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The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of external factors on police efficiency in a sample of Peru’s municipalities. Drawing on the postulates of the contingency theory of organizations, this study argues that because of the public nature of police organizations’ activities, they are heavily influenced by the environment in which they operate, which invariably affects their efficiency.

The study examines police efficiency using a four-stage Data Envelopment Analysis model in a sample of 619 Peruvian municipalities (“distritos”). After adjusting the inputs to the external environment, the remaining inefficiencies are presumed to result from managerial issues and other internal organizational factors.

The results indicate that police efficiency improves after adjusting police inputs to the effect of external factors. The mean efficiency scores improved by 39 percent from 0.57 to 0.79. Because the effects of the external environment can be stronger in larger municipalities, these experience larger improvements in efficiency than smaller municipalities.

There are two important limitations. First, the sample of municipalities in Peru is limited and the results must be interpreted with caution. In addition, the external factors included in the second stage analysis represent only a proportion of all potential external factors which can influence police efficiency. Second, the results presented here explain only one aspect of contingency theory. An important implication of this study suggests that for police managers to make more informed decisions on resource use and allocations, they need a more thorough understanding of the environments in which police operate.

It can assist researchers to ascertain the effects of the external environment on police performance. More importantly, it can assist police managers in making informed decisions about resource use and allocation. Consequently, a better use of resources could lead to better policing and improved citizen safety and security.

This study introduces a new and innovative methodological approach to measure police performance. This multi-stage approach has not been used in the context of democratic policing in Latin America and the Caribbean. The current research fills an important gap on how to measure police performance in developing countries.

This paper aims to take stock and to increase understanding of the opportunities and threats for policing in ten European countries in the Political, Economic, Social, Technological and Legal (PESTL) environment.

This study is part of the large EU‐funded COMPOSITE project into organisational change. A PESTL analysis was executed to produce the environmental scan that will serve as a platform for further research into change management within the police. The findings are based on structured interviews with police officers of 17 different police forces and knowledgeable externals in ten European countries. The sampling strategy was optimized for representativeness under the binding capacity constraints defined by the COMPOSITE research budget.

European police forces face a long list of environmental changes that can be grouped in the five PESTL clusters with a common denominator. There is also quite some overlap as to both the importance and nature of the key PESTL trends across the ten countries, suggesting convergence in Europe.

A study of this magnitude has not been seen before in Europe, which brings new insights to the target population of police forces across Europe. Moreover, policing is an interesting field to study from the perspective of organisational change, featuring a high incidence of change in combination with a wide variety of change challenges, such as those related to identity and leadership.

The authors set out to show how key private security industry actors in Sweden establish body-worn cameras (BWCs) as a tool to protect private security officers from the public the officers police and to improve the work environment of the officers.

The authors conducted qualitative semi-structured interviews with key personnel involved in the implementation of BWCs. The authors' analysis focused on delineating recurrent moral stories and affirmative environments to show how BWC use was made legitimate as a work environment tool.

The authors show how BWC use by private security officers patrolling public spaces in Sweden is legitimized by four organizational narratives: (1) the vulnerable security officer and the caring employer, (2) defenders of protective regulation, (3) moral selves and morally dubious others and (4) function creep and moral guardians. The authors explain how such organizational narratives are key to establishing and legitimizing the use of BWCs as a tool to improve the work environment of private security guards, and how certain narrative environments promote such organizational narratives in Sweden to improve the work environment of private security guards.

The authors' findings in this article add to a small but growing literature on BWC use in policing outside of the USA and the UK as well as to the hitherto very limited research from the work environment and managerial perspectives. The authors illustrate the importance of organizational narratives and narrative environments for understanding organizational change involving legitimation of new technologies.

The purpose of this paper is to explores the contemporary workplace experiences of lesbian and gay officers who serve across the UK.

Using an online survey, the research asked lesbian and gay officers to share their experiences in law enforcement environments. Acknowledging the changing climate in many law enforcement environments, this respondents here were asked to focus on both positive and negative experiences in the workplace.

The responses of 243 police officers revealed that lesbian and gay officers face barriers to equal employment opportunities similar to those faced by women and other minorities in law enforcement, but lesbian officers appear to experience and witness lower levels of discrimination than gay male police officers. Attitudinal bias against lesbian and gay officers remains a significant problem in the force. Lesbian officers report feelings of tokenism at higher levels than gay male police officers.

Future research endeavors should analyze any differences between the experiences of different lesbians and gay men at different levels of visibility within law enforcement, including “out” and “closeted” officers. Research about when officers come out as lesbian or gay – during training, on the force, after they retire – would be insightful in understanding officers’ perceptions.

The research suggests that police departments in the UK have made good strides in opening the law enforcement workforce, but continue to face on-going challenges in creating fair, diverse, and representative work environments for lesbian and gay officers. Specifically, agencies should review policies where supervisor have discretion over the employment-related actions. By not meetings the challenges of a more diverse workplace, agencies risk lower job satisfaction, and decreased police effectiveness, especially on community policing environments.

This research joins a small, but growing body of research that offers specific barriers and opportunities – as perceived by the officers. As other agencies engage in efforts to recruit and retain diversity police forces, the results of this research can enhance policies and practices, with regards to lesbian and gay officers.

The purpose of the paper is to present the results of research in the region covered by the Murska Sobota Police Directorate based on semi-structured interviews we conducted with community policing officers in the rural and urban areas of Pomurje.

Community policing is one of the more recent (yet hardly new) ways of ensuring security. It focuses on collaboration between citizens and the police, the joint identification of security issues and resolving them. Not long ago, it was established that policing varies depending on geographical criteria, specifically the urbanisation of the environment since police work in cities is often very narrowly specialised compared to in a rural environment. We were therefore interested in whether the Pomurje region also shows that it is easier to practise community policing in rural areas compared to cities.

The research results confirm previous findings; namely, that in urban areas approximately two-thirds of the population does not know the community policing officer, leading to the mutual cooperation between residents and the police being poorer than in rural areas. The conclusion describes ways of improving the established situation facing Pomurje.

We see the limitations of the study in the peculiarities of the Pomurje region; therefore the results cannot be generalised and applied in areas of other police directorates.

The survey offers insight into rural and urban policing in the Pomurje region at the same time, focusing on possibilities for improvements.

Police legitimacy has emerged as a core concept in the study of twenty-first century policing. The purpose of this paper is to contribute new knowledge by examining the dynamics surrounding policing legitimacy in a high demand environment in Northern Canada.

A case study approach was used to explore the historical and contemporary factors that contributed to the challenges surrounding the police-First Nations relations, how these challenges affected public confidence in, and trust of, the police, and how the communities, police, and government took action to address these issues.

The findings reveal that it is possible for the police, First Nations, and government in high demand environments to implement reforms and to create the foundation for police-community collaboration. The development of relationships based on trust and a continuing dialogue is important components in building police legitimacy.

The study was conducted in one northern jurisdiction. The findings may apply to other jurisdictions where the police are involved in policing indigenous peoples.

The case study provides insight into the processes required to fundamentally alter the police-First Nations relations, to improve police service delivery in high demand environments, and to ensure that reforms are sustained.

Police legitimacy has been examined primarily in urban environments where police services have considerable capacities and there re-extensive networks of support from various agencies and organizations. The dynamics of policing in northern communities are appreciably different and present challenges as well as opportunities for improving police legitimacy.

This qualitative study seeks to gather rich, narrative data from police officers on the social environment of law enforcement classrooms and the classroom experiences valued most by law enforcement officers.

The study used interview data from a focus group, as well as individual interviews.

Data revealed one predominant theme, students' preference for adult education practices, and four distinct subthemes: engagement, practicality, affiliation, and efficiency. That is, officers valued courses that were interesting and engaging, were applicable to their everyday duties and responsibilities, provided opportunities for social interaction, and were presented efficiently. These subthemes or classroom preferences support the primary study finding that the students preferred adult education practices in their classrooms. The interviews revealed, however, that actual law enforcement classrooms do not always accommodate these preferences or foster the preferred classroom environment.

Such findings, which should be supplemented with additional qualitative studies as well as quantitative surveys, may be informative for classroom design and instructional planning in the law enforcement setting.

There is a dearth of research on officers' opinions about adult education in the law enforcement arena.

This study explores the impact of work environment, work‐family conflict, and coping mechanisms on physical and psychological stresses of police officers. Using survey data from a large police department located in the New England area, we pay specific attention to analyzing similar and dissimilar results while comparing across gender groups. Our research indicates that for both gender groups, work‐family conflict (spillover) and destructive coping mechanisms are among the strongest and most consistent stressors, regardless of the measures of dependent variable employed (i.e. somatization, anxiety and depression). On the other hand, we also find divergent impact of exposures to negative work environment, camaraderie, and constructive coping mechanisms on different measures of work related stresses across the two gender groups. Implications of these convergent and divergent effects are discussed.

One of the important developments in police theory and research is the recognition of the institutional contexts in which departments participate. A body of theory, organized under the rubric of the “theory of institutionalized organizations”, provides a theoretical framework for the conceptualization and empirical assessment of policing contexts and their relationship to police organizational structures and practices. The first part of this paper provides an overview of institutional theory and reviews writings on the application of institutional theory to the police. The second section reviews research conducted on institutional theory across the field of criminal justice. The third part contrasts the competing notions of institutions and utility in institutional theory, and locates police organizations within Giddens’ model of human agency.

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.