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Subterranean processes in the maintenance

of power: an examination

of

the mechanisms

coordinating police action‘

CLIFFORD D . SHEARING

Cet article souligne to ut d’abord qu‘en dCpit de le urs idCaux Cgalitaires, les dim ocra ties

libCrales me tte nt ii profit leur systPme juridique p our mainten ir les structures d’autoritC

dans les conflits politiques. L ’auteur atti re ensu ite l’attention su r la thCorie requise pour

dCgager les mCcan ismes prCcis serva nt perpCtuer cette hypocrisie. Dans ce contexte

thCorique, l’organisation policiere est vue comm e une thCorie sociale laique qui perm et aux

policiers dans l’exercise d e leur fonc tion de choisir leur cand idat la criminalisation

sous

couvert de la loi. L‘auteur Ctudie la fois les aspects critiques de la cultu re polici6re et les

rapports de celle-ci avec les structu res sociales au sein desquelles elle opere.

This paper begins with t he observation that the legal system in liberal democracies, despite

its egalitarian ideals, is used as re source in po litical conflict to m aintain structu res of

dominance. It then draws attention to th e theoretical requirement to identify the specific

mechanisms tha t provide for this persistent and systematic institutional hypocrisy.

W ithin this theoretical context, th e police subculture is identified as a lay social theory

which serves to direct working p oliceme n in the ir selection of candidates for criminaliza-

tion and in th eir use of the law to initiate th is process. Both the critical features of the

police subculture and its relationship to the social structures within which police operate

are con sidered.

One of the most persistent theoretical questions in sociological theory has been

how to relate social structure and interaction (c.f. Berger and Luckman, 1967).

This question remains a major concern. Within the context of the conflict

perspective, it has been posed as the problem of identifying the processes that

provide for th e reproduction

of

power relations (Turk, 1969; Giddens, 1976). In

specifying

this problem, conflict theorists have identified the role of the state as

critical. Quinney, for example, has argued that ’the theoretical problem at this

time is that of linking th e class structure

of

advanced capitalism to th e capitalist

state.’ (1977: 80). This problem implies questions such as, ’how is it that th e state

does what it is supposed to do’, or more concretely, ’what are the mechanisms

through which it preserves the hegemony of the dominant classes’ (Buroway,

1978: 59).

I

would like to th an k m y colleagues Richard Ericson, John Hagan, Jeff Leon, Dianne

MacFarlane, Austin Turk

and

Livy Visano for their com ments on th is paper.

I am

grateful to W anda Crause for h er assistance with the field work.

This paper was received February,

1978,

and accepted August,

1979

University

of

oronto

Rev.

canad.

SOC

An th. /Canad.

Rev.

SOC h t h .

18 3) 1981



284 C L I F F O R D S H E A R I N G

The re is considerable research, especially in t he area of criminal justice, that is

relevant to these questions. O ne of the conclusions drawn from it is that law is used

as a resource, or weapon, in t he preservation of power relations (B ittner, 1967,

1970; Chambliss and Seidman, 1971; Turk, 1976). In support of this, researchers

have argued th at t he egalitarian safeguards built in to the law in liberal democracies

(via a formal emphasis on universalistic and behavioural, rather than status,

criteria) are system atically underm ined in practice by law enforcers who in making

decisions emphasize extra-legal criteria that identify persons as members of

’problem populations’ (Spitzer, 1975; Quinney, 1977). Criminality, it is argued, is

an ascribed status applied disproportionately to the least powerful (Turk, 1969).

As

a consequence of these arg um ents , th e traditional conception of t he law as a

guide to law enforcement (Pound, 1942) has been challenged by t he more cynical

view that the law acts not t o direct law enforcem ent, but to provide an ideological

resource tha t can be used to legitimize political control as a non-political activity

based on egalitarian criteria (Carlen,

1976).

This raises the question of the

coordination of law enforcement, and suggests that whatever the relationships

between class structure and law enforcement embedded in the law Chambliss,

1964;

Kolko,

1963;

(Cham bliss and Seidman,

1971;

Quinney,

1970, 1974),

one

mu st look beyond t he law itself if o ne is to identify the mechanisms th at provide

for the sy stematic introduction of extra-legal status considerations in law

enforcement (Hopkins, 1975: 615; Turk, 1977: 214-15).

As the ‘ga tekeepers’ of crim inal justice (Reiss,

1971)~

he police have tended to

become the focus of mu ch research. H owever, u nde r th e impact of the liberal ideal

of ’equal justice,’ thi s research has been inclined to address th e problem of

inequality produced by patte rns of law enforce men t. Cons equen tly, the questio ns

most often addressed have been: A re th e police biased in their tre atm ent of the

public? Do they discriminate? Are they fair? (Skolnick, 1966; Berkley, 1969;

Bayley and M endelsohn,

1968;

Chevigny,

1969;

Lambert,

1970;

Banton,

1973;

Rosett and Cressey,

1976).

W hile much has been learned from this research about

the correlation betw een situational factors (such as age, sex, race, socio-economic

status, demeanour, complainants’ preference and previous record) and law

enforcement (Piliavin and B riar,

1965;

Reiss and Bordua,

1967;

Black,

1968,1970;

Black and Reiss, 1970; Sullivan and Segal, 1972; Sykes and Clark, i975) ,

remarkably little progress has been made in accounting for how policemen act

together

so

tha t their ’joint action’ (Blumer,

1969)

systematically contributes to

the reproduction of relations of s ubord ination and dom inance.

To the extent tha t an answer t o this question has been soug ht, attention has been

directed towards t he influence ex ercised by p olitical and s enior police autho rities

(Wilson, 1968; Chevigny, 1969; Davis, 1969; Grosman, 1975). However,

althoug h this research has enhanced o ur unde rstanding of political control of t he

police, it suggests that this influence is too variable and too related to partisan

interests of individuals and political factions to provide a single satisfactory

explanation fo r the system atic, continuou s, and pervasive use of statu s criteria in

the m aintenance of order.

In considering how t o approach th e coordination of police activity, the

relationship drawn between consensus and conflict theory by David Lockwood

(1956) is worth recalling. Lockwood argued tha t consensus theory, w ith its focus



285 S U B T E R R A N E A N P R O C E S S E S I N T H E M A I N T E N A N C E O F P O W E R

on explicit political and legal norms, directed attention to the superstructural

processes involved in t he ideological work of legitimation , while conflict theo ry,

with its Marxian heritage, directed attention to a more substructural level of

analysis. This view of the contributions of consensus and conflict theory suggests

that if th e problem of the coord ination of police activity is to be resolved, atten tion

should be directed to the su bterrane an levels within the police organization and,

more generally, within t he state. Th is suggestion finds support in the frequ ently

cited police adage that policing is not done ‘by the book and that the operating

principles of police work a re learned on the job, and fo rm part of the intu ition and

common sense that seasoned policemen acquire (Wilson, 1968; Sacks, 1972;

Kirkham, 1974; Grosman, 1975; Manning, 1977). It is thus, perhaps, common

sense, or ’rules of thumb’ (Manning, 1977: 162) that make up the police

subculture, to w hich attention should be directed in searching for the processes

coordinating law enforcemen t practice.

The police sub cultu re has long been a topic of research within th e sociology of

deviance and a subs tantial body of literatu re has been developed (Wexler, 1974).

Thro ugho ut, one encounters the observation that t he police view the public from a

we/they perspective. They see themselves, it is argued, as a closely knit group set

apart from the public. T hey believe, it is maintained, that the public view them as a

hated and distrusted enemy (Manning, 1971)~ nd they, in turn, reciprocate by

regarding the public as their enemy (Westley, 1970; Manning, 1971; Harris,

1973; Wexler, 1974). This perceived enem y relationship, it is suggested, operates

to encourage police solidarity, secrecy, and a hostile, sometimes violent, response

to the public (W estley, 1953, 1956). In explaining this cluster of beliefs and the

responses they encourage . the police subculture has been conceived of as a defense

mechan ism developed by th e police in response to the dem ands made on them by

the public (Buckner, 1972)~he public’s hostility, and the danger and ambiguities

of police work (Reiss and B ordua, 1967; Kirkham, 1974). This conception of th e

police subculture provides little support for the notion that it may be part of a

subterranean process linking police work to t he perservation of established power

relations. On the contrary, it suggests that far from relating the police to any

interest group w ithin society, their subculture sets them apart from all such groups

by defining them as an independent body isolated from, and independent of, all

others.

Recent research by Shearing ( ~ 9 7 7 ) ~owever, calls into question the applicabil-

ity of th e ’public as enem y’ metaphor, by a rgu ing tha t it is applicable only to one of

the publics which th e police recognize as relevant to their work, and that it is not

used by th e police with respect to t he public at large. In developing this point,

Shearing notes that a fund am ental distinction is made by the police between the

people they serve and th e troublemakers th ey control in the course of providing

their service - hat is, between t he people they do things for and those they do

things

to

(Hughes, 1971). It is because this distinction has been largely ignored in

the literature on t he police subculture that th e relevance of this culture, as a

mechanism for coordinating police activity which links it to the larger social

structure , has been missed.

This paper reviews these findings to show how the police subculture con tributes

to the maintenance of pow er within political and legal structure that defines



286

C L I F F O R D

S H E A R I N G

police action in egalitarian terms.

It

begins by examining the police view of

troublemakers and shows how th e police subcu lture acts as a social theory fo r

coordinating and managing police involvement in class conflict. This discussion

raises the issue

of

th e potential effects of th e conflict between th e police subcu lture

and liberal, democratic ideals. Th is leads to a consideration of th e way in which th e

police subc ulture serves to isolate t he police fro m the influence of these ideals.

This, in its tu rn , raises the question

of

the origin

of

th e police subculture and its

relationship to social class.

T H E R E S E A R C H

The tendency in so much literature to gloss over distinctions between different

police publics seems, in part, to have been a result of the influence of labelling

theory which focussed on police response to troublemakers. O ne consequence of

this was the highlighting of this public as the police public. My research, in

contrast, took place in a set tin g in which victims and complaints were as relevant to

th e police as troublem akers. This setting he comm unications centre of a large

urban Canadian police department where citizen calls for police assistance were

received and responded to provided an opportunity to examine the police

conception of bo th th e people the y do things to and those th ey serve. Furthe r, as

policemen from m any oth er parts of t he dep artment were regularly in touch with

the cen tre, it was possible to develop a police view of citizens based a wide variety of

individuals. Research for this s tu dy took place over a six-m onth period in the fall of

1971, nd involved the o bservation

of

over sixty sh ifts as well as the tape-recording

of several thousand telephone co nversations between both policemen in the centre

and citizens, and betw een policemen in t he cen tre and policemen in other parts

of

the department (see Shearing, 1977 for a detailed description of t he research).

P O L I C E I N V O L V E M E N T IN C L A S S C O N F L I C T

In contrast to th e cu rre ntly accepted view of th e police subculture, m y research

indicated th at t he police did no t view themselves as enemies of th e public at large.

In

this dealings with citizens, found that policemen made a fundamental

distinction between the public on the on e hand, and third-and fourth-class

citizens, the dregs, or m ore expressively, the scum, on th e other. This

bifurcated concept of citizens related directly to t he work of policemen in t he centre

and those elsewhere in the department. The public consisted of those th e police

believed they should serve and protect. T he scum were very different. Th ey were

th e people whom th e police prosecuted in th e course of helping the public. The

scum were troublemakers who impelled the public to seek police assistance.

In

supporting t he public, the police controlled th e scum.

The scum were viewed by th e police as th e ene m y of t he public. Therefore the y

were, by implication, also the ene m y of th e police. The scum were supported by the

public by public housing subsidies and welfare and by ripping the m

off

through

crime.



287 S U B T E R R A N E A N P R O C E S S E S

I N

T H E M A I N T E N A N C E O F P O W E R

That

is a

pre tty run down area as you can hear from old gravel voice. They’re at the very

bottom of the ladder hird and fourth-class citizens. When you’ve worked in tha t area ,

you learn that they haven’t seen soap for weeks. They and their houses are filthy dirty.

Not only w ere the scum unclean, but as enemies they threatened the police and

the public both physically an d mo rally. Th ey were dang erous.

In -

f

you get involved in something, you never know whether you‘ll get ou t O.K.

Pick up one garbage can a t

-

Imagine getting

a

station detail to - you‘d be surprised to

get out alive.

Th e scum , th e police believed, showed no respect for the auth ori ty of t he law.

They gave no qua rter an d deserved none . Th ey enraged th e police. ‘That’s the first

clown of the night .

I’d

like to go down an d arrest the b um myself. I can’t stand

those pigs.’

As an enem y, th e scum deserved no help from the police heir job was to help

the public, not thescum . A ny harm the scum

did

to each other was all to the better,

as

it

assisted th e police an d th e public in th eir conflict with the scum.

First Policeman: There was

a

murder

a t -

yesterday , you know.

Second Policeman: That’s not

a

murder, that‘s

a

local improvement, but

if

you called it

that you‘d have to pay taxes on it.

First Policeman: They should close down tha t division and put

a

fence around it.

Everyone there deserves each other.

Second Policeman: Yeah, you better believe

it.

It is the scum who, in an age less embarrassed

by

class differences and less

comm itted to th e ideal of e qua lity, were re ferred to as th e ‘dangerous’ or ‘criminal’

classes (Silver, 1967),

a

‘bastardized race,‘ a ’class degrade d by m ise ry who se vices

stand like a n invincible obstacle to t he generous inten sions that wish to combat it‘

(Foucault, 1977: 276).

This

distin ction between two classes

of

citizens with who m policemen come into

contact is, Hu ghe s argues, com mon t o m an y service occupations.

To understand (service occupations) one must understand the system, including the clients

and their wants. People and organizations have problems; they want things done for

them - for their bodies and souls, for the ir social and financial relations , for the ir cars,

houses, bridges, sewage systems; and they want things done to the people they consider

their competitors or their enemies. (Hughes,

1971 422)

In distinguishing between clients and competitors and/or enemies, Hughes

draws attentio n to the sam e sort of relationship as Emerson and Messinger do in




their identification of the situation roles of complainants and/or victims and

troublemakers. However, unlike Emerson and Messinger, who restricted their

analysis to situated roles, Hughes‘ formulation extends to trans-situational

identities. This distinction is critical to an understanding of the categories of

citizens identified by th e police sub culture. Neithe r th e scum n or the public refer to

the situated roles of troublemaker and victim/complainant that emerge in the

definition of, and reaction to, particular troubles. Rather, they refer to two

relatively stable popu lations of persons who become involved in trouble. Either th e

scum or the public could be troublemakers in a particular situation. What

distinguishes th e scum from t he public is that the scum are structurally in conflict

with, and are the enemies of, the public. The scum are, to use Katz’s (1972)

formulation, ‘in essence’ troublemakers, while the public are ’in essence’ their

victims.

In distinguishing between th e scum and th e public as two classes who oppose

each other as enemies, the police culture makes available to the police a social

theory that they can use in th e context

of

their w ork to define situations and to

construct a course of action in response to the m . This theory enables the police to

transcend the situated fe atures of enco unters by relating th em to a broader social

context which identifies the ’real troublem akers’ and ’real victims.

’3

In using this

theo ry as a guide t o action, policemen e nt er , as participants, in to the class conflict

that th e culture describes. As th ey do , they are able, and encouraged, to use the

power of th e state, on behalf of t he public, to control th e scum, there by prese rving

not only th e dominance of th e public vis 1 vis the scum, but the system of

relationships o n which th e opposition between th e

two

groups depends.4

This system of relationships is strikm gly similar to that described by M arx in his

analysis of capitalism. Th e scum an d th e public ar e categories which a re consistent

with Marx’s notions of t he surp lus unproductive population and the productive

population engaged in capitalistic modes of production. Furtherm ore, like Marxist

theory, t he police subculture recognizes that th e surplus population, both because

it is outside th e controls em bodied in t he econom y itself, and because of it s parasitic

relationship to the productive population, constitutes a threat to the productive

classes. The police subculture directs th e w o rh n g policemen to control the surplus

population, precisely as Marxist theories argue is the case: ’From arrest to

imprisonment th e criminal justice system exists to control th e surplus

population’ (Quin ney, 1977: 136).

Wh at this analysis adds to th e general discussion provided by M arxist and other

conflict theorists, is a more specific analysis of t he m echan isms th at coordinate t he

activities of tho se working within crimina l justice. M arxism, it has been argued , ‘is

still grappling with the problem of how to transform a theory into a concrete

historical force’ (Stewart, 1978:

20 .

In the police subculture, we see how, in a

small bu t sy stema tic way , a conflict theo ry grounded in an analysis of social class

relevant to police work is used as a ’concrete historical force’ to reproduce a

particular set of relations. This suggests that it is wrong to identify the theory

appropriate to advanced capitalism as consensus (Chambliss and Seidman, i 9 7 i ) ,

and that o f revolution as social conflict (Stewa rt,

1978).

Although consensus may

be the theo ry t ha t legitimates criminal justice, ou r findings suggest that th e theory

which operates to reproduce order is one that takes class conflict as its major



289

S U B T E R R A N E A N

P R O C E S S E S

I N

T H E M A I N T E N A N C E O F P O W E R

premise. It is at the wo rking level tha t on e finds the ’merger

of

reason and action’

(Stewart,

1978:

19), of theory and prac tice, which conflict theo rists refer to.

Ironically, however, this merger

of

conflict theo ry and action works t o reproduce,

rather than transcend, capitalist relations.

C L A S S C O N F L I C T A N D E G A L I T AR I A N I D E A L S

The acknowledgement that capitalist society incorporates two social theories

(conflict and consensus) based on opposing premises, each contributing to the

maintenance of order, raises the question of th e relationship between them. This is

particularly relevant in the case of the police who work within a system that is

explicitly com mitted t o liberal egalitarian ideals. W ithin this context the question

that arises is: How does the police subculture retain an influence on the

motivations of working policemen in an environ me nt in w hich egalitarian notions

are supposed to prevail? In orde r words: How is it that the conflict theory of the

police subculture is able to motiva te, and the reby coordinate, individual policemen

in the face of th e official com mitme nt by th e public, political authorities, and th e

courts to a consensus social theory? How does the police subculture retain its

influence over working policemen given the hierarchical character of the police

organization and th e freq uent attemp ts by inquiries, comm issions, the m edia, civil

liberties groups, and dedicated liberal politicians to bring police practice into line

with egalitarian ideals? In order to answer this question, we must examine the

beliefs abou t th e public and ’the brass’ endorsed by th e police subculture.

In contrast to the

scum,

h e public were viewed by the police as allies wh o th ey

helped and assisted in their conflict w ith t he scum . This alliance, however, was not,

in their view, between equals. In fighting the scum and dealing with t he trouble

they caused, the police viewed themselves as professionals, and contrasted their

status and expertise with the helplessness and incompetence of the public. They

were, they believed, not only more knowledgeable and experienced than the

public, but m ore objective and im partial. This perceived inequality between police

and public proved a ch ronic source of tension, as it seemed that the public did not

always respect professionalism of th e law enforcers or acknow ledge their own

incompetence as laymen.5 This tension was a primary source of meaning for

the

set

of

images the police used to describe the public. Each

of

these images

emphasized th e professional distance between t he police and the public. To gether

they identified thre e ma jor them es w hich defined the police view of the proper

relationship between the public and th e police.

In emphasizing their ow n expertise, th e police drew attention to

the helplessness

and stupidity

of

the public. As

one policeman rem arked, ’som e of th em don’t have

enough brains to pound sand.‘ The public, they complained, often created

problems for themselves tha t could have been avoided had the y had ‘an ounce of

brains.’ Th e police felt th at m an y of th e problems broug ht to their attention by t he

public were trivial, and could have been handled by t he victims themselves. N oise

complaints were frequen tly used to illustrate this.

It makes you sick, all you get on weekends are noisy parties. Why don’t they

go

and bang

on doors themselves?



29

C L I F F O R D S H E A R I N G

So why did he have to call us? The guy‘s a neighbour. Why doesn‘t he go and ask him

to shut

up

his bloody dog

himself?

Not on ly did th e public report problems to t he police that t he police felt they

should have been able to resolve themselves, bu t the police complained they were

sometimes so helpless and incompetent that they could not even request police

support properly. ‘You have to be an oth er Larry Solway sometimes. You have to

put words in th eir mo uths just to find ou t where the y live or their phone num bers.’

Wh ile the public’s stupidity was frequ ently defined in terms of their inability to

prevent and deal with min or problems, it was also seen as arising from naivetk. The

police believed tha t, as a result of th e drama tization of t he police role in novels,

films, and television dramas, the public had developed unreasonable expectations

concerning the police capacity to resolve problems. ‘Some people think a

policeman’s uniform will make everything all right. But it only quietens things

down for a little while.

I t

really doesn’t accomplish anything.’

This naivete, th e police believed, extended beyond a misunderstanding of police

resources and even included a definition of ‘police trouble. ’

A

principal complaint

was tha t th e public simply did not know wh at an em ergency was, and constantly

exaggered trivial incidents by calling them emergencies. For example, they

frequently pointed ou t tha t wh at th e public defined as an emergency often proved,

on closer inspection, to be no mo re th an a noisy pa rty o r a minor traffic accident.

The conclusion drawn from all this by th e police was that yo u could not rely on th e

public’s judgement abou t what problems th e police should deal with o r how this

should be done.

W hile it was the public’s helplessness and incompetence th at characterized th em

and their relationship to t he police, it was their persistent failure to recognize and

accept this tha t most anno yed the police. This failure was apparent in th e public’s

tendency

to

demand help rather than request it, thus suggesting that the police

related to them as servant to master. This failure to recognize the professional

status of the police and th eir ability and auth ority t o respond to trouble angered th e

police.6 ‘Send out a car imm ediately. It really bugs m e when the y say th at.’ This

disrespect was regarded as particularly insulting w hen the d emanding citizen was a

low-status person who scarcely qualified as a member

of

th e public.

The thing tha t bugs

me is

getting

a call from

a

person

who

can

barely speak English,

but

demands a car ‘right away’. The two things that they know are ‘dollar’, and ’send police

right away,’

and

they don’t

even

speak the language. The

woman

had only called

ten

minutes ago

so

said, ’There are two million

people in

the city

and

you are only one of

them.’

These views about the public’s right to demand police service, like the views

about the helplessness and ignorance of the public, served to preserve police

autono my b y em phasizing tha t while the police served the public, they w ere not to

be viewed as the servants of the public. T his them e was taken up in a somewhat

different form in th e police view tha t mem bers of th e public sometimes used th e

police to exploit their relationship as allies. The y complained that th e public were

often not as helpless as the y seemed. T he public, they believed, sought to use th e



291 S U B T E R R A N E A N P R O C E S S E S I N T H E M A I N T E N A N C E O F P O W E R

police to accomplish their own self-serving ends. The police became particularly

incensed when persons misused their power and status for these reasons. In the

police eyes, one of the w orst g roups of o ffenders were private alarm com panies

who ’had the nerve’ to ask th e police

to

respond to their alarms for them.

Alarm companies, they use the po lice. They get us to do their work for them.

God damn phoney outfits. They call the owner and he says not to tell the police anything,

so

our car sits there at the scene waiting and waiting for someone to show .

It was, however, not only the economically powerful who sought to misuse the

police his tendency was seen as much more widespread. Often it was perceived

as no more than th e result of laziness and a refusal to take responsibility for

problems.

Very often people call about barking dogs because they do not want to get involved

themselves. They want to leave it to the police to do som ething. Complaints about barking

dogs just misuse the police. In the vast majority of cases, it is probably quite unneces-

sary to involve the police, except as a last resort. The thing to do would be to

go

directly to

the dog‘s owner and ask him to take the dog inside or quiet it down some other way.

In em phasizing their p rofessional status7 the police culture served to insulate the

police from members of the public who might try to influence them, and to

encourage the police to rely on their own experience and the collective wisdom of

their peers inmaking their decisions.

Just as the police subculture served to guard against the situated influences

arising from t he dem ands of particular complainants and victims, it also served to

insulate the police from t he more systematic influences directed at them through

the chain of command. Interestingly, in this context the a utonom y of the working

policeman was encouraged by th e police culture on the same grounds as it was with

respect to the public y emphasizing th e inequality in expertise and ’know-how’

between the working policeman and th e brass (a term used to refer roughly to all

those superiors in th e chain of com mand above the rank of sergeant).

In distinguishing them selves from the brass, police constables recognized that,

as policemen, th ey shared some things with th e brass. It is with these similarities

that we m ust begin, because th ey constitute the backdrop for their differences.

At th e most general level, especially when the police were contrasted with th e

public, the brass were considered to be police. They had shared many of th e

experiences familiar to ordinary policemen they had been there.’ They had at

one time all been ’front line’ policemen. Even now , a major concern of the bra ss

was

to

protect and enhance th e image of the police. Attacks on th e police in the

press, for example, served to break down the distinction between the brass and

working policemen . When newspaper reporters, for example, criticized the brass,

policemen would spring vigorously t o their defence. ’There’s always some nu t who

wants to get the police into trouble and there‘s always some reporter who will

listen to him .‘

Yet th e brass, although t he y had been working policemen, were now ‘something




quite different.’ The concernsof the brass, it was argued, were not only different,

but were often competing. When the ‘chips were down,‘ the brass would sacrifice

the individual policeman in the name of the ’interests

of

the

force.

’

Policemen were

not reluctant to point out that the ’interests of the force’ overlapped with, and were

often synonomous with, the ’interests of the brass.‘

With promotion out of the ranks, the brass, it was suggested, developed new

interests they became less concerned about the problems faced by ordinary

policemen. What the brass should know, and certainly had known, about the

nature of police work, was convenientlly forgotten when trouble arose. The brass’s

concern was not simply ’doing the job,’ but rather ensuring that the job was done

smoothly and that nothing happened to taint the image of the police in the eyes of

the public a public comprised not so much of people who needed help, but of

boards

of

police commissioners, politicians, reporters, and newspaper editors. This

attitude on the part of the brass was lampooned by one policeman after a call from a

sergeant for all cars in the division to o in for ‘car washes’, with the remark: ‘We

sure have a clean police department. Not an efficient one, but a clean one ’

The brass were accorded an explicitly ideological role and this role was seen as

not only different from, but often opposed to, the demands of ’real’ police work.

This was emphasized by noting that their concern with ‘political matters,’ resulted

in the brass losing touch

with

’real police work’ and ‘real policemen.’

They don ’t understand, and they don‘t care any more. Th ey’ve been out of

it

for too

long.

Most of

them have not don e real police work for years. They don’t know wha tpolice

work is any more. They spend their time in their offices. You wonder som etim es. That’s

why the y make all these procedures.

When they

get

that commission something happens. They don‘t know you any m ore.

They make new friends when they become officers.

In pointing to the relative ignorance

of

the brass, the police subculture

simultaneously suggested that this ignorance was often more a matter of

convenience than anything else. In circumventing brass policy, because you ‘can’t

do it by the book,’ working policemen saw themselves as acting with the tacit

approval of the brass and their political masters, who subtly and surreptitiously

encouraged duplicity and secrecy by rewarding, through advancement into more

attractive areas

of

police work (particularly detective work), performances which

ignored ’the book,’ but which could be retrospectively reconstructed in accordance

with policy and legal procedure (Canada, 1976: 116--19).

The apparent ignorance of

the

brass, together with their tacit approval of ‘real

police work,’ identified a role difference between the brass and working policemen.

While the brass were concerned with maintaining an egalitarian image of the police

within political and judicial arenas, working policemen were to get on with the job

of

real policing, or controlling the scum. In providing for this distinction, the

police subculture at once encouraged police action which served to reproduce

existing power structures, while isolating worlung policemen from influences

which tended to mitigate against this. The police subculture, in contrasting ’real

police work‘ with the brass‘s concern with legitimizing police work, enabled



293

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P R O C E S S E S

I N T H E

M A I N T E N A N C E

O F

P O W E R

working policemen to move beyond th e comm on sense view of the law as a set of

behaviourally grounded instructions for identifying criminality, to a view of the

law as a resource f o r justi fying coercive control of th e scum. Good police work, the

police subculture made clear, meant participating in the class conflict between

public and scum in a way th at could be justified retrospectively with reference to

legal criteria ha t is, to behav ioural, universa listic, and egalitarian criteria.

In sum , in answ er to th e question of how the conflict theo ry operates in a police

subculture dominated by consensus theory,

I

have show n how a class-based theo ry

of social control is encouraged, along with an institutional hypocrisy that presents

police work in egalitarian term s. In sh ort, the police subculture provides for police

action based o n extra-legal status criteria, w hile simultaneously allowing for its

presentation in terms of legal behavioural criteria.

LINKAGES

T O

POWER ORIGINS

OF

THE POLICE SUBCULTURE

This contrast between th e conflict theo ry of the police subculture and the

surroun ding ideology raises a final query : W here does the social theory of the

police subculture come from, and how does it come to reflect

so

exactly class

structure and class conflict in th e face of an ideology tha t explicitly denies the

applicability of statu s criteria to police work ? Although these qu estions

go

beyond

the scope of this paper, it is possible, from a review of the analysis presented, to

suggest th e general o utline of an answer and th e direction to be followed in

developing this outline.

The independence of th e police subcu lture, its low visibility, as well as its

operation at the ’fro nt line’ of policing, is consistent with Foucault’s (1977)

analysis that social control is no longer imposed from above and outside the fabric

of social life by an auth or ity em bodied in th e person of the sovereign ; rather, it is

embedded in t he v ery struc ture of social relations themselves. It is from this

structure, rather th an from an identifiable political authority, that the social theory

of the police subcu lture arises. The police, by v irtue of their occupational position

as

state agents, participate in th e social conflict between th e produ ctive and un-

productive classes. Their position identifies them as allies of the one and enemies

of

the o ther. W ithin this context th e police inevitably come face-to-face with t he

hostility of th e scum. In dealing with th is hostility, and in participating in th e

conflict between the scum and th e public, th ey develop a particular view of th e

scum and an expertise that sets them apart from the public.

In

short, a guiding

authority emerges w hich is grounded in th e collective experience of working

policemen. T his au tho rity reflects, in conceptual terms, the social differences and

relationships in which it is located. In doint

so,

it provides a mechanism for

transforming structural forces into individual motivations.

The embedded nature of this process gives th e police subculture an anon ymous

and ubiquitous character that ‘automatizes and disindividualizes’ it (Foucault,

1977:

202 .

It is this feature of modern social control that is reflected in the

common sense talk of ‘the system.’ A t first glance, as Foucault notes, this system

appears to be ‘nothing more than an infra-law’ that extends ’the general forms

defined by law to th e infinitesimal level of individual lives’ (1977: 222 . However,

he argues, on closer exam ination rhese processes prove to be ‘a sort of coun ter

law’



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C L I F F O R D

S H E A R I N G

which effects ‘a suspension of the law that is never total, but is never annulled

either,’ that maintains ’insuperable asymmetries,’ despite the legal definition of

‘juridicial subjects according to universal norm s,‘ by means of a ’series of

mechanisms for unbalancing power relations definitively and everywhere’

(Foucault, 1977: 222-3). On even closer inspection, as we have seen, the

subterranean structures m aintaining th e asymm etries of power are revealed not as

a ‘counter law,’ but as one face of t he institutiona l hypoc risy th at characterizes

liberal social control. These structures provide for a process of control through

social conflict tha t by-pass political and legal processes at a macroscopic level. The

independence of th e political and legal superstructure from ‘the system’ of control

that this provides permits those persons acting to legitimize social control within

legal and political spheres to pursue egalitarian ideals energetically and with

personal integrity, without undermining the work necessary to reproduce

relations of dominance. Similarly, it allows the police, and others in similar

positions, to get on with their work as participants in class conflict without

underm ining th e belief in t he egalitarian na ture of liberal democracy.

It is this relationship between th e supe rstructural and substructural levels of

social control th at frus trates Marxists com mitted t o a utopian society withou t class

conflict, because ’conquering or ga ining access to th e state thro ug h electoral means

cannot lead to socialism since the worlung class party, when it takes over the

government, becomes a prisoner

of

the very system it attempts to overthrow’

(Burawoy, 1977: 60). For those of u s who do not sh are this comm itment, and who

view social conflict in mo re n eutral term s (Turk, 1977)~he lesson is simply tha t

the p rocess of social conflict and

the

stability or change it produces cannot be

understood by an analysis that focuses exclusively on political processes and

ignores subterranean mechanisms.

N O T E S

1

There is no single definition of the police subculture provided in related literature.

One definition, and the one we will use here,

views

the police subculture as

embodying the collective ’wisdom’ of policemen, passed on from one generation

of

policemen

to

another through a process in whch it is both embellished and validated.

The culture is available to policemen as a guide they can use in going about police

work. This definition is consistent with the general definition

of

culture ’as the

“image” of the society, the collective information by which the society attempts to

organize itself‘ (Ball, 1978: 69). This definition equates culture with Mead’s concept

of the ’generalizedother.‘ The police subculture, as we are using the concept here, thus

refers to a device which enables policemen to plan and assess courses of action from

the standpoint

of

other policemen (Blumer, 1969).

z

It has been aruged (Cummings, et al. 1967) that ‘support’ and ’control’ constitute

latent and manifest aspects of the police role. This view arises out of the tendency

to

regard citizens as all forming part of a single category. These findings indicate

that support and control refer to two different role relationships with

two

different

populations.

3

See Kahne and Schwartz (1978) who criticize the Emerson and Messinger formulation

for its failure to consider the more general social contexts that affect actors’ definitions



295

S U B T E R R A N E A N P R O C E S S E S I N T H E

M A I N T E N A N C E

O F

P O W E R

of particular situated roles. As Emerson and Messinger‘s (1977) analysis demon-

strates, if one remains analytically at a situational micro-political level which excludes

contextual relationships, decisions about statuses and roles must, of necessity, de-

pend exclusively on an analysis

of

the activities of those involved. This is precisely the

analytic difficulty that labelling theorists like Becker (1973) face in accounting for

deviance. It leads them to identify deviance with rule-breaking and thus prevents them

from examining how the claim of rule-breaking is used as a method (or weapon) in

responding to deviance defined as a trans-situational ’essence’ (see Katz, 1972).

4

This account of operation of the police subculture permits us to answer some

puzzling questions. For example, why is it that working policemen regard some

statistically important parts of their job - for instance, domestic disputes and

traffic work - as not ’real police work,’ and why do the ‘crimes’ of some- particu-

larly the powerful

-

’go

largely unrecognized and/or unpunished, while the less

consequential (for society as a whole) offences of the lower class are given

so

much

punitive attention’ (Turk, 1977: 214-15) What the analysis in the text suggests

is that ’real crime’ activity is defined by police as any wrongdoing undertaken by

the scum against the public. Intra-class conflicts, although they may involve

activity that would technically be regarded as criminal, are regarded as ‘not really

criminal.’ Similarly, wrongdoing by the public against the scum is also regarded

as ‘not really criminal’ (Black,

1976).

5 Hughes

(1971)

has argued that this tension is found in most service occupations.

6

This theme of disrespect for police authority dominates the literature on police subcul-

ture. However, in this literature, as the critical distinction between the disrespect of

the scum as an enemy and the disrespect of the public as an ally is not made, disrespect

is generally only considered in the context of the enemy metaphor.

7 This denial of a servant/employer relationship between the police and the public is

related to the legal position the police hold vis vis the sovereign authority from

whom, it is argued, they derive an original authority (Call, 1975-77).

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