University of Akron Police Personality Reaction Essay Paper should be 5 – 7 pages in length (types, double-spaced)other info are in the attachment Tips for

University of Akron Police Personality Reaction Essay Paper should be 5 – 7 pages in length (types, double-spaced)other info are in the attachment Tips for Writing A Good Reaction Paper
Do
1. Read the given article carefully.
2. Think about 3 major points you want to articulate in your reaction paper.
3. Describe your points first (“Lessons Learned,” “What you agreed with…” or
“What you disagreed with…”)
4. Justify why you think that way.
5. Provide examples from the reading – You may use any example you are
familiar with, including class discussion and from the textbook. Provide
sufficient background information and show how your example(s) support your
argument.
6. Explain how your points relate to major class themes (e.g. liberty vs. public
safety, control of discretion, measures of effective policing)
Desirable Formats
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Write a strong introduction that details your major points of discussion.
Discuss all points and include examples from the reading.
Write a strong conclusion.
Paper should be 5 – 7 pages in length (types, double-spaced)
Please proofread your reaction paper carefully to avoid any grammatical
mistakes or typos.
What Not To Do
1. Summarize what you read. I want to see your reasoning and opinions based on
the criminal justice concepts and issues that we discussed during the course.
2. No evidence to back up your point (e.g. no examples)
3. Provide random examples without making careful effort to relate to your point.
Remember! Provide appropriate examples to support arguments and insights. Relate
your reactions to policing/criminal justice concepts.
A SKETCH OF THE POLICEMAN’S
“WORKING PERSONALITY”
JEROME H. SKOLNICK
© REPRINTED
P E R M I S S I O N O F P E A R S O N E D U C AT I O N , I N C . ,
UPPER SADDLE RIVER, NJ.
WITH
ARTICLE CONTEXT

Cognitive Lenses—we all have cognitive lenses that influence our perceptions and
interpretations of events; for police the occupational elements of danger and authority help to shape their distinctive cognitive lenses and world view

Elements of the Police Environment—danger, authority, and efficiency shape distinctive cognitive lenses and leads to distinctive behavioral responses

Working Personality—distinctive cognitive tendencies in an occupational grouping
Occupational environments can influence and shape perceptions and interpretations of
events and situations. Insight into the occupational environment of police officers can
help to provide a more complete understanding of officer behavior and decision-making.
This is especially important in the area of policing, where high discretion and low-level
decision-making typifies the nature of the occupation.
Understanding the relationship between an officer’s environment and cognitive and
behavioral responses to that environment can lead to a deeper understanding of police
behavior, isolation, and subsequent solidarity and cohesion. Specifically, exploration into
the “working personality” of police, and the environment that helps to shape the working
personality, can provide potential solutions for improving police/citizen relationships, and
other serious challenges confronting police. Further, exploring the working personality and
environment of police can highlight obstacles, and explain failures of, police initiatives
and movements.
2 Consequences: Criminal Justice Reader
ARTICLE SUMMARY
The working personality of police is shaped by the need to establish one’s authority, the
ever-present threat of danger, and the need for efficiency. The working personality influences the behavioral responses of police officers, providing a unique way to study and
understand police behavior. The isolation police experience from the public serves to
strengthen police solidarity and the working personality of officers.
This groundbreaking article from the 1960’s was one of the first to outline the characteristics that influence a police officer’s discretion in deciding when or if an arrest should
be made. Various environmental factors determine how a police officer will react to a given
situation, and the officer’s background and experience play a major role in police-citizen
interactions. Skolnick was the first to recognize the idea of a “working personality” of cognitive tendencies that shape a police officer’s outlook on his/her profession.
KEY PHRASES
Policing
Occupational Environment of Police
Officer Perceptions and Interpretations
Working Personality of Police Officers
ARTICLE
A recurrent theme of the sociology of occupations is the effect of a man’s work on his
outlook on the world. Doctors, janitors, lawyers, and industrial workers develop distinctive ways of perceiving and responding to their environment. Here we shall concentrate
on analyzing certain outstanding elements in the police milieu, danger, authority, and efficiency, as they combine to generate distinctive cognitive and behavioral responses in
police: a “working personality.” Such an analysis does not suggest that all police are alike
in “working personality,” but that there are distinctive cognitive tendencies in police as
an occupational grouping. Some of these may be found in other occupations sharing
similar problems. So far as exposure to danger is concerned, the policeman may be
likened to the soldier. His problems as an authority bear a certain similarity to those of
the schoolteacher, and the pressures he feels to prove himself efficient are not unlike
Policing: Jerome H. Skolnick 3
those felt by the industrial worker. The combination of these elements, however, is unique
to the policeman. Thus, the police, as a result of combined features of their social situation, tend to develop ways of looking at the world distinctive to themselves, cognitive
lenses through which to see situations and events. The strength of the lenses may be
weaker or stronger depending on certain conditions, but they are ground on a similar axis.
Analysis of the policeman’s cognitive propensities is necessary to understand the practical dilemma faced by police required to maintain order under a democratic rule of
law. . . . A conception of order is [essential] to the resolution of this dilemma. [We
suggest] that the paramilitary character of police organization naturally leads to a high
evaluation of similarity, routine, and predictability. Our intention is to emphasize features
of the policeman’s environment interacting with the paramilitary police organization to
generate a “working personality.” Such an intervening concept should aid in explaining
how the social environment of police affects their capacity to respond to the rule of law.
[Emphasis] will be placed on the division of labor in the police department . . . ;
“operational law enforcement” [cannot] be understood outside these special work assignments. It is therefore important to explain how the hypothesis emphasizing the generalizability of the policeman’s “working personality” is compatible with the idea that police
division of labor is an important analytic dimension for understanding “operational law
enforcement.” Compatibility is evident when one considers the different levels of analysis at which the hypotheses are being developed. Janowitz states, for example, that the
military profession is more than an occupation; it is a “style of life” because the occupational claims over one’s daily existence extend well beyond official duties. He is quick to
point out that any profession performing a crucial “life and death” task, such as medicine, the ministry, or the police, develops such claims. A conception like “working personality” of police should be understood to suggest an analytic breadth similar to that of
“style of life.” That is, just as the professional behavior of military officers with similar
“styles of life” may differ drastically depending upon whether they command an infantry
battalion or participate in the work of an intelligence unit, so too does the professional
behavior of police officers with similar “working personalities” vary with their
assignments.
The policeman’s “working personality” is most highly developed in his constabulary
role of the man on the beat. For analytical purposes that role is sometimes regarded as
an enforcement specialty, but in this general discussion of policemen as they comport
themselves while working, the uniformed “cop” is seen as the foundation for the policeman’s “working personality.” There is a sound organizational basis for making this assump-
4 Consequences: Criminal Justice Reader
tion. The police, unlike the military, draw no caste distinction in socialization, even
though their order of ranked titles approximates the military’s. Thus, one cannot join a
local police department as, for instance, a lieutenant, as a West Point graduate joins the
army. Every officer of rank must serve an apprenticeship as a patrolman. This feature of
police organization means that the constabulary role is the primary one for all police officers, and that whatever the special requirements of roles in enforcement specialties, they
are carried out with a common background of constabulary experience.
The process by which this “personality” is developed may be summarized: the policeman’s role contains two principal variables, danger and authority, which should be interpreted in the light of a “constant” pressure to appear efficient. The element of danger
seems to make the policeman especially attentive to signs indicating a potential for violence and lawbreaking. As a result, the policeman is generally a “suspicious” person.
Furthermore, the character of the policeman’s work makes him less desirable as a friend,
since norms of friendship implicate others in his work. Accordingly, the element of danger
isolates the policeman socially from that segment of the citizenry which he regards as
symbolically dangerous and also from the conventional citizenry with whom he identifies.
The element of authority reinforces the element of danger in isolating the policeman.
Typically, the policeman is required to enforce laws representing puritanical morality,
such as those prohibiting drunkenness, and also laws regulating the flow of public activity, such as traffic laws. In these situations the policeman directs the citizenry, whose
typical response denies recognition of his authority and stresses his obligation to respond
to danger. The kind of man who responds well to danger, however, does not normally subscribe to codes of puritanical morality. As a result, the policeman is unusually liable to the
charge of hypocrisy. That the whole civilian world is an audience for the policeman further
promotes police isolation and, in consequence, solidarity. Finally, danger undermines the
judicious use of authority. Where danger, as in Britain, is relatively less, the judicious
application of authority is facilitated. Hence, British police may appear to be somewhat
more attached to the rule of law, when, in fact, they may appear so because they face
less danger, and they are as a rule better skilled than American police in creating the
appearance of conformity to procedural regulations.
T HE S YMBOLIC A SSAILANT
AND
P OLICE C ULTURE
In attempting to understand the policeman’s view of the world, it is useful to raise a more
general question: What are the conditions under which police, as authorities, may be
Policing: Jerome H. Skolnick 5
threatened? To answer this, we must look to the situation of the policeman in the community. One attribute of many characterizing the policeman’s role stands out: the policeman is required to respond to assaults against persons and property. When a radio call
reports an armed robbery and gives a description of the man involved, every policeman,
regardless of assignment, is responsible for the criminal’s apprehension. The raison d’être
of the policeman and the criminal law, the underlying collectively held moral sentiments
which justify penal sanctions, arises ultimately and most clearly from the threat of violence and the possibility of danger to the community. Police who “lobby” for severe narcotics laws, for instance, justify their position on grounds that the addict is a harbinger
of danger since, it is maintained, he requires $100 a day to support his habit, and he must
steal to get it. Even though the addict is not typically a violent criminal, criminal penalties for addiction are supported on grounds that he may become one.
The policeman, because his work requires him to be occupied continually with potential violence, develops a perceptual shorthand to identify certain kinds of people as symbolic assailants, that is, as persons who use gesture, language, and attire that the policeman has come to recognize as a prelude to violence. This does not mean that violence by
the symbolic assailant is necessarily predictable. On the contrary, the policeman responds
to the vague indication of danger suggested by appearance. Like the animals of the experimental psychologist, the policeman finds the threat of random damage more compelling
than a predetermined and inevitable punishment.
Nor, to qualify for the status of symbolic assailant, need an individual ever have used
violence. A man backing out of a jewelry store with a gun in one hand and jewelry in the
other would qualify even if the gun were a toy and he had never in his life fired a real
pistol. To the policeman in the situation, the man’s personal history is momentarily immaterial. There is only one relevant sign: a gun signifying danger. Similarly, a young man may
suggest the threat of violence to the policeman by his manner of walking or “strutting,”
the insolence in the demeanor being registered by the policeman as a possible preamble
to later attack. Signs vary from area to area, but a youth dressed in a black leather jacket
and motorcycle boots is sure to draw at least a suspicious glance from a policeman.
Policeman themselves do not necessarily emphasize the peril associated with their
work when questioned directly, and may even have well-developed strategies of denial.
The element of danger is so integral to the policeman’s work that explicit recognition
might induce emotional barriers to work performance. Thus, one patrol officer observed
that more police have been killed and injured in automobile accidents in the past ten
years than from gunfire. Although his assertion is true, he neglected to mention that
6 Consequences: Criminal Justice Reader
police are the only peacetime occupational group with a systematic record of death and
injury from gunfire and other weaponry. Along these lines, it is interesting that of the 224
working Westville policemen (not including the sixteen juvenile policemen) responding to
a question about which assignment they would like most to have in the police department,
50 percent selected the job of detective, an assignment combining elements of apparent
danger and initiative. The next category was adult street work, that is, patrol and traffic
(37 percent). Eight percent selected the juvenile squad, and only 4 percent selected
administrative work. Not a single policeman chose the job of jail guard. Although these
findings do not control for such factors as prestige, they suggest that confining and routine
jobs are rated low on the hierarchy of police preferences, even though such jobs are least
dangerous. Thus, the policeman may well, as a personality, enjoy the possibility of danger,
especially its associated excitement, even though he may at the same time be fearful of
it. Such “inconsistency” is easily understood. Freud has by now made it an axiom of personality theory that logical and emotional consistency are by no means the same
phenomenon.
However complex the motives aroused by the element of danger, its consequences for
sustaining police culture are unambiguous. This element requires him, like the combat
soldier, the European Jew, the South African (white or black), to live in a world straining
toward duality, and suggesting danger when “they” are perceived. Consequently, it is in
the nature of the policeman’s situation that his conception of order emphasizes regularity and predictability. It is, therefore, a conception shaped by persistent suspicion. The
English “copper,” often portrayed as a courteous, easygoing, rather jolly sort of chap, on
the one hand, or as a devil-may-care adventurer, on the other, is differently described by
Colin MacInnes:
The true copper’s dominant characteristic, if the truth be known, is neither
those daring nor vicious qualities that are sometimes attributed to him by friend
or enemy, but an ingrained conservatism, and almost desperate love of the
conventional. It is untidiness, disorder, the unusual, that a copper disapproves of
most of all: far more, even than of crime which is merely a professional matter.
Hence his profound dislike of people loitering in streets, dressing extravagantly,
speaking with exotic accents, being strange, weak, eccentric, or simply any rare
minority—of their doing, in fact, anything that cannot be safely predicted.
Policemen are indeed specifically trained to be suspicious, to perceive events or changes
in the physical surroundings that indicate the occurrence or probability of disorder. A
Policing: Jerome H. Skolnick 7
former student who worked as a patrolman in a suburban New York police department
describes this aspect of the policeman’s assessment of the unusual:
The time spent cruising one’s sector or walking one’s beat is not wasted time,
though it can become quite routine. During this time, the most important thing
for the officer to do is notice the normal. He must come to know the people in
his area, their habits, their automobiles and their friends. He must learn what
time the various shops close, how much money is kept on hand on different
nights, what lights are usually left on, which houses are vacant . . . only then
can he decide what persons or cars under what circumstances warrant the
appellation “suspicious.”
The individual policeman’s “suspiciousness” does not hang on whether he has personally
undergone an experience that could objectively be described as hazardous. Personal
experience of this sort is not the key to the psychological importance of exceptionality.
Each, as he routinely carries out his work, will experience situations that threaten to
become dangerous. Like the American Jew who contributes to the “defense” organizations such as the Anti-Defamation League in response to Nazi brutalities he has never
experienced personally, the policeman identifies with his fellow cop who has been beaten,
perhaps fatally, by a gang of young thugs.
S OCIAL I SOLATION
The patrolman in Westville, and probably in most communities, has come to identify the
black man with danger. James Baldwin vividly expresses the isolation of the ghetto
policeman:
The only way to police a ghetto is to be oppressive. None of the police
commissioner’s men, even with the best will in the world, have any way of
understanding the lives led by the people they swagger about in twos and
threes controlling. Their very presence is an insult, and it would be, even if
they spent their entire day feeding gumdrops to children. They represent the
force of the white world, and that world’s criminal profit and ease, to keep the
black man corralled up here, in his place. The badge, the gun in the holster,
and the swinging club make vivid what will happen should his rebellion become
overt. . . .
8 Consequences: Criminal Justice Reader
It is hard, on the other hand, to blame the policeman, blank, good-natured,
thoughtless, and insuperably innocent, for being such a perfect representative
of the people he serves. He, too, believes in good intentions and is astounded
and offended when they are not taken for the deed. He has never, himself,
done anything for which to be hated—which of us has?—and yet he is facing,
daily and nightly,…
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