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Associate Professor, Faculty of Law, University of New South Wales, Sydney, 2052,
Australia.
62
Police culture
References to police culture have become cliched in Australia, New Zealand
and elsewhere. In both academic and popular uses of the term, problems in
policing are said to be cultural products and reform is assumed to require
cultural alteration. Drawing on the extended argument in Shearing and Ericson
(1991), Shearing calls for a fundamental reconceptualization of police culture.
The standard accounts treat police culture as a set of informal rules. By
contrast, Shearing presents culture as a sensibility constructed through stories:
action is not rule-directed, but rather is the product of an instinct or common
sense which is a cultural construction.
Shearing and Ericsons reformulation of police culture has the mark of a
classic. They latch on to the stories which all police researchers have heard,
laughed at, been bored by, and repeated, but have regarded as essentially
64
trivial. Instead, Shearing and Ericson present these stories as the key to
understanding police culture. It is through telling and hearing them that
officers know how to act. Importantly, this account provides for agency:
officers are not cultural dopes, but make choices in performing police work.
Shearing makes clear the implications for police reform: in his view, most
efforts at bringing about cultural change have been ineffective because their
subject has been misunderstood. This account of culture is an excellent
example of the use (as opposed to mere recitation) of theory. Many
criminologists who have been intimidated or alienated by postmodernist
theory will see here the value of theorising in this way. However, some
qualifications may be raised.
Their account provides a convincing way of understanding police activity
on the street. The construction and deployment of suspicion, in particular, is
much better understood through this type of analysis than simplistic
assumptions about cultural norms. This has important implications for the
legal regulation of street policing, which has often failed because its nature
was misunderstood by rule-makers (Dixon et a1 1989). However, the rejection
of a normative conception of culture is taken too far. Contrary to Shearing and
Ericsons argument (1991:482), there are cultural rules for which the evidence
is not merely (and tautologically) the activity which they are supposed to
explain. In my experience of fieldwork in policing, there are informal rules
which are expressed and experienced as prohibitions and directives, and
which are not merely retrospectivejustifications for action. Obvious examples
are rules of collective solidarity (eg back up your colleagues and dont snitch
or dob) and rules of behaviour (eg dont let a challenge to your authority pass
without response). There may well be stories which convey the same message:
stories and norms may be complementary. In challenging the orthodoxy,
Shearing goes too far: there would appear to be good explanatory reasons for
(and no theoretical reasons against) developing a broad conception of culture
which includes both elements. For example, Janet Chan has done this in her
combination of insights from organisational theory with Bourdieus analysis
of habitus and field (Chan 1996a; see also 1996b). This approach, which sees
police culture as constituted by interaction between the legal and political
context of policing and police organisational knowledge, provides a
sophisticated and comprehensive understanding of police culture.
Shearings rejection of normative accounts of culture finds some of its roots
in critiques of the conventional reform analysis by McBarnet (eg 1981) and
Ericson (eg 1981). They stressed the breadth of law as a resource, its crime
control commitment, and its role as retrospective legitimator of police action.
McBarnets work, in particular, had a major influence in shifting the focus of
policing studies. However, the limitations of this analysis have now to be
acknowledged. Her theory of law was never fully articulated, and remains an
underdeveloped combination of structuralism and radical realism which lent
itself to excessively deterministic conclusions (Dixon, forthcoming chl). The
inherent problems are is exemplified in McConville, Sanders and Lengs The
Case for the Prosecution (1991). The controversy over interpretations of how
policing in England and Wales has been affected by legal regulation shows the
need for a more positive view of the role of law in policing, and consequently
for the prospects of using legal regulation as one of the tools of police reform
Conclusion
Shearings paper introduces several crucial developments in the contemporary
study of policing. Instead of the orthodox focus on England and America,
policing elsewhere in the world is taken seriously. It is considered not just as
the appropriately grateful recipient of gifts from North and West, but as a
source of inspiration and education (see also Findlay & Zvekic eds 1993).
Secondly, a radical challenge is made to the identification of policing with the
state: policing is seen as not just a concern of, but also an activity carried out
by civil society. Thirdly, police culture is rescued from its status as little more
than clich6, and is subjected to critique and development. Fourthly, a concern
to use and develop theory permeates the work. Fifthly, there is an exemplary
articulation of the proper relationship between academic work and political
action. In all these respects, Shearings work demonstrates what is currently
best in policing studies.
References
Bolen, J (1996) Prospects for sustained police reform Current Issues in
Criminal Justice, forthcoming.
Brogden, M & Shearing, C (1993) Policing for a New South Africa,
Routledge, London.
Chan, J ( 1996a) Changing police culture, British Journal of Criminology,
forthcoming.
Chan, J (1996b) Changing Police Culture: Policing in a Multicultural Society,
Cambridge University Press, Melbourne.
Dixon, D (1992) Legal regulation & policing practice, Social & Legal
Studies vol 1, pp 5 1 5 4 1 .
Dixon, D (forthcoming) Law in Policing: Legal Regulation and Police
Practices, Clarendon Press, Oxford.
Dixon, D, Bottomley, A K, Coleman, C A, Gill, M & Wall, D (1989) Reality
and rules in the construction and regulation of police suspicion,
International Journal of the Sociology of Law, vol 17, pp 185-206.
Ericson, R (1981) Rules for police deviance, in C Shearing, ed
Organizational police Deviance, Butterworths, Toronto, pp 83-1 10.
Findlay, M & Zvekic, U, eds (1993) Alternative Policing Styles:
Cross-Cultural Perspectives, Kluwer Publishers, Deventer, The
Netherlands.
Guelke, A (1995) Policing and the South African miracle, Social and Legal
Studies, vol 4, pp 413-19.
Johnston, L (1992) The Rebirth of Private Policing, Routledge, London.
McBarnet, D (1981) Conviction, Macmillan, London.
McConville, M, Sanders, A & Leng, R (1991) The Case for the Prosecution:
Police Suspects and the Construction of CriminaliQ, Routledge, London.
Shearing, C D (1992) The relation between public and private policing, in M
Tonry & N Morris, eds Modern Policing, University of Chicago Press,
Chicago, 399-434.
Shearing, C D & Stenning, P (1984) From the panopticon to Disney World:
the development of discipline, in Perspectives in Criminal Law, eds AN
Doob & EL Greenspan, Canada Law Book, Toronto.
Shearing, C D & Stenning, P, eds (1987) Private Policing, Sage, Newbury
Park, Cal.