Disassembling Police Culture

"Mike Rowe has done us all a favor by taking on the hazy and protean concept of culture to explain all that is wrong (and some that is right) with police behavior. This is a timely and whip smart ethnography of everyday policing as carried out by officers on the streets in three urban departments located in England. Resting on six years of close observation of the working patterns of officers, Rowe argues with telling evidence that policing is far from the intense, breathtaking activity as portrayed in the movies and TV but is comprised of tedious, rather repetitive tasks in which highly specific features such as the varied social contexts in which the work takes place, the wide range of individual and group preferences held by officers, the day-to-day supervisory practices in the field (or lack thereof), and the unevenly enforced policies of a department matter far more when accounting for police behavior than the popular but flawed and flattening notion of police culture. This is hard slogging scholarship of a lively and relevant sort that deserves the close attention of those interested in just how the police shape and are shaped by the work that they do."

John Van Maanen, Professor Emeritus of Organization Studies, MIT

"A timely, important, thought provoking and challenging book. Keenly observed and researched, conceptually rigorous and a real pleasure to read. Recommended for anyone interested in the crucial area of police culture, Science and Technology Studies in policing and the links between them - or, indeed, the realities and daily work of policing more broadly."

Abi Dymond, Senior Lecturer in Criminology, University of Exeter