Police Diversity: Beyond The Blue

Tensions between police and diverse communities in both the US and UK require innovation about ways to improve relations. While police diversity is often raised as a potential solution, these discussions generally lack rigorous analysis. This volume examines UK and US police diversity through the lens of street policing culture theory to assess the ways it can be internally and externally more equal, diverse and inclusive. It argues that street police culture applies pressures on all officers, but particularly pressures on those from traditionally marginalised backgrounds including officers of colour, women, LGBTQ+ and those with college educations, and shapes how they experience and conduct policing. Drawn from analysis of significant empirical data including original elite interviews with diverse UK and US police leaders, this volume is the first to comparatively examine UK and US police diversity through the lens of street police culture. While it does not offer police diversity as a panacea for all that is ailing in policing, it provides offers a new way of understanding police diversity. It argues that while a plethora of tools including rules-based solutions including lawsuits, consent decrees, compulsory affirmative action programmes, are required to help shift policing from its homogenous street culture norms to more heterogenous and more creative ways of policing, it asserts that mitigating the outsized influence of street police culture is imperative to improving the experiences of all officers, including those from historically underrepresented backgrounds, as well as the experiences of policed communities, particularly marginalised groups.