‘The nature of the beast:’ the precariousness of police work

Abstract

ABSTRACT There is abundant literature focusing on current police officers, but there is a need to turn the focus towards police academies and training programmes to better understand how the relationship between policing and danger is perpetuated. If there is any hope for changes in police practices, it must begin with the induction, socialisation, and professionalisation of new police officers. Drawing on months of participant observation at a Pre-Employment Police Basic Training Program, this article presents how police training programmes create and work to normalise a sense of precarity and insecurity for aspiring police officers. This article contributes to a broader discussion about police and police training by examining how this particular form of police training produces and re-produces a sense of precariousness and danger in police work. Through the data gathered, this article offers an example of how police training programmes incite fear and suspicion among recruits, while also providing a glimpse of the socialisation process that happens in the training of police officers.