Police culture

Police culture is the set of values, norms, and perspectives that inform police conduct. Police culture has a great effect on how police officers exercise their power and discretion about which crimes to pay attention to and how suspects are treated while in their custody. As a result, police culture has become increasingly and internationally important in both academic and policy discussion of policing.

Studies of a police culture that is distinct from the culture of the general public began in the United States and the United Kingdom in the 1960s. By the early 21st century the concept had been widely accepted as orthodoxy in the field of police studies.

Understanding of police culture is an important element of police reform.

Early academic work in police sociology was carried out in the 1960s, especially in the United States and Great Britain. These early empirical ethnographies challenged the prevailing notion at the time that police forces were "rule-bound, legalistic, bureaucratic organizations", in which strict discipline enforced top-down government policies.

Michael Banton's The Policeman in the Community (1964) was possibly the first book-length study of police culture. This study presented a "primarily harmonious view of British society" that neglected problems of police corruption and violence against marginalized communities. The book described working class officers as "peace keepers" rather than "law enforcers"; Banton also noted that police authority resulted in officers' social isolation. Jerome Skolnick investigated in 1966 how the pressures and tensions inherent to policing produced a "working personality" of suspiciousness, social isolation, conservatism, and internal solidarity with other police officers. More critical analyses of police culture began to appear in the 1970s. Maureen Cain examined difference between urban and rural police forces, finding that urban policing was marked by greater prejudice against minority ethnic groups, while rural policing was a comparatively "quiet and leisurely affair".

Many studies have made "blanket critiques" of police culture that emphasize the role of traditional police culture in perpetuating police abuse and misconduct, though ethnographies of police in some countries from the Global South suggest that police cultures may be more varied than described by mainstream scholarship on the subject (most of which is produced by non-communist countries from the Global North), and that distinct police cultures in some places may contribute to greater community responsiveness.

Traditional police culture emphasizes the role of police in law enforcement and "crime fighting" rather than service and maintenance of order. It is associated with more aggressive policing and with a "code of silence" where officers are expected to avoid reporting misconduct. Traditional police culture maintains some similarities across international jurisdictions including the United Kingdom, the United States, and Canada in its characterization by dominance, suspicion, insularity, and stereotyping or prejudice.

There is persistent consensus among scholars that police culture is gendered at individual and organizational levels; and while women do participate in policing they are not well-represented. Researchers have consistently described police culture as "machismo" or hyper-masculine.