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The current and ongoing police legitimacy crises demand a renewed analysis of the police mission in American law enforcement. This research aims to examine the mission statements of a national sample of police agencies, and generates an organizational typology of contemporary policing styles.

Using the responsive agencies listed in the Law Enforcement Management and Administrative Statistics (LEMAS) as a sampling frame, mission statements from 2,826 departments were collected from official law enforcement websites. Wilson's (1968) seminal typology of policing styles was then used to classify the emergent patterns from the mission statements. Mission statement patterns that did not fit squarely into Wilson's model (i.e. watchman, service and legalistic styles of policing) were classified to update the model and account for contemporary police goals and organizational orientations.

A theme of outward-facing legitimacy among police organizations emerged as a new variety of police behavior, according to collected mission statements. The researchers’ findings suggest that public perceptions of police legitimacy are a primary concern for today's police forces.

This research reappreciates the utility of Wilson's typology of policing styles, and provides insight into the cultivation of police legitimacy. The authors identify a fourth typology of organizational behavior, legitimacy, that may be an emerging, professional police response to both contemporary crime issues and public antipathy.

The purpose of this paper is to provide an outline of the strengths and weaknesses of selected models of police‐based victim services. It aims to provide an overview of the current predominant models of police‐based victim support in the USA, Canada, UK and Australia. It also aims to advance a typology of police‐based victim services as a useful analytic tool for understanding the varying models.

The research was based on extensive documentary analysis supplemented by semi‐structured interviews with 17 practitioners in the USA, Canada and Australia. Sites were selected for interview based on documentary research which indicated that they had developed police‐based victim services in their organization that were either particularly representative or innovative.

Police‐based victim services can be categorized into three broad models: unit services, dedicated liaison officer services, and referral services. Each model has strengths and weaknesses in terms of service delivery and police organization. Unit services may be optimum in delivering services but are also resource‐intensive and may be beyond the financial scope of some police organizations. They also potentially risk sequestering victim services within police organizations and reinforcing a view that dealing with victims of crime is not “real policing”. Dedicated officer services require significant institutional input to achieve their goals, while referral models necessitate workable mechanisms for inter‐agency cooperation. Thus police organizations need a clear perception of their victim services delivery role and how this might best be achieved.

The academic literature on police‐based victim services remains scant. This paper makes a valuable contribution to the literature by providing a useful typology for the analysis of police‐based victim services and the assessment of their strengths and weaknesses. The typology will prove useful for future empirical case‐studies of individual police‐based victim services.

This paper explores the applicability of environmental theories to understanding patterns of police misconduct. In turn, it aims to offer a method for identifying prevention techniques that can be practically applied by policing agencies.

The study empirically examined 84 substantiated matters of police misconduct in Queensland, Australia. The matters were content-analysed for elements of the first level of the crime triangle. These elements were then analysed to identify their relationships with the situational precipitators that initiated the misconduct; proactive misconduct and situational misconduct.

The two types of initiating misconduct had differing relationships with the crime triangle elements. Therefore, specific prevention techniques can be tailored by policing agencies to address and prevent each type of misconduct more successfully. The paper discusses these findings in terms of preventative measures according to the second preventative level of the crime triangle and situational crime prevention techniques.

This paper provides an alternative approach to understanding and preventing police misconduct by exploring the applicability of environmental theories. It finds that environmental theories offer a feasible approach for policing agencies to understand and tailor prevention of police misconduct in their jurisdictions.

The purpose of the study is to provide empirical data on cases of drug‐related police corruption. It identifies and describes incidents in which police officers were arrested for criminal offenses associated with drug‐related corruption.

The study is a quantitative content analysis of news articles identified through the Google News search engine using 48 automated Google Alerts queries. Statistical analyses include classification trees to examine causal pathways between drugs and corruption.

Data were analyzed on 221 drug‐related arrest cases of officers employed by police agencies throughout the USA. Findings show that drug‐related corruption involves a wide range of criminal offenses, and that cocaine is the most prevalent drug. Older officers and those employed by large agencies are less likely than others to lose their jobs after a drug‐related arrest.

The study is limited by the quality of the available content in each case. The data are also limited to cases that involve an official arrest. Additionally, the data are the result of a filtering process that includes the exercise of media discretion as to types of news stories reported and the content devoted to particular news stories.

The data provide documentation of drug‐related corruption and the drug trade in 141 police agencies and the need for police executives to develop effective strategies to address it.

The study augments the few drug corruption studies published and is the only study known to describe drug‐related corruption at many police agencies across the USA.

The purpose of this paper is to examine Chinese police cadets' attitudes toward police roles and their work.

Using survey data collected from 182 cadets in a Chinese police college, this paper assesses the influences of cadets' characteristics and training on their attitudes toward law enforcement, order maintenance, preventive patrol, and community building.

Cadets without family members or relatives serving as police officers and with stronger physical capability are more likely to support the law enforcement role, while cadets with greater physical capability are less likely to favor order maintenance. Younger cadets and those without a Bachelor's degree are more likely to view preventive patrol as an important goal for the police. Cadets with stronger attitudes toward law enforcement are more likely to regard community building as an important police goal.

Future research should continue to explore factors that influence officers' occupational attitudes and incorporate more attitudinal dimensions into the analysis. Future projects should also target local station officers from different departments.

This study represents one of the first attempts to empirically assess Chinese police cadets' work‐related attitudes. Findings of the study provide Chinese police administrators with useful references and directions to improve police training and enhance police‐community relations.

Examines the link between level of organizational commitment and patrol officers’ attitudes toward and participation in police occupational deviance in a police patrol bureau. Uses analysis and interpretation of qualitative data gathered during field research in one mid‐sized police department to develop the subject. Field research was conducted over a seven‐month period, during which 580 hours of field observations were made and 48 unstructured interviews with patrol officers were conducted. Analysis disclosed that patrol officers with low levels of organizational commitment tended to engage in patterns of work avoidance and manipulation and employee deviance against the organization ‐ in contrast, patrol officers with high levels of commitment to the organization were likely to engage in employee deviance against the organization. Finally, patrol officers with a medium level of organizational commitment engaged in any of the three forms of deviance, depending on which end of the commitment continuum they tended toward. Claims that all patrol officers accepted informal rewards.

With rare research access to the police service in the United Kingdom, the authors investigate levels of burnout and the performance of emotional labour.

Using 330 surveys completed by serving police officers, the authors investigate levels of burnout and also the performance of the three elements of emotional labour.

Investigating heterogeneity, the authors create a typology of three different types of officer. In addition to a core group, this includes groups with misaligned and matching values. Surface acting impacts on all groups, and in each group it is associated with increased levels of burnout.

A unique feature of this research is the involvement of a practitioner from the police service in the authorship team, together with re-engagement with the police service in order to refine this typology. Possible coping strategies are introduced following this consultation.

A typology of suicide by police was created by separating 143 such incidents from a database of 174 police shooting incidents. The 143 incidents were found to consist of three main categories: Direct Confrontations, in which suicidal subjects instigated attacks on police, Disturbed Interventions, in which potentially suicidal subjects took advantage of police intervention, and Criminal Interventions, in which subjects preferred death to submission. These three categories were then subdivided into nine types. Two judges obtained a reliability coefficient of 0.87 for distinguishing suicide by cop, and 0.58 for placement into the nine types. Meaningful distinctions among the types were found on three variables: subject age, real danger, and lethality.

This study examines empirically the extent to which there is evidence of an endemic sub‐culture of policing among a sample of sheriffs’ deputies. While failing to observe widespread adherence to the sub‐cultural norms and values suggested in the literature, such adherence is observed among a subset of our sample. Advanced statistical techniques (i.e. cluster analysis and discriminant function analysis) are then used to create, replicate, and validate a numerical taxonomy of policing. The taxonomy reveals three types of law enforcement orientations: “Sub‐Cultural Adherents,” “COP Cops,” who represent a nouveau sub‐culture strongly committed to public service, and “Normals,” who, on average, are quite average and are not especially committed to either sub‐cultural form.

The purpose of this paper is to attempt to replicate Engel’s (2001) styles of supervision using data from a new sample and including additional independent variables.

The data were collected from a sample of police supervisors (N=369) at three distinct locations throughout the USA. Bivariate analyses and ordinary least squares regression were used to analyze the data.

The authors find three of Engel’s four supervisory styles and find largely consistent results, with the exception of gender. Further, the authors find strong evidence for persistent agency-level effects.

Supervisory styles are important to consider, especially when trying to effectively control the behavior of subordinates. While this study cannot address the impact of organizational differences, the consistent agency-level effects suggest this as something that should be considered again in future research.