LEARNING OBJECTIVES
After reading the chapter, the student should
be able to:
1. Understand how and why the police subculture provides officers with mechanisms to justify, rationalize, and excuse their involvement in deviant activities.
2. Explain the need for deviant officers to maintain positive self-images and public images.
3. Describe how motives and justifications operate to enable deviant police to account for their misdeeds.
4. List, describe, and discuss neutralization techniques used by deviant police.
5. Discuss how the public is mentally prepared to accept and even rationalize prohibited police acts.
6. Describe how the boundaries of the police normative
system are constantly negotiated and tested.
CHAPTER OUTLINE
I. Subculture Facilitates Deviance
A. Provides Members with Different
Standards
B. Allows Departure from Society's
Expectation of Acceptable Behavior
II. Understanding Motive and Motivation
A. Motivation as Inner Drive
B. Motive as Device for Structuring
Behavior
1. Social
Constructions Give Meaning to Acts in a Social and Cultural Framework
2. Reasons
Communicate Actor's Explanation for Certain Behaviors
3. Justifications
Excuse Behavior, Mitigate Sanction, or Support the Correctness of a Certain
Course of Action
C. Motive Expressed before, during,
and/or after an Act
1. Motive
before an Act Operates in Pre-existing Social Frames of Reference
2. Motive
During an Act Composed of Past Frames of Reference
3. Motive
after the Fact Uses Excuse, Mitigation, and Justification
a.
Provides Structure, Organization, and Meaning for Behavior
b.
Provides Social Context for Others' Understanding of the Act
III. Sykes and Matza's Techniques of Neutralization
A. Police Denial of Responsibility--
"I didn't Mean It"
B. Police Denial of Injury--"It
Didn't Really Hurt Anybody"
C. Police Denial of the Victim--"They
Had It Coming to Them"
D. Police Condemnation of Condemners--"Everybody's
Picking on Me"
E. Police Appeal to Higher Loyalties--"I
Didn't Do It for Myself"
IV. Audience Acceptance of Justifications
A. Police Prepare Audience by
Invoking Language of Crime and Disorder
B. Police Characterize Victimized
Citizens as Criminals or Deviants
C. Police Modify Justifications
for Intended Audience
V. Negotiating Boundaries of Normative System
A. Individual and the Audience
Interact to Negotiate Moral and Social Order
B. If Justification Rejected
by Public, Justification Must be Modified, or Behavior Changed
C. Once Justification Accepted
by Audience, Further Deviance Becomes Easier for the Actor
MAJOR POINTS
1. The police subculture facilitates deviance by providing officers with means to justify, rationalize, and excuse their deviance. These mechanisms are essential since they permit deviant officers to maintain a positive self-image and to present a conformist, law abiding image to the public.
2. The police subculture provides officers with motives, reasons, and justifications that enable them to account for their involvement in proscribed activities.
3. Officers may use several after-the-fact "techniques of neutralization" to justify their misdeeds. These include: denial of responsibility, denial of injury, denial of victim, condemning condemners, and appealing to higher loyalties.
4. The police use various means to prepare the public to accept the actions of police. The police may capitalize upon citizen fear of crime. They may also portray victims of police deviance in highly unfavorable ways.
5. The boundaries of police norms and values are
constantly negotiated and tested. This involves a dynamic and interactive
process that is shaped by the moral, social and political order of the
larger society.
KEY TERMS, CONCEPTS, AND NAMES
motivation
techniques of neutralization
motive
denial of responsibility
reasons
denial of injury
justifications
denial of victim
as social shields against stigmatization
condemning the condemners appeal
to higher loyalties
negotiating the boundaries of
Gresham Sykes
the normative system
David Matza
CHAPTER SUMMARY
Police who engage in deviant activities are faced with psychological and social strains. Psychologically, police must be able to justify and rationalize their involvement in deviant activities. Socially, deviant police must also be able to project a conformist image to the public. The police subculture facilitates deviance by providing officers with the beliefs, values, definitions, and affirmations necessary to depart from society's expectation of acceptable behavior.
Various techniques are used by the police to break the bonds of society's norms while permitting them to maintain a law-abiding master status and public image. Motives, reasons, and justifications are all mechanisms that permit police to "explain away" their involvement in deviant acts.
The police culture instructs police on the use of several "neutralization" techniques to justify their involvement in illicit activities. These techniques provide deviant police with after-the-fact justifications for their conduct. Police may deny responsibility for committing a deviant act. Police may deny that anyone was injured by their deviancy. Police may deny that there was a victim of the deviant act. Police may condemn those who question police involvement in deviant acts. Finally, police may appeal to higher loyalties in an effort to justify their wrongdoings.
It is important that the public accept the justifications provided by police for their involvement in deviant activities. One way police prepare the public to accept police wrongdoing is by portraying crime as a deepening problem that threatens to take over society. Police may overemphasize or misuse statistics that show increases in certain forms of criminal activity. When police heighten concerns about such things as organized drug rings and violent youth gangs, the public is prepared to accept future deviant acts by police. The police may also influence public sentiments by portraying victims of police deviance detrimentally. Here, police characterize victims of police wrongdoing as drug addicts, ex-convicts, violent criminals, or mentally ill. When victims of deviance are portrayed as serious, violent, dangerous, or unstable offenders, the public tends to be skeptical of claims of abuse and may even rationalize the actions of the police.
If the public rejects justifications provided by
police for police deviance, one of two reactions must follow. Either the
justification provided by the police must be modified, or the police behavior
must be adjusted or discontinued. This process of acceptance/rejection,
modification/continuation is constant and ongoing. It describes the process
by which the norms and values of the police are negotiated, as well as
those for larger society.
Discussion Questions
1. Motives can be expressed before, during, or after an act. Provide an example of a motive that police might use before, during, or after stealing items at the scene of a burglary.
2. Do the police use motives to justify their behavior to themselves or to others?
3. Does Sykes and Matza's theory start with the premise that people/police are basically good or evil? Explain your answer.
4. Some theories are designed to explain certain types of criminal and deviant behaviors. Is Sykes and Matza's theory best used to explain police crimes against property, crimes against persons, or both?
5. The police, often in very subtle ways, prepare the public to accept police justifications for engaging in deviant acts. How has the public been prepared to understand the need for police to use extraordinary measures to fight the "war on drugs?" How has the public been prepared to understand the need for an aggressive police response to the "gang" problem?
6. Is there any situation where a police officer would be justified in slapping an offender? Would your peers, parents, teachers, or friends agree with your answer? Why or why not?
7. Is the general public more or less tolerant of police brutality than it was in the 1960s? What specific factors led to the change?
8. Are information restrictions on the
media's access to officers' work histories necessary?
Essay Questions
1 . Police use various mechanisms to account for their involvement in deviant activities. In the context of explaining police deviance, what are motives? How do motives differ from events, reasons, and justifications?
2. Are the techniques of neutralization ever used by non-deviant police? By non-deviant police supervisors? Explain.
3. Explain how the police prepare the public to accept police misdeeds. Are these tactics used primarily by large, urban police departments or by other law enforcement agencies as well? Explain.
4. Describe the process whereby the police normative system is continuously negotiated and tested. Does this process primarily describe how police norms and values are formed, or does it also account for the development of norms and values for society?
5. List Sykes and Matza's five general techniques of neutralization. Pick two of the techniques that you believe patrol officers use most frequently to justify their involvement in deviant activities. Pick two of the techniques that you believe police supervisors and administrators most commonly use to justify their involvement in deviant acts. Explain why your choices are, or are not, the same.
6. Deviant police may condemn their condemners by using three general techniques. List, describe, and discuss each of the techniques.