Police Occupational Culture: Testing the Monolithic Model

• NCJ Number: 251782
• Journal: Justice Quarterly Volume: 35 Issue: 4 Dated: June 2018 Pages: 670-698
• Author(s): Eugene A. Paoline III; Jacinta M. Gau
• Date Published: June 2018
• Length: 29 pages
• Grant Number(s): 2005-IJ-CX-0055
• Agencies: NIJ-Sponsored
• Publication Type: Program/Project Description
• Award: Assessing Police Use of Force Policy and Outcomes

Annotation

This article reports on the empirical testing of a theoretical model that has been constructed to depict the ways in which the stressful features of the police work environment produce coping mechanisms and outcomes.

Abstract

In foundational work in the 1950s, researchers described a variety of dimensions of the occupational culture of police. The theoretical model examined in this article attempted to integrate the disparate works. Path analyses of officer survey data provided support for several of the propositions in the monolithic model, although the magnitude of the statistical associations was not very powerful and overall model fit was marginal. The implications of these findings are especially relevant given recent concerns over police-community relations and the renewed interest in the police occupational culture expressed by the President's Task Force on 21st Century Policing. (Publisher abstract modified)