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Subterranean processes in the maintenance
of power: an examination
of
the mechanisms
coordinating police action‘
CLIFFORD D . SHEARING
Cet article souligne to ut d’abord qu‘en dCpit de le urs idCaux Cgalitaires, les dim ocra ties
libCrales me tte nt ii profit leur systPme juridique p our mainten ir les structures d’autoritC
dans les conflits politiques. L ’auteur atti re ensu ite l’attention su r la thCorie requise pour
dCgager les mCcan ismes prCcis serva nt perpCtuer cette hypocrisie. Dans ce contexte
thCorique, l’organisation policiere est vue comm e une thCorie sociale laique qui perm et aux
policiers dans l’exercise d e leur fonc tion de choisir leur cand idat la criminalisation
sous
couvert de la loi. L‘auteur Ctudie la fois les aspects critiques de la cultu re polici6re et les
rapports de celle-ci avec les structu res sociales au sein desquelles elle opere.
This paper begins with t he observation that the legal system in liberal democracies, despite
its egalitarian ideals, is used as re source in po litical conflict to m aintain structu res of
dominance. It then draws attention to th e theoretical requirement to identify the specific
mechanisms tha t provide for this persistent and systematic institutional hypocrisy.
W ithin this theoretical context, th e police subculture is identified as a lay social theory
which serves to direct working p oliceme n in the ir selection of candidates for criminaliza-
tion and in th eir use of the law to initiate th is process. Both the critical features of the
police subculture and its relationship to the social structures within which police operate
are con sidered.
One of the most persistent theoretical questions in sociological theory has been
how to relate social structure and interaction (c.f. Berger and Luckman, 1967).
This question remains a major concern. Within the context of the conflict
perspective, it has been posed as the problem of identifying the processes that
provide for th e reproduction
of
power relations (Turk, 1969; Giddens, 1976). In
specifying
this problem, conflict theorists have identified the role of the state as
critical. Quinney, for example, has argued that ’the theoretical problem at this
time is that of linking th e class structure
of
advanced capitalism to th e capitalist
state.’ (1977: 80). This problem implies questions such as, ’how is it that th e state
does what it is supposed to do’, or more concretely, ’what are the mechanisms
through which it preserves the hegemony of the dominant classes’ (Buroway,
1978: 59).
I
would like to th an k m y colleagues Richard Ericson, John Hagan, Jeff Leon, Dianne
MacFarlane, Austin Turk
and
Livy Visano for their com ments on th is paper.
I am
grateful to W anda Crause for h er assistance with the field work.
This paper was received February,
1978,
and accepted August,
1979
University
of
oronto
Rev.
canad.
SOC
An th. /Canad.
Rev.
SOC h t h .
18 3) 1981
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284 C L I F F O R D S H E A R I N G
The re is considerable research, especially in t he area of criminal justice, that is
relevant to these questions. O ne of the conclusions drawn from it is that law is used
as a resource, or weapon, in t he preservation of power relations (B ittner, 1967,
1970; Chambliss and Seidman, 1971; Turk, 1976). In support of this, researchers
have argued th at t he egalitarian safeguards built in to the law in liberal democracies
(via a formal emphasis on universalistic and behavioural, rather than status,
criteria) are system atically underm ined in practice by law enforcers who in making
decisions emphasize extra-legal criteria that identify persons as members of
’problem populations’ (Spitzer, 1975; Quinney, 1977). Criminality, it is argued, is
an ascribed status applied disproportionately to the least powerful (Turk, 1969).
As
a consequence of these arg um ents , th e traditional conception of t he law as a
guide to law enforcement (Pound, 1942) has been challenged by t he more cynical
view that the law acts not t o direct law enforcem ent, but to provide an ideological
resource tha t can be used to legitimize political control as a non-political activity
based on egalitarian criteria (Carlen,
1976).
This raises the question of the
coordination of law enforcement, and suggests that whatever the relationships
between class structure and law enforcement embedded in the law Chambliss,
1964;
Kolko,
1963;
(Cham bliss and Seidman,
1971;
Quinney,
1970, 1974),
one
mu st look beyond t he law itself if o ne is to identify the mechanisms th at provide
for the sy stematic introduction of extra-legal status considerations in law
enforcement (Hopkins, 1975: 615; Turk, 1977: 214-15).
As the ‘ga tekeepers’ of crim inal justice (Reiss,
1971)~
he police have tended to
become the focus of mu ch research. H owever, u nde r th e impact of the liberal ideal
of ’equal justice,’ thi s research has been inclined to address th e problem of
inequality produced by patte rns of law enforce men t. Cons equen tly, the questio ns
most often addressed have been: A re th e police biased in their tre atm ent of the
public? Do they discriminate? Are they fair? (Skolnick, 1966; Berkley, 1969;
Bayley and M endelsohn,
1968;
Chevigny,
1969;
Lambert,
1970;
Banton,
1973;
Rosett and Cressey,
1976).
W hile much has been learned from this research about
the correlation betw een situational factors (such as age, sex, race, socio-economic
status, demeanour, complainants’ preference and previous record) and law
enforcement (Piliavin and B riar,
1965;
Reiss and Bordua,
1967;
Black,
1968,1970;
Black and Reiss, 1970; Sullivan and Segal, 1972; Sykes and Clark, i975) ,
remarkably little progress has been made in accounting for how policemen act
together
so
tha t their ’joint action’ (Blumer,
1969)
systematically contributes to
the reproduction of relations of s ubord ination and dom inance.
To the extent tha t an answer t o this question has been soug ht, attention has been
directed towards t he influence ex ercised by p olitical and s enior police autho rities
(Wilson, 1968; Chevigny, 1969; Davis, 1969; Grosman, 1975). However,
althoug h this research has enhanced o ur unde rstanding of political control of t he
police, it suggests that this influence is too variable and too related to partisan
interests of individuals and political factions to provide a single satisfactory
explanation fo r the system atic, continuou s, and pervasive use of statu s criteria in
the m aintenance of order.
In considering how t o approach th e coordination of police activity, the
relationship drawn between consensus and conflict theory by David Lockwood
(1956) is worth recalling. Lockwood argued tha t consensus theory, w ith its focus
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285 S U B T E R R A N E A N P R O C E S S E S I N T H E M A I N T E N A N C E O F P O W E R
on explicit political and legal norms, directed attention to the superstructural
processes involved in t he ideological work of legitimation , while conflict theo ry,
with its Marxian heritage, directed attention to a more substructural level of
analysis. This view of the contributions of consensus and conflict theory suggests
that if th e problem of the coord ination of police activity is to be resolved, atten tion
should be directed to the su bterrane an levels within the police organization and,
more generally, within t he state. Th is suggestion finds support in the frequ ently
cited police adage that policing is not done ‘by the book and that the operating
principles of police work a re learned on the job, and fo rm part of the intu ition and
common sense that seasoned policemen acquire (Wilson, 1968; Sacks, 1972;
Kirkham, 1974; Grosman, 1975; Manning, 1977). It is thus, perhaps, common
sense, or ’rules of thumb’ (Manning, 1977: 162) that make up the police
subculture, to w hich attention should be directed in searching for the processes
coordinating law enforcemen t practice.
The police sub cultu re has long been a topic of research within th e sociology of
deviance and a subs tantial body of literatu re has been developed (Wexler, 1974).
Thro ugho ut, one encounters the observation that t he police view the public from a
we/they perspective. They see themselves, it is argued, as a closely knit group set
apart from the public. T hey believe, it is maintained, that the public view them as a
hated and distrusted enemy (Manning, 1971)~ nd they, in turn, reciprocate by
regarding the public as their enemy (Westley, 1970; Manning, 1971; Harris,
1973; Wexler, 1974). This perceived enem y relationship, it is suggested, operates
to encourage police solidarity, secrecy, and a hostile, sometimes violent, response
to the public (W estley, 1953, 1956). In explaining this cluster of beliefs and the
responses they encourage . the police subculture has been conceived of as a defense
mechan ism developed by th e police in response to the dem ands made on them by
the public (Buckner, 1972)~he public’s hostility, and the danger and ambiguities
of police work (Reiss and B ordua, 1967; Kirkham, 1974). This conception of th e
police subculture provides little support for the notion that it may be part of a
subterranean process linking police work to t he perservation of established power
relations. On the contrary, it suggests that far from relating the police to any
interest group w ithin society, their subculture sets them apart from all such groups
by defining them as an independent body isolated from, and independent of, all
others.
Recent research by Shearing ( ~ 9 7 7 ) ~owever, calls into question the applicabil-
ity of th e ’public as enem y’ metaphor, by a rgu ing tha t it is applicable only to one of
the publics which th e police recognize as relevant to their work, and that it is not
used by th e police with respect to t he public at large. In developing this point,
Shearing notes that a fund am ental distinction is made by the police between the
people they serve and th e troublemakers th ey control in the course of providing
their service - hat is, between t he people they do things for and those they do
things
to
(Hughes, 1971). It is because this distinction has been largely ignored in
the literature on t he police subculture that th e relevance of this culture, as a
mechanism for coordinating police activity which links it to the larger social
structure , has been missed.
This paper reviews these findings to show how the police subculture con tributes
to the maintenance of pow er within political and legal structure that defines
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286
C L I F F O R D
S H E A R I N G
police action in egalitarian terms.
It
begins by examining the police view of
troublemakers and shows how th e police subcu lture acts as a social theory fo r
coordinating and managing police involvement in class conflict. This discussion
raises the issue
of
th e potential effects of th e conflict between th e police subcu lture
and liberal, democratic ideals. Th is leads to a consideration of th e way in which th e
police subc ulture serves to isolate t he police fro m the influence of these ideals.
This, in its tu rn , raises the question
of
the origin
of
th e police subculture and its
relationship to social class.
T H E R E S E A R C H
The tendency in so much literature to gloss over distinctions between different
police publics seems, in part, to have been a result of the influence of labelling
theory which focussed on police response to troublemakers. O ne consequence of
this was the highlighting of this public as the police public. My research, in
contrast, took place in a set tin g in which victims and complaints were as relevant to
th e police as troublem akers. This setting he comm unications centre of a large
urban Canadian police department where citizen calls for police assistance were
received and responded to provided an opportunity to examine the police
conception of bo th th e people the y do things to and those th ey serve. Furthe r, as
policemen from m any oth er parts of t he dep artment were regularly in touch with
the cen tre, it was possible to develop a police view of citizens based a wide variety of
individuals. Research for this s tu dy took place over a six-m onth period in the fall of
1971, nd involved the o bservation
of
over sixty sh ifts as well as the tape-recording
of several thousand telephone co nversations between both policemen in the centre
and citizens, and betw een policemen in t he cen tre and policemen in other parts
of
the department (see Shearing, 1977 for a detailed description of t he research).
P O L I C E I N V O L V E M E N T IN C L A S S C O N F L I C T
In contrast to th e cu rre ntly accepted view of th e police subculture, m y research
indicated th at t he police did no t view themselves as enemies of th e public at large.
In
this dealings with citizens, found that policemen made a fundamental
distinction between the public on the on e hand, and third-and fourth-class
citizens, the dregs, or m ore expressively, the scum, on th e other. This
bifurcated concept of citizens related directly to t he work of policemen in t he centre
and those elsewhere in the department. The public consisted of those th e police
believed they should serve and protect. T he scum were very different. Th ey were
th e people whom th e police prosecuted in th e course of helping the public. The
scum were troublemakers who impelled the public to seek police assistance.
In
supporting t he public, the police controlled th e scum.
The scum were viewed by th e police as th e ene m y of t he public. Therefore the y
were, by implication, also the ene m y of th e police. The scum were supported by the
public by public housing subsidies and welfare and by ripping the m
off
through
crime.
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287 S U B T E R R A N E A N P R O C E S S E S
I N
T H E M A I N T E N A N C E O F P O W E R
That
is a
pre tty run down area as you can hear from old gravel voice. They’re at the very
bottom of the ladder hird and fourth-class citizens. When you’ve worked in tha t area ,
you learn that they haven’t seen soap for weeks. They and their houses are filthy dirty.
Not only w ere the scum unclean, but as enemies they threatened the police and
the public both physically an d mo rally. Th ey were dang erous.
In -
f
you get involved in something, you never know whether you‘ll get ou t O.K.
Pick up one garbage can a t
-
Imagine getting
a
station detail to - you‘d be surprised to
get out alive.
Th e scum , th e police believed, showed no respect for the auth ori ty of t he law.
They gave no qua rter an d deserved none . Th ey enraged th e police. ‘That’s the first
clown of the night .
I’d
like to go down an d arrest the b um myself. I can’t stand
those pigs.’
As an enem y, th e scum deserved no help from the police heir job was to help
the public, not thescum . A ny harm the scum
did
to each other was all to the better,
as
it
assisted th e police an d th e public in th eir conflict with the scum.
First Policeman: There was
a
murder
a t -
yesterday , you know.
Second Policeman: That’s not
a
murder, that‘s
a
local improvement, but
if
you called it
that you‘d have to pay taxes on it.
First Policeman: They should close down tha t division and put
a
fence around it.
Everyone there deserves each other.
Second Policeman: Yeah, you better believe
it.
It is the scum who, in an age less embarrassed
by
class differences and less
comm itted to th e ideal of e qua lity, were re ferred to as th e ‘dangerous’ or ‘criminal’
classes (Silver, 1967),
a
‘bastardized race,‘ a ’class degrade d by m ise ry who se vices
stand like a n invincible obstacle to t he generous inten sions that wish to combat it‘
(Foucault, 1977: 276).
This
distin ction between two classes
of
citizens with who m policemen come into
contact is, Hu ghe s argues, com mon t o m an y service occupations.
To understand (service occupations) one must understand the system, including the clients
and their wants. People and organizations have problems; they want things done for
them - for their bodies and souls, for the ir social and financial relations , for the ir cars,
houses, bridges, sewage systems; and they want things done to the people they consider
their competitors or their enemies. (Hughes,
1971 422)
In distinguishing between clients and competitors and/or enemies, Hughes
draws attentio n to the sam e sort of relationship as Emerson and Messinger do in
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288 C L I F F O R D S H E A R I N G
their identification of the situation roles of complainants and/or victims and
troublemakers. However, unlike Emerson and Messinger, who restricted their
analysis to situated roles, Hughes‘ formulation extends to trans-situational
identities. This distinction is critical to an understanding of the categories of
citizens identified by th e police sub culture. Neithe r th e scum n or the public refer to
the situated roles of troublemaker and victim/complainant that emerge in the
definition of, and reaction to, particular troubles. Rather, they refer to two
relatively stable popu lations of persons who become involved in trouble. Either th e
scum or the public could be troublemakers in a particular situation. What
distinguishes th e scum from t he public is that the scum are structurally in conflict
with, and are the enemies of, the public. The scum are, to use Katz’s (1972)
formulation, ‘in essence’ troublemakers, while the public are ’in essence’ their
victims.
In distinguishing between th e scum and th e public as two classes who oppose
each other as enemies, the police culture makes available to the police a social
theory that they can use in th e context
of
their w ork to define situations and to
construct a course of action in response to the m . This theory enables the police to
transcend the situated fe atures of enco unters by relating th em to a broader social
context which identifies the ’real troublem akers’ and ’real victims.
’3
In using this
theo ry as a guide t o action, policemen e nt er , as participants, in to the class conflict
that th e culture describes. As th ey do , they are able, and encouraged, to use the
power of th e state, on behalf of t he public, to control th e scum, there by prese rving
not only th e dominance of th e public vis 1 vis the scum, but the system of
relationships o n which th e opposition between th e
two
groups depends.4
This system of relationships is strikm gly similar to that described by M arx in his
analysis of capitalism. Th e scum an d th e public ar e categories which a re consistent
with Marx’s notions of t he surp lus unproductive population and the productive
population engaged in capitalistic modes of production. Furtherm ore, like Marxist
theory, t he police subculture recognizes that th e surplus population, both because
it is outside th e controls em bodied in t he econom y itself, and because of it s parasitic
relationship to the productive population, constitutes a threat to the productive
classes. The police subculture directs th e w o rh n g policemen to control the surplus
population, precisely as Marxist theories argue is the case: ’From arrest to
imprisonment th e criminal justice system exists to control th e surplus
population’ (Quin ney, 1977: 136).
Wh at this analysis adds to th e general discussion provided by M arxist and other
conflict theorists, is a more specific analysis of t he m echan isms th at coordinate t he
activities of tho se working within crimina l justice. M arxism, it has been argued , ‘is
still grappling with the problem of how to transform a theory into a concrete
historical force’ (Stewart, 1978:
20 .
In the police subculture, we see how, in a
small bu t sy stema tic way , a conflict theo ry grounded in an analysis of social class
relevant to police work is used as a ’concrete historical force’ to reproduce a
particular set of relations. This suggests that it is wrong to identify the theory
appropriate to advanced capitalism as consensus (Chambliss and Seidman, i 9 7 i ) ,
and that o f revolution as social conflict (Stewa rt,
1978).
Although consensus may
be the theo ry t ha t legitimates criminal justice, ou r findings suggest that th e theory
which operates to reproduce order is one that takes class conflict as its major
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289
S U B T E R R A N E A N
P R O C E S S E S
I N
T H E M A I N T E N A N C E O F P O W E R
premise. It is at the wo rking level tha t on e finds the ’merger
of
reason and action’
(Stewart,
1978:
19), of theory and prac tice, which conflict theo rists refer to.
Ironically, however, this merger
of
conflict theo ry and action works t o reproduce,
rather than transcend, capitalist relations.
C L A S S C O N F L I C T A N D E G A L I T AR I A N I D E A L S
The acknowledgement that capitalist society incorporates two social theories
(conflict and consensus) based on opposing premises, each contributing to the
maintenance of order, raises the question of th e relationship between them. This is
particularly relevant in the case of the police who work within a system that is
explicitly com mitted t o liberal egalitarian ideals. W ithin this context the question
that arises is: How does the police subculture retain an influence on the
motivations of working policemen in an environ me nt in w hich egalitarian notions
are supposed to prevail? In orde r words: How is it that the conflict theory of the
police subculture is able to motiva te, and the reby coordinate, individual policemen
in the face of th e official com mitme nt by th e public, political authorities, and th e
courts to a consensus social theory? How does the police subculture retain its
influence over working policemen given the hierarchical character of the police
organization and th e freq uent attemp ts by inquiries, comm issions, the m edia, civil
liberties groups, and dedicated liberal politicians to bring police practice into line
with egalitarian ideals? In order to answer this question, we must examine the
beliefs abou t th e public and ’the brass’ endorsed by th e police subculture.
In contrast to the
scum,
h e public were viewed by the police as allies wh o th ey
helped and assisted in their conflict w ith t he scum . This alliance, however, was not,
in their view, between equals. In fighting the scum and dealing with t he trouble
they caused, the police viewed themselves as professionals, and contrasted their
status and expertise with the helplessness and incompetence of the public. They
were, they believed, not only more knowledgeable and experienced than the
public, but m ore objective and im partial. This perceived inequality between police
and public proved a ch ronic source of tension, as it seemed that the public did not
always respect professionalism of th e law enforcers or acknow ledge their own
incompetence as laymen.5 This tension was a primary source of meaning for
the
set
of
images the police used to describe the public. Each
of
these images
emphasized th e professional distance between t he police and the public. To gether
they identified thre e ma jor them es w hich defined the police view of the proper
relationship between the public and th e police.
In emphasizing their ow n expertise, th e police drew attention to
the helplessness
and stupidity
of
the public. As
one policeman rem arked, ’som e of th em don’t have
enough brains to pound sand.‘ The public, they complained, often created
problems for themselves tha t could have been avoided had the y had ‘an ounce of
brains.’ Th e police felt th at m an y of th e problems broug ht to their attention by t he
public were trivial, and could have been handled by t he victims themselves. N oise
complaints were frequen tly used to illustrate this.
It makes you sick, all you get on weekends are noisy parties. Why don’t they
go
and bang
on doors themselves?
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29
C L I F F O R D S H E A R I N G
So why did he have to call us? The guy‘s a neighbour. Why doesn‘t he go and ask him
to shut
up
his bloody dog
himself?
Not on ly did th e public report problems to t he police that t he police felt they
should have been able to resolve themselves, bu t the police complained they were
sometimes so helpless and incompetent that they could not even request police
support properly. ‘You have to be an oth er Larry Solway sometimes. You have to
put words in th eir mo uths just to find ou t where the y live or their phone num bers.’
Wh ile the public’s stupidity was frequ ently defined in terms of their inability to
prevent and deal with min or problems, it was also seen as arising from naivetk. The
police believed tha t, as a result of th e drama tization of t he police role in novels,
films, and television dramas, the public had developed unreasonable expectations
concerning the police capacity to resolve problems. ‘Some people think a
policeman’s uniform will make everything all right. But it only quietens things
down for a little while.
I t
really doesn’t accomplish anything.’
This naivete, th e police believed, extended beyond a misunderstanding of police
resources and even included a definition of ‘police trouble. ’
A
principal complaint
was tha t th e public simply did not know wh at an em ergency was, and constantly
exaggered trivial incidents by calling them emergencies. For example, they
frequently pointed ou t tha t wh at th e public defined as an emergency often proved,
on closer inspection, to be no mo re th an a noisy pa rty o r a minor traffic accident.
The conclusion drawn from all this by th e police was that yo u could not rely on th e
public’s judgement abou t what problems th e police should deal with o r how this
should be done.
W hile it was the public’s helplessness and incompetence th at characterized th em
and their relationship to t he police, it was their persistent failure to recognize and
accept this tha t most anno yed the police. This failure was apparent in th e public’s
tendency
to
demand help rather than request it, thus suggesting that the police
related to them as servant to master. This failure to recognize the professional
status of the police and th eir ability and auth ority t o respond to trouble angered th e
police.6 ‘Send out a car imm ediately. It really bugs m e when the y say th at.’ This
disrespect was regarded as particularly insulting w hen the d emanding citizen was a
low-status person who scarcely qualified as a member
of
th e public.
The thing tha t bugs
me is
getting
a call from
a
person
who
can
barely speak English,
but
demands a car ‘right away’. The two things that they know are ‘dollar’, and ’send police
right away,’
and
they don’t
even
speak the language. The
woman
had only called
ten
minutes ago
so
said, ’There are two million
people in
the city
and
you are only one of
them.’
These views about the public’s right to demand police service, like the views
about the helplessness and ignorance of the public, served to preserve police
autono my b y em phasizing tha t while the police served the public, they w ere not to
be viewed as the servants of the public. T his them e was taken up in a somewhat
different form in th e police view tha t mem bers of th e public sometimes used th e
police to exploit their relationship as allies. The y complained that th e public were
often not as helpless as the y seemed. T he public, they believed, sought to use th e
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291 S U B T E R R A N E A N P R O C E S S E S I N T H E M A I N T E N A N C E O F P O W E R
police to accomplish their own self-serving ends. The police became particularly
incensed when persons misused their power and status for these reasons. In the
police eyes, one of the w orst g roups of o ffenders were private alarm com panies
who ’had the nerve’ to ask th e police
to
respond to their alarms for them.
Alarm companies, they use the po lice. They get us to do their work for them.
God damn phoney outfits. They call the owner and he says not to tell the police anything,
so
our car sits there at the scene waiting and waiting for someone to show .
It was, however, not only the economically powerful who sought to misuse the
police his tendency was seen as much more widespread. Often it was perceived
as no more than th e result of laziness and a refusal to take responsibility for
problems.
Very often people call about barking dogs because they do not want to get involved
themselves. They want to leave it to the police to do som ething. Complaints about barking
dogs just misuse the police. In the vast majority of cases, it is probably quite unneces-
sary to involve the police, except as a last resort. The thing to do would be to
go
directly to
the dog‘s owner and ask him to take the dog inside or quiet it down some other way.
In em phasizing their p rofessional status7 the police culture served to insulate the
police from members of the public who might try to influence them, and to
encourage the police to rely on their own experience and the collective wisdom of
their peers inmaking their decisions.
Just as the police subculture served to guard against the situated influences
arising from t he dem ands of particular complainants and victims, it also served to
insulate the police from t he more systematic influences directed at them through
the chain of command. Interestingly, in this context the a utonom y of the working
policeman was encouraged by th e police culture on the same grounds as it was with
respect to the public y emphasizing th e inequality in expertise and ’know-how’
between the working policeman and th e brass (a term used to refer roughly to all
those superiors in th e chain of com mand above the rank of sergeant).
In distinguishing them selves from the brass, police constables recognized that,
as policemen, th ey shared some things with th e brass. It is with these similarities
that we m ust begin, because th ey constitute the backdrop for their differences.
At th e most general level, especially when the police were contrasted with th e
public, the brass were considered to be police. They had shared many of th e
experiences familiar to ordinary policemen they had been there.’ They had at
one time all been ’front line’ policemen. Even now , a major concern of the bra ss
was
to
protect and enhance th e image of the police. Attacks on th e police in the
press, for example, served to break down the distinction between the brass and
working policemen . When newspaper reporters, for example, criticized the brass,
policemen would spring vigorously t o their defence. ’There’s always some nu t who
wants to get the police into trouble and there‘s always some reporter who will
listen to him .‘
Yet th e brass, although t he y had been working policemen, were now ‘something
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292 C L I F F O R D S H E A R I N G
quite different.’ The concernsof the brass, it was argued, were not only different,
but were often competing. When the ‘chips were down,‘ the brass would sacrifice
the individual policeman in the name of the ’interests
of
the
force.
’
Policemen were
not reluctant to point out that the ’interests of the force’ overlapped with, and were
often synonomous with, the ’interests of the brass.‘
With promotion out of the ranks, the brass, it was suggested, developed new
interests they became less concerned about the problems faced by ordinary
policemen. What the brass should know, and certainly had known, about the
nature of police work, was convenientlly forgotten when trouble arose. The brass’s
concern was not simply ’doing the job,’ but rather ensuring that the job was done
smoothly and that nothing happened to taint the image of the police in the eyes of
the public a public comprised not so much of people who needed help, but of
boards
of
police commissioners, politicians, reporters, and newspaper editors. This
attitude on the part of the brass was lampooned by one policeman after a call from a
sergeant for all cars in the division to o in for ‘car washes’, with the remark: ‘We
sure have a clean police department. Not an efficient one, but a clean one ’
The brass were accorded an explicitly ideological role and this role was seen as
not only different from, but often opposed to, the demands of ’real’ police work.
This was emphasized by noting that their concern with ‘political matters,’ resulted
in the brass losing touch
with
’real police work’ and ‘real policemen.’
They don ’t understand, and they don‘t care any more. Th ey’ve been out of
it
for too
long.
Most of
them have not don e real police work for years. They don’t know wha tpolice
work is any more. They spend their time in their offices. You wonder som etim es. That’s
why the y make all these procedures.
When they
get
that commission something happens. They don‘t know you any m ore.
They make new friends when they become officers.
In pointing to the relative ignorance
of
the brass, the police subculture
simultaneously suggested that this ignorance was often more a matter of
convenience than anything else. In circumventing brass policy, because you ‘can’t
do it by the book,’ working policemen saw themselves as acting with the tacit
approval of the brass and their political masters, who subtly and surreptitiously
encouraged duplicity and secrecy by rewarding, through advancement into more
attractive areas
of
police work (particularly detective work), performances which
ignored ’the book,’ but which could be retrospectively reconstructed in accordance
with policy and legal procedure (Canada, 1976: 116--19).
The apparent ignorance of
the
brass, together with their tacit approval of ‘real
police work,’ identified a role difference between the brass and working policemen.
While the brass were concerned with maintaining an egalitarian image of the police
within political and judicial arenas, working policemen were to get on with the job
of
real policing, or controlling the scum. In providing for this distinction, the
police subculture at once encouraged police action which served to reproduce
existing power structures, while isolating worlung policemen from influences
which tended to mitigate against this. The police subculture, in contrasting ’real
police work‘ with the brass‘s concern with legitimizing police work, enabled
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working policemen to move beyond th e comm on sense view of the law as a set of
behaviourally grounded instructions for identifying criminality, to a view of the
law as a resource f o r justi fying coercive control of th e scum. Good police work, the
police subculture made clear, meant participating in the class conflict between
public and scum in a way th at could be justified retrospectively with reference to
legal criteria ha t is, to behav ioural, universa listic, and egalitarian criteria.
In sum , in answ er to th e question of how the conflict theo ry operates in a police
subculture dominated by consensus theory,
I
have show n how a class-based theo ry
of social control is encouraged, along with an institutional hypocrisy that presents
police work in egalitarian term s. In sh ort, the police subculture provides for police
action based o n extra-legal status criteria, w hile simultaneously allowing for its
presentation in terms of legal behavioural criteria.
LINKAGES
T O
POWER ORIGINS
OF
THE POLICE SUBCULTURE
This contrast between th e conflict theo ry of the police subculture and the
surroun ding ideology raises a final query : W here does the social theory of the
police subculture come from, and how does it come to reflect
so
exactly class
structure and class conflict in th e face of an ideology tha t explicitly denies the
applicability of statu s criteria to police work ? Although these qu estions
go
beyond
the scope of this paper, it is possible, from a review of the analysis presented, to
suggest th e general o utline of an answer and th e direction to be followed in
developing this outline.
The independence of th e police subcu lture, its low visibility, as well as its
operation at the ’fro nt line’ of policing, is consistent with Foucault’s (1977)
analysis that social control is no longer imposed from above and outside the fabric
of social life by an auth or ity em bodied in th e person of the sovereign ; rather, it is
embedded in t he v ery struc ture of social relations themselves. It is from this
structure, rather th an from an identifiable political authority, that the social theory
of the police subcu lture arises. The police, by v irtue of their occupational position
as
state agents, participate in th e social conflict between th e produ ctive and un-
productive classes. Their position identifies them as allies of the one and enemies
of
the o ther. W ithin this context th e police inevitably come face-to-face with t he
hostility of th e scum. In dealing with th is hostility, and in participating in th e
conflict between the scum and th e public, th ey develop a particular view of th e
scum and an expertise that sets them apart from the public.
In
short, a guiding
authority emerges w hich is grounded in th e collective experience of working
policemen. T his au tho rity reflects, in conceptual terms, the social differences and
relationships in which it is located. In doint
so,
it provides a mechanism for
transforming structural forces into individual motivations.
The embedded nature of this process gives th e police subculture an anon ymous
and ubiquitous character that ‘automatizes and disindividualizes’ it (Foucault,
1977:
202 .
It is this feature of modern social control that is reflected in the
common sense talk of ‘the system.’ A t first glance, as Foucault notes, this system
appears to be ‘nothing more than an infra-law’ that extends ’the general forms
defined by law to th e infinitesimal level of individual lives’ (1977: 222 . However,
he argues, on closer exam ination rhese processes prove to be ‘a sort of coun ter
law’
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C L I F F O R D
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which effects ‘a suspension of the law that is never total, but is never annulled
either,’ that maintains ’insuperable asymmetries,’ despite the legal definition of
‘juridicial subjects according to universal norm s,‘ by means of a ’series of
mechanisms for unbalancing power relations definitively and everywhere’
(Foucault, 1977: 222-3). On even closer inspection, as we have seen, the
subterranean structures m aintaining th e asymm etries of power are revealed not as
a ‘counter law,’ but as one face of t he institutiona l hypoc risy th at characterizes
liberal social control. These structures provide for a process of control through
social conflict tha t by-pass political and legal processes at a macroscopic level. The
independence of th e political and legal superstructure from ‘the system’ of control
that this provides permits those persons acting to legitimize social control within
legal and political spheres to pursue egalitarian ideals energetically and with
personal integrity, without undermining the work necessary to reproduce
relations of dominance. Similarly, it allows the police, and others in similar
positions, to get on with their work as participants in class conflict without
underm ining th e belief in t he egalitarian na ture of liberal democracy.
It is this relationship between th e supe rstructural and substructural levels of
social control th at frus trates Marxists com mitted t o a utopian society withou t class
conflict, because ’conquering or ga ining access to th e state thro ug h electoral means
cannot lead to socialism since the worlung class party, when it takes over the
government, becomes a prisoner
of
the very system it attempts to overthrow’
(Burawoy, 1977: 60). For those of u s who do not sh are this comm itment, and who
view social conflict in mo re n eutral term s (Turk, 1977)~he lesson is simply tha t
the p rocess of social conflict and
the
stability or change it produces cannot be
understood by an analysis that focuses exclusively on political processes and
ignores subterranean mechanisms.
N O T E S
1
There is no single definition of the police subculture provided in related literature.
One definition, and the one we will use here,
views
the police subculture as
embodying the collective ’wisdom’ of policemen, passed on from one generation
of
policemen
to
another through a process in whch it is both embellished and validated.
The culture is available to policemen as a guide they can use in going about police
work. This definition is consistent with the general definition
of
culture ’as the
“image” of the society, the collective information by which the society attempts to
organize itself‘ (Ball, 1978: 69). This definition equates culture with Mead’s concept
of the ’generalizedother.‘ The police subculture, as we are using the concept here, thus
refers to a device which enables policemen to plan and assess courses of action from
the standpoint
of
other policemen (Blumer, 1969).
z
It has been aruged (Cummings, et al. 1967) that ‘support’ and ’control’ constitute
latent and manifest aspects of the police role. This view arises out of the tendency
to
regard citizens as all forming part of a single category. These findings indicate
that support and control refer to two different role relationships with
two
different
populations.
3
See Kahne and Schwartz (1978) who criticize the Emerson and Messinger formulation
for its failure to consider the more general social contexts that affect actors’ definitions
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of particular situated roles. As Emerson and Messinger‘s (1977) analysis demon-
strates, if one remains analytically at a situational micro-political level which excludes
contextual relationships, decisions about statuses and roles must, of necessity, de-
pend exclusively on an analysis
of
the activities of those involved. This is precisely the
analytic difficulty that labelling theorists like Becker (1973) face in accounting for
deviance. It leads them to identify deviance with rule-breaking and thus prevents them
from examining how the claim of rule-breaking is used as a method (or weapon) in
responding to deviance defined as a trans-situational ’essence’ (see Katz, 1972).
4
This account of operation of the police subculture permits us to answer some
puzzling questions. For example, why is it that working policemen regard some
statistically important parts of their job - for instance, domestic disputes and
traffic work - as not ’real police work,’ and why do the ‘crimes’ of some- particu-
larly the powerful
-
’go
largely unrecognized and/or unpunished, while the less
consequential (for society as a whole) offences of the lower class are given
so
much
punitive attention’ (Turk, 1977: 214-15) What the analysis in the text suggests
is that ’real crime’ activity is defined by police as any wrongdoing undertaken by
the scum against the public. Intra-class conflicts, although they may involve
activity that would technically be regarded as criminal, are regarded as ‘not really
criminal.’ Similarly, wrongdoing by the public against the scum is also regarded
as ‘not really criminal’ (Black,
1976).
5 Hughes
(1971)
has argued that this tension is found in most service occupations.
6
This theme of disrespect for police authority dominates the literature on police subcul-
ture. However, in this literature, as the critical distinction between the disrespect of
the scum as an enemy and the disrespect of the public as an ally is not made, disrespect
is generally only considered in the context of the enemy metaphor.
7 This denial of a servant/employer relationship between the police and the public is
related to the legal position the police hold vis vis the sovereign authority from
whom, it is argued, they derive an original authority (Call, 1975-77).
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