Improving Police Accountability Through Organizational Culture Change
This paper examines how law enforcement agencies can improve officer accountability and reduce misconduct by transforming dysfunctional police organizational culture. Drawing on Walker and Archibold's PTSR model — encompassing policy, training, supervision, and review — as well as anthropological and sociological analyses of police subculture by Kappeler, Sluder, and Alpert, the paper identifies core cultural problems including codes of silence, false bravery, exaggerated autonomy, and authoritarianism. It argues that systemic solutions such as early intervention systems, body-worn cameras, critical incident reviews, and national professionalism standards offer more effective paths to accountability than punitive measures alone.
- The Case for Organizational Culture Change in Policing: Thesis: cultural reform is key to accountability
- Dual Cultures: Official Policy Versus Tacit Subculture: Gap between official codes and lived police culture
- Dysfunctional Norms: Silence, Bravery, Autonomy, and Authoritarianism: Core cultural pathologies driving misconduct and deviance
- Early Intervention Systems and Supervisory Accountability: Non-punitive systems to correct behavior early
- Body-Worn Cameras as a Tool for Transparency: Cameras as evidence-based accountability mechanism
- Professionalism and Ongoing Assessment as Long-Term Solutions: National standards and review as lasting reform strategy
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What makes this paper effective
- The paper integrates multiple theoretical frameworks — Walker and Archibold's PTSR model alongside Kappeler, Sluder, and Alpert's anthropological perspective — to build a multidimensional argument rather than relying on a single source.
- Concrete, practical recommendations (body-worn cameras, early intervention systems, national professionalism standards) are grounded in specific scholarly citations, giving the argument both academic credibility and real-world relevance.
- The paper consistently connects systemic cultural problems to their behavioral consequences, making the causal logic clear and easy to follow throughout.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper demonstrates effective synthesis of sources: rather than summarizing each source separately, the writer weaves multiple authorities together to build a unified argument. For example, Kappeler et al.'s sociological analysis of subculture is used to diagnose the problem, while Walker and Archibold's PTSR model is used to prescribe solutions — showing how different sources can play complementary roles in a single argument.
Structure breakdown
The paper opens by establishing the thesis that cultural change is the key to police accountability, then distinguishes between official and tacit police cultures. It proceeds to examine specific dysfunctional cultural norms before proposing concrete remedies: early intervention, body cameras, and professionalism standards. Each section builds logically on the last, moving from diagnosis to prescription and ending with a forward-looking call for systemic reform.
The Case for Organizational Culture Change in Policing
The key to improving the efficacy of law enforcement agents is changing the organizational culture to one built on accountability. Walker and Archibold offer a new and potentially revolutionary framework for police accountability. Their new vision for law enforcement centers on the PTSR model, in which policy, training, supervision, and review are the core components of organizational change. The current organizational culture of law enforcement has several dysfunctional features, values, and norms. Viewing police culture from anthropological and sociological perspectives, as Kappeler, Sluder, and Alpert suggest, shows how norms, values, structures, and institutions create dysfunction, misbehavior, and corruption. Problems like excessive use of force and abuse of power can only be controlled through systematic changes in the organizational culture of policing.
Dual Cultures: Official Policy Versus Tacit Subculture
Changing organizational culture requires more than just altering departmental policies and procedural guidelines. After all, most departments maintain codes of ethics and guidelines that reflect an idealized set of values. In practice, however, there are two distinct cultures within policing: the legitimate one projected in official literature such as codes of ethics, and the tacit culture that is more implicitly conveyed through police culture socialization. Officers at an early stage in their training and careers are socialized into the police subculture, which perpetuates the dysfunctional behavioral habits and traits that lead to problems like abuse of power and excessive force.
References
Kappeler, V.E., Sluder, R.D., & Alpert, G.P. Forces of Deviance. 2nd edition. 1998.
Miller, L. & Tolivier, J. Implementing a Body-Worn Camera Program. Washington, DC: Office of Community Oriented Policing Services, 2014.
Sklansky, D.A. The persistent pull of police professionalism. New Perspectives in Policing, March 2011. Retrieved from: https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/232676.pdf
Walker, S. & Archibold, C.A. The New World of Police Accountability. Sage. Kindle Edition, 2014.
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