Rethinking Police Governance, Culture & Management

Page 1Rethinking Police Governance, Culture &ManagementDraft Final: December 3, 2007Christopher Murphy, PhDPaul McKenna, MA, MLSDalhousie UniversityHalifax, Nova ScotiaA Summary Review of the LiteraturePrepared for theTask Force on Governance and Cultural Change in the RCMP,Public Safety Canada

Page 2TABLE OF CONTENTSPreface .4Chapter 1:Police Culture: Dimensions, Variations & Implications.51.1 The Police Culture Thesis .51.2 Traditional Military Police Organization & Culture.81.3 The Development of RCMP Organization & Culture.101.4 The RCMP & Its Military Bureaucratic Tradition.111.5 The Modern RCMP: Organizational Reform & Uncertainty .131.6 Conclusions.16Chapter 2:The Expanding Police Mandate. 172.1 The Changing Nature of Modern Policing.172.2 The Police and “Policing” .172.3 The Changing Nature of Conventional Police Work .192.3.1 Legal & Regulatory Changes.192.3.2 New Technology & Police Change .202.3.3 Changing Public Governance Expectations .222.3.4 Policing Costs and Consequences.232.3.5 Globalization and Changing Crime Patterns .242.3.6 Summary .252.4 Police and Public Safety .252.5 Public Policing and National Security .262.6 Security and the RCMP .282.7 Policing Risk and Risky Policing .292.8 Integrated Policing.302.9 Summary .322.10 Implications for the RCMP .33Chapter 3:Police Governance, Management & Culture Change .373.1 Issues & Elements of Contemporary Police Governance .373.2 Internal Police Governance.403.3 Implications for the RCMP .413.4 Critique of the Military, Bureaucratic & Professional Models .413.5 Some Problematic Issues for the RCMP.453.6 Policing Change Agenda: Organization & Culture.463.7 Organizational Learning as Leadership.493.8 The Promise of Post-Secondary Education in Policing.503.9 Police Executive Education & Development Programs.513.10 Implications for the RCMP .543.11 Conclusions.58Rethinking Police Governance, Culture & Management

Page 3Chapter 4:Towards a New Paradigm of Police Management & Culture:Alternative Models & Strategies ofCorporate Police Management .594.1 Exploring New Approaches & Models.594.2 Future Direction? .624.2.1 Maintenance of Status Quo.624.2.2 Reform Existing RCMP Management & Culture .624.2.3 Rethinking and Developing a New Management Model .634.3 Towards a New RCMP Management Model .634.4 Conclusion .68Chapter 5:Research Resources.695.1 References .695.2 Bibliography .78APPENDICESAppendix One: Dimensions of Accountability .91Appendix Two: RCMP Functional Structure.94Appendix Three: RCMP Civilian Staffing Categories.99Appendix Four: Police Executive Learning & Development Programs.100Rethinking Police Governance, Culture & Management

Page 4PrefaceThe Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RMCP) is an institution with aproud history, an international reputation and a significantmandate for the delivery of a broad range of policing and relatedservices. The Task Force on Governance and Cultural Change in theRCMP has been given the mandate to examine some problematicaspects of the RCMP governance and organizational culture. It is ourhope that this report is a useful contribution to this process.We provide in this report a summary review of the literature andresearch on police and RCMP culture, management, governance and thechanging police role. From our review of police studies and the limitedRCMP literature, we identify some of the critical culture and governanceissues that we believe are related to the Task Force’s mandate. Given thelimited timeframe this review, by necessity, has been selective,interpretive and represents a preliminary examination of a number ofcomplex issues. While our analysis is based on a wide range of relevantpolice research and program literature it is also informed by our ownwork and involvement with Canadian policing and the RCMP overmany years.Though critical of some aspects of traditional RCMP management andculture, we have assembled these ideas and information in order toconstructively focus on possible new or alternative policy directions andstrategies that we think will strengthen the management andgovernance of RCMP. The challenges faced by the RCMP in managingan organization with its traditions, varied functions, and broadresponsibilities are significant, but extremely important. We hope thisreview will not only contribute to the current examination process butthat it will also provide a rationale and groundwork for furtherexploration.Christopher Murphy, PhDPaul McKenna, MA, MLSRethinking Police Governance, Culture & Management

Page 5CHAPTER 1:Police Culture: Dimensions, Variations &Implications1.1The Police Culture ThesisThe concept of police culture as an explanatory factor in policestudies has an extensive literature. Though it has been examinedfrom a variety of disciplinary perspectives such as anthropology,sociology, criminology, and organizational studies, they generally sharea central argument which can be summarized as follows:The role of the public police in modern society is both unique andproblematic. The police have a broad, ambitious mandate (crime controland public order) and special legal, but limited, coercive powers toachieve it (Bittner 1970; Manning 1977). Police work as result has anumber of distinctive situational, structural, and symbolic qualities suchas danger, risk, authority, and conflict. These qualities of the police rolein democratic societies often make the police environment uncertain andrisky, generating a reactionary and protective occupational andorganizational culture. Culture in this sense is understood as a set ofsocial solutions devised by a group of people to understand andrespond to a common set of real and perceived problems (Van Maanen1984). Police culture is variously described in police studies as; “a set ofshared values, group attitudes, agreed upon behavioural norms,informal “craft” rules, a set of common understandings and informalguides for action (Durivage 1992; Goldsmith 1991; Greene et al. 1994;Skolnick 1994). Police culture is explained as a functional, evennecessary cultural response to the broad, complex and uncertain natureof doing police work; especially managing the discretionary exercise ofcoercive police powers in uncertain and potentially risky situations.Police culture thus serves as an informal guide to the situationalenactment of the police role, providing the informal rules ofengagement (Ericson 1982). In short police culture helps officersnegotiate their complex uncertain working environments in ways thatlet them get the job done. Internalized, police culture is also form ofgovernance as it provides group based behavioural guides, interactionalrules and proscribed codes of conduct.Rethinking Police Governance, Culture & Management

Page 6Police officers learn the culture or are socialized into its collective valuesand understandings, though informal groups interaction, both on andoff the job. To become a police officer means learning and internalizingthe culture and adhering to its core values and rules. Acceptance byone’s peers as being trustworthy and reliable often depends on beingaware, and accepting, this culture or code and subscribing to its variousbehavioural and attitudinal tenets.Though studies of police culture differ somewhat in describing groupvalues, there is general agreement that traditional police culture isdescribed by the following general core values and qualities:1.2.3.4.5.6.7.Solidarity – emphasis on shared responsibility and loyalty toother police officers above all others;Authoritarianism – belief in, and willingness to exercise, powerover others, believed to be either a function of the job orpersonality type;Suspicion – mistrust of people gained from limited and oftennegative contact with public; mistrust of people gained fromlimited and often negative contact with public; a protectiveresponse to the uncertainty of the environment andConservative – political and social outlook either caused by themoralistic and negative nature of police work or those whoare attracted to police work;Prejudicial – tendency to prejudge others based on values,behaviour and work experience – stereotyping gets the jobdone but can lead to racism sexism, etc.;Cynicism – tendency to regard all non police as potentialunreliable, unsympathetic and critical of police.Blue collar – describes the class background and values ofmost police officers as blue collar or working class, suggeststhat police cultural values reflect many of the general valuesand attitudes of working class males.While the existence of a police culture with these particular values isunderstandable, it has also been linked to a number of persistentpolicing problems. Various studies of police deviance directly identifypolice culture as a contributing or casual factor. Police culture is said tocontribute to, facilitate and justify a number of negative policebehaviours. Studies of the excessive use of force, corruption, and racismhave implicated police culture in both rationalizing these activities butalso providing protection from its discovery and elimination. Policeculture can validate or rationalize deviant activities so that policeRethinking Police Governance, Culture & Management

Page 7officers can engage in them without violating cultural codes thatnormalize bad behaviour and, more importantly, cover them up. Thedemand for loyalty and solidarity with other police officers serves as amaster value that insulates and protects police deviance and makes itdifficult to govern officers’ behaviour from within but especially fromoutside the organization. Police culture exhibits a deep-rooted suspicionof non-police outsiders. Outside public or political criticism can makepolice organizations and their members resistant to external forms ofaccountability, influence, regulation and governance. Indeed, in manycases internal codes of loyalty, solidarity and suspicion fuel resistance toexternal attempts to govern and mange police behaviour.However despite extensive research and analysis on police culture andits negative effects, there are criticisms of this rather simplistic andgeneric portrayal of traditional police culture that limits its significanceas an “accurate” or “complete” description of modern police culture. Insummary, these critics (Chan 1997; Kappeler et al. 2006) argue thatmodern police culture is not as distinctive or universal as it usuallyportrayed. They argue that modern police officers are better educatedand are more diverse (for example, with respect to race and gender) andare, therefore, less uniform in type and attitudes and thus less likely toshare and adhere to group norms. Research also shows that there isconsiderable variation within police organizations and that policeofficers vary by type of police organization. Each police organizationmay have its own version of police culture reflecting some generalpolice culture traits but also projects its own cultural variation reflectingits particular institutional history and tradition. Finally, some criticsargue that cultural values are only loosely connected to actualbehaviour, the difference between “saying and doing”, so that theinfluence of police cultural on police behaviour is exaggerated.While the notion of traditional police culture needs to be updated andmust be seen as more fluid and contextualized organizationally, thereremains basic agreement that police culture exists, that it retains invarying degrees a number of shared values, and that some of theseshared values have a negative impact on police behaviour and itsmanagement.Rethinking Police Governance, Culture & Management