Police stress as a professional self-image

Abstract

This article examines what appears to be an original and recent strategy of police professionalization in the United States—an emphasis on police stress as a means of gaining professional legitimacy and prestige as well as a means of bringing coherence to a number of conceptions surrounding the tasks of, and role expectations for, the police. A focus on police stress provides a vehicle for organizing the disparate crime control and peacekeeping elements of law enforcement into a single whole. Because the notions of stress, danger, and service are concepts with which the public are readily able to sympathize and because the public recognizes the stress-related aspects of traditional professions such as medicine, law, and the ministry, especially the responsibility of those in these professions for the lives and welfare of others, the idea of police stress would seem to enhance the public's acceptance of the police claim to professional status. Unfortunately, the social and political conditions underlying police work inhibit such acceptance.