Table Of ContentFAIR COP:
LEARNING THE ART OF POLICING
Janet B.L. Chan with Chris Devery and Sally Doran
Police forces around the world have been undergoing major social
and organizational changes in recent years. In this unique longitudi-
nal study, Janet Chan, Chris Devery, and Sally Doran analyse the
complexity of police socialization in response to changing conditions.
Following 150 new police recruits through two years of training and
apprenticeship, the authors question the traditional model of social-
ization that assumes a degree of stability and homogeneity in the
organizational culture. They suggest that recruits' developmental
paths are often quite diverse and the overall police culture is increas-
ingly subject to change.
Drawing on interviews, observations, and questionnaires, the
authors depict the complex processes by which recruits adapt, re-
define, cope with, and make sense of the positive and negative
aspects of their training and apprenticeship. Bringing together
rigorous quantitative analysis with rich ethnographic description,
Fair Cop provides new empirical data and theoretical understanding
regarding change and the reproduction of police culture.
JANET B.L. CHAN is a professor in the School of Social Science and
Policy at the University of New South Wales.
CHRIS DEVERY teaches at New South Wales Police College.
SALLY DORAN is a research assistant at the School of Social Science and
Policy at the University of New South Wales.
This page intentionally left blank
JANET B.L. CHAN
with Chris Devery
and Sally Doran
Fair Cop:
Learning the Art of Policing
UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS
Toronto Buffalo London
www.utppublishing.com
© University of Toronto Incorporated 2003
Toronto Buffalo London
Printed in Canada
ISBN 0-8020-3663-5 (cloth)
ISBN 0-8020-8491-5 (paper)
Printed on acid-free paper
National Library of Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Chan, Janet B.L. (Janet Bick Lai), 1948-
Fair cop : learning the art of policing / Janet B.L. Chan; with
Chris Devery and Sally Doran.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-8020-3663-5 (bound). ISBN 0-8020-8491-5 (pbk.)
I. Police training. 2. Police - Attitudes. I. Devery, Chris
II. Doran, Sally III. Title.
HV7923.C43 2003 363.2'071 C2002-904349-2
This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Humanities
and Social Sciences Federation of Canada, using funds provided by the
Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial assistance to
its publishing program of the Canada Council for the Arts and the
Ontario Arts Council.
University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial support for
its publishing activities of the Government of Canada through the
Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP).
Contents
Acknowledgments vii
1 Organizational Socialization and Professionalism 3
2 Research Organization and Methods 41
JANET CHAN AND SALLY DORAN
3 Joining the Organization 62
4 Learning at the Academy 80
CHRIS DEVERY
5 Learning in the Field 145
6 Taking On the Culture 201
7 Negotiating the Field 248
8 Doing Gender 276
SALLY DORAN AND JANET CHAN
9 Conclusion: Learning the Art of Policing 301
Notes 317
Bibliography 325
Index 335
This page intentionally left blank
Acknowledgments
This study was funded by an Australian Research Council (ARC) Col-
laborative Research Grant (1995-7) as a joint venture between the Uni-
versity of New South Wales (UNSW) and the New South Wales Police
Service (NSWPS), with Janet Chan as the chief investigator and Chris
Devery as the chief collaborator. The success of the grant application
was due partly to the support and assistance of the then assistant
commissioner, Jeff Jarratt of the NSWPS, the then dean of studies at the
NSW Police Academy, David Bradley, and the then Director of the
UNSW Research Office, Merrilee Robb.
Many people in the NSW Police Service contributed to the success of
this study. I would like to give my special thanks to the class of police
recruits who generously agreed to participate in the study. The project
would not have been possible without their consent and cooperation.
More than anything else, we are grateful for their appreciation of the
value of research. Thanks are due also to the many academy staff,
patrol/local area commanders, education development officers, field
training officers, shift supervisors, and other police officers who coop-
erated with and facilitated our fieldwork over the two years. I would
also like to thank Julie Stewart for facilitating the negotiation of the
publishing agreement.
Chris Devery acted as our first point of contact at the police service,
and the project benefited from his ability to convey the importance of
the research to a wide range of people within the service and secure
their understanding and support. Chris also undertook some of the
fieldwork, provided valuable comments on the manuscript, and wrote
chapter 4.
Sally Doran provided the pillar of strength for this complex and at
viii Acknowledgments
times difficult project. Besides helping design the research instruments,
interviewing and observation, managing and analysing data, main-
taining financial accounts, and conducting library research, she man-
aged the onerous task of organizing the data collection activities - all of
this with efficiency, enthusiasm, and meticulous attention to detail. Her
ability to orchestrate the project's complex research tasks around an
inflexible timetable while meeting other demands of the research (all
this while working half-time!) was truly remarkable. It is not an exag-
geration to say that the project would not have succeeded without her
strong and capable hands. Sally is also the junior author of chapter 2
and the senior author of chapter 8.
For their assistance with the interviews and observations, I thank (in
alphabetical order) Lyn Barnes, Liz Bowen, Jody Camden, Lise Carroll,
Fay Davidson, Sara Graham, Marion Horsky, Frank Leonard, Kim
McKay, Michael Murphy, Deirdre Shields, Lisa Simone, Richard
Thorowgood, and Darren Viscovich. Frank Leonard deserves special
thanks for his thoughtful contributions to the project and his willing-
ness and ability to meet some of the more demanding aspects of field-
work. Sadly, Marion Horsky passed away before the end of the project.
She was a source of inspiration to us: even when she was too ill to
contribute, she never lost her enthusiasm for the project. I also thank
Lise Carroll and Deirdre Shields for assisting with the data analysis of
some of the surveys. For their help transcribing the interviews, I thank
Beverly Loughton, Karen Monkerud (who also assisted with data
entry), Fran Smithard, and Janelle Stevens.
I am grateful for the administrative support given to the project by
the University of New South Wales, especially Susan Byrne at the
School of Social Science and Policy, who handled the paperwork, and
Warwick Dawson at the research office, who dealt with various aspects
of the industry partnership arrangements. For their persistence and
hard work in negotiating with the NSW Police Service a licence to
publish, I thank Peter Dowdall and James Walsh of the UNSW Re-
search Office.
I would also like to thank my colleagues at the School of Social
Science and Policy for their support over the years. I benefited from my
study leave at the University of British Columbia in the second half of
1997. My appointment as Walter S. Owen Visiting Chair at the Faculty
of Law and as visiting scholar at Green College provided a stimulating
environment for my work on this project. Thanks are also due to David
Dixon, Richard Ericson, Peter Manning, Peter Saunders, and two anony-
Acknowledgments ix
mous reviewers of the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Criminology
for their comments on the paper 'Negotiating the Field/ in which I
explored some of the theoretical arguments of this book.
Virgil Duff deserves special thanks for his support of this book. The
comments of three anonymous reviewers for University of Toronto
Press and the Humanities and Social Sciences Federation of Canada
(HSSFC) were invaluable in helping me sharpen the focus of the book.
The manuscript benefited from the careful editing by Matthew Kudelka.
I also gratefully acknowledge the subsidy granted by the Aid to Schol-
arly Publications Program of the HSSFC.
Finally, I would like to thank my partner Peter Saunders and my
children Karen Beilharz and Kenneth Chan, who have supported me
through years of trying to balance the demands of work with meeting
their needs. I also thank Karen for preparing the index.
Preliminary results of this study were presented as papers at learned
conferences over the years. These include: J. Chan, 'Learning the Craft
of Policing.' Paper to the Annual Conference of the Australian and
New Zealand Society of Criminology, Wellington, NZ, 1996; J. Chan,
'"Good" and "Bad" Policing: Views of Recruits.' Paper to the Annual
Conference of the Australian and New Zealand Society of Criminology,
Brisbane, 1997; J. Chan. 'Learning the Culture: The Effect of Age, Gen-
der, Education and Ethnicity on the Socialisation of Police Recruits.'
Paper to the American Society of Criminology Annual Conference, San
Diego, 1997; J. Chan and S. Doran, 'Learning in the Field: The Transmis-
sion of Cultural Knowledge in Police Organisations.' Paper to the Aus-
tralian and New Zealand Society of Criminology Annual Conference,
Surfers Paradise, 1998; and J. Chan, 'Negotiating the Field: New Obser-
vations on the Making of Police Officers.' Paper to the Australian and
New Zealand Society of Criminology Annual Conference, Perth, 1999.
A substantially expanded and revised version of 'Negotiating the Field'
was published in 2001 in the Australian and New Zealand Journal of
Criminology.
