SDG 10 aims to reduce inequality within and among countries. Browse books and journal articles relating to this SDG below and find out more on the UN Sustainable Development Goals website.
Goal 10: Reduced Inequalities
You are looking at 1 - 10 of 10,285 items
The book’s final chapter reflects on its original contributions to scholarship in arguing that policing, and in turn police diversity, cannot be understood without considering the significant impacts of street police culture on policing institutions, police decision-making and police officer experiences. The chapter considers the ways the book has argued that all police officers are impacted by the street police culture norms which set the formal and informal standards, behaviours, priorities, metrics for evaluation and agendas of police institutions. While it asserts that all police officers are forced to contend with street police culture on the job, this volume argues that for the particular experiences of officers from traditionally marginalized backgrounds – including racial and ethnic minorities, women, LGBTQ+ and those with different levels of higher education – experiences of street police culture can pose particular challenges and create additional burdens and obstacles in the role. This chapter reflects on the richness of comparing the UK and US jurisdictions which, while operating in distinct historical, legal, political, economic and cultural contexts, reflect remarkable similarities in analysing police diversity through the lens of street police culture. The chapter considers the significant challenges to changing street police culture.
The chapter illustrates that while the book has not offered police diversity as a singular solution to the problems plaguing UK and US policing, it has argued that it is just one of a plethora of tools required to help shift policing from its straight, White, male, working-class traditions, norms and culture, to a more heterogeneous, more varied, more broadly thinking and more creative set of institutions. The chapter reflects on the ways the book asserts that rules-based solutions, including lawsuits, consent decrees and compulsory affirmative action programmes, are also important to changing the character of policing institutions, reducing the influence of police culture, and improving the experiences of all officers, including those from traditionally marginalized backgrounds.
Chapter 8 explores one of the book’s key assertions – that UK and US officers from traditionally marginalized backgrounds may, under particular circumstances, engage in active bureaucratic representation, meaning in their roles as officers, representing and championing the interests of their communities of origin or other oppressed groups. While this argument has largely been explored with bureaucrats outside of policing, there is a growing body of evidence supporting the notion that ethnic minority, female and LGBTQ+ officers, among others, may explicitly or implicitly engage in policing in ways different from their straight White male counterparts. This chapter argues that under certain conditions, active bureaucratic representation in policing can occur, depending on the ways under-represented officers view themselves, view the role and experience the job, and the types of support they receive from colleagues, supervisors, their institutions and communities they serve. This can be highly beneficial to policing in a multitude of ways, particularly because it can mitigate the negative effects of street police culture on policed communities. To support this argument, this chapter also considers the growing body of evidence showing statistically significant differences in policing outcomes for officers from traditionally under-represented groups reflected in some studies. Finally, this chapter also examines intergroup contact theory, arguing that increased intergroup contact between officers from traditionally marginalized backgrounds and straight White male officers can help the latter mitigate a host of negative effects of street police culture.
This chapter focuses on the ways hegemonically masculine and heteronormative street police culture shapes the lived experiences of UK and US officers from LGBTQ+ communities. It considers the ways hegemonically masculine and heteronormative street police culture is normalized, reinforced and supported in police institutions, posing specific challenges for LGBTQ+ officers. Significantly, this chapter explores the ways pressures to adhere to these street police culture norms create similarities but also differences in the experiences of LGBTQ+ officers. It considers the ways hegemonically masculine and heteronormative street police culture creates some explicit and implicit similarities, but also many differences for LGBTQ+ officers’ lived experiences of policing compared to those of their straight colleagues in both jurisdictions. The chapter applies the lens of street police culture to the limited evidence about the experiences of LGBTQ+ officers in UK and US policing, and triangulates this with comments from diverse police leaders interviewed for this volume, to shed light on the experiences and provide further depth of understanding of the experiences and challenges of LGBTQ+ officers in both jurisdictions.
Chapter 2 examines the overarching theoretical framework of street police culture which the book uses to examine and understand UK and US police diversity. Street police culture is one type of organizational culture within the policing institution, but has proven the most influential in police organizations in the UK, US and beyond. The core tenets of street police culture are remarkably similar across policing jurisdictions including the UK and US, and are largely characterized by aggression, violence, competition, authority, hierarchies, dominance, paranoia, insularity and intolerance, masculinity, racism, sexism, homophobia and stereotyping. Street police culture is an inherently ‘warrior model’ of policing, meaning a quasi-military structure, prioritizing and rewarding violence, aggression, conflict, use of force and escalation over particular people and populations, where warrior-officers tend to see themselves as enforcers at war against criminals and potential criminals. Street police culture in the UK and US developed from the norms, values and beliefs of the straight White males who have historically formed the majority of police in most of the UK and US. The chapter concludes by offering the guardianship policing model as a means to mitigate against embedded street police culture approaches, which emphasize police legitimacy, mutual trust and respect with communities, and police investment in policed communities rather than oppositional warrior approaches. It asserts the guardianship model better reflects how police spend their time, and holds promise for repairing strained police legitimacy and effectiveness with all communities, particularly traditionally marginalized groups.
Tensions between police and diverse communities in both the US and UK require innovation about ways to improve relations. While police diversity is often discussed as a potential solution, these discussions lack theoretical and empirical support.
This volume presents an original discussion of race, gender, sexual orientation and class diversity and shows that police diversity can have meaningful impacts on the decision-making, outcomes and legitimacy of police forces.
Drawing on theoretical and empirical research including interviews with diverse police leaders, this book examines how police diversity can help shift traditional policing cultures. It also considers obstacles to police reform, revealing how championing meaningful diversity can positively impact the lives of policed communities.
Chapter 3 examines the concept of police legitimacy, and considers the ways it can be produced and maintained in policed communities. The chapter explores the lengthy histories of poor police legitimacy in UK and US communities, and the ways police misconduct negatively impacts police legitimacy. The chapter further offers an important contribution to understandings of police legitimacy by tying it to the theory of representative bureaucracy. It asserts that passive bureaucratic representation alone can improve public perceptions of legitimacy, particularly in traditionally marginalized communities. It further argues that active bureaucratic representation can change outcomes for historically oppressed groups. It further examines the degree of minority group representativeness required to improve legitimacy, and ultimately change organizational culture, considering whether a ‘critical mass’ of diversity is required to shift police organizational culture. The chapter concludes by arguing that the only way to rapidly achieve sufficient degrees of representativeness to improve legitimacy in some key minority communities is through positive discrimination/affirmative action.
This chapter considers the ways street police culture shapes the experiences, stereotypes and expectations of racial and ethnic minorities in UK and US police services. It analyses the ways the lived experiences of officers of colour in the role may vary significantly from those of their White counterparts. It assesses the ways street police culture can shape the ways they are viewed by fellow officers, supervisors and department leaders, and how this can impact their experiences of policing. It also considers the ways policies and practices which, on the face of it, seem to be neutral and applied to all officers may, in fact, be applied in different ways to officers of colour, and have disparate impacts on their experiences of policing in the UK and US. It considers the ways street police culture can place inordinate pressures on officers of colour to assimilate into or conform with negative stereotypes of people of colour, including those from their countries of origin. The chapter considers the ways officers of colour may seek to resist conforming or assimilation into street police culture norms, including informal support networks or joining affinity associations. It also explores the ways negative street police culture stereotypes can be applied to officers of colour themselves by fellow officers and supervisors in their own departments, with severe, or even deadly, consequences. Finally, it also considers the vastly under-researched intersectional experiences of female officers of colour who are often subjected to combined effects of street police culture stereotypes about both race and gender.
Chapter 7 examines the role of social class in UK and US policing, considering the ways policing was developed as a working-class craft and developed a street police culture reflecting the values, norms and views of the disproportionately working-class men who have traditionally served in the role. The chapter argues that as pressure to increase police effectiveness, legitimacy and accountability has increased, both nations have sought to increase police education levels as a panacea for professionalizing the police in an effort to move policing away from its working-class origins. This chapter argues that merely increasing officer education levels is an over-simplistic response to the host of problems which plague police–community relations. It asserts that increasing officer education levels alone, without attending to the underlying problems with street police culture, will not make police more fair, less oppressive, more accountable to policed communities or raise levels of community satisfaction. The chapter considers the limited empirical evidence linking police officers’ higher levels of educational attainment to certain positive indicators of success in policing including supervisor evaluations, promotions, use of discretion, reduced authoritarianism, creativity, open-mindedness and relations with communities, and job satisfaction.
Chapter 1 sets out the framework for the book, which examines UK and US police diversity through the lens of street policing culture. While it offers police diversity as one of the tools valuable in reforming UK and US police, it does not assert that police diversity is a panacea for all that is ailing in policing. Rather, it offers a new way of understanding police diversity in both jurisdictions by applying police culture theory to the issue of police diversity, which provides a cohesive understanding of the ways police diversity is created, supported and challenged in both locales. It argues that comparison of these two distinct police jurisdictions is possible because knowledge and lessons to be drawn from police diversity are not of limited relevance solely to their country-specific cultural contexts. The book asserts that rather than viewing policing as a monolith, as critics and supporters have tended to do, understanding police diversity requires understanding the ways street police culture applies pressures on all officers, but unique and significant pressures on those from traditionally marginalized backgrounds, including officers of colour, women, LGBTQ+ and those with college educations. Developed through interpretation of a broad array of empirical data including original elite interviews with current and former UK and US police leaders from diverse backgrounds, this volume is the first to comparatively examine UK and US police diversity, finding many similarities in these two distinct jurisdictions.
Chapter 5 examines the ways hegemonically masculine street police culture shapes the experiences of female officers in the UK and US police services. It evaluates the ways these street police culture norms developed from traditional straight, White, male perspectives of masculinity, gender, sexuality, aggression, escalation, violence and danger, among other attributes which shape the experiences of female officers in UK and US policing. It considers how street police culture creates and reinforces particular types of gender frameworks, giving rise to gendered stereotypes, expectations and lived experiences for both female and male officers in the policing role. Rather than being beneficial to policing, this chapter demonstrates the ways these heavily gendered perspectives create challenges for both female and male officers and make the experiences of female officers in both the UK and US more difficult, and policing less efficient. The chapter explores the ways female officers may choose to adopt gendered street police culture norms and operate in the role in ways consistent with those expectations. By contrast, the chapter also examines ways female officers may opt to resist gendered police culture norms by shunning them or engaging in active bureaucratic representation.
