An Institutional Perspective of Policing

Abstract

This article suggests that American municipal police departments are highly institutionalized organizations and should be studied in terms of how their formal structure and activities are shaped by powerful myths in their institutional environment. The incorporation of powerful myths into the structure and activities of police departments enables them to attain legitimacy; with legitimacy comes stability and protection from outside interference by powerful sovereign actors who are present in the enveloping institutional environment. However, legitimacy problems arising from conflicting institutional myths may precipitate full-blown organizational crises. Such police department crises are resolved ceremonially through a ritual that combines the public degradation of the department and the removal and replacement of the disgraced police chief by a new chief with a legitimating mandate.