Abstract
This book makes quite an impact in an area often overlooked in studying law enforcement—that is, to understand and examine police culture. Paoline and Terrill take on the challenging task of defining what police culture actually is and go above and beyond the call of duty to define this in general terms, no easy undertaking by far. This is probably one of the most comprehensive studies of what police culture actually entails, delving into the aspects of what officers routinely deal with out in the field on a daily basis.
The book does an excellent job of dispelling any notion of what popular culture imagines a police officer’s life and duties to be, separating fact from fiction. Spanning five eras of policing and armed with an effective and practical combination of quantitative and qualitative research methodologies, the authors successfully patch together an exhaustive framework of indicators, accurately predicting the foundations, dynamics, and behaviors often found in police culture at all levels by surveying officers across a range of seven departments, from small to large, and everything in between.
Paoline and Terrill factor in everything from police officers' feelings about supervisors, the common bond that many officers feel between each other versus those outside of the profession, and the different roles that police play in the public eye versus their own notions of what it means to protect and to serve. The most interesting part of this equation is not only that the book throws in such solid statistical data on just about every aspect of police culture, but that it does it so well. The authors, since early in their careers, have been examining this mystery for a long time, and though others have tried to tackle how to define police culture, none have embarked upon such a formidable task as Paoline and Terrill. Since they have had time to examine this question for quite some time, with this book, they have essentially broken new ground in the understanding of what police culture means in general.
This is not simply a library report or an accumulation of statistical data done on several visits with academics and interviews with experts on policing, but an ambitious operation performed by spending countless man-hours having their research teams meeting with police departments, supervisors, and so on, going inside and out, up to the highest levels of administrative bureaucracy, down to the lowest levels of frontline officers out on daily call, to gain the level of trust and respect needed to ensure that their research was as accurate as possible and went as smoothly as could be necessary. Paoline and Terrill took some time out to get a sense of each police department’s culture and how police culture has evolved into its present status today.
Simply by examining the indicators or glancing at some of the data charts, with a view as to how the authors themselves studied the evolution of policing and the demands of the occupation, one quickly realizes that this is no ordinary study, that one gets a realistic perspective inside the minds of police officers, how they work with each other, and how they have adapted to their particular work environments. The results of the study certainly break new ground into how the public perception of what policing and police culture entails, not only verifying what early criminal justice and policing pioneers have discovered about the occupation, but also bringing information to light about the public perception versus the reality of police culture. Essentially, one soon discovers that, in essence, these are not always one and the same.
On another note, what is so refreshing about this book is that not only is it well written and the subject matter so well researched, it is surprisingly easy to follow about the intentions of the study and the outcome of the findings themselves on police culture. For those academics more interested in analyzing metrics and crunching data related to particular nuances on just about any aspect of policing or the law enforcement profession, the book does a superb job of organizing the data neatly in to charts and explaining the participation involved in each departmental study, as well as verifying existing theories or giving a good amount of background on various policing eras. The book also does well to both confirm suspicions by the founding fathers, and their successors, of specific aspects of the job involved in the study of the science of policing and explaining how specific studies fail to explain or misfire when describing commonly held beliefs about police culture. In addition, for those students of criminal justice or other academics who wish to focus on the more qualitative aspects of police culture, this book does a fine job of explaining the facts behind the data, their implications, and what they mean for the future of police culture, as well as how those interested in analyzing the profession might want to delve deeply into particular aspects of the culture itself.
The authors, being consummate professionals, also gave practical advice for other areas of police culture that still need to be explored, as well as a sound strategy about how their research could be improved upon in the future or how specific niches in the exploration of police culture can be dissected and examined from their comprehensive analysis. Overall, the book is a practical, easy-to-follow analysis of police culture and how the profession adapts to suit the needs not only of officers, but of departmental needs and, likewise, the community they are serving. Criminal justice academics, undergraduate and graduate students interested in policing, and those in the general public simply curious about the notion of police culture, will all have the ability to pick up this book and comprehend its central thesis, each able to come away with something fascinating and new, to suit their particular fancy.