Criminology Research Council grant ; (11/78)
Premised on the view that one's occupational identity makes a major input into adult interaction, this study monitored the adoption of the occupational identity of 'policemen' by a cohort of New South Wales police officers. The project sought to answer four specific questions:
- How does becoming a 'policeman' affect the way one interacts with friends and acquaintances?
- Is this suspected change stressful?
- Does the formal training of police officers address such changes? and
- If such changes are stressful, how can we change training to make them less so?
The project used basically a qualitative design in that the major research methods were the conversational interview and observation. These methods were supplemented by the use of some standard statistical instruments. The fundamental qualitative technique focused on the reaction of others, relatives, friends and acquaintances to the trainees' induction into the police force. In a more general way the project sought to establish the trainees' expectations of their being police officers and how they thought being 'in the job' would affect their life generally. By following the one group through their training and probationary period (longitudinal design) and matching their views with a group already graduates (cross sectional design), the study sought to establish what becoming a police officer meant in the eyes of some 40 trainees-particularly as it affected their friendship patterns.
The project's methodology is indebted to the Chicago school of symbolic interactionism. In terms of actual research activity such a stance dictated that the researcher seek to see the police world through the eyes of his respondents.
Reporting a great amount of verbatim data the project aimed for a standard of proof which may be phrased in terms of 'balance of probability'. The chosen methodology asks that the reader be given as much exposure as possible to the first-hand data on which the researcher's conclusions, albeit tentative, are constructed. In adopting this strategy, the report sought to gauge the sort of commitment that the sample group brought to the enterprise of policing. By making a passing comparison to the commitment revealed by a group of medical students in another of the author's studies, the project estimated that the bulk of the sample approached policing with no burning commitment to the enterprise. Some were economic conscripts but the bulk were young people 'trying on' the occupational role. Some, though few, were fundamentally quite idealistic.
As soon as the decision to join the police was made known, there began to operate, against this background of peripheral commitment, social forces of a very considerable magnitude which the report argues fundamentally altered the perspective from which the trainees saw the police world. The decision to join the police is a subject of intense and enduring interest among family members. But whereas families basically supported the decision, mainly for its implications for the inductees' entering a career, friends coupled their remarking on the decision with a banter which proved, over the twelve months of service, to be onerous. Acquaintances also couched their recognition of the decision to join in bantering terms though often the recognition was accompanied by verbal, even physical hostility. The report argues that these reactions constitute a significant force for distancing the new trainee from his former world.
It is against this background of commitment that the attitude-changing force of the Police Academy operates. The separation from society, which has already begun, is paralleled by a very persuasive invitation to join the 'brotherhood of police'. This 'brotherhood' is, in turn, premised on the functionality of police working as a united group, a 'thin blue line', between the criminal or hoodlum element and the wider society who, although the beneficiaries of police protection, are largely unappreciative.
The report argues that becoming a police officer entails a fundamental change in self-identity-a change brought about in significant part by the reactions of others-reactions supportive, hostile and commercially deferential and which distinguish the officer from the community. Moreover, the report argues that present training procedures exacerbate the isolation process which, though significant, is not so stressful as to entail any serious thoughts about leaving a job which most officers found personally very rewarding in terms of the vital contribution to society. Nonetheless, the police occupation envelopes other identifying characteristics-it is a 'greedy' occupation.
In acknowledging a 1978 internal review of training by Inspector John Avery and the 1981 Inquiry by Mr Justice Lusher, the report concludes with an annotated recommendation for a restructured police education/training program in the manner of a semi-professional occupation.