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This study explores how police culture is experienced by women officers serving in positions where they are significantly underrepresented (i.e. leadership and elite specialty units) and the environmental factors that shape these experiences.

A qualitative analysis of transcripts from interviews with 71 women serving in male-dominated roles was conducted (N = 39 ranking women; N = 32 women on elite units).

Participants described five occupational, organizational and assignment-level factors that shaped their workplace experiences. While some contextual forces at play are similar for women working patrol (e.g. traditional police culture, the underrepresentation of women in law enforcement) unique position-level factors were also identified (e.g. the high-risk and consequential nature of the work).

While the cultural environment for women patrol officers has improved in the past few decades, the same cannot be said for women working in positions that are still dominated by men. More attention to this area of policing is needed to ensure gender diversity is achieved throughout organizations and not only in positions deemed suitable for women.

The study extends research on women in policing beyond the focus on patrol. Further, it explores the assignment- and rank-based perspectives of police culture, which are largely absent from the literature.

Violence as a foundational element of police work is continuously reaffirmed and justified through police labour as ‘violence workers’ (Seigel, 2018). Hiring more female police officers has recently been seen as a way to reduce police violence. However, would employing more female officers change the relationship between policing and violence? Arguments in favour of more female police tend to rely on stereotypical understandings of gender, emphasising that women are naturally less aggressive and more likely to be caring and compassionate, often obscuring the violence enacted by female police officers in doing so. Female officers may be more likely to engage in violence out of necessity due to police culture and occupational norms around the use of force. Examining female police across countries such as the United States, Nigeria and Slovenia, this chapter establishes female police violence as a broader pattern, reflects on how female officers participate in police violence and addresses the extent to which masculinised police culture structures the expression of police violence. This chapter concludes with a discussion of why hiring more female police officers is not an adequate solution for reducing police violence, as police officers enact and are complicit in violence, regardless of gender.

The study examined rural police culture in one Kansas police agency.

This study used a qualitative ethnographic approach using in-depth interviews and non-participant observations to construct and interpret the culture of rural police through the lens of officers working in one rural police agency.

Five themes were found that described the complexities rural police officers face at this research site, including the law being at the center of officers’ actions, the nature of crime, officers serving as jack of all trades, community relationships and enforcement of crimes by teenagers, and how outside pressures from the community and increased concern for citizens' safety affect officers' daily lived experiences.

There is a dearth of scholarly literature addressing rural and small-town policing. This study is the first known qualitative study to be conducted on rural Kansas police, allowing a snapshot of the workings of rural Kansas police.

The call to defund the police emerges globally from the voices of those who stand up to police brutality. Reallocating funds so that non-criminalising entities can meet community needs is crucial, but it does not address the problem in the system of policing. Further, the call for accountability cannot just emerge after a police-related death but must extend to the process of police work, beginning with police academy training. The author can identify and solve the most pressing issues by examining officer training as it is foundational to departmental work culture, organisational structure, and daily decision-making. Based on participant observation of academy lectures, scenario training, and informal conversations at two police academies in the Midwestern part of the United States, the author uncovers daily processes in which new recruits are socialised into their role as officers. Data reveal officers are taught a racialised decision-making logic that prioritises arrest, and perpetuates harm against its citizens. Training also devalues formal education, undermining knowledge that can expand officer thinking and critical self-reflection. Adhering to the goals of activist criminology, this chapter illuminates deeply rooted patterns of oppression and suggests reform aligned with critical social justice and anti-racist principles.

Knowledge about the prevalence and impact of Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) is pivotal to trauma-informed approaches, yet the impact of ACEs training is rarely investigated. This study reports a qualitative investigation of police perceptions of ACEs training in relation to conceptualisations of ACEs and trauma-informed working, practical applications of ACE knowledge and service-level support.

Four focus groups were conducted with 29 police officers, who had participated in an ACEs-awareness training. Based on the qualitative data, themes were generated using reflexive thematic analysis (Braun and Clarke, 2019).

Analysis generated seven themes, conceptualised into three domains of conceptual understanding, police culture and operationalising ACEs.

The sample is limited to Scottish police officers and is ethnically non-diverse. Further evaluation of higher quality interventions is warranted.

The study highlighted that a lack of conceptual framework, officer concerns and police culture may present barriers to officers incorporating ACEs knowledge into their day-to-day work. Future trainings should address these issues to achieve maximum benefits.

To the authors’ knowledge, this is the first in-depth qualitative study of police officers' perceptions of ACEs training. Focus groups facilitated the expression of cultural norms. The results provide insight into tailoring trauma-informed interventions in police in future, as well as raising broader service-level issues.

This study aims to test an integrated model that examines the relationship between the service qualities of police at any urban tourist destination and the tourist urban destination advocacy at tourist cities in the Shimla region of India, where tourists’ trust in police acts as a mediating variable. This study mainly focused on the type of service shown by police officials to develop trust among the tourists, resulting in their urban destination advocacy.

The questionnaire was adopted from previously developed and validated scales. The questionnaire was administered to different tourists who came to India. This study used the bootstrapping technique and structural equation modelling (SEM) to address the research questions and test the hypotheses.

This study results indicate that trust in the police mediates the relationship between police service quality and tourist satisfaction at any urban tourist destination. The study’s findings add to the literature on tourists’ trust in policing tourist sites, police service quality and leader behaviour.

The above-tested model has a very limited number of constructs. There are a variety of additional antecedents (e.g. police organization culture and urban destination attributes) and consequences (word-of-mouth referrals and customer identification) that could be considered for future research to develop a more comprehensive model. The cross-sectional study raises concerns about the causal relationships between constructs in the tested model. More substantial evidence of causality via longitudinal and experimental studies is needed.

The study’s findings added a chapter to the literature by identifying how police service quality impacts tourist trust building and urban destination advocacy.