Influential Women? Policing Styles in Online Recruitment Materials

• Author: Michael F. Aiello
• DOI: 10.1177/1098611119870263
• Published date: 01 March 2020
• Date: 01 March 2020
• Subject Matter: Articles

Article

Influential Women?

Policing Styles in Online

Recruitment Materials

Michael F. Aiello

1

Abstract

This article tests the temporal relationship between the representation of females in

policing and organizational change toward community-oriented policing. This mixed

methods study involves secondary data analysis of the 2013 Law Enforcement

Management and Administrative Statistics survey, open-source data collection of

online recruitment materials for 493 Law Enforcement Management and

Administrative Statistics agencies, quantitative content analysis of a random sample

of 131 departments, and Leximancer semantic mapping of the 493 departments’

materials. The two forms of content analysis focus on the particular emphases of

“legalistic,” “watchman,” and “service” styles. The quantitative content analysis

results largely support the temporal model, with the percent female sworn in a

given department in 2013 significantly predicting whether that department’s 2018

recruitment materials focus on service or community-oriented policing content. The

Leximancer semantic mapping results provide a more ambiguous picture, including

legalistic through-line language around police work.

Keywords

women in policing, police recruitment, online, community policing, policing styles

1

Department of Sociocultural and Justice Sciences, State University of New York at Fredonia, NY, USA

Corresponding Author:

Michael F. Aiello, State University of New York at Fredonia, Fredonia, NY, USA.

Email: aiello@fredonia.edu

Police Quarterly

2020, Vol. 23(1) 3–24

!The Author(s) 2019

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DOI: 10.1177/1098611119870263

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“Representation matters” is a modern adage associated with media representa-

tion of various minority groups. The concept focuses on the idea that modeling

partially dictates the aspirations of individuals in a mediated society. This proj-

ect is part of a larger body of scholarship investigating the gendered nature of

policing (e.g., Crank, 2014; Prokos & Padavic, 2002) and, more specifically,

police recruitment (Aiello, 2019; Cordner & Cordner, 2011). While researchers

have begun to examine how police departments and human resources profes-

sions frame minimum sets of requirements as well as their ideal recruit via focus

groups (Inzunza, 2016), a large-scale study of how American law enforcement

agencies construct their occupation for potential applicants is missing.

Increasingly, police recruitment occurs online (Castaneda & Ridgeway,

2010). While several scholars investigated the socialization process of the

police academy (Chappell & Lanza-Kaduce, 2010; Prokos & Padavic, 2002;

Rossler & Suttmoeller, 2018), studies focused on this even earlier stage in the

recruitment and development process for police officers are more limited. This

study fills a gap in the literature on gender in policing, as well as police web

presence, by examining how departments frame their ideal recruit in their online

recruitment materials. This project builds on prior research on this topic involv-

ing limited sample sizes or a single methodological perspective (Aiello, 2014;

Jolicoeur & Grant, 2018). This undertaking relies on a mixed methods design,

involving open-source data collection, secondary data analysis, quantitative

content analysis, and Leximancer automatic semantic analysis, providing a mul-

tiangle investigation of this crucial and growing area of policy and research.

Literature Review

Policing Styles

As some important conceptual groundwork for this project, Wilson (1968) dis-

cussed several organizational differences between the “watchman,” “legalistic,”

and “service” styles of policing in the context of the 1960s, including where

agencies draw their recruitment pool as well as their training schedules. The

focus of this project is on the objectives of departments and the relative empha-

sis of law enforcement (legalistic), order maintenance (watchman), and service

(service) responsibilities. Wilson’s (1968) styles nicely fit three main eras of

policing, including the “Political Era” from the 1830s through the 1900s, the

“Professional Era” from the 1900s to the 1960s, and the “Community Policing

Era” or “New Policing Era” from the 1970s to today (Walker & Katz, 2017).

The legalistic style of law enforcement has the most direct connection to

Professional Era policing. This style of formalized, legal code enforcement-

focused policing has not disappeared, as more modern policing approaches

including zero-tolerance policing are built on this foundation. The watchman

4Police Quarterly 23(1)