A highly identifiable topic of discussion among scholars and practitioners alike is police culture. Unfortunately, a large degree of vagueness and confusion also comes with this concept, as a variety of definitions, perspectives, and levels of aggregation are used to describe the ways in which officers cope with the problems and conditions faced out on the street and inside the police department.
"Police Culture" provides clarity to such discussions by comprehensively organizing the disparate conceptualizations of police culture based on key assumptions, foundational research, primary cultural explanation, and common research methodologies. Based on in-person surveys of patrol officers from seven agencies of varying size, structure, and geographic locale, the book also provides one of the most comprehensive empirical examinations of police culture to date.
Eugene A. Paoline, III, is an Associate Professor of Criminal Justice at the University of Central Florida and William Terrill, Associate Professor in the School of Criminal Justice at Michigan State University.
