Police Community Support Officers

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Megan O'Neill
Keyword(s):  
Detailed Analysis ◽  
Police Officer ◽  
Direct Observation ◽  
Community Policing ◽  
Community Support ◽  
Support Staff ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
Police Culture ◽  
Occupational Culture ◽  
Budget Reductions

Police Community Support Officers: Cultures and Identities within Pluralized Policing presents the first in-depth ethnographic study of Police Community Support Officers (PCSOs) since the creation of the role in 2002. Situated within the tradition of police ethnographies, this text examines the working worlds of uniformed patrol support staff in two English police forces. Based on over 350 hours of direct observation and thirty-three interviews with PCSOs and police constables in both urban and rural contexts, the book offers a detailed analysis of the operational and cultural realities of pluralized policing from within. Using a dramaturgic framework, the author finds that PCSOs have been undermined by their own organizations from the beginning, which has left a lasting legacy in terms of their relationships and interactions with police officer colleagues. The implications of this for police cultures, community policing approaches, and the success of pluralization are examined. The author argues that while PCSOs can have similar occupational experiences to those of constables, their particular circumstances have led to a unique occupational culture, one which has implications for existing police culture theories. The book considers these findings in light of budget reductions and police reforms occurring across the sector, processes in which PCSOs are particularly vulnerable.

The Widening Police Family, Community Policing, and Police Culture

2019 ◽  
pp. 3-26
Author(s):  
Megan O'Neill
Keyword(s):  
Community Policing ◽  
Community Support ◽  
Job Security ◽  
Police Work ◽  
First Century ◽  
Police Culture ◽  
Occupational Culture ◽  
The Public ◽  
Police Forces

Chapter 1 examines exiting research on policing pluralization, community policing, and police culture. Early studies of police occupational culture found that community policing and other types of ‘soft’ policing methods (such as partnership work) were not highly valued within the organization. However, this method was to revolutionize policing in the twenty-first century. In addition, ever more aspects of ‘police’ work are now undertaken by other actors in both the public and the private sectors. Consequently, what was once an insular and guarded organization is now more open to collaboration with outsiders, and it seems to appreciate better the ‘soft’ side of policing. However, as Police Community Support Officers are employees of police forces with a police-like mandate, these staff have been seen to present a greater danger to job security and the ‘purity’ of the police officer’s role.

The Culture of Contemporary Community and Plural Policing

2019 ◽  
pp. 136-148
Author(s):  
Megan O'Neill
Keyword(s):  
Community Policing ◽  
Community Support ◽  
Occupational Culture ◽  
Research And Practice ◽  
The Uk ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Multiple Actors ◽  
Practice Community ◽  
Degree Of Overlap

Chapter 7 examines changes in neighbourhood and community policing since the research was conducted, the impact of this on Police Community Support Officers (PCSOs), and how the findings of this research have implications beyond England and Wales. Community policing specifically and pluralized policing more broadly are topics that have expression in a number of countries and contexts. It is important to recognize that while they are indeed separate arenas of research and practice, community policing is itself a pluralized method of policing in relation to its variability internationally and because it involves multiple actors. There is thus an unavoidable degree of overlap between the two concepts. This final chapter will therefore consider what this study of PCSOs can offer for current scholarship and discourse on both community and pluralized policing beyond the UK, and the necessity of considering occupational culture within these, using the framework developed in the previous chapters.

Police Community Support Officer Culture in a Pluralized Field

2019 ◽  
pp. 123-135
Author(s):  
Megan O'Neill
Keyword(s):  
Police Officer ◽  
Police Officers ◽  
Community Support ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Occupational Culture

This penultimate chapter of the book brings together the research described so far and analyses its significance for an understanding of the occupational culture of Police Community Support Officers (PCSOs) within the pluralized field of public policing. The two phenomena of institutional undermining and complementary/competitive teams discussed previously in the book are combined through a theoretical framework developed by Chan (1997) to analyse police officer and PCSO culture. This highlights the processes of developing and enacting an occupational culture through storytelling, and it highlights its artefacts (two distinct aspects of occupational culture which are often conflated). Both PCSOs and police officers experience these processes and generate cultural artefacts. The chapter explores how these processes and artefacts for the two groups, while at times appearing similar, have significant differences, which reveals a unique PCSO occupational culture.

“Laying Hands” and Learning to Touch and Grab in the Police Academy

2019 ◽  
pp. 446-468
Author(s):  
Brian Lande
Keyword(s):  
Police Officer ◽  
Police Officers ◽  
Gain Control ◽  
Police Force ◽  
Police Culture ◽  
Police Academy ◽  
Attitudes And Beliefs ◽  
Police Recruits ◽  
Hands On

Research on the formation of police officers generally focuses on the beliefs, accounts, and categories that recruits must master. Becoming a police officer, however, is not simply a matter of acquiring new attitudes and beliefs. This article attends to an unexplored side of police culture—the sensorial and tactile education that recruits undergo at the police academy. Rubenstein wrote in 1973 that a police officer’s first tool is his or her body. This article examines the formation of the police body by examining how police recruits learn to use their hands as instruments of control. In police vernacular, this means learning to “lay hands” (a term borrowed from Pentecostal traditions) or going “hands on.” This chapter focuses on two means of using the hands: searching and defensive tactics. It describes how instructors teach recruits to use their hands for touching, manipulating, and grabbing the clothing and flesh of others to sense weapons and contraband. It also examines how recruits are taught to grab, manipulate, twist, and strike others in order to gain control of “unruly” bodies. It concludes by discussing the implications of “touching like a cop” for understanding membership in the police force.

scholarly journals An Ethnographic Study of the Passover Night Tradition in the Pandemic Situation to Preserve Ideology and Harmonious Social Environment

2020 ◽  
Vol 202 ◽  
pp. 07032
Author(s):  
Lidya Sartika D Putri ◽  
Agus Subiyanto
Keyword(s):  
Social Environment ◽  
Direct Observation ◽  
Jesus Christ ◽  
Life Story ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
Communicative Acts ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
Ethnographic Approach ◽  
Qualitative Descriptive ◽  
Descriptive Method

Christian is religion that was born in Judea (Palestine) around the 1st century, believing in the life story of Jesus Christ. In the life story of Jesus there is a story about the atonement of human sins. Jesus was crucified to atone for the sins of men and then rose up. The resurrection was considered a victory and celebrated as the Passover. Since then, tradition of Passover has been known as the day of celebration of Liberation for Catholics. In this celebration, there are a series of events of communication. This research is motivated by religious traditions and culture which are often only considered a ceremony. This study aims to find out the communicative situations, communicative events and communicative acts of Passover Night celebration. This study uses a qualitative descriptive method with an ethnographic approach. The result shows that there are so many symbols or meanings from each part on the ceremony. The symbols and their meaning can be found from interviewing some experts and conducting a direct observation of the ceremony. However, in the pandemic situation, the ceremony is conducted online with some adjustments in order that ideological aspects and harmonious social environment can still be preserved.

The Public Understanding of Crime and Policing

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-28
Author(s):  
Martin Innes ◽  
Colin Roberts ◽  
Trudy Lowe ◽  
Helen Innes
Keyword(s):  
Community Policing ◽  
Community Support ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Public Perceptions ◽  
Public Understanding ◽  
The Public ◽  
Order Maintenance ◽  
History Of ◽  
Over Time

This chapter situates Neighbourhood Policing in a social and policing context, arguing that in order to understand how and why it gained traction at the particular moment when it did, it is necessary to establish how it relates to a longer and deeper history of policing ideas. It proposes that, as a particular iteration of the community policing philosophy, Neighbourhood Policing reflects a defining tension in the police mission as to whether the principal focus should be upon crime management, or a broader notion of community support and order maintenance. This analysis develops a detailed discussion of the community policing tradition and how it has ebbed and flowed over time in terms of its popularity, outlining a theoretical framework for thinking about how and why community policing interventions impact upon public perceptions and experiences of crime, disorder, and security.

Police Family Dynamics

2019 ◽  
pp. 101-120
Author(s):  
Megan O'Neill
Keyword(s):  
Police Officer ◽  
Police Officers ◽  
Family Dynamics ◽  
Community Support ◽  
England And Wales ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
Performance Teams ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Police Forces

Chapter 5 describes and analyses the day-to-day encounters between Police Community Support Officers (PCSOs) and police officer colleagues. These encounters are important to consider in order to understand fully PCSOs’ occupational experiences. The pluralized public police in England and Wales are often described as a police ‘family’. However, just how functional and harmonious a family this is is shown to be variable between and within police forces. The chapter considers the reasons for this from within a dramaturgical framework, to appreciate fully the nature and organization of these face-to-face interactions. In particular, Goffman’s concepts of performances, teamwork, and regions will be used. The chapter argues that police officers and PCSOs operate as separate performance teams, rather than as one unified one, and that the relationships between these teams varies. In some areas, the teams worked in a complementary way, whereas in others, the relationship was competitive.

Becoming a Police Community Support Officer and Being Institutionally Undermined

2019 ◽  
pp. 79-100
Author(s):  
Megan O'Neill
Keyword(s):  
Community Policing ◽  
Community Support ◽  
Initial Training ◽  
Foot Patrol ◽  
The Individual ◽  
New Recruits ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter considers the process of becoming a Police Community Support Officer (PCSO), from deciding to apply for the position to the initial training experiences and the first few months of shadowing experienced colleagues on foot patrol. The focus of this chapter is on the relationship between the individual PCSOs and the police institution. It considers the stages of initiation into community policing which PCSOs experienced and how the organization failed to fully equip these new recruits with the ‘tools’ needed. While work as a PCSO initially was attractive to these individuals, the reality upon entering the occupation was that many were left to learn for themselves how to do the work. The organization did not give consistent messages in this regard or adequate support in order for them to learn in a formal capacity how to do the job: this process will be called ‘institutional undermining’.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document