Abstract
The occupational culture of the police lower ranks has attracted the interest of criminologists for over two decades. Although the number of empirical studies completed is quite small, inferences and commentary drawn from them have been wide-ranging. Two criticisms, neither based on particularly robust empirical evidence, have become taken-for-granted assumptions within criminological debate. The first is that the occupational culture must have changed since the early studies were completed. The second is that there are occupational cultures, not one unifying culture.
Police Culture in a Changing World is based on 18 months’ participant observation in an English constabulary, particularly in two police divisions, one urban, one rural. Loftus’s study indicates that she observed and probed officers’ working practices with an analytical ability that has led to a very welcome and interesting research monograph. On the basis of her work we can further assess whether or not the occupational culture (at times she calls it the ‘inner life of policing’) has changed, and whether or not it remains a unified cohesive structure, binding working relationships and practices.
Following a description of the early studies of the occupational culture in the USA and the UK, Bethan Loftus asks if they still hold relevance within a societal context of policing marked by significant social and legal change. The Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984; a new public rhetoric of law and order; the politics of policing diversity; and central features of late modern societies, not least the creation of the new unemployed, a marginalized class of young men, are presented as central to the wider context within which the study was undertaken. Importantly, this and other features of late modernity draw attention to how social class has been neglected by previous studies of the occupational culture, something Loftus further addresses in a separate chapter.
Before the subject of social class is addressed the reader is guided through sensitively analysed data about many themes of previous studies. Similarities and differences are pointed out in a style that avoids repetition – this is still relevant, that is different. Bethan Loftus crafts a vivid portrait of the occupational culture that significantly adds to the literature. Expressions of solidarity among officers, of cynicism about groups within the population policed; of a police moral mission; of crime fighting as central to police work; of territorial control; and many other subjects are documented to seal the thesis that many generic features of the occupational culture remain within the social context of late modernity. The argument is convincing and important, developing rather than repeating previous work. When it comes to the consideration of change, the analysis suggests an interruption of, rather than a radical or significant rupture to, some features of the occupational culture. Aspects of work about domestic violence and of ethnic relations are examples of where policy and law have made an impact. Here, the argument is again subtle and convincing. Returning to the marginalization of young men within late modern conditions, Loftus describes and analyses policing tactics that reproduce their exclusion and, importantly, express symbolic domination. The ways in which officers identify and characterize young men are detailed; their related actions are documented skilfully. Important aspects of social class within late modernity are analysed through the lens of policing.
Bethan Loftus has written a fine book that makes an excellent contribution to an established, international field of study. Her thesis must have been of A++ quality! It seems somewhat churlish to make criticisms of the work but I wondered if her discussion of marginalized youth underemphasized that many of them dealt with by officers could have been offenders rather than ‘youth’? Checking this matter would have provided deeper insights. The book is within the sociological tradition but I would have liked a more critical approach to the sociological assumptions underpinning previous studies and how her work has added to and, more importantly, questions them. The notion that the occupational culture has been interrupted rather than fundamentally changed could have been discussed further. What, for example, seem to be the generic and more transitory features of the occupational culture? Why do some of its features change and others abide? What counts as cultural change? Indeed, more widely, the analysis is sufficiently sophisticated to comment on a wider field of organizational studies dealing with cultural change. If other scholars took up these subjects it would signal the importance not the inadequacy of Bethan Loftus’s contribution to our understanding of the police and of organizations. Loftus has revived a sociological understanding of the police and other subjects that is lacking in far too much contemporary criminology. This is an excellent book that deserves close attention.