Poice Ethics Chapter 3, Nature of Police Work Flashcards
Emilie Durkheim’s concept of normlessness: when people feel out of sync with their society.
Anomie
The propensity for police officers to keep quiet about the misdeeds of others.
blue code of silence
Obtaining desired behaviors through using threats to harm.
coercive power
The idea that the media make violence appear to be sexy and cool.
cosmetized violence
The military propensity to make enemies less than human;aids in creating a killing atmosphere.
dehumanizing the enemy
The sorts of “boxes” within our minds where we store information.
diagnostic packages
The judicial concept requiring a charge to be brought before a person can be kept behind bars.
habeas corpus
Valuable possessions of a person that may be threatened for the purposes of coercion.
hostages
Refers to procedural laws of the criminal justice system that are often considered to operate against efforts to hold the factually guilty accountable for their misdeeds.
legal technicalities
Applied to the functions of the police, the idea that what the police are expected to prioritize is complicated rather than easy to discern.
multiple, conflicting, and vague
The idea that criminal justice practitioners must take all deviant behavior and codify it.
normalize crime
Something that operates contrary to normal expectation or to common sense, or contrary to the thing’s apparent purpose.
paradox
The less a person values a hostage, the less coercible that person is.
paradox of detachment
The less a person has, the less they have to lose.
paradox of dispossession
The nastier a person’s reputation, the less often they are required to prove it.
paradox of face
A two-part paradox-
the crazier the victim of coercion, the less effective the threat; the crazier the coercer, the more effective the threat.
paradox of irrationality
Semi=military or quasi-military way of organizing the police.
para militarism
Process by which people make quick decisions in life.
perceptual shorthand
The idea that the police will solve all crimes all of the time.
RCMP Syndrome
The normal human propensity to categorize data and utilize it later for the purpose of making life simpler and more manageable.
stereotyping
Citizens about whom officers should be concerned because they might assault the police.
symbolic assailants
Frustration is brought about by possessing an
inadequate amount of power over others
The duties that police are supposed to accomplish and the roles they are supposed to play are
____ ____ and _____
multiple
conflicting
vague
Police have three basic sets of functions and roles
law enforcement
order maintenance
service
on the street, police must focus on substantive guilt. but system does not. it focuses upon
procedural guilt
legal system can appear to be lost in a wilderness of
legal technicalities
diagnostic packages
everything we know is made up of nothing more than stereotyped notions of people, things, events and language
police also stereotype by using organizational shortcuts such as radio codes, 211, 187
perceptual shorthand
normalize crime
no matter how bizarre, disgusting, the police are driven to normalize it by attaching a numeber to it.
working the beat
officers normalize how beat looks, who belongs and who doesnt. caused police to stereoptype
symbolic assailants
people who might pose a threat
who wrote that police are forever looking to symbolic assailants.
Jerome Skolnick, leading American scholar on policing
additional police stereotyping
police see people as “cases”
what is the single most important minute by minute form of misconduct in police work
abuse of discretionary latitude
Hostage
Coersion involves obtaining desired behavior from another by threatening to harm something of value to them
Muirs’s paradoxes of coercive power
- paradox of dispossession- those that are disenfranchised that they have no hostages
- paradox of detachment- people who can consciously detach themselves from valeuing their freedom can be difficult to coerce.
- paradox of face- police showing a tough face to public. , nastier one’s reputation, the less nasty one has to be
- paradox of irrationality- the crazier the victim of coersion, less effective the threat. ex: juveniles, drunk or stonedd, mentally unbalanced.
second half of paradox of coercive power is the crazier the coercer, the more effective the threat
ex: police k9.
paramilitarism, reasons for this military focus
- makes police visible
- makes police more accountable.
- paramilitarism instills a sense of duty in indiv.-duty to “the corps” of police.
downside to paramilitarism.
Tony Jefferson in “The Case Against Paramilitary Policing”.
4 important points
- creates “us against them” feeling among police and citizenry
- making citizens into “enemy” in a warlike battle.
- intimidates people unnecessarily\
- focuses upon such trivialities as haircusts and shoe shines
- works against COP principles: collegial problem solving.
todays police are invovled in creating and maintaining two organizations at once
COP system of problem solving agents
militaristic system of people who do precisely what they are told
In Media Imagery
- RCMP syndrome- Royal Canadian Mounted Police- “Mountie always gets his man”.
- Dirty Harry problem- vigilante justice
- cosmetized violence-making violence appear sexy and cool.
- universal problem in America with Miranda warning
sociologist labeled anomie
Emile Durkheim
anomie
term for the feeling of normlessness, that many suicidal people experience. a Disconnect between themselves and society.
sociologist tell us that subculture is a
culture within a culture
police subculture is known for its
solidarity
police isolation or solidarity develop norms that are driven by this experience. 5. police subcultural dynamics
some norms operate in a way of counterproductive to interest of justice.
- Overkill- regard to use of force
- blue code of silence-no police would aid into investigation of misconduct of other officers
- norm that works directly against the development of COP. idea that “real” police work involves enforcing law, only enforcing law.
- solidarity within the group
- Police socializing: parties, vacations, celebrations
____,____ and ____ nature of what the police do sometimes creates confusion for the police, distrust of the police and difficulties that directly impact our discussion of what ethical conduct is.
multiple, conflicting and vague
Multiple, Conflicting and Vague functions of the police, which are admittedly vague and often in conflict with each other, are to :
enforce the law
maintain order
provide services to community
