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The purpose of the current study was to augment the police culture and stress literature by empirically examining the impact of features of the internal and external work environment, as well as officer characteristics, on police officer stress.

The current empirical inquiry utilized survey data collected from street-level officers in a mid-sized urban police department in a southern region of the United States (n = 349).

This study revealed that perceived danger, suspicion of citizens and cynicism toward the public increased police occupational stress, while support from supervisors mitigated it. In addition, Black and Latinx officers reported significantly less stress than their White counterparts.

While this study demonstrates that patrol officers' perceptions of the external and internal work environments (and race/ethnicity) matter in terms of occupational stress, it is not without limitations. One limitation related to the generalizability of the findings, as results are gleaned from a single large agency serving a metropolitan jurisdiction in the Southeast. Second, this study focused on cultural attitudes and stress, although exact connections to behaviors are more speculative. Finally, the survey took place prior to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and the killing of George Floyd (and others), which radically shook police–community relationships nationwide.

Police administrators should be cognizant of the importance that views of them have for patrol officer stress levels. Moreover, police trainers and supervisors concerned with occupational stress of their subordinates should work toward altering assignments and socialization patterns so that officers are exposed to a variety of patrol areas, in avoiding prolonged assignments of high social distress.

The study augmented the police culture and stress literature by empirically uncovering the individual-level sources of patrol officers' job-related stress. This study builds off of Paoline and Gau's (2018) research using data collected some 15 years ago by examining a more contemporary, post–Ferguson, context.

The objectives of this research were to examine how officer perspectives on body-worn cameras (BWCs) are patterned by broader occupational attitudes, and to analyze stability and change in officers' attitudes toward BWCs before and after the deployment of the technology.

The authors analyze panel survey data on individual officers in the Albany (New York) Police Department (APD).

Pre-BWC deployment, officers varied in their occupational attitudes and BWC perspectives, and the officers' BWC outlooks bore relationships to several occupational attitudes. BWC outlooks were largely stable following deployment. Individual changes in BWC perspectives were related to officers' assignments and unrelated to officers' occupational attitudes.

The authors use panel survey data to test hypotheses about the effect of broad occupational attitudes on officers' receptivity to BWCs and to analyze change pre-/post-BWC deployment.

Much of the commentary about police culture treats it as a monolithic and problematic feature of the police occupation that inhibits change and progress. The purpose of this paper is to draw on surveys completed by over 13,000 sworn police to describe officers’ occupational outlooks and explore the extent to which they vary across individuals and police agencies.

This paper draws upon employee survey data from 89 US police and sheriff departments collected in 2014-2015 to examine police culture through officers’ views of the community, police work, and police administration and to explore the extent to which these beliefs and opinions are affected by personal characteristics and organizational affiliation.

Results indicate that officers’ perspectives are more positive than might be expected and do not vary greatly by officer personal characteristics. They differ more substantially across police agencies. This suggests that police culture is to a significant extent an organizational phenomenon, not simply an occupational one.

Examining the views and perspectives of over 13,000 sworn police employed in 89 different police organizations provides a more representative and generalizable picture of police culture than previous studies that typically analyzed officers in only one police department.

Policing is associated with a pronounced occupational subculture. Policing is also known for physical and mental stressors that are, arguably, more than other professions. The purpose of this paper is to hypothesize that those police officers who perceive themselves as not a part of the subculture (i.e. “out-group”) would experience more occupational stress in comparison to those who perceive themselves as a part of it (i.e. “in-group”).

The authors use data from the Work and Family Services for Law Enforcement Personnel in the US survey (Delprino, 1997) and OLS regression to assess the direct association between officers’ perceptions of policing subculture membership and occupational stress.

Results support the hypothesis, with in-group officers reporting significantly less occupational stress than out-group officers. This finding holds, with slight variations, when demographic and experiential variables are introduced as controls.

Findings are from an earlier survey and based on responses from 1,632 officers in 51 agencies. They are geographically limited.

The importance of the protective function of subculture needs to be taken into account when attempting to deal with police stress.

This study provides ideas on how departments can utilize occupational subcultures to deal with the stress experienced by members.

The relationship between police subculture and stress has not been examined empirically before. This study documents the positive impact of police subculture in terms of helping members deal with stress.

Over the past two decades successive British governments, both Conservative and Labour, have attempted to implement reforms within the English and Welsh police service. The latest Labour government proposals have resulted in new legislation which paves the way for wide‐scale reforms of how the police are managed, financed and judged against specific performance targets. Further, the introduction of the UKs first “national policing plan” has led to the belief that this is a sign of the British government's intention to reduce/remove the historical, political neutrality identified through “constabulary independence”. Past experiences suggest that greater “nationalisation” of policing in the UK is unlikely to meet government expectations owing to the strength of police (sub) culture to adopt and yet resist reform and that the governments failure to pay attention to this may result in the failure of reform.

This paper comparatively assesses the connections between individual demographic traits, occupational characteristics, and organizational factors and officers' attitudes toward important groups in China and Taiwan.

Survey data used in this study were collected from 722 police officers from mainland China and 531 officers from Taiwan. Multivariate regression analyses were conducted to assess the correlates of police attitudes toward peers, supervisors, and citizens.

The Chinese and Taiwanese officers do not differ in their trust in peers, but the Chinese officers hold significantly more positive views on the trustworthiness of supervisors and citizens compared to the Taiwanese officers. Supervisor justice and organizational identification are significant predictors of officers' attitudes toward all three groups in both countries.

A major limitation revolves around the inability to test and explain exactly why findings from the two groups vary in their ways. Future research should include specific social, political, and cultural predictors.

This study represents one of the few studies that compare police attitudes toward important groups of peers, supervisors, and citizens across nations/cultures.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the organisational cultures of two different parts of the emergency service, the police and the ambulance service.

Semi-structured interviews with 45 police officers and ambulance staff sought to understand more about the relationships between these two distinctly different professions who work together closely and regularly in often very difficult situations.

Interviews with police officers and ambulance staff revealed the strong and harmonious working relationship between the two professions and an existence of both shared organisational characteristics and shared cultural characteristics. These cultural characteristics, identified as both explicit and tacit in nature provide the “glue” which not only binds each organisation together but which appears to cement a longer term, tangible link between the police and ambulance services.

This paper reveals a new dimension within cultural analyses of occupational groups by considering the shared cultural characteristics of two groups within the emergency services, police officers and ambulance staff. This potential for cultural boundary crossing is explored in detail.

The police culture literature suggests that police officers’ attitude towards the public is characterised by suspicion and an “us-vs-them” mentality. It also refers to the moral mission of protecting the public by being tough on crime. The traditional police culture model seems to imply that these aspects are typical for the police. There is, however, a lack of empirical studies to test this proposition. The purpose of this paper is to propose a different conceptual framework, based on grid-group cultural theory (GGCT), which not only broadens the lens of the police culture model, but also allows for comparative research between different professional groups.

The newly developed conceptual framework is tested in an ethnographic study in the Belgian police and labour inspection. The main data collection methods are observation, interview and informal conversation.

The results of this study show that there are similarities in the way in which Belgian police officers and labour inspectors interact with the public, which raises interesting questions concerning the (often implicit) claim of the police culture literature concerning the specificity of police culture.

More research is needed to gain deeper insight into similarities and differences of the occupational culture in the police and comparable professional groups. GGCT offers a useful conceptual framework for such a research agenda.

This paper addresses a number of criticisms against the classic police culture model and provides an innovative perspective to not only study aspects of police culture, but also compare the police with other professions.

There is considerable evidence to illustrate police occupational culture can negatively influence service delivery and organizational reform. To counteract this, and to improve professionalism, the police services of England and Wales will become a graduate profession from 2020, although little empirical evidence exists as to what impact this will have. The purpose of this paper is to examine the implications of a police degree course on its students.

Initially, a survey was conducted with 383 university students studying for criminal justice-related undergraduate degrees in a UK university. This indicated Police Foundation degree students (n=84), identified themselves as being different, and behaving differently, to other university students. To explore the reasons for this, four focus groups were conducted with this cohort, during their two-year degree programme.

The study found that the Police Foundation degree students quickly assimilated a police identity, which affected their attitudes and behavior. The process led to a strengthening of ties within their own student group, at the expense of wider student socialization.

The study provides new findings in relation to undergraduate students who undertake a university-based degree programme, tailored to a future police career. The results have implications for both police policy makers and those in higher education as it highlights the strength of police occupational culture and the implications for the design of future police-related degree programmes.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the nature of humour within two different organisations, policing and ambulance work, which are linked by their focus on emergency work.

Semi structured interviews with 45 police officers and ambulance staff sought to understand more about the relationships between these two distinctly different professions who work together closely and regularly in often very difficult situations.

Interviews with police officers and ambulance staff revealed that humour is a key component in the working relationship of police officers and ambulance staff. The humour of superiority and the humour of exclusion are used to both cope with the demands of their work, reinforce group values and to strengthen the shared bonds between the two occupations.

Humour has been studied within organisations but this paper reveals that humour also functions across occupational divides. Police officers and ambulance staff draw from a mutually acceptable but culturally defined joke‐book in the course of their work. The informal forces of humour appear, ironically, to provide a means of enhanced interoperability between the two organisations but at the expense of other agencies involved within the emergency service field.