brodeur, jean-paul. 2005. police studies past and present - a reaction

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http://pqx.sagepub.com/content/8/1/44The online version of this article can be found at:

DOI: 10.1177/1098611104267326

2005 8: 44Police QuarterlyJean-Paul Brodeur

Peter K. Manning, and Kam Wonglice Studies Past and Present: A Reaction to the Articles Presented by Thomas Feltes, Larry T. Ho

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10.1177/1098611104267326 POLICEQUARTERLY(Vol.8,No.1,March2005)Brodeur/POLICESTUDIESPASTANDPRESENT

POLICE STUDIES PAST AND PRESENT:A REACTION TO THE ARTICLESPRESENTED BY THOMAS FELTES,LARRY T. HOOVER, PETER K. MANNING,AND KAM WONG

JEAN-PAUL BRODEUR

University of Montreal

Keywords: police; training; education; international; applied research;

theoretical research; obstacles; sociology of police; sociology

for police

The presentations that I am to discuss bear on research (Hoover, 2005 [thisissue]; Manning, 2005 [this issue]; Wong, 2003) andon training andeduca-tion (Feltes, 2003). As it happens, research and education are tricky in thatthey exist on two levels: They exist as research findings aimed to be com-

municated or taught, with the assumption that they are true, and they alsoexist in what they refer tothat is, aspects of policing on which they makestatements that can actually be tested for their validity and truth. Hence, thearticles may be discussed in two ways. We might first ask ourselves ques-tions on whether alleged trends in research are genuine, putting into brack-etsareactiontothetruthofwhatisassertedbytheresearchers.Forexample,when Hoover (2005) said that the myth that police make no difference waseliminated by thecrimedrop that occurred in the1990s in theUnitedStates,we may ask ourselves whether this assertion can actually be found inresearch. It can, George Kelling having, among many others, said so in sev-eral publicationsandinterviews (e.g.,Kelling & Coles,1996; Rosen,1999).We can also ask whether it is true. This question is much more controversial

as can be seen by reading the essays collected by Alfred Blumstein in The

POLICE QUARTERLY Vol. 8 No. 1, March 2005 4456DOI: 10.1177/1098611104267326 2005 Sage Publications

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Crime Drop in America, which tries to explain why crime rates dropped somuch (Blumstein & Wallman, 2000). Because the topic of the sessionwherethreeofthesearticleswerepresentedwasthestateofresearchandnotits factual truth (although this distinction may in the present context appearsuperficial), I will try to avoid being sidetracked into secondary issues andstick to the main topic of that session: past and present trends in research.

Although the four presentations had some points in common, they werealso markedly different. The articles by Hoover (2005), Manning (2005),and Wong (2003) addressed issues of researchalthough in a differentwayeither because of their subject or their approach. Hoover and Man-ning only dealt with the research undertaken in the United States, althoughManning also added a detailed review of developments in theUnited King-

dom. Wongcovered research in thewhole continentof Asia with an empha-sis on the obstacles to its development. However, with respect to Hooversand Mannings articles, the restrictive clause beginning with the wordonly is clearly a euphemism because there is much more research onpolicing in the United States and the United Kingdom than anywhere else.Feltess (2003) presentation at the conference mainly discussed policetraining and education in Europe with case studies of Germany, theNether-lands, and Scotland. Having been asked to focus on training and education,Feltes did not attempt to review police studies in continental Europe. Con-sequently, I will not try to discuss such diverse presentations togetherbecause that would entail setting the level of discourse at a level that is tooabstract.

POLICE EDUCATION AND TRAINING

I will begin my discussion with Feltess (2003) presentation, which,although it focused much more on police training than on police studies,raiseda crucial question that is relevant to all theproceedings of theEasternKentucky University conference on police studies. Not far into his article,Manning (2005) framed his own discussion of police studies in relation toBantons (1964) seminal distinction between sociology of the police andsociology for the police. This classic distinction is explained in Mannings(2005) article and I shall not repeat his explanation. Suffice it to say that a

sociology of the police is knowledge pursued within a theoretical frame-work to validate or invalidate said framework but that can also uncover fea-tures of policing that need to be changed. Sociology for the police is gener-ally empirical work undertaken on an ad hoc basis to solve problems of

Brodeur / POLICE STUDIES PAST AND PRESENT 45



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performance or image. It is important to consider that the differencebetween sociology of and for the police is not simply that the first pursuesknowledge for its own sake whereas the second is more pragmatically ori-ented, although there is some truth to this claim. In the French tradition,sociology makes a distinction between obligation de moyen(constraint on aprocess) and obligation de rsultat (an emphasis on outcomes). Beingunder theformer obligation implies that an organization is bound to respectcertain norms on the acceptability of means to fulfill its mandate and thusrejects that the end justifies the means. Satisfying the latter obligationimpliesthatoutputismoreimportantthanprocessandthatconstraintontheprocess can be relaxed to increase efficiency. Sociology of the police ismore mindful of the constraints that define due process whereas sociology

for the police is more sensitive to maximizing output.Feltes (2003) compared police training and education in three countries:

Germany, Scotland, and the Netherlands. On the basis of his descriptions,we can conclude that police training and education are more elaborate inGermany, with police universities stressing theoretical formation and gen-erally more time being devoted to police training and education than ineither Scotland or the Netherlands. Police training and education appear tobe the least developed in Scotland where the basic course only lasts 15weeks,with therest of theeducationbeing on-the-job training.Police train-ing and education stand in between these two models in the Netherlands,which is, nevertheless, closer to Germany than Scotland.

There is some paradox in these findings when they are profiled againstthe background of research. Not only can Scotland tap the considerableamountof policestudies undertaken in theAnglo-Saxon world, but it has itsown productive research centers in criminology (e.g., at the university ofEdinburgh, where Banton himself taught). By comparison, police sociol-ogy as a whole, in either variant distinguished by Banton (1964), is a verysmall field in Germany and the Netherlands. One could further pursue thissubject by noting that countries that devoted the most effort to police train-ingand educationFrance, Spain,Italy, andtheCanadianprovinceofQue-bec (each of these having the equivalent of a police university)have notdeveloped their own field of sociological police studies.

Beforeaskingwhere these institutionsget their textbooks from, I want to

stress that Bantons (1964) distinction is rather narrow, only referring, as itwere, to the work undertaken in sociology (or social sciences studies suchas anthropology or political science).1 The field of sociology for the policeisbut a small part of the researchundertaken for the police. For instance, the

46 POLICE QUARTERLY (Vol. 8, No. 1, March 2005)



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greatest amount of money spent in the United States on policing programsby the National Institute of Justice is devoted to DNA research and foren-sics. In light of theseremarks, I wouldlike to raise thefollowing questions:

1. What is the relative proportion of sociological studies of and for the police in policeeducation andtraining? Bear in mind that textbooks on criminal investigations do notgenerally even mention sociology and focus on psychology and forensics (scientificpolicing).

2. What importance should the sociology of police be given in educational programswhere students enroll for the purpose of pursuing a career in policing or security?

3. Whatis andshouldbe therelationship between police educationand theagenda of re-search on policing?

4. What is the relationship between police studies and nonsociological research of andfor policing (police psychology, economics, legal research, data mining, intelligence

analysis, forensics, and so forth)?

I shall come back to these questions in my comments on Mannings(2005) article.

POLICE STUDIES IN ASIA

Focusing mainly on the Peoples Republic of China (PRC), Hong Kong,India, and Bangladesh, Wong (2003) tried to explain why police studies inAsiawereneither asabundantnor aselaborate asone would wish themtobeand made a crucial distinction between the local context and the compara-tive study approach.Although Wong appeared forgood reasons to favor the

local context approach with its indigenous, theoretical framework andempirical data sets, there are features that seem to transcend geographicaland cultural differences.

Themain obstacles to thedevelopmentof research in policing in Asia arepolitical censure; the divorce between police theory and practice (fosteredby the viewthat policing is a vocation that can only be realized in the field);the conservative nature of Asian police organizations; Asian police organi-zations desire, in certain instances, to protect the police mystique; andAsian police organizations need to control information.

I submit that these obstacles are cross-cultural, the only real differencebeing the extent to which any particular research tradition has managed toovercome them. When Richard V. Ericson (1981), the noted Canadian

police researcher, published his first book presenting the findings of hisfieldwork on criminal investigation in Ontario (Making Crime), the policeforce harboring the unit where he conducted his research threatened to uselegal action to prevent the publication of his book. The police force was




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only deterred from doing so when Edward Greenspan, one of the foremostCanadian criminal lawyers at the time, announced that he would representEricson pro bono. More recently, Canadas most well-known expert incriminal profiling (of serial killers) was fired (or pressured to resign) fromthe Vancouver Police Department. Although he was a member of thedepartment for several years, he was not granted access to the departmentsofficer mess because he did not begin his career as an officer on the beat.

The obstacles to research on policing are alternatively much higher ormuch smaller in countries such as France, Italy, and Spain where policeorganizations are strongly centralized (thereareonly two policeagencies inFrance). When these organizations have a policy of fending off outsideresearchers,which is often the case, there is nowhere else to go to undertake

field research on policing. But when they open up to research, then theresearchers access becomes much more comprehensive. There is morefield research on policing in the United States than elsewhere because, Ibelieve, U.S. police forces are municipally based and, hence, much morenumerous. A researcher has many doors to knock on.

Wong(2003)noted that two obstacles to field research in Hong Kong areoperational secrecy and the need to protect the privacy of the citizens. Bothobstacles tend to merge, with the protection of privacyoften acting as a pre-text to bar the access of researchers to police files. Police are not so uptightabout theprotection of privacy when leaking information to the press as theRoyal Canadian Mounted Police did in respect to ex-Prime MinisterMulroney in a notorious case of allegations of political corruption (Brodeur,2000).

HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE

In various parts of his article, Wong (2003) noted that in the PRC, policestudies are undertaken as a subcategory of jurisprudence. He also men-tioned a number of well-crafted Law Reform Commission Reports onpolice abuse of powers. Having studied the development of police studiesin North America (whichalso includes CanadaandMexico) andelsewhere,I came up with the following sequence in time. In most Western countries,one initially finds various historical monographs based (in the best cases)

on declassified archives. After that, the research sequence really begins.First, police studies are often undertaken by the legal community as part ofresearch on due process (e.g., La Fave, 1965). Second, there are commis-sions of inquiry into various policing topicspolice wrongdoing being just




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one of them. This is a crucial step. Because of the legal powers granted tothem, these commissions have access to police files and conduct interviewswith policeadministrators whomust answerquestions. In this respect, I wasstruck by how many U.S. police scholars, such as Albert Reiss, conductedearly research fortheKatzenbach Commission. Third,policeofficers enrollin university programs and undertake research within the framework oftheir masters thesis or Ph.D. dissertation, which is afterwards published.Lastly, empirical research conducted by university-trained researcherspro-gressively develops outside the normative framework of legal studies. Thissequence is,of course, a relatively artificial construct, but it emphasizes therole played by important bodies such as royal, presidential, and local com-missions of inquiry in generating research on policing. Some of these

commissions transcendthedivide between researchon andforthepolice.

THE IMPORT-EXPORT BUSINESS INREFORMING POLICE ORGANIZATIONS

Wong (2003) contrasted professor Brogden (2005 [this issue]) andKrishnamurthys respective positions on community policing: the firstbeing critical of the marketing of community policing and the second see-ingmerit in the import-export business (the relationshipsometimesplays inboth directions as seen in David Bayleys (1979) descriptions of Japanesekobans having been influential in generating the concept of neighborhood

police ministations). Wong advocated more methodological rigorousnessbefore taking sides (although one suspects that his stress on the importanceof local context would move him closer to Brogdens criticism).

What are the reasons for the rather astonishing international spread ofcommunity policing? Showcase problem-oriented policing, community-oriented policing Disneylands have sprouted or are being planted in themost unlikely of places: the Congo-Kinshasa, the Ivory Coast, Morocco,and South American countries known for the extreme violence of theirpolice forcesin a bad year there are some 1,300 police homicides in SaoPaulo, Brazil (1,470 in 1995 according to Chevigny, 1999). It may be thatthe spread of community policing is but one more example of the decou-pling of discourse and practice in policing, with the international spread of

community policing reflecting more a political rhetoric of police legitimi-zation rather than actual policeprocedure. More crucially, Western govern-ments strive to promote their progressive international image through the




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funding of policing experiments artificiallyconducted in emerging countriessaid to be in transition toward democracy.

POLICE STUDIES: ON THE POLICE OR FOR THE POLICE

There is oneelement that Feltes (2003)andHoovers (2005) approach to

research on policing share: They view research from the standpoint of the

academic establishment. However, what they are referring to by academic

establishment needs to be spelled out explicitly. Feltes proposed to make a

distinction between police training andpoliceeducation. This distinction is

illuminating because it broadens the meaning of police education and

stresses links between police education and research on policing or, to bor-

row from Hoover, between police education and police studies.

If distinguishing policeeducation from police training allows us to think

of police education in a more encompassing way, Hoovers (2005) use of

the words academic establishment narrows considerably the meaning of

police education. In accounting for police studies in the 1970s, Hoover

stressed that

The contributions to our knowledge base about policing were not being made by the

university-based academic establishment. Certainly, the staff of the Police Founda-

tion included individuals with sound academic credentials, but established programs

in law enforcement and criminal justice were not playing a role. (p. 12)

There is noproblem in equatingan academicestablishment with a partic-ular institution proposing courses in law enforcement and criminal justice.

There is, however, a significant difficulty in reducing the academic estab-

lishment to policeacademiesand research centers with programs in law en-

forcementandcriminal justice. There was andstill is a considerableamount

of research on policing that is undertaken in academic establishments, al-

beit not ones specializing in offering programs in law enforcement and

criminal justice. In respect to the 1970s, Mannings Police Workwas pub-

lished in 1977 and Bayleys Forces of Orderin 1979. Both of these books,

although very different, are still influential contributions to the field, and

neither fit under theheading of policescience. There are many other contri-

butions that could be quoted as momentous, particularly if we refer to re-

search published in theUnited Kingdom such as Reiners The Blue-CoatedWorker published in 1978. Mannings (2005) article presents an encom-

passing list of meaningful contributions. It must be stressed that almost




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none of these came out of academic establishments, as Hoover (2005) usedthe phrase.

Neartheendofhisarticle,Hoover(2005)mentionedthreewaysinwhichan academic establishment might contribute to the improvement of polic-ing at multiple levels (p. 14): attempting to improve the educational stan-dards in thefield, assistingand training law enforcement personnel, anddo-ingbetterat a researchcontribution. Here I wouldlike to make threepoints:

1. What Hoover (2005) seems to mean by research is applied research. Without resur-rectingtheolddebateonwhetherknowledgeshouldbepursuedforitsownsake,Iwillstress that there are researchers involved in police studies who would not be comfort-able with theclaimthat allresearchon policing isapplied research.It is debatable, forinstance, whether Bittner (1990) believed that he was doing applied research or was

even connected with the improvement of policing when he wrote hisdecisive articlesdefining police through their use of nonnegotiable force.2. Second, although human rights and freedoms may not be as fashionable as they once

were, there isa growing bodyof research being undertakenin thefield of policeethicsand, more generally, within a nonlegalistic, normative framework. There are manypeople in Europe and Canada who date the birth of police studies to WilliamWestleys 1950Ph.D.dissertationtitled Violenceandthe Police: A SociologicalStudyof Law, Custom and Morality (Brodeur & Monjardet, 2003). The MIT Press subse-quently published itas a book in1970.Because policecannot operate efficiently with-out being trusted by communities, it was progressively discovered that police inter-vention and police ethics are not to be divorced, efficiency being dependent onlegitimacy andvice versa.This link between police efficiencyandpolicefairnesshasbeen strongly reasserted in a recent report released by a panel of experts in policing(Skogan & Frydl, 2004).

3. Finally, it should also be emphasized that policing encompasses both public policing

and private security. Groundbreaking research contributions to the field of private po-licing studies were made at the very beginning of the 1980s (e.g., various articles byShearing & Stenning, 1981, 1985). Reisss 1988 study of the private employment ofpublicpolice isessentialreadingfor anystudent of policing. In ourtimes ofproliferat-ing security technology, it would be unduly reductiveindeed, it would be severelycripplingto reduce police studies to research on the public police.

Most of the points made above are made in a more thorough manner inMannings (2005) article, which, as we previously saw, built on Bantons(1964) early distinction between research for the police and research on thepolice. In this regard, Hoover (2005) and Mannings (2005) articles appearto be at the opposite ends of the spectrum. Hoover can be viewed as callingfor more research for the police, whereas Manning made a strong case for

research on the police.According to Manning (2005), the dominant method, at least in theUnited States, is rampant empiricism based on observations, interviews,




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questionnaires,or official records with little effort to connect actualprac-tices with the theory and beliefs of police organizations (p. 36). Further-more, an inadequate rendition of the problematic notion of occupa-tional culture (p. 29) wrongly supersedes theorganizational context as themain determinant of policing in the few theories that strive for explanatorypower.

Manning (2005) stressed that links must be established between educa-tion and job requirements if police studies are to have some substance.What, then, of the possibility of integrating research on the police into theeducational curriculum within the organizational context of teaching stu-dents who want to embark on a career as practitioners in the field of secu-rity? A brief discussion of the programs offered by the School of Criminol-

ogy (SC) at theUniversity of Montreal will illustrate thedifficulties of suchintegration. TheSC offers courses in criminology and related subjects at alllevels of the curriculum (undergraduate, masters, and Ph.D.), and the vari-ous programs are neither more nor less demanding for the students thansimilar programs at other universities. The courses on policing are clearlyoriented toward research on the police. The SC selects less than 10% of allapplicants, according to their marks in college. As a result, between 80%and 90% of the students in criminology are women, who perform muchbetter than men in college (the figure is closer to 90%).

Since 1999, the SC has created a new undergraduate programpolicingand securitythat is explicitly addressed to persons aiming to becomesecurity professionals (police, private security managers, and so forth).This program is less selective (more than oneapplicant in four being admit-ted), with the result that most of the students are male. The teaching person-nel are composed of tenured professors of the SC and lecturers who areoften ex-police, recruited according to need. Most of the courses originallyhad the same content as those offered to criminology students, with addi-tional courses chosen from teachings given to law students and other socialscience departments.

It was soon found that the students in the new policing and security pro-gram had more difficulty succeeding in their curriculum than the criminol-ogy students, their marks being noticeably lower. Furthermore, professorswho taught classes in the new program realized that students considered

teachings that had no practical connection to their job as police or securitypersonnel as philosophy, which is not, needless to say, a term of praise. AttheSC, teacher performance is systematically assessed by thestudents:One




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short questionnaire is filled by the student after some 5 weeks of teaching(to see if the course isaimed in the right direction), and a final questionnairewith more than 20 questions is filled at the end of the course. These studentassessments are used for promotion and rehiring purposes (in the case oflecturers). Professors who were theory oriented were often criticallyassessed, the students overtly complaining to the chairman of the schoolabout some of them. The assembly of career professors at the SC passed aresolution according to which none of them could be obliged by their chair-person to teach in the policing and security program. Few of them actuallydo,most courses being taughtby lecturerswhoemphasize the jobrelevanceof what they teach.

The SC and other teaching bodies (at the level of public colleges where

Techniques of Policing [Techniques Policires] is offered as an optionalprogram) have tried to shed light on the predicament described above. Thebasic finding is that students aiming to pursue a career in policing and secu-rity do not view their future as that of knowledge workers (Ericson &Haggerty, 1997), to say the least, and are strongly oriented toward crisisintervention, which they view as the core of their future profession. Thisview is sharedby policepractitioners and thepublic. Within itspolicing andsecurity program, the SC recently organized a seminar on criminal intelli-gence in which police officers from the main police organizations in Que-bec participated. A recurrent theme was the difficulty recruiting police intointelligence units, these not being perceived as a gratifying assignment. Itwasactually acknowledged by some policemanagers that they assigned theleast performing members of their force to intelligence units.

To sum up, the SC teaches two programs: one in criminology, withcourses on policing, and another one in policing and security that isaddressed to students who want to undertake a career in security. The con-tent of the courses taught in the two programs can now be neatly splitbetween research on the police (criminologists do not object to being lec-tured on research for the police aswell) and research for the police, which isaddressed to students who have enrolled in the policing and security pro-gram. This situationcould perhaps be remedied by attempts to show would-be police professionals how important it is for them to be knowledgeable inresearch on the police. The problems here are (a) that they have little

patience formetateaching(i.e., teaching on what ought to be taught) and(b)that they can use their assessment of members of the faculty to convey theirdispleasure.




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ARE WE STUCK IN THE FUTURE?

Inthelastpartofhisarticle,Hoover(2005)askedhimselfWhatsnext?

and answered that the current decade will be called the technology era(p. 14). It well may be. However, I want to express some reservations inrespect to this brave prognosis.

It is increasingly believed that forensic sciences, police intelligence, anddata mining will revolutionize criminal investigations. I have been workingin the archives of the Montreal Police Department for 3 years reviewinginvestigation files from 1990 to the present day. I have more than 300 caseson file, especially 154 homicide cases. See Table 1 for some preliminaryresults on how a homicide suspect is identified.

As one can see, the part played by forensics (including DNA), databanks, surveillance technology, and even investigative work is minimal,with the greater part of investigations being solved in a matter of hours by

intervening patrolpersons or withthesuspectssurrendering almost immedi-ately to the police. Of all cleared homicide cases that I examined, 59% weresolved in 24 hr or less. These findings were first the result of a thoroughexamination of police files. Afterwards, I discussed them at length with


TABLE 1. Principal and Auxiliary Means in Identification of Homicide Perpetrators in aSample From Montreal Police (n = 154)

% Cases No. Cases % Cases No. Cases

Where Where Where Where

Mean Principal Principal Auxiliary Auxiliary

Eyewitness 22 34 11 18Spontaneous confession 20 31 7 11Police informant 12.5 19 5 8Caught in the act through 911 10 16 11 17Dying victim/surviving covictim 10 16 0.6 1Denounced by parent 4 6 3 5Denounced by friend 4.5 7 3 5Routine investigation 2 3 0.6 1

Police lineup 1.2 2 6.5 10Electronic surveillance (audio/video) 1.2 2 0.6 1Instigation 1.2 2 0 0Police intelligence 0.6 1 0 0Forensics 0.6 1 5 6Outside intervention 1.2 2 0 0Other Not applicable Not applicable 41.5 59

Note: There are missingvalues in both columns (cases involvingseveral victims or several perpetratorsare counted as one case for the purpose of this table).



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homicide detectives during interviews.My archival findingsare in line withtheir investigative experience. Technology is of limited help in actuallysolving cases (identifying and finding the perpetrator). According to thedetectives whom I interviewed, forensics play their most significant roleduring the trial because judges and juries are much more impressed byproof backed by technology than by the account of an eyewitness (not tomention confessions, which are increasingly viewed with suspicion).

Of course, I do not believe that predicting that we are entering an era oftechnology is wrong. With respect to what is conspicuous and imposesitself on the perception of researchers and the public, technology is cer-tainly prominent, as forensics and scientific policing are. The real questionis to find where in criminal justice and policing it generates its most

portentous effects.

NOTE

1.When Michael Banton(1964)wroteThePolicemanin theCommunityhe was teachingin the Department of Social Anthropology at the University of Edinburgh.

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Jean-Paul Brodeur is a full professor at the School of Criminologyof the Uni-

versity of Montreal. He is also director of the International Centre for Com-

parativeCriminologyat this same university. He has published severalbooks

and articles on policing in various languages (English, French, German,

Portuguese, and Spanish).

http://pqx.sagepub.com/

brodeur, jean-paul. 2005. police studies past and present - a reaction

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