POLICE CULTURE AND OFFICER BEHAVIOR: APPLICATION OF A MULTILEVEL FRAMEWORK

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/1745-9125.12192
• Author: JASON R. INGRAM,EUGENE A. PAOLINE,WILLIAM TERRILL
• Date: 01 November 2018
• Published date: 01 November 2018

POLICE CULTURE AND OFFICER BEHAVIOR:

APPLICATION OF A MULTILEVEL FRAMEWORK∗

JASON R. INGRAM,1WILLIAM TERRILL,2

and EUGENE A. PAOLINE III3

1Department of Criminal Justice and Criminology, Sam Houston State

University

2School of Criminology and Criminal Justice, Arizona State University

3Department of Criminal Justice, University of Central Florida

KEYWORDS: police culture, police use of force, police misconduct, occupational

attitudes, multilevel theory

Although recent advancements have been made in the understanding and studying of

police culture, several significant gaps remain, including deficiencies in theoretical de-

velopment and the lack of research on culture’s influence on police practice. In the cur-

rent study, we apply a multilevel theoretical framework to the examination of officers’

cultural attitudes and behavior to help bridge these gaps. In doing so, police culture

is treated as a collective feature of patrol groups as opposed to as an individual-level

attribute. Furthermore, we extend previous work by introducing the concept of culture

strength as a moderator of the culture–behavior relationship. After drawing on survey

and behavioral data from a national multimethod project, we then test this framework

with two empirical examples from each of the primary work environments (i.e., street

and organization) in which police culture originates and operates. The findings reveal

that workgroup culture is associated with officers’ behaviors, representing a collective

effect, and that the relationship between culture and behavior may not always be lin-

ear. The results provide support for incorporating a multilevel approach to the study

of police culture and officer behavior.

In an effort to address the vagueness associated with the term “police culture,” schol-

ars have recently worked toward modeling the precise mechanisms (i.e., environments,

prescriptions, and outcomes) that are part of the occupational culture of police (Paoline,

2003; Paoline and Terrill, 2014). Despite such advancements, work is still needed in the

theoretical development of the concept and, perhaps more importantly, in identifying

the extent to which culture relates to police behavior (Manning, 2005; Mastrofski, 2004;

∗Additional supporting information can be found in the listing for this article in the Wiley Online

Library at http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/crim.2018.56.issue-4/issuetoc.

This article is based on data from the Assessing Police Use of Force Policy and Outcomes Project,

supported by Grant No. 2005-IJ-CX-0055 by the National Institute of Justice, Office of Justice

Programs, U.S. Department of Justice. The points of view expressed in this article are those of the

authors and do not necessarily represent the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of

Justice.

Direct correspondence to Eugene Paoline, Department of Criminal Justice, University of Central

Florida, P.O. Box 161600, Orlando, FL 32816-1600 (e-mail: Eugene.Paoline@ucf.edu).

C2018 American Society of Criminology doi: 10.1111/1745-9125.12192

CRIMINOLOGY Volume 56 Number 4 780–811 2018 780

POLICE CULTURE AND OFFICER BEHAVIOR 781

National Research Council, 2004; Waddington, 1999). Although the results of a few

studies (McCluskey, Terrill, and Paoline, 2005; Paoline and Terrill, 2005; Terrill, Paoline,

and Manning, 2003) have demonstrated an empirical link between cultural attitudes and

officer behaviors, two significant issues remain.

First, researchers have not yet fully accounted for the shared nature of culture (Paoline,

2003), which should influence the relationship between the substantive nature of culture

and behavior. Second, researchers have mainly portrayed police culture as an attribute

of individual officers instead of as a collective property. Culture is an emergent concept

derived from individuals interacting with one another, through a socialization process

(Van Maanen, 1974), and so measures should reflect the combined influence of all those

who shape culture (Kozlowski and Klein, 2000). Collectively, both of these issues have

limited the theoretical development, in general, as well as have limited the ability to assess

culture’s impact on behavior, in particular.

In addressing these issues, we draw on a multilevel theoretical framework that has re-

cently been adapted to the study of police culture from an attitudinal perspective (Ingram,

Paoline, and Terrill, 2013) and apply it to the study of officer behavior. Additionally, we

add to this framework by incorporating the concept of culture strength, defined as the

degree to which officers within groups share cultural views, to determine the extent to

which such cohesion might also relate to behavior. By using survey and behavioral data

from a national multimethod use-of-force project, we test this framework with illustra-

tive empirical examples that rest at the core for understanding the primary internal and

external work environments in which police culture operates.

POLICE CULTURE AND OFFICER BEHAVIOR

Research aimed at examining the influence of police culture on officer behavior has

generally fallen into one of two areas. The first area comprises officers grouped into

cultural types based on their adherence to a host of occupational attitudes that are

collectively referred to as the “traditional” view of police culture (Paoline and Terrill,

2014).1The most prevalent attitudes include a suspiciousness or distrust of citizens

(Manning, 1977; Rubinstein, 1973; Skolnick, 1966; Westley, 1970), aggressive policing

tactics (Bittner, 1970; Brown, 1988; Van Maanen, 1974; Worden, 1995), negative views

of supervision (Reuss-Ianni, 1983; Van Maanen, 1974; Worden, 1995), selective enforce-

ment of the law (Brown, 1988), and prioritization of the law enforcement role over order

maintenance or service roles (Bittner, 1970; Manning, 1977). These views are transmitted

and shared among officers to cope with the common strains of their occupational (i.e.,

street-level interactions with citizens) and organizational (i.e., departmental interactions

with supervisors) work environments (Paoline, 2003). Terrill, Paoline, and Manning

(2003) found that officers who subscribed to more traditional views of culture were more

likely to use higher levels of force. Similarly, Paoline and Terrill (2005) reported that

1. These attitudes have been derived from early ethnographic studies of the police in which offi-

cers’ work environments were characterized as dangerous,authoritarian,uncertain,andambiguous

(Bittner, 1970; Manning, 1977, Rubinstein, 1973; Skolnick, 1966; Van Maanen, 1974; Westley,

1970). For a more detailed description of the nature and content of the traditional view of police

culture, see Paoline (2003).

782 INGRAM, TERRILL, & PAOLINE

traditionally oriented officers were 2.5 times more likely to conduct searches during

traffic stops compared with their culturally divergent counterparts.

The second research area comprises examination of how individual cultural atti-

tudes are related to a variety of behaviors. The results of these studies have produced

mixed findings. For example, although some study findings have shown that officers’

views toward citizens were related to improper force (Worden, 1996) and traffic stops

(Worden, 1989), others have revealed null effects on severity of force (Terrill and

Mastrofski, 2002), improper force allegations (Terrill and Paoline, 2015), and engag-

ing in comforting behaviors (DeJong, 2004). In several studies aimed at examining

officers’ subscription to a narrow, crime-fighting role orientation, scholars have found

no significant effects on force, traffic stops, or improper search behaviors (Terrill and

Mastrofski, 2002; Worden, 1989, 1996) and weak effects on suspicion stops (Worden,

1989) but significant effects on the number of citizen complaints generated (Terrill and

Paoline, 2015). Similarly, officers’ attitudes toward selective enforcement of the law and

aggressive patrol have been found to be unrelated to stops (Worden, 1989) but somewhat

related to use of force (McCluskey, Terrill, and Paoline, 2005). Finally, although some

scholars have failed to find a link between officer attitudes toward community policing

and their search behavior (Gould and Mastrofski, 2004), others have found that officers

with more positive views toward community policing were significantly less likely to

make arrests (Mastrofski, Worden, and Snipes, 1995).

LIMITATIONS

Prior police culture research has had at least two key limitations. First, in such work,

scholars have not fully incorporated the extent to which officers share cultural attitudes

(Ingram, Paoline, and Terrill, 2013; Paoline, 2003; Paoline and Terrill, 2014), especially in

relation to behavior.2This is important because culture’s influence on behavior may be

a function of not only the nature of officers’ attitudinal outlooks but also the extent to

which officers share outlooks. Hence, officers may be more forceful if they strongly share

a distrust of citizens but less forceful if they strongly share a positive outlook of citizens.

Citizen distrust, however, may not be predictive of officers’ force behavior when views

toward citizens are generally less agreed upon.

Second, researchers have failed to account for the collective effects that cultural atti-

tudes may exert on officer behaviors. Because culture is shared, it is by definition a collec-

tive concept derived from the common strains officers face in their work environments.

Culture is an emergent phenomenon that originates in officer attitudes, becomes shared,

and then manifests at a higher level (e.g., Kozlowski and Klein, 2000). As a result, cul-

ture cannot be fully understood from the perspective of any single person who belongs to

it (Hofstede, 1980; Trice and Beyer, 1993; Van Maanen and Barley, 1985), and cultural

2. The “sharedness” of culture has been part of a debate among police researchers. The traditional

view, as well as the recent portrayal of culture by the President’s Task Force on 21st Century

Policing (2015), assumes widespread collectiveness among police confronting similar occupational

strains (Crank, 1998). Empirical research findings, however, have demonstrated that cultural views

are fragmented among segments of officers via attitudinal styles (e.g., Brown, 1988; Cochran and

Bromley, 2003; Jermier et al., 1991; Paoline, 2004). Although both lines of research comprise con-

ceptually incorporating ideas regarding sharedness, neither has been aimed explicitly at measuring

how strongly officers share these views.