Subcultures in Policing: Features and Implications
On August 7, 2024 NACOLE welcomed a team of experts to discuss police subcultures, the role of organizational context, implications for police behavior, and what civilian oversight bodies should be aware of regarding police subcultures.
Police culture is thought to emerge from occupational and organizational features associated with police work. Culture develops as “collective sense-making” (Crank, 2004, p. 15) with ideational, behavioral, social, and emergent elements. Some of the earliest research on police work and police culture identified various “types” of officers based on their styles of policing and occupational outlooks. Later research highlighted how workgroups or units varied in their attitudes and behavior as well. Given this variation, sometimes subcultures develop when a subset of an organization identifies with each other as a group, and take on collective outlooks unique to that group. Occasionally, subcultures or subgroups can develop that create conflict with internal or external groups of “others,” and have been associated with scandals across a range of law enforcement agencies. This session will discuss what we know about police subcultures, the role of organizational context, implications for police behavior, and what civilian oversight bodies should be aware of.
Speakers:
Shawn Hill
Shawn Hill is a retired Commander with the Santa Barbara Police Department and a Ph.D. student at the University of California Santa Barbara in the department of communication. He earned a bachelor’s degree in English Literature from Old Dominion University and a master’s degree in Criminal Justice from Arizona State University. Shawn was appointed to the Community Policing Committee of the International Association of Chiefs of Police in 2017, has served as a member of the Bureau of Justice Assistance Executive Session of Police Leadership, is an Executive Fellow at the National Police Institute, and a National Institute of Justice LEADS Scholar. Shawn recently co-edited an international and interdisciplinary Handbook on Communication, Policing and Society, published by Rowman& Littlefield. His research explores the intergroup relationship between
Eugene "Gene" Paoline, Ph.D.
Eugene (Gene) Paoline, Professor of Criminal Justice at the University of Central Florida, is an expert in police culture, police socialization, police use of force, and police education. He currently serves as Chair for the Department of Criminal Justice at the University of Central Florida, and has served as Co-Principal Investigator on two multi-method, multi-site, National Institute of Justice grants that examined police use of force and early intervention systems. Gene is a member of the editorial boards for Policing: A Journal of Policy and Practice and Social Problems, as well as a reviewer for over 30 academic journals. He is an active member of the American Society of Criminology, the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences, and the Southern Criminal Justice Association. He previously served as the Chair of the American Society of Criminology’s Division of Policing. Gene has published more than 70 articles in journals such as Criminology, Justice Quarterly, Criminal Justice & Behavior, and Police Quarterly. Gene received his Ph.D. and M.A. in Criminal Justice from the University at Albany, State University of New York and his M.S. and B.A. in Criminology and Criminal Justice from Florida State University.
Samuel "Sam" Peterson, Ph.D.
Samuel (Sam) Peterson is a policy researcher at RAND and a professor of policy analysis at the Pardee RAND Graduate School. He has broad interests in topics within and outside of criminal justice. His most recent research includes estimating state-level household firearm ownership, estimating state-level hospitalizations for gunshot injury, evaluating NYPD's Neighborhood Policing philosophy, evaluating police-led diversion efforts, a tabletop exercise to improve police-community relations, research to understand persistent neighborhood violence, and research to understand the formation and impact of subgroups (cliques) within the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s department. Peterson also has prior research experience in gun violence prevention, sexual assault at American colleges and universities, school-based victimization among adolescents, and substance use within adolescent social networks. His applied research experience includes working with a variety of criminal justice and community stakeholders. Peterson completed his Ph.D. in criminal justice at the University of Cincinnati.l