Gender and Community Policing: Walking the Talk

by Susan L. Miller

Overview

While traditional policing celebrated male officers as masculine crime fighters who were tough, aloof, and physically intimidating, policewomen were characterized as too soft and emotional for patrol assignments and were relegated to roles focusing on children, other women, or clerical tasks. With the advent of community policing, women's perceived skills are finally finding a legitimate place in police work, and law enforcement structures now encourage such previously undervalued feminine traits as trust, cooperation, compassion, interpersonal communication, and conflict resolution.

In this illuminating study of gender and community policing, Susan L. Miller draws on a combination of survey data, forthright interviews with a diverse mix of police officers, and extensive fieldwork conducted in a midwestern city where community policing has been practiced for over a decade. She describes the differences and similarities in policing styles of male and female officers, considers the relationships that develop between neighborhood police on foot and patrol officers in squad cars, and explores the interactions between neighborhood officers and community members.

Miller confronts such questions as how police reconcile incompatible images of masculinity and femininity; how actions of neighborhood police officers compare with those of traditional rapid response patrol officers; how community police cope with resistance from the rank and file; and how gender and gender-role expectations shape police activities and the evaluation of new skills.

Gender and Community Policing provides both a feminist framework for community policing and a fresh examination of how race, gender, and sexual orientation affect police image, identity, and methods.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781555534134
Publisher:	Northeastern University Press
Publication date:	11/04/1999
Series:	Northeastern Series on Gender, Crime, and Law Series
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	320
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.61(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

Table of Contents

	Preface	ix
	Acknowledgments	xiii
1	Background: The Research Goals, Methods, and Site	3
2	A Day in the Life of an NPO: In-Depth Profiles of Six Officers	28
3	Intersecting Gender with Community Policing: A Review of the History, Existing Theories, and Research	65
4	Competing Police Roles: Social Workers or Dirty Harry/Harriet?	99
5	Police and Community: Interactions	139
6	Walking the Talk: Contrasting Neighborhood Officers and Patrol Officers	165
7	Summary: The Findings and Their Policy Implications	193
Appendix	Methodology	229
	References	239
	Index	249

Editorial Reviews

Miller (sociology, Univ. of Delaware) spent several years observing and interviewing NPOs (neighborhood police officers) to learn "how community policing is accomplished across multiple styles, roles, practices, and personalities." Here, in the only available book on the impact of gender on community policing, she presents the results of her research. Chapters detail the background of women in policing and their effect on community policing, a day in the life of several NPOs, the roles of NPOs and how gender shapes them, how NPOs fit into neighborhoods, and differences between NPOs and patrol officers. Interestingly, she argues that many ideas in community policing stem from feminine police duties of previous eras. This is an informative work not only about gender and policing but also for its detailed field study of community policing. Essential for collections serving scholars, practitioners, and policymakers in the criminal justice field, it will also be of interest to sociology and women's studies scholars.--Mary Jane Brustman, SUNY at Albany Libs. Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.

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