SAGE Journal Articles

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Journal Article 1: Brough, P., Chataway, S., & Biggs, A. (2016). “You don’t want people knowing you’re a copper!” A contemporary assessment of police organizational culture. International Journal of Police Science & Management, 18(1), 28–36.

Abstract: Police organizations have recently experienced a number of significant transformations, including changes to police officer demography, the adoption of community-oriented policing models and increased accountability requirements. The impacts of these changes upon the dominant police organisational cultural characteristics have been speculated upon, but have not been empirically assessed. Via the use of the cultural web methodology applied in both interviews and focus groups with N = 42 sworn police officers, this research assessed the key dimensions of contemporary police organizational culture. The results indicated the existence of five dominant police organisational culture characteristics: the police family, control, us versus them, masculinity, and subcultural differences. We also identified two dominant themes regarding the key changes to the police culture: reduction in social rituals and increased scrutiny. We discuss how these results both support previous descriptions of the core components of police organisational culture and update previous findings by identifying significant changes to police cultural norms and practices.

 

Journal Article 2: Haberman, C. P. (2016). A view inside the “black box” of hot spots policing from a sample of police commanders. Police Quarterly, 19(4), 488–517.

Abstract: This study used observations of crime strategy meetings and interviews with police commanders to “get inside the black box of hot spots policing.” The findings focus on what the studied police commanders believed they were doing and why they believed those tactics would be effective during hot spots policing implemented under nonexperimental conditions. An example causal model for the effectiveness of hot spots policing that emerged from the data is presented. While the commanders’ views aligned with commonly used policing tactics and crime control theories, their underlying theoretical rationale is complex. The presented model provides one causal model that could be tested in future hot spots policing evaluations, and a discussion is presented of how the study’s methodology can be applied in other jurisdictions to define localized causal models and improve hot spot policing evaluations.