This book offers researchers, police practitioners, and policymakers a platform for organizational reform and an understanding of how the police organization creates stress, which contributes to reduced officer performance.
This book, based on an in-depth study exploring the relationship between perceived organizational stressors and police performance, indicates which features of the police organization generate the most stress affecting performance, and provides a model of organizational stress that applies to police agencies. While much stress research portrays the operation of policing as the greatest source of contention among officers, this research shows the ever-present rigid hierarchical design of the police agency to be contributing factor of stress that affects performance.
Ideal for scholars, police personnel, and policymakers who are interested in how the police organization contributes to lower officer performance, this book has implications for policing agencies in the United States and worldwide.
Chapter 1: Police Stress in Today’s World
A Look at the Problem
Differentiating Stressors in Policing
What Previous Studies Generally Reveal about Occupational Stress
Implications of Organizational Stress
Why This Study Matters
Framework for the Study
Chapter 2: What Methods Should We Use to Research Police Stress?
Overview of the Research Design
Research Questions
Data Sources, Instruments and Validation
Measures
Site Description and Selection
Chapter 3: Stress in Policing: Where Does it Come From?
A Model of Occupational Stress Applied to Police Organizations
Organizational Antecedents to Stress
Stressors in Organizational Life
Perception and Cognition: The Appraisal Process
Properties of the Person as Stress Mediators
Properties of the Situation as Stress Mediators
Responses to Stress
Consequences of Stress
What is Police Performance and What Does it Look Like?
Chapter 4: Stress in Policing: What Does it Lead to?
The Officers
A Look at What the Data Tells Us
Chapter 5: Stress in Police Work: What Does the Future Hold?
Policy Implications
Limitations of the Study
Future Police Stress Research
Where Does This Leave Us?
REFERENCES
INDEX
Biography
Jon M. Shane is an Associate Professor in the Department of Law, Police Science, and Criminal Justice Administration at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. Dr. Shane has published in leading criminal justice and policing journals, including Crime Science, Journal of Criminal Justice, Justice Quarterly, Policing: An International Journal of Strategies and Management, and Police Practice and Research. Dr. Shane can be reached at [email protected].