Historical Perspectives - Police Culture & Behavior

Historical Perspectives - Police Culture & Behaviour
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Historical Perspectives - Police Culture & Behaviour
The police have one of the most difficult jobs worldwide. Actually, their job is also rated among the most stressful in the world. This paper provides a detailed discussion of the current and past law enforcement, psychological theories, philosophies, different models of police behaviour, as well as the application of various policing styles in relation to the individual police officer and the organization. What leaders can do to help in alleviating some of the stress experienced by police officers and citizens within their policing organization jurisdiction by using different models and police styles is also discussed in this essay.
In America, community policy has become the leading theme of modern law enforcement. Law enforcement agencies across America have extensively accepted, adopted and implemented community-policing programs. A number of reasons have been postulated that led to the emergence of community-policy programs. For instance, there was citizen disappointment and dissatisfaction with police service and patrol police officers had become aggravated with their long-established role and they therefore started to insist on better ways of interacting with people – ways that would be helpful in improving morale (Worrall & Zhao, 2003). Moreover, a longing to emulate progressive law enforcement agencies, or a professional ethic, may also be contributing factors to the present and extensive diffusion of community policing. Community policing could be a vehicle of altering the goals of police officers’ work, for instance from crime control to service; of redirecting attention away from police officials; or of influencing public opinion and not responding to it (Worrall & Zhao, 2003).
Generally, law enforcement organizations have to change; they need to contend not just with the internal discord but also need to deal with pressures by individuals and organizations on the outside. Institutional theory is helpful in explaining why some police organizations innovate. As per this theory, the institutionalization process is essentially the process of gradual growth in which the organization adjusts and becomes accustomed to the strivings of internal groups as well as the values of the wider society. The resource dependency theory focuses on the influence of external resources on innovations that occur in organizations. This theory hypothesizes that the majority of organizational innovations are directly linked to the obtainability of external resources (Zhao & Lovrich, 2003). According to the resource dependency theory, police organizations have to interact with other organizations such as the Community-Oriented Policing Services (COPS) Office within their environment in order to obtain financial resources. From the year 1993 to the year 1996, the priorities of law enforcement officers in America directly reflected the professional crime-fighting model. It is notable that the priority ratings of the main functions of police were not related to difference in many environmental and departmental variables such as size of cities, number of comm...