Hear My Cry: Breaking the Code of Silence around Intimate Partner Violence among Black Women in and beyond Midlife

There is a knowledge gap about how the intersections of gender, race, culture, age, income, social class, and other identities shape Black women’s experiences of intimate partner violence (IPV). In this qualitative study, we utilized an intersectional approach to examine how IPV is experienced and managed by racialized women, and in particular, our focus was to explore the IPV experiences of Black Nova Scotian women in and beyond midlife and their experiences of seeking support. Participant recruitment was predictably challenging, but we were able to collect in-depth interview data from a Black woman who identified as being in and beyond midlife and who had experienced IPV in the past and from three people who provided support to Black women in a paid capacity. An interpretive narrative approach was utilized to identify five dominant themes: descriptions of the experiences of IPV for Black women; strategies for coping with IPV; strategies in supporting Black women experiencing IPV; barriers in accessing support; and challenges in the delivery of support. The knowledge gained through this research provides important insights about the experiences, barriers faced, and how to address these challenges for Black women who experience IPV in and beyond midlife.

RACIST TORTURE AND THE CODE OF SILENCE

We join Eduardo Bonilla-Silva’s structural theory of the racialized U.S. social system with a situational methodology developed by Arthur L. Stinchcombe and Irving Goffman to analyze how law works as a mechanism that connects formal legal equality with legal cynicism. The data for this analysis come from the trial of a Chicago police detective, Jon Burge, who as leader of an infamous torture squad escaped criminal charges for more than thirty years. Burge was finally charged with perjury and obstruction of justice, charges that obscured and perpetuated the larger structural reality of a code of silence that enabled racist torture of more than a hundred Black men. This case study demonstrates how the non-transparency of courtroom sidebars plays an important role in perpetuating systemic features of American criminal injustice: a code of silence, racist discrimination, and legal cynicism.

A Longitudinal Study of the Effects of Academy Socialization on Police Integrity

The objective of this study was to examine changes in American recruits’ perceptions of the seriousness of behaviors related to police integrity from the beginning to the end of their academy training. Using a sample of 655 recruits from multiple academies in the United States, multilevel growth models were used. The results showed that the recruits rated scales related to misconduct, code of silence, and a noble cause less seriously at the end than at the beginning of their training. The results also showed that ethics training mitigated the effects of socialization, while organizational injustice intensified the effects of socialization. Female recruits rated the behaviors more seriously at the beginning and the end of training compared to male recruits. The results confirm the role of the academy in socializing officers into the negative aspects of the traditional police culture and highlight important avenues for police reform.

Police ethics and integrity: Keeping the ‘blue code’ of silence

This paper examines attitudes towards police ethics and integrity using the responses of police officers and support staff to some ethical dilemmas via an online questionnaire. The aim of the study was to explore potential connections between respondents’ beliefs about the seriousness or type of misdemeanour and their likelihood of reporting the behaviour. Using a series of scenarios, we explore professional ethics and integrity by analysing the evidence from our survey of around 1,500 police officers, police community support officers (PCSOs) and police support staff. Throughout, we aim to show which of the scenarios were considered the most ‘serious’, which are more likely to be reported, and offer some suggestions as to why the ‘blue code’ is significant. The findings suggest the persistence of a reluctance to report some misdemeanours; of the 10 scenarios created for the survey, there was a great deal of certainty around the reporting theft of cash, but respondents were less likely to report a colleague keeping a ‘found’ watch. Accessing the Police National Computer without due authority was seen as relatively ‘serious’ and covering up for a drink-driving colleague and use of excessive force were both likely to be reported. We discovered ambiguities in responses around sexual touching of a colleague in an office setting, but a lower level of concern regarding an officer who forms a romantic relationship with a victim of crime who he met in a professional setting. Respondents expressed distrust in the force’s anonymous messenger system, set up for reporting a colleague’s behaviour without revealing their own identity and said they could treat a whistle-blower with respect or caution, depending on the circumstances of the individual case.