolnick, Herbert, and Maanen focused on theory building based on the analysis of the data collected through interview and systematic social observations targeted to individual officers; Their purpose of conducting this qualitative study is to figure out what kinds of working personality that police departments have, what constitutes the subculture of police departments, and what kinds of processes are involved when these working personality and subculture influence the individual officers. In my opinion, it is understandable that there are more qualitative studies than quantitative studies on understanding the actual feature of police force given the unique characteristic of police force. Since only police officers can understand what they are actually doing because of their isolated characteristics, researchers could not collect accurate information on police organization if they just observe it as an outsider. Researchers should actually participate the work of officers and listen to the story of officers directly from them, if they …show more content…
As Maanen explained, most of officers’ work consists of monotonous work, rather than consist of adventurous work. And given police work often involves coercive force, there are numerous rules and procedures that officers have to follow that can prevent them from using this coercive force arbitrary. This means that police officers have to deal with not only boring, but also highly-restricted work. I believe that the reason that officers build their own routine and develop working code is one of their survival tactics for dealing with this boring and restricted work effectively. With this kind of explanation on the reality of the police work, general public can understand that emphasizing routine and working codes is not just a feature of the red-tape of police organization, but rather is one of survival tactics of
• Police force has a very different working personality and subculture with other governmental organizations (Skolnick, Herbert).
• Because of the dangerous characteristics of the work of police officers, they tend to dislike unpredictable situation that might be potential threaten to their life and they tend to like maintaining …show more content…
If I only consider these four articles, it is obvious that there are more qualitative studies (Skolnick, Herbert, and Maanen) than quantitative studies (Haarr) on this subject. Specifically, Skolnick, Herbert, and Maanen focused on theory building based on the analysis of the data collected through interview and systematic social observations targeted to individual officers; Their purpose of conducting this qualitative study is to figure out what kinds of working personality that police departments have, what constitutes the subculture of police departments, and what kinds of processes are involved when these working personality and subculture influence the individual officers. In my opinion, it is understandable that there are more qualitative studies than quantitative studies on understanding the actual feature of police force given the unique characteristic of police force. Since only police officers can understand what they are actually doing because of their isolated characteristics, researchers could not collect accurate information on police organization if they just observe it as an outsider. Researchers should actually participate the work of officers and listen to the story of officers directly from them, if they …show more content…
As Maanen explained, most of officers’ work consists of monotonous work, rather than consist of adventurous work. And given police work often involves coercive force, there are numerous rules and procedures that officers have to follow that can prevent them from using this coercive force arbitrary. This means that police officers have to deal with not only boring, but also highly-restricted work. I believe that the reason that officers build their own routine and develop working code is one of their survival tactics for dealing with this boring and restricted work effectively. With this kind of explanation on the reality of the police work, general public can understand that emphasizing routine and working codes is not just a feature of the red-tape of police organization, but rather is one of survival tactics of