Self-check questions and answers
1. How did Wilson famously characterise the particular character of police discre¬tion?
Answer:
‘the police department has the special property … that within it discretion increases as one moves down the hierarchy’ (Wilson, 1968: 7)
2. What are the key features of police sub-culture?
Answer:
a range of features is often identi¬fied: cynicism, suspicion, conservatism, sense of mission, isolation/solidarity, machismo, pragmatism, racial prejudice, orientation to action, ‘covering-your-ass’
3. What characterises the ‘rotten apples’ perspective on police racism?
Answer:
the ‘rotten apples’ perspective associates the problem with the negative prejudices and stereotyping of a small minority of officers that have a disproportionate impact on the organisation as a whole
4. What was the remit of early generations of female police officers?
Answer:
protecting women and children, dealing with prostitution
5. What proportion of homophobic crime has it been estimated is not reported to the police?
Answer:
the National Advisory Group/Policing Lesbian and Gay Communities (1999) found that 80 per cent of homophobic incidents are not reported
6. In respect of what issues did Colman and Gorman measure the attitudes of police recruits?
Answer:
the death penalty and migration
7. What different ‘strains’ of police culture have been identified?
Answer:
between ‘street cops’ and ‘management cops’, between different specialist departments, between different nations
8. In what nation did Moon suggest police sub-culture is not resistant to community policing?
9. Who conducted an early study of routine police work in London?
Answer:
Smith and Gray/ the Policy Studies Institute (1983)
10. Why might the understanding of police culture need to be broadened?
Answer:
the ‘chang¬ing terrain of policing’; for example, the expansion at local, national and interna¬tional levels of agencies involved in the process of policing
