Continuum of police crime: an empirical study of court cases

The great majority of police officers are committed to honourable and competent public service and consistently demonstrate integrity and accountability in carrying out the often difficult, complex and sometimes dangerous, activities involved in policing by consent. However, in every police agency there exists an element of dishonesty, lack of professionalism and criminal behaviour. This article is based on archival research of criminal behaviour in the Norwegian police force. A total of 60 police employees were prosecuted in court because of misconduct and crime from 2005 to 2010. Court cases were coded as two potential predictors of court sentence in terms of imprisonment days, ie, type of deviance and level of deviance. Categories of police crime and levels were organised according to a conceptual framework developed for assessing and managing police deviance. Empirical findings support the hypothesis that as the seriousness of police crime increases in breadth and depth so also does the severity of the court sentence as measured by time in prison

Making Sense of Police Reforms

Sensemaking is an ongoing process members of organizations engage in to explicate their world. When faced with changes in their environment, members try to make sense of uncertainties and disruptions and 'enact' their interpretations into the world to give it a sense of order. This article draws on a longitudinal study of police recruits to describe how officers make sense of reforms that have considerably altered the field of policing. It argues that sensemaking provides a processual frame that helps connect Bourdieu's concepts of field and habitus : it describes how agents translate changes in the field into shared understandings and values that inform the occupational habitus. Sensemaking is thus an important element for the theorizing of police culture and practice