The Police: The Culture of a Social Control Agency - Taylor Buckner

247 Pages·2004·2.19 MB·English

by  H. Taylor Buckner

The Police: The Culture of a Social Control Agency

By Hubbard Taylor Buckner

B. S. (University of Louisville) 1959
M. A. (University of California) 1964

DISSERTATION

Submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
in Sociology

in the

GRADUATE DIVISION
of the
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY

1967
Approved:

Neil J. Smelser, Chairman
Irving Piliavin
Stewart E. Perry

Copyright 1967, 2004

By

H. TAYLOR BUCKNER

This electronic version of the 1967 Thesis was scanned in, optically recognized, and corrected in
2004. No changes of wording or grammar have been made; it is exactly as written in 1967. In the
original text underlining was used both for emphasis and for italics, now emphasis is supplied by
bolding and foreign terms and book titles are in italics. The original Thesis was double spaced,
now it is single spaced. The original Table of Contents only listed the Chapter Titles, now it has all
sections. Typographical errors and spelling errors that occurred in the original text have been
corrected, and an out of place page in the Bibliography has been put back in alphabetic order. For
the purpose of quotation, the pagination of the 2004 Adobe Acrobat PDF edition should be used,
unless the original is available. H. Taylor Buckner, South Hero, Vermont, August 6, 2004.
E-Mail: [email protected]
TABLE OF CONTENTS
The Police: The Culture of a Social Control Agency..........................................................................i
INTRODUCTION..........................................................................................................................1
THESIS STATEMENT..............................................................................................................1
Sources of Data...........................................................................................................................3
Anonymity..................................................................................................................................4
CHAPTER I: A SOCIAL CONTROL THEORY..........................................................................5
Three Levels of Social Control...................................................................................................6
Primary....................................................................................................................................6
Secondary................................................................................................................................7
Tertiary....................................................................................................................................8
SOCIAL CONTROL SUMMARY TABLE...............................................................................9
Level of Social Control, Severity of Sanctions, and Interaction Frequency.............................11
When Social Control Breaks Down..........................................................................................13
Sub-Cultural Institutionalization of Deviance..........................................................................15
The Police Mandate: A Mixture of Laws and Customs............................................................16
The Police as Agents of Social Control....................................................................................19
Conclusions...............................................................................................................................21
CHAPTER II: THE RELATION OF THE SOCIAL CONTROL OF INTERACTIVE
INSTITUTIONS TO THE SOCIAL CONTROL OF TERTIARY AGENTS.................24
Secondary or Tertiary Control? A Dilemma of Tertiary Agents in Interactive Situations
...................................................................................................................................................24
Police Officers' Assumptions Regarding Neighborhoods ............................................27
Neighborhoods are associated with different types of crime and have different
reactions to criminal activity. In his patrolling, the officer is advised to look for
certain types of criminal activity which are often associated with specific areas. 27
Police Officers' Assumptions Regarding Individuals ...................................................30
Some Origins of Cultural Expectations of the Public Regarding Police Action..........32
Conditions Supporting and Undermining the "Legal" Conception of Police Behavior.33
The Officer Reacts to the Assumed Power or Status of the Offender.......................34
The Officer is Presented with Extra-legal Requests......................................................38
The Officer's Emotional Involvement..................................................................................39
The Officer's Own Interactive-Institutional Relationships Affect His Action..................40
Self Interest May Lead to Corruption..............................................................................41
Secondary Control by Tertiary Control Agents: Interactive Institutions and Legal
Intervention.............................................................................................................................42
Three Types of Extra-legal Social Control Provided by the Police...........................45
Alcoholics...........................................................................................................................45
Mentally Ill.........................................................................................................................46
Family fights.......................................................................................................................49
Interactive Institutional Control of Police Behavior: Secondary Control Over Tertiary
Control Agents........................................................................................................................53
The Police Institution and Various Community Institutions...........................................57
The Newspaper...................................................................................................................57
Sports and Other Public Events.......................................................................................59
Restaurants.........................................................................................................................59
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Businessmen........................................................................................................................60
Transportation Companies................................................................................................61
Influential Groups and People. ......................................................................................62
The Community in General.............................................................................................62
The Police and Other Legal System and Government Institutions.............................63
Criminals.............................................................................................................................63
Informers.............................................................................................................................64
Jail........................................................................................................................................66
Traffic Violations.............................................................................................................66
The City ..............................................................................................................................67
Other Police Agencies......................................................................................................67
District Attorney, Public Defender...................................................................................68
Probation and Parole..........................................................................................................69
Institutionalized Transactions as a Social Control for the Patrol Officer................69
Conclusions.............................................................................................................................70
CHAPTER III: THE ENTRANCE OF FORMAL SOCIAL CONTROL AGENTS INTO
INTERACTIVE SITUATIONS....................................................................................................73
THE COMPLAINT OF CRIME...............................................................................................73
Situations Where the Officer Can Do Something About the Complaint..............................74
Situations in Which the Officer Can Do Nothing About the Complaint..............................76
Situations in Which the Officer Can Do Nothing but Take a Report...................................77
Situations Where Official Action Would Make Matters Worse...........................................78
THE PERCEPTION OF CRIME..............................................................................................79
Visibility...............................................................................................................................82
Strategies of Perception........................................................................................................83
Incongruity Procedures.........................................................................................................85
Strategies for Uncovering Evidence of Criminality..............................................................86
Reaction Time Assumptions.................................................................................................87
Use of Reaction Time Assumptions to Mislead...................................................................88
Attending to Reactions to Assess Guilt................................................................................89
Severity of Police Disposition by Youth’s Demeanor..........................................................90
Creating Situations to Test Reactions...................................................................................91
Interpretation of Common Acts with Attention to their Possible Criminality......................91
Perceptions and the Range and Nature of Contacts with the Public.....................................93
Danger...................................................................................................................................95
Perception of Habits Associated with Criminality................................................................97
Organizing Perceptions.........................................................................................................98
THE CHALLENGE AND GAME OF CRIME........................................................................99
Police Games of Cops and Robbers....................................................................................100
Citizens' Games of Cops and Robbers................................................................................103
Criminal Games of Cops and Robbers................................................................................104
Conclusions.............................................................................................................................105
CHAPTER IV: CONTROL OF THE SITUATION: THE QUICK AND THE DEAD107
The predictability of the outcome of a social situation seems to depend on five
factors....................................................................................................................................107
Controlling Situations on the Street ...............................................................................109
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Force......................................................................................................................................113
The Internalization and Acceptance of the Possibility of Killing Another........................117
Force and Solidarity...........................................................................................................120
External Solidarity.........................................................................................................122
Internal Solidarity.............................................................................................................123
Force as Interpersonal Power ......................................................................................125
Force as A Weapon to Get Results..............................................................................127
Force and Danger as Fun..................................................................................................128
Controlling Situations without the Necessity of Using Force...................................130
Control of Situations Through Electronic Communications.........................................132
The Microwave Peyton Place........................................................................................134
The Radio and the Authority Structure..........................................................................136
The Radio and Patrol Patterns.........................................................................................138
Controlling the Interrogation Situation ........................................................................140
Control of the Situation in Disturbances and Riots.....................................................143
The Funnel of Betrayal in the Arrest Situation.................................................................145
Conclusions..........................................................................................................................148
Possibly Relevant Realms of Knowledge Accessible to the Police Officer..................152
Legal Knowledge..............................................................................................................152
Non-Legal Knowledge ...................................................................................................154
Moral Knowledge ...........................................................................................................156
Habituated Knowledge.....................................................................................................157
Interactive Institutional Transaction Knowledge.....................................................159
Some Situational Factors Relevant to the Choice of Decision Paths ......................159
The "Attitude" of the Offender....................................................................................159
Situational Demands........................................................................................................161
Situations...............................................................................................................................164
The Traffic Stop................................................................................................................164
Report Taking..................................................................................................................165
Family Fights...................................................................................................................166
Neighborhood Disputes..................................................................................................166
Real Crimes, Felonies......................................................................................................166
Conclusions...........................................................................................................................167
CHAPTER VI: LEGAL AND SEMI-LEGAL SOCIAL CONTROL ...........................169
Law as a Weapon ................................................................................................................171
Multiple Charges and Police Discretion ........................................................................172
Transformations of Reality in the Legal Process .......................................................173
Divergent Realities Produce Divergent Typifications of Acts............................174
The Officer's Typification is Compared With Common-Sense Typification.....176
Linguistic Objectifications Must be Accurate or Transformation is Defective 178
Preparations for Transformations by Officers and Defendants.............................179
Appeal Tests Questions of Law......................................................................................180
The Process is the Sanction..............................................................................................181
Criminal Behavior with Hard-to-Gather Admissible Evidence....................................183
Arrests to Remove Disorderly Persons.............................................................................184
Conclusions .........................................................................................................................186
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EVADING DEMANDS FOR SOCIAL CONTROL.........................................................189
IMPRESSION MANAGEMENT........................................................................................190
Impressing the Public that the Police are Doing their Job.....................................191
Secrecy in Police Operations...........................................................................................195
Strategic Reserve..............................................................................................................198
DECEIT AS A WEAPON FOR SOCIAL CONTROL....................................................199
Deceit to Gain Information from a Suspect.............................................................201
Deceit to Justify Field Interrogation...........................................................................202
Deceit to Keep a Suspect from Being Informed of Surveillance............................203
Deceit to Control Distressing but Legal Behavior .......................................................203
Deceit to Justify or Gain Right to Search, Otherwise Illegal....................................204
Deceit to Justify an Arrest, Otherwise Illegal or Difficult........................................206
Deceit to Gain an Admission or Confession................................................................208
Deceit to Get Admissions Signed...................................................................................213
Deceit to Convince the Defendant to Plead Guilty..................................................214
Conclusions..........................................................................................................................214
CHAPTER VIII: CONCLUSIONS ......................................................................................216
APPENDIX: METHODOLOGY.............................................................................................227
My Position in the Westville Police Department......................................................228
Calibrating the Instrument - Personal History and Values..............................................230
Honesty..................................................................................................................................231
Benefits and Limitations of Participant Observation of the Police..............................233
Checks....................................................................................................................................236
Expenses................................................................................................................................237
Books and Articles................................................................................................................238
Theses....................................................................................................................................241
Newspaper Articles............................................................................................................242

v
INTRODUCTION

A number of questions are often asked about things the police do which cannot be answered
by examining any formal description of the police job.1 Questions such as: "Why do policemen
sometimes not enforce the law when it is being broken?"; "Why do policemen sometimes react to
demeanor and other legally irrelevant aspects of an offender's behavior? "; "Why do people who
admit their guilt sometimes come out better than people who stand on their legal rights?";
"Why do policemen often under-enforce the law in Negro neighborhoods? "; "Why do policemen
harass unusual looking people? "; "Why do the police sometimes do nothing when a crime is
reported to them?"; and, "Why are policemen often closemouthed and isolated from civilian social
activities?!' cannot be answered if one thinks of the police as ministerial officers of the law obeying
only legal requirements.

Instead of answering such questions in the usual manner, which involves an ad hoc answer
to each, I would like to develop a few simple principles which throw light on all of these problems.
Instead of suggesting that police officers are lazy, capricious, bigoted, stupid, ultra-conventional,
and authoritarian, all of which have been mentioned as answers to the questions posed above, I
would like to suggest that all of these behaviors are responses to the influences and tensions
inherent in the role of a formal social control agent involved in interactive situations.

THESIS STATEMENT

The police as formal agents of legal social control exercise a large amount of extra-legal
and sometimes illegal social control be-cause they are expected to deal with many situations which
are violations of custom or morality but not of law. These expectations of police action held by the
public are relevant to the police because the police themselves are largely controlled by interactive
institutions established with segments of the public rather than by any formally granted legal
mandate. Laws require less than custom in most cases, and the police mandate is no exception. The
police are confronted with violations of customs they themselves adhere to and, whether or not the
violation is also one of law, their response is conditioned by their interpersonal commitments. Their
dispositional decisions thus take into account moral, customary, and legal aspects of the behavior,
as they interpret them, and the result is a form of social control which is only tangentially and
sporadically related to law.

This thesis may be stated as a series of hypotheses about social control, police behavior, and
public behavior:

1. Interactive institutions imply the existence of reciprocal typifications of behavior. In
order for the institution to persist and continue to reward the participants, the people involved in the

1 Actually, as will be made clear in Chapter I, there is no formal description of the police job, or mandate, to be found.
Rather, there is the idea that the police are ministerial officers of the law who bring offenders to "justice." Their
"function" is thus the discretion-less apprehension of offenders, and it is this "model" of police behavior which fails to
explain actual police actions.

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institution must act toward each other as the other expects they will. This behavior becomes the
"customary" and "moral" behavior expected of the individuals involved in the institution and
deviation is punished by the primary control of conscience or the secondary control of interpersonal
sanctions. Formal social controls, tertiary controls, in the form of laws, are established to set
minimum requirements for behavior which does not appear to be satisfactorily controlled by
custom and morality. Laws tend to be minimal and universal abstracts of common customs. The
police are empowered, by law, to enforce these minimal requirements but not the more
comprehensive customs from which the laws were abstracted. This means that many violations of
custom and morality may take place that the police have no legal warrant to correct.

2. Individuals generally control themselves to fit into the interactive institutions in which
they are involved. If their behavior is not so controlled, the institution is disturbed and the others
either do not know how to react, or react negatively, excluding the deviant from the institution and
its rewards. Institutions can arise around any mutual activity, but the most universal and important
institutions appear to center on the production and management of life needs in the areas of labor
(occupation), sex (family), and territory (neighborhoods, countries). If a person is excluded from
these institutions, he will have difficulty in surviving. The police occupation is largely controlled,
as is any other occupation, by the interactive institutions established with the public it contacts.
These institutions frequently require the police to respond to demands for social control in areas of
custom for which they have no legal warrant.

3. Violations of morality, customs, and laws come to the attention of the police through
complaints, their own perceptions, or, occasionally, the challenges of the violator. Some of these
violations can be processed within the structure of law, others cannot.

4. Before the decision on how to process the violation can be made or completed, the police
must bring the immediate situation under their control and keep it there. A number of strategies are
used to control situations. The use of force and the solidarity of the police may be used to control
the situation. This use of force may or may not be legitimated by legal rules, or it may be made to
appear to be so legitimated.

5. Officers take personal, moral, customary, and legal considerations into account in
deciding what to do about the various situations they face. Their behavior cannot be predicted
unless the nature of all of these elements is known.

6. Legal solutions involve many requirements as they are the officially contemplated,
recorded, reviewed, and sanctioned course of events. Legal solutions allow adversary contention to
take place wherein the accused can effectively contend that he is actually innocent, that the police
overstepped their prescribed methods, or that his behavior is not that proscribed by law. The
difficulty or impossibility of proving a legal case, especially when the act may be a violation of
custom but not law, combined with the feeling of the complainant, and sometimes the officer, that a
wrong has been committed, causes the officer to search for un-counterable control techniques
outside of the law which will control the behavior involved. Sometimes a partial, unreviewable
invocation of the law is used as a control.

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7. Where there is no legal solution, the police may attempt to evade the demands of the
public for control of a violation by the use of impression management and secrecy about their
operations. They may also use deceit to establish control where they have no legal warrant to do so.

8. Thus the police enact social control for social and personal ends using legal weapons
when they are effective and extra-legal ones when they are not. The end result is that some of the
various customs of conventional society get roughly the social control that is more or less expected,
but not always through the established legal channels. Most of the social control provided by the
police is thus customary and subject to the variations, vagaries, and discrepancies of a continuously
changing and largely unplanned set of understandings which exist in an uneasy dialectic with
formally enacted rules.

Each chapter in this work is devoted to one of these hypotheses.

Sources of Data

In order to study the police as agents of social control, I utilized several sources of data.

First, I went through the appropriate ten-week (two nights a week) training program to
become a Westville Police Reserve Officer. I then worked as a police officer (again about two
nights a week) for the next thirteen months, keeping careful field notes for the entire period. The
problems and limitations inherent in this participant observation are discussed in the
methodological appendix.

Second, I used the other studies which have been done in Westville Police Department by
other sociologists as sources of observations and data inaccessible to me in my position. I used
these studies as data and have largely re-interpreted their observations in my own framework of
social control theory.2 I have also used most of the other police literature cited herein in a similar
manner. Very often other writers have made observations which fit into my framework, though
they have been using them for other ends or have been making other arguments.

Third, I have ridden on patrol with two other police departments, one in Westville's state,
one outside. Additionally, I have had many discussions with the officers of two other departments,
one a small department in a high prestige community, the other the San Francisco Police
Department. The officers from San Francisco were enrolled in a seminar on the theoretical study of
the police process which I conducted at San Francisco State College. One of these officers, John W.

2 These studies include: Jerome H. Skolnick, Justice Without Trial, Wiley, New York, 1966, which concentrates on
Westville's vice squad and detectives. Jerome H. Skolnick and J. Richard Woodworth, "Bureaucracy, Information, and
Social Control: A Study of a Morals Detail," in The Police, edited by David J. Bordua, Wiley, New York, 1967, pp. 99-
136, which deals with the way statutory rape cases are dealt with by the Westville Police Department. Irving Piliavin
and Scott Briar, "Police Encounters With Juveniles," American Journal of Sociology, 70, September, 1964, pp. 206-
214, which deals with the juvenile division of the Westville Police Department. In addition to these studies dealing
specifically with the Westville Police Department, David Sudnow's "Normal Crimes: Sociological Features of the Penal
Code in a Public Defender Office," Social Problems, 12, 3, Winter, 1965, pp. 225-276, was based on the Public
Defender Office which serves Westville's county. These studies have been used to fill in gaps in my own observations
which were limited to the patrol division.

3
Minderman, has read the entire first draft of this thesis and has commented extensively on many
points. I have incorporated many of his comments as footnotes and I have followed many of his
suggestions for changing a word or two without specific citation. I am greatly indebted to him for
his expert and conscientious criticism and comments. His help has improved the accuracy of many
points contained herein.

Fourth, I have corresponded with officers from several other police departments regarding
specific problems. Where their comments are not sensitive, I have cited them by name, where they
might be sensitive, I have covered their identities.

Anonymity

I have adopted several unscholarly conventions in this thesis to protect my informants. First,
I have not cited any laws by their section numbers, because to do so would pinpoint Westville's
state. Consequently, I have avoided making esoteric legal points and have had reference to codes
which were derived from common law. Second, I have not given the dates of any of my field notes
as the officers involved could be identified by the department from existing records of assignments.
Third, I have disguised the identity of officers who have provided me with written or verbal
comments on various possibly questionable practices. Their cooperation could cost them their jobs
so the least I can do is to insure their anonymity and thank them for their help. The necessity for
these conventions will become apparent as one reads the thesis.

4
CHAPTER I: A SOCIAL CONTROL THEORY
"Social Control" covers all of the processes which prevent and correct deviance. Almost
every facet of social life has at one time or another been considered as an example of social control.
Social control originates in interactive human relationships. Both formal social control and.
the social control implicit in socialization are derived from the habituations and institutionalizations
which arise from repeated interaction. 1 When two people interact with one another over a period of
time, they come to take for granted the behavior of the other in an ever-widening circle of
situations. This behavior which is taken for granted then need not be a matter of much concern to
the participants because they consider it to be the "typical" behavior of the other, an expected part
of their relationship, and they can give their attention to more problematic aspects of their
environments. Behavior which has reached this state of habituation is said to be "reciprocally
typified" between the two people. In order for "reciprocally typified" behavior to arise, a condition
must exist wherein participants are brought into regularized contact, over a period of time, dealing
with essentially similar problems each time.
These conditions particularly exist in the social areas of labor, sex, and territory.2
When people must coordinate their behavior to produce some product, they quickly typify
the behavior of the other in the situation so that they can count on the other's efforts to aid rather
than hinder their own. Thus work, employment, is a major source of control over the behavior of
the person engaged.
People who live together and raise children also interact repeatedly, intensively, and over a
long period of time. They develop understandings about what is to be expected from each other in
various situations. The family provides a great amount of control over the behavior of its members.
People who live in close proximity to one another, in the same territory, neighbors, often
find that they have interests in common which require coordinated action. The longer a person lives
in a given territory, other things equal, the greater the number of interactive institutions he becomes
involved in, each of which constitutes a social control over his behavior.
While new institutions are being created all of the time by the processes of repeated
interaction, a child does not create his own institutions, at least at first. A child is born and raised
within the structure of existing institutions, and far him they are objective facts independent of his
own existence. He is "socialized" into "the way things are" by his contacts with his already

"enculturated" parents. 3 As he grows up he contacts other people and has experiences on his own

1
Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann, The Social Construction of Reality, Doubleday, Garden City, New York,
1966, pp. 54-5
2 Ibid., p. 55.

3 Melford E. Spiro, "Culture and Personality: The Natural History of A False Dichotomy," Psychiatry , 14, February,
1951, pp. 19-46.
5