Cara E. Rabe-Hemp

POLICEwomen or PoliceWOMEN? Doing Gender and Police Work

This work originates from a set of accounts given by female police officers to determine how they construct their identity and their image of themselves in relation to their gender, as they talk about their roles as police, and the broader roles of men and women in society. Despite policewomens fight for equality in policing, women not only differentiated themselves from their male counterparts, but also described “doing gender” (West & Zimmerman, 1987) and “doing police work” collaboratively. Women actively resisted and adopted stereotypical norms of femininity and policing, broadening their opportunities for work in the male dominated occupation while reinforcing their traditional conception of gender difference.

Women Police: The Use of Force by and Against Female Officers

Abstract This study investigated the use of force by and against women police officers using survey data from a large sample of female and male officers in six departments. Results suggested that female officers and same-gender female-female officer pairs used less force, and were less likely to use physical force, in police-citizen encounters when compared to their male counterparts. There was no evidence supporting the proposition that citizens used less force against female officers compared with male officers. In fact, the findings indicated that citizens used significantly more force against female officers relative to male officers in domestic calls. Although female officers were more likely to engage in underpredicted policing; that is, use less force than the situation would normally dictate, underpredicted policing was not related to an increase in the likelihood of officer injury. Implications for women officers, police use of force, and the institution of policing are discussed.

Violence Against Police Officers: Are Female Officers at Greater Risk?

Violence against officers is an important topic not only because of the negative consequences to the officer but also because it is at the core of one of the most debated issues regarding female officers—their ability to deal with hostile citizens. Using arrest data from several metropolitan departments, the research compared gender differences in assaults on officers, as well as situational and individual officer factors related to the assaults. The findings suggest that when compared to male officers, female officers are at an increased risk for being assaulted in family conflict situations. Furthermore, the results suggest that female officers are at the greatest risk of being assaulted in family conflict situations when the assailant is impaired. More research is needed to better understand why family conflict situations and intoxicated assailants are especially dangerous for female officers and what policies can be instituted to mitigate this potentially threatening situation.

Community characteristics and policing styles in suburban agencies

Recent policing reforms have strongly emphasized the role of community context in determining the form and content of effective policing, along with the traditional influence of organizational structures. Recognizing the increasing suburbanization of US communities, this study examines the empirical support for the underlying contextual and structural premises of these reforms in a sample of midwestern suburban communities. Merging data from a telephone survey of 194 municipal police departments in the five counties of the Chicago metropolitan statistical area with data on communities from other government sources, multiple regression was used to assess the relative importance of community context and organizational structure factors in accounting for differences in departmental policing styles. The findings both support and contradict some basic assumptions of current community‐oriented policing reforms, as well as some of the findings of prior studies. They underline the importance of empirically testing our theoretical assumptions in all types of community settings.

Female Forces: Beauty, Brains, and a Badge

As a lens through which gender is negotiated and reproduced, this study examines Female Forces, a reality television show, which follows women police in the highly contested task of crime fighting. Results suggest that the media depictions of women police reify the stereotypes that women police are caretakers and nurturers, rather than crime fighters. This is accomplished through an overemphasis on femininity, domestication, and beauty in the officers’ behaviors and narratives. The implications for women police, citizens, and the administrators who hire them are critical as our notions of what female police are and should be are represented, digested, and re-created through television.

An Analysis of Advertisements: A Lens for Viewing the Social Exclusion of Women in Police Imagery

The present study was designed to analyze gender stereotypes in U.S. print advertisements of police officers in a professional police magazine (n = 680). A decade (1996–2006) of advertisements was examined using E. Goffmans (1979) framework for content/frame analysis. The results suggest that women (n = 99) are numerically underrepresented and socially excluded from the imagery of crime-fighting; rather, they are portrayed as being in lower ranks, stereotypically as caretakers and nurturers. The implications for women police, the citizens they serve, and the administrators who hire them are critical, as advertisements function as a feedback loop whereby notions of what a female officer is are represented, digested, and recreated.

An Exploration of Recidivism and the Officer Shuffle in Police Sexual Violence

By examining a decade of newspapers accounts in the Midwest, the current study explores the nature of repeat or recidivist police sexual violence (PSV) in comparison to first-time offending in the characteristics of the offenders, nature of the PSV acts, and the departments and criminal justice system response. Results show that more than 41% of PSV cases are committed by recidivist officers who averaged 4 victims each over a 3-year span of offending. The idea of the officer shuffle is explored in the context of sexual offending by police, indicating that a minority of officers move across jurisdictions maintaining police certification despite allegations of violence and misconduct. Implications explore how policy changes, such as a national reporting system for police sexual offending, would impact problem-prone PSV offending.

A survey of maternity policies and pregnancy accommodations in American police departments

As police organizations in the United States accommodate pregnancy through the adoption and the implementation of disability and maternity policies, managers must negotiate the institutional pressures and organizational conflicts inherent to allocating resources. This study establishes a record of maternity policies in US agencies and indicates that maternity leave has morphed into family leave, with agencies reporting resources invested in paternity leave, and shared family leave. While prior research has suggested a lack of policy in American police departments, this research confirms that maternity and light duty policies have been established.

Citizen complaints and gender diversity in police organisations

Using data from 464 law enforcement agencies drawn from the Law Enforcement Administrative and Management Statistics survey, the purpose of this study was to evaluate whether the number of institutional rules and organisational structures an agency has in place to identify, collect and manage information on the use of force incidents explains the previously reported findings that greater levels of female officer representation is associated with more police use of force. Agencies reported receiving a total of 18,711 citizen complaints in 2003 and 22,146 complaints in 2007. Approximately 6.7% of the complaints were sustained in 2003 and 8% in 2007. In 2007, women made up approximately 11% of the sworn officers in the agencies under examination, ranging from 1.4% to 40.1%, up slightly from 2003 when the average was 10.1% Based on the disruption thesis, we hypothesise that increasing female representation in police organisations is a catalyst by which norms and practices become formalised and embedded in the organisations institutional structure. The findings confirm this connection and suggest that the relationship between gender diversity and citizens complaints of inappropriate use of force is a function of the number and quality of rules, policies and mechanisms designed to capture and quantify complaints. These results have implications for the increased representation of women in law enforcement. A more robust research agenda on women and policing is needed to explore ways to reduce the negative conflict associated with increasing gender diversity while maintaining a police force that accurately represents the diversity in modern society.

Exploring Administrators’ Perceptions of Light-Duty Assignment

Through the lens of organizational justice, this study explored administrators’ perceptions of light-duty assignment in police agencies in Illinois. The majority consider light-duty assignment a necessary practice for modern police agencies, although opinions varied on the need for the formalization of policy, especially for off-duty injury or pregnancy. Qualitative analyses of administrators’ perceptions suggest financial and organizational challenges to maintaining light-duty policies, including the costs of overtime pay to cover injured officers’ shifts, the struggle to meet mandatory strength minimums, and malingering. The findings have important implications for officer well-being and morale, departmental administrative rule making, and community safety.