This book reinvigorates the debate about the origins and development of police culture within our changing social, economic and political landscape. An in-depth analysis and appreciation of the police socialisation, identity and culture literature is combined with a comprehensive four-year longitudinal study of new recruits to a police force in England. The result offers new insights into the development of, and influences upon, new police recruits who refer to themselves as a “new breed” of police officer. Adding significantly to the police culture literature, this original and empirically based research also provides valuable insights into the challenges of modern policing in an age of austerity. Scholars of policing and criminal justice, as well as police officers themselves will find this compelling reading.

Police Leadership as Practice applies a leadership-as-practice approach (emphasising leader-employee relationships) to law enforcement. This book provides a progressive and collaborative leadership text for students of law enforcement, as well as insights into leadership dynamics in all organisations for students and researchers of business and management. The police leadership-as-practice perspective provides a holistic understanding of leadership in the police, identifying factors that inhibit and promote learning. It refers to four main components as dynamic and continuously evolving processes: Strategies: social mission and organisation, along with strategies as practice Community: organisational and police culture, identity and belonging, community of practice and competencies Participation: sense-making and discretion; power and politics Activities: learning as practice, change and change management as practice Practical and enriched with case studies, examples and best practice, the textbook is also rigorously research based. Authored by a professor of business and management with specialist knowledge in police leadership, it brings the cutting edge of leadership thinking to the practicalities of policing. It is essential reading for those engaged with policing, leadership roles, and management.

Drawing on six years of ethnographic research, this book critically examines police culture, exploring police behaviours, decisionmaking and actions. Police culture is a concept widely used, often critically, to characterise the working attitudes and behaviours of (usually uniformed) police officers. It is shorthand for a workplace imbued with machismo, racism, sexism, a thirst for danger and excitement, cynicism and conservatism. Rather than looking for culture or identifying how culture affects behaviours, this book identifies factors that influence the decisions and actions, including technology, targets, training, timing, intelligence, geography and supervision, thus reassembling police culture much as Bruno Latour sought to reassemble the social. The analysis develops a clearer and critical understanding of culture by explicitly connecting the debates about police culture to those about organisational culture. Offering a detailed ethnography of two shifts, it grounds the analysis of the idea of police culture in a 'thick description' of the day- to- day activities observed in the police station and the patrol car, rather than using brief illustrative extracts. The book dispenses with any assumption of the utility of the concept of police culture, not least because it is opaque, and reassembles our understanding of policing and, if it retains any relevance, of police culture. An accessible and compelling read, this book will appeal to students and scholars of policing, criminology, sociology, law, politics and all those interested in the day- to- day lives of police officers.

Police culture has been widely criticized as a source of resistance to change and reform, and is often misunderstood. This book seeks to capture the heart of police culture—including its tragedies and celebrations—and to understand its powerful themes of morality, solidarity, and common sense, by systematically integrating a broad literature on police culture into middle-range theory, and developing original perspectives about many aspects of police work.

Explaining the ways the concept of police culture has meaning in contemporary UK policing and has relevance to the lives of police practitioners, this book will enable both police officers and students of policing to understand the relevance of cultural factors to numerous areas of police business including the police/public relationship, diversity, management/leadership, specialization, professionalization, technology and police reform. To achieve this, the book uses an evidence-based approach to under-pinning the concepts (and applications of concept) covered in this book.

The Politics of the Police offers a geographical and historical overview of the law and politics of the police. This fifth edition covers a wider range of empirical and theoretical issues, encompassing a transnational scope and reflecting the growing diversity of policing forms in today's globalized world.

If you are embarking on a university criminology, policing or other law enforcement professional degree, the books in this series will help you acquire and develop the knowledge, skills and strategies you need to achieve your goals. They provide support in all areas important for university study, including institutional and disciplinary policy and practice, self-management, and research and communication. Tasks and activities are designed to foster aspects of learning which are valued in higher education, including learner autonomy and critical thinking, and to guide you towards reflective practice in your study and work life. Academic Writing and Referencing for your Policing Degree provides you with a sound knowledge and understanding of: what constitutes good academic writing in policing a range of strategies for writing successful essays and reports the importance of clarity and coherence in your writing about policing how to improve your academic style, grammar and punctuation, and formatting and presentation referencing conventions in the field of policing, and of how to avoid plagiarism.

Police Community Support Officers: Cultures and Identities within Pluralised Policing presents the first in-depth ethnographic study of Police Community Support Officers (PCSOs) since the creation of the role in 2002. Situated within the tradition of police ethnographies, this text examines the working worlds of uniformed patrol support staff in two English police forces. Based on over 350 hours of direct observation and 33 interviews with PCSOs and police constables in both urban and rural contexts, Police Community Support Officers offers a detailed analysis of the operational and cultural realities of pluralised policing from within. Using a dramaturgic framework, the author finds that PCSOs have been undermined by their own organisations from the beginning, which has left a lasting legacy in terms of their relationships and interactions with police officer colleagues. The implications of this for police cultures, community policing approaches and the success of pluralisation are examined. The author argues that while PCSOs can have similar occupational experiences to constables, their particular circumstances have led to a unique occupational culture, one which has implications for existing police culture theories. The book considers these findings in light of budget reductions and police reforms occurring across the sector, processes in which PCSOs are particularly vulnerable.

In a critical analysis of conventional understanding, leading authors Claire Davis and Marisa Silvestri present bold new conceptualisations of police leadership. Drawing on empirical research in criminology, sociology and leadership studies, they present a thoughtful critique of the nature and practice of leadership in contemporary policing. The book: - Critically explores the identities of leaders and their positions within wider organisational structures and processes; - Provides a critique of contemporary reform to police professionalisation, training and education, equalities and diversity by situating these developments within wider historical, social and political context; - Draws on critical theory to offer an alternative, challenging and novel interpretation of police leaders as not simply the result of individual experiences and attitudes, but of the social, institutional and historical processes of policing and the cultures that exist within it; - Points towards future directions and a reimagining of leadership in the police. Accessible and stimulating, this is an essential text for policing students and valuable reading for current leaders and those interested in policing, criminology and leadership.

Transatlantic policing is experiencing an unprecedented crisis of legitimacy, epitomised by public responses to the murders of George Floyd and Sarah Everard during the COVID-19 pandemic. Legitimacy is lost when the police either fail to protect the public or rely on coercion rather than consent to achieve that protection. Recovering Police Legitimacy challenges conventional criminological, political, and public solutions to the problem by approaching it from the bottom up, beginning with policing as a practice constituted by a unique set of excellences, skills, and characteristics. The author draws on his experience as a police officer and on the serial fictions of James Ellroy, David Peace, and Nic Pizzolatto to characterise the practice in terms of heroic struggle, edgework, absolute sacrifice, and worldmaking. These characteristics provide an analytic tool for revolutionising our understanding of the relations among policing as a situated practice, public protection, and police legitimacy and for identifying the different levels at which legitimacy is undermined. His conclusion is that recovery is possible but will be slow in pace and incomplete in scope. Written accessibly for students, police officers, policymakers, scholars, and anyone with an interest in police legitimacy, this is a groundbreaking study of a pressing social problem.