Discuss the police personality

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Jerome Skolnick is cited in the text as one who produced a "working personality" in reference to police officers. It is suggested that the danger present in the officer's environment results in an officer being more suspicious than the average person. This characteristic may also result from the officer's feelings of fellow officers who have been victims of violence. In addition, an officer's personality may reflect a feeling of isolation resulting from community reaction to the police. Perhaps this explains why officers generally prefer to socialize outside of police work with fellow officers. However, there are several different perspectives of the police officer's personality. Nevertheless, much of the literature tends to support, expand, or clarify elements of Skolnick's original thesis.

The text also notes that there is a view that some individuals who choose police work are predisposed toward formulating a police personality. The pre-dispositional viewpoint suggests that police have an authoritarian personality which according to the text is a view that few scholars now have today. Yet, another pre-dispositional view is that police behavior is primarily explained by characteristics possessed by the officer before actually becoming an officer. It is suggested by Holden that the values of an officer are for the most part the lower middle class values that the police bring into police work.
Interestingly, a police behavior perspective that completes with pre-dispositional theory is that of socialization. Proponents of this view suggest that officers adopt the values of their peers. This is not an uncommon situation for most of us if we remain in a particular environment for some time. Yet, there is another view about an officer's personality that should be noted and it is the possibility that an officer's value system may be influenced by various community groups in which the officer has had some contact with over the years. Hence, it could be said that there are some distinct characteristics of a police personality.