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Police Occupational Culture and Bullying

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Special topics and particular occupations, professions and sectors

Part of the book series: Handbooks of Workplace Bullying, Emotional Abuse and Harassment ((HWBEAH,volume 4))

Abstract

This chapter explores the pervasive nature of bullying and harassment within the police occupational culture amongst police officers and staff. Literature from all continents identifies similar issues relating to policing strategies, reform and workplace behaviour. Law enforcement agencies across the world report similar problems in attempting cultural change with officers determined to maintain their desire for adrenaline-led police work and consequently rejecting any move towards a community policing philosophy. The idea of real police work endures within the occupational culture promoting and preserving the unwritten rules of loyalty and solidarity, but anyone failing to conform to the group norms and values becomes exposed to being isolated and excluded. Real police work is generally associated with high-intensity masculine traits, thus developing a macho culture and isolating female officers who fail to demonstrate masculine characteristics. The normality of the macho culture appears to be acceptable to both academics and practitioners to such a degree that research fails to recognize the subtle, or even more blatant, behaviours that are deemed to be potentially bullying or harassment. In addition, some literature raises the question of whether police officers recognize negative behaviours if they are intrinsic to the workplace. Literature examined during this study has identified how emotion, either as emotional energy or emotional intelligence (EI), has value when attempting to understand why and how police officers behave in the way they do. Police and law enforcement agencies have developed codes of ethics and policies in an attempt to take positive action to tackle the problem of bullying and harassment, but these have proved worthless in the battle to transform the occupational culture and associated negative behaviours. Parallels are made to changes relating to racism in the UK (United Kingdom) police following the publication of the Macpherson Report UK (1999), which identified negative behaviours as unwitting and institutional as opposed to deliberate and individual.

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  1. Police Sciences, University of South Wales, Pontypridd, UK

    Hilary Miller

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  1. Hilary Miller
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Organizational Behaviour (OB), Indian Institute of Management Organizational Behaviour (OB), Ahmedabad, Gujarat, India

    Premilla D'Cruz

  2. Organisation Behaviour, Indian Inst of Mgnt Ahmedabad Organisation Behaviour, Ahmedabad, India

    Ernesto Noronha

  3. Wayne State University, Department of Communication Wayne State University, Detroit, MI, USA

    Loraleigh Keashly

  4. Iowa State University , Ames, IA, USA

    Stacy Tye-Williams

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Miller, H. (2019). Police Occupational Culture and Bullying. In: D'Cruz, P., Noronha, E., Keashly, L., Tye-Williams, S. (eds) Special topics and particular occupations, professions and sectors. Handbooks of Workplace Bullying, Emotional Abuse and Harassment, vol 4. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-5154-8_6-1

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