Police—Enforcing Social Equality Or Disparity?
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| The cynical view of police as protectors of the elites has spurred PR campaigns to flip the public perception |
The police as the civilian law enforcement arm of the state always seems to take a bad rap. While its fundamental function does not change in either democracies or dictatorships, the scope of policing powers can be expanded or retracted based on how the government perceives the state of order in the country. In societies where the general public attitude toward police officers is mistrustful, such as in Malaysia, the government seeks to rehabilitate their image through positive PR messages, such as the cheery female cartoon police officer in the above picture.
In the broader sense, functionalists view police as crucial to the smooth functioning of society. Yet whereas crime is dysfunctional, a limited amount is necessary and even a good thing. Conflict theorists conversely view crime as the societal manifestation of the wealth gap between the haves and have-nots, and further believe the desperation that compels poor people to commit such acts is a precursor to revolution given enough time and critical mass.
Emile Durkheim, the father of functionalism, believed all social change stems from some manner of deviance such as crime, and that the social system self-corrects over time to incorporate this change as a norm. Such self-correction, he contended, was a good thing and made societies more robust. An example would be legislation that is clearly out of step with the contemporary worldview of society, such as on abortion or the legalization of marijuana.
Hence criminals identify glitches in society that (a) will become part of the change, such as greater welfare for pockets of poverty or amendments to the constitution, or (b) reinforce the hegemonic values of the state when criminals are paraded on media and the rest of society is explicitly told such acts are unacceptable. Isolated incidents of police brutality to maintain the status quo, though frowned upon by functionalists, are perfectly acceptable insofar as they are motivated toward the end goal of social stability.
Institutional police brutality, however, is unacceptable as it enrages large sectors of society and hence has a broad destabilizing effect. As for racial profiling by police, that too may be justified if certain groups—like African-Americans and Latinos in the US—exhibit a historically higher tendency to commit crimes than other social groups.
Conflict theorists meanwhile view the police as a personal tool of the “white, moneyed elites” who use the institution to preserve the status quo and hence their interests. They also deride police officers as accomplices of the ruling class in exploiting the most vulnerable and powerless sectors of society, which in Marxian terms means blue-collar workers.
It comes as no surprise to them that individuals from the majority ethnic or racial group dominate the police hierarchy, especially in its upper echelons—such as white-males in the US—as this facilitates their use as “control agents” to suppress citizens. Police brutality and racial profiling, hence, are levers used by the elites for signaling effect—i.e. citizens internalize that challenging the state will lead to bad things—and to preserve their pole position in society by widening the privilege gap between them and the bottom feeders. Significantly, in 1979, Jacobs and Britt concluded when studying this phenomenon in the US that “police were most likely to use deadly force in the most unequal states.”
This relationship can be proven tangentially by using symbolic interactionism. As a general rule, wealthy citizens of society belonging to the dominant social group will hold and express far more positive opinions of the police than poor individuals from the slums who either belong to ethno-racial minorities or are immigrants.
References:
The Functionalist Perspective on Crime and Deviance. (2016, April 3). Retrieved January 20, 2018, from https://revisesociology.com/2016/04/03/functionalist-explanations-of-deviance/
Jacobs, D., & Britt, D. (n.d.). Inequality and Police Use of Deadly Force: An Empirical Assessment of a Conflict Hypothesis. Retrieved January 20, 2018, from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/240760946_Inequality_and_Police_Use_of_Deadly_Force_An_Empirical_Assessment_of_a_Conflict_Hypothesis
Institutional police brutality, however, is unacceptable as it enrages large sectors of society and hence has a broad destabilizing effect. As for racial profiling by police, that too may be justified if certain groups—like African-Americans and Latinos in the US—exhibit a historically higher tendency to commit crimes than other social groups.
Conflict theorists meanwhile view the police as a personal tool of the “white, moneyed elites” who use the institution to preserve the status quo and hence their interests. They also deride police officers as accomplices of the ruling class in exploiting the most vulnerable and powerless sectors of society, which in Marxian terms means blue-collar workers.
It comes as no surprise to them that individuals from the majority ethnic or racial group dominate the police hierarchy, especially in its upper echelons—such as white-males in the US—as this facilitates their use as “control agents” to suppress citizens. Police brutality and racial profiling, hence, are levers used by the elites for signaling effect—i.e. citizens internalize that challenging the state will lead to bad things—and to preserve their pole position in society by widening the privilege gap between them and the bottom feeders. Significantly, in 1979, Jacobs and Britt concluded when studying this phenomenon in the US that “police were most likely to use deadly force in the most unequal states.”
This relationship can be proven tangentially by using symbolic interactionism. As a general rule, wealthy citizens of society belonging to the dominant social group will hold and express far more positive opinions of the police than poor individuals from the slums who either belong to ethno-racial minorities or are immigrants.
References:
The Functionalist Perspective on Crime and Deviance. (2016, April 3). Retrieved January 20, 2018, from https://revisesociology.com/2016/04/03/functionalist-explanations-of-deviance/
Jacobs, D., & Britt, D. (n.d.). Inequality and Police Use of Deadly Force: An Empirical Assessment of a Conflict Hypothesis. Retrieved January 20, 2018, from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/240760946_Inequality_and_Police_Use_of_Deadly_Force_An_Empirical_Assessment_of_a_Conflict_Hypothesis
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