NCJ Number
70565
Journal
Police Studies Volume: 3 Issue: 1 Dated: (Spring 1980) Pages: 49-61
Date Published
1980
Length
13 pages
Annotation
Modern police military bureaucracies, although they restrain corruption, should be modified to allow better police morale, better use of police discretion, and greater sensitivity to citizens.
Abstract
The police were first organized into military bureaucracies in Britain in 1829 to restrain them from corruption and abuse of power. Although fostering discipline needed by those who must exercise force and restraining corruption, a military structure makes police insensitive to citizens. In addition, bureaucracies harm police work by hindering decisionmaking through requiring a rigid obedience to rules; they tend to measure policing performance by the amount of obedience to regulations, and they hurt morale and cause alienation through encouraging too many police specialties or furthering organization over human beings. Thus, the military structure is most inappropriate for the police since it is intended for groups in which decisions come from above, while the rank-and-file make most decisions in a police agency. Although police decisions are ostensibly made according to official rules as in all bureaucracies, police are expected by the public, the courts, and police management to exercise discretion. Recent attempts to professionalize the police aim at improving the use of this discretion. Although the police are presently meeting the criteria of being professional in improving educational and ethical standards and increasing specialization, police bureaucratic tendencies to equate professionalism with running better bureaucracies has hindered their achieving many other professional criteria. Recommendations include making police administrators more aware of the relationship between services and organization, compromising the military model, and emphasizing good service over efficiency. One footnote and a bibliography of approximately 35 references are included.