Police Culture Challenges Reform

There are four question options below. You must select one of them and construct a paper that adequately addresses the question.

1) According to Willis and Mastrofski, given the police craft’s focus on how the particularities of any given situation powerfully shape decision-making, the challenge for police reformers is telling patrol officers what to do under different circumstances. Briefly discuss how some of the work of Tversky and Kahneman (in the Phillips article) might support Willis and Mastrafski’s argument.

2) According to Cordner (2015, p. 11), the recent President’s Task Force observed that “organizational culture eats policy for lunch.” The implication of this saying is that those inside and outside of policing who desire change must find a way to neutralize or overcome the tendency of police culture to block significant police reform. If police officers still use a “representative heuristic” in their decision making on the street, how might this impact police reforms that focus on culture?

3) According to Silver, et al., the attitudes and values associated with traditional police culture are thought to develop from strains that are a part of the day-to-day work of the police. How might policing myths contribute to these strains?

4) According to Phillips, there are several myths associated with policing. Further, there are potential sources of bias with the representative heuristic. Which of those potential sources of bias may contribute to policing myths? Which sources of bias might not contribute to policing myths? Be sure to explain your thinking