Chapter Five. Reforming The Policing Of Marital Violence: Missing The Mark?

Abstract

This chapter examines critically the strategies that are typically advocated or introduced to reform police culture in an attempt to 'improve' police response to marital violence. The typology used by Brogden & Shearing depicting the two traditional approaches to reforming police culture is useful here. The first perspective emphasises legalist or rule-making devices as a means of controlling police discretion, while the second, the cultural perspective, depicts an attempt to change police culture directly, and from the 'inside'. In Singapore, the 'orthodox' approach to transforming the policing of marital violence concentrates on the work of both 'rule-makers' and of 'culturalists', and these will be examined in the chapter. The legalist approach maintains that police failure to act according to expected standards is the result of an absence of appropriate directives governing police conduct. In general, rule-making involves the making or changing of internal or external rules.Keywords: Brogden & Shearing; legalist approach; marital violence; police culture; rule-makers; Singapore