Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-tf8b9 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-25T22:54:02.487Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Policing Identities: Cop Decision Making and the Constitution of Citizens

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 December 2018

Trish Oberweis  and
Michael Musheno
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

We examine police decision making by focusing on police stories and drawing together contemporary thought about identities and police subculture. Our inquiry suggests that police decision making is both improvisational and patterned. Cops are moral agents who tag people with identities as they project identities of their own. They do engage in raw forms of division or stereotyping, marking some as others to be feared and themselves as protectors of society, while exercising their coercive powers to punish “the bad.” Due, in part, to the many ways that they identify themselves, cops also connect with people as unique individuals, including individuals whose categorical identities (e.g., drug dealers) put them at the margins of society. Rather than using their coercive powers to repress these individuals, cops infuse them with certain virtues (e.g., good family men) while cutting them breaks. As they complicate representations of themselves, cops also project complex notions of law and legality. Moral discourse seems to infuse their judgments, while they invoke law strategically as a tool to enforce their moral judgments.

Type
Articles
Information
Law & Social Inquiry , Volume 24 , Issue 4 , Fall 1999 , pp. 897 - 923
Copyright
Copyright © American Bar Foundation, 1999 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Althusser, Louis. 1991. Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses (Notes Toward an Investigation) In Lenin and Philosophy, and Other Essays, trans. Brewster, Ben, 121–73. London: New Left Books.Google Scholar
Bayley, David, and Bittner, Egon. 1984. Learning the Skills of Policing. Law and Contemporary Problems 47:35–59.Google Scholar
Butler, Judith. 1990. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
1992. Contingent Foundations: Feminism and the Question of Postmodernism. In Feminists Theorize the Political, ed. Butler, Judith and Scott, Joan W., 3–21. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Conley, John, and O'Barr, William. 1998. Just Words: Law, Language, and Power. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Crank, John P. 1994. Watchman and Community: Myth and Institutionalization in Policing. Law and Society Review 28: 325–52.Google Scholar
1997. Understanding Police Culture. Cincinnati, Ohio.: Anderson Publishing.Google Scholar
Ericson, Richard. 1991. Representing Order: Crime, Law, and Justice in the News Media. Toronto, Ont.: Toronto University Press.Google Scholar
Ewick, Patricia, and Silbey, Susan. 1995. Subversive Stories and Hegemonie Tales: Toward a Sociology of Narrative. Law and Society Review, 29:197–227.Google Scholar
1998. The Common Place of Law. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Fishman, Mark. 1978. Crime Waves as Ideology. Social Problems 25:531–43.Google Scholar
Foucault, Michel. 1988. The Political Technology of Individuals. In Technologies of the Self, ed. Martin, Luther H., Gutman, Huck, and Hutton, Patrick H., 145–62. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press.Google Scholar
Gamson, William. 1992. Talking Politics. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Garfinkel, Harold. 1967. Studies in Ethnomethodology. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall. Hall.Google Scholar
Stuart, . 1996. Introduction: Who Needs Identity? In Questions of Cultural Identity, ed. Hall, Stuart and du Gay, Paul, 1–17. London: Sage Press.Google Scholar
Halley, Janet M. 1993. The Construction of Heterosexuality. In Fear of a Queer Planet, ed. Warner, Michael, 82–104. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Herbert, Steve. 1997. Policing Space: Territoriality and the. Los Angeles Police Department. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
1998. Police Subculture Reconsidered. Criminology 36:343–69.Google Scholar
Lovibond, Sabrina. 1993. Feminism and Postmodernism. In Postmodernism: A Reader, ed. Docherty, Thomas, 390–414. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Manning, Peter. 1977. Police Work. Cambridge, mass.: MIT Press.Google Scholar
1989. Occupational Culture. In Encyclopedia of Police Science, ed. Bailey, William. New York: Garland.Google Scholar
Meyer, John C. 1995. Tell Me a Story: Eliciting Organizational Values from Narratives. Communication Quarterly 43:210–24.Google Scholar
Mouffe, Chantal. 1995. Democratic Politics and the Question of Identity. In The Identity in Question, ed. Rajchman, John, 33–46. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Reuss-Ianni, Elizabeth. 1983. Two Cultures of Policing: Street Cops and Management Cops. New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Books.Google Scholar
Riessman, Catherine Kohler. 1993. Narrative Analysis. Newbury Park, N.J.: Sage Publications.Google Scholar
Rosenau, Pauline Marie. 1992. Post-Modernism and the Social Sciences: Insights, Inroads, and Intrusions. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Salecl, Renata. 1994. The Crisis of Identity and the Struggle for New Hegemony in the Former Yugoslavia. In The Making of Political Identity, ed. Laclau, Ernesto, 205–32. London: Verso.Google Scholar
Sarat, Austin. 1990. ‘The Law is All Over:’ Power, Resistence, and the Legal Consciousness of the Welfare Poor. Yale Journal of Law and Humanities 2:343–79.Google Scholar
Schram, Sanford, and Neisser, Phillip. 1977. Introduction to Tales of the State. In Tales of the State: Narrative in Contemporary U.S. Politics and Public Policy, ed. Schram, Sanford and Neisser, Phillip. Oxford, England: Rowman and Littlefield.Google Scholar
Sewell, William. 1992. A Theory of Structure: Duality, Agency and Transformation. American Journal of Sociology 98:1–23.Google Scholar
Shearing, Clifford, and Ericson, Richard. 1991. Culture as Figurative Action. British Journal of Sociology 42:482–506.Google Scholar
Swidler, Ann. 1968. Culture in Action: Symbols and Strategies. American Sociological Review 51:273–86.Google Scholar
Maanen, Van, John, . 1978. The Asshole. In Policing: A View from the Streets, ed. Van Maanen, John and Manning, Peter. Santa Monica, Calif.: Goodyear Publishing.Google Scholar
Welch, Michael, Fenwick, Melissa, and Roberts, Meredith. 1998. State Managers, Intellectuals, and the Media: A Context Analysis of Ideology in Experts' Quotes in Feature Newspaper Articles on Crime. Justice Quarterly 15: 219–42.Google Scholar
West, Cornel. 1995. A Matter of Life and Death. In The Identity in Question, ed. Rajchman, John, 33–46. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
White, Hayden. 1987. The Content of the Form. Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar
Young, Robert, ed. 1985. Untying the Text: A Post-Structuralist Reader. Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul.Google Scholar
Zatz, Marjorie. 1987. Chicano Youth Gangs and Crime: The Creation of a Moral Panic. Contemporary Crises 2:129–58.Google Scholar