EMPAC Senior Research Fellow, Professor Terry O’Connell, here offers a thought leadership piece about the culture of policing, professional standards and authentic reform.
In recent discussions about policing wellbeing, increasing attention has been given to the relationship between trauma exposure and misconduct. Reflective commentary from practitioners has raised an important question: whether behaviours that lead to investigation may sometimes overlap with symptoms associated with cumulative trauma exposure in policing.
This is an important and legitimate line of inquiry. Policing is an occupation characterised by repeated exposure to traumatic incidents, operational stress, and emotional demands that are rarely encountered in other professions. Research across multiple jurisdictions has demonstrated that police officers experience elevated risks of psychological distress, cumulative stress, and post-traumatic stress responses. These realities deserve serious attention.
However, focusing primarily on trauma risks overlooking a deeper organisational issue. The relationship between trauma, misconduct, and disciplinary processes cannot be understood without examining the culture and operating logic of policing organisations themselves.
In many respects, policing may be confronting the symptoms of a deeper structural problem while continuing to have the wrong conversation about its causes.
The Organisational Context of Misconduct
Policing organisations are embedded within the broader criminal justice system, a system historically shaped by principles of deterrence, punishment, and rule enforcement. These principles are essential to maintaining public order and legal accountability. Yet they also influence how police organisations govern themselves internally.
When misconduct occurs, the organisational response typically follows a familiar sequence:
- Identification of breach
- Investigation
- Determination of responsibility
- Sanction or discipline
This process is legally necessary and protects public trust. However, it often mirrors the punitive ethos of the criminal justice system itself, focusing primarily on rule violation rather than on the relational and organisational context in which behaviour occurs. The result is that disciplinary systems frequently operate in ways that produce unintended consequences.
Officers under investigation often report experiences of:
– isolation from colleagues
– perceived organisational abandonment
– reputational damage
– prolonged uncertainty
– defensive organisational responses
In many cases the process generates resentment, withdrawal and distrust rather than reflection, learning or reintegration. This dynamic becomes particularly significant when officers are already operating under conditions of cumulative stress or trauma exposure.
What Police Cultural Surveys Reveal
Perhaps the most revealing insights into policing organisations come not from misconduct statistics but from internal cultural surveys conducted across jurisdictions.
These surveys consistently identify similar patterns:
– low levels of trust between operational police and senior leadership
– perceptions of inconsistent or unfair disciplinary processes
– reluctance to admit mistakes due to fear of punishment
– weak psychological safety within teams
– strong “us versus them” perceptions between management and frontline officers
What is striking is that these findings have appeared repeatedly for decades and across multiple countries. Despite repeated reform initiatives, many of the same cultural concerns remain.
At their core, these findings reveal something fundamental: many of the challenges within policing are relational rather than procedural. Officers rarely complain primarily about policies, procedures or operational tactics.
Instead, they report concerns about:
– trust
– communication
– fairness
– engagement
– leadership relationships
These are all fundamentally relationship issues.
Procedural Justice, Fair Process and Organisational Legitimacy
Research outside policing provides important insights into why these relational dynamics matter so much. Tom Tyler’s work on procedural justice demonstrates that people comply with authority primarily because they experience fairness, respect, voice and neutrality.
When individuals believe they are treated fairly and with dignity, they are far more likely to accept decisions and comply with rules — even when outcomes are unfavourable.
Similarly, the organisational research of Kim and Mauborgne on Fair Process identifies three essential conditions for trust and commitment within institutions:
– engagement (people are involved in decisions affecting them)
– explanation (decisions are explained and understood)
– expectation clarity (people understand what is required of them)
These principles apply not only to citizens interacting with police but also to police interacting with their own organisations.
A healthy policing culture would therefore model procedural justice internally. When officers experience fairness, engagement and respect within their organisation, they are far more likely to replicate those behaviours in their interactions with the community.
Conversely, when organisational cultures rely primarily on command authority and punitive control, officers learn a different lesson: compliance is achieved through hierarchy and enforcement rather than legitimacy.
In this sense, internal organisational culture becomes a powerful form of professional socialisation. Police organisations teach officers how to police largely through how they themselves exercise authority.
Command and Control: The Persistent Model
The persistence of relational problems within policing is closely connected to the organisational model through which policing is typically managed. Most police organisations remain structured around a command-and-control leadership paradigm.
This model emphasises:
– hierarchy
– authority
– compliance
– discipline
– centralised decision-making
Such structures are often justified as necessary for operational effectiveness. In certain operational contexts this may indeed be the case. However, command-and-control leadership also shapes organisational culture in ways that can unintentionally undermine relational trust.
When leadership emphasises control over engagement, and compliance over dialogue, the result is often a culture in which:
– mistakes are hidden rather than discussed
– vulnerability is avoided
– learning opportunities are lost
– defensive behaviours become normalised
These dynamics are frequently reflected in cultural survey results.
Trauma and Misconduct: Only Part of the Picture
Against this organisational backdrop, it is understandable that trauma exposure may influence behaviour.
Police officers regularly encounter:
– violence
– death
– tragedy
– moral ambiguity
– public hostility
– intense operational pressure
Over time, these exposures can affect emotional regulation, decision-making and interpersonal interactions. However, trauma alone does not explain misconduct.
Many officers experience significant trauma exposure without engaging in behaviour that breaches professional standards. What trauma may do is increase vulnerability within already challenging organisational environments. In environments characterised by high pressure, limited psychological safety and punitive disciplinary responses, cumulative stress may interact with organisational dynamics in ways that increase the likelihood of behavioural difficulties.
The Missing Dimension: Practice Rationale
Another important issue rarely discussed in policing reform debates is the profession’s difficulty articulating the rationale behind its own practice. Policing is fundamentally a relational profession. Officers interact daily with victims, offenders, colleagues and community members. These interactions shape outcomes in ways that extend far beyond the formal application of law. Yet when police are asked to describe the last time they made a difference, many struggle to answer. This is not because they do not make a difference.
In fact, research such as Tyler’s demonstrates that police legitimacy — and therefore much of policing effectiveness — arises through everyday respectful interactions with the public.
Officers often create compliance, cooperation and community trust simply through how they engage with people. However, because policing culture traditionally emphasises law enforcement and compliance, these relational achievements are rarely recognised or articulated. They remain visible but largely unexplained.
As a result, many officers struggle to describe the deeper purpose and impact of their work. Policing becomes defined by rule enforcement rather than relational influence, even though the latter is often where the greatest difference occurs.
Professional Standards and the Limits of Externalised Accountability
Healthy professions rely heavily on practitioners themselves to maintain professional standards. Doctors, lawyers and other professions regulate behaviour not only through formal disciplinary bodies but also through strong professional cultures in which practitioners actively uphold and reinforce standards among themselves.
In policing, this dynamic is far weaker. The default response to misconduct is typically to transfer responsibility to Professional Standards units. These units are essential for accountability and public confidence. However, they can inadvertently remove responsibility for professional standards from everyday professional practice.
When this occurs:
– accountability becomes bureaucratised
– peer responsibility weakens
– learning opportunities are lost
– officers become defensive rather than reflective
The result is that discipline becomes something done to officers rather than something owned by the profession itself.
This reinforces the command-and-control model and weakens professional self-regulation.
The Real Issue: Relationships
The consistent message emerging from cultural surveys, organisational experiences and reform efforts is that the central challenge within policing is relational.
The follow issues appear repeatedly:
– trust
– engagement
– fairness
– leadership relationships
Misconduct processes, trauma exposure and organisational stress all intersect within this relational environment. Yet policing reform discussions often focus primarily on structural or procedural changes. This of course risks overlooking the most fundamental dimension of policing work: ‘the quality of relationships within the organisation itself.’
Reframing the Conversation
The question raised in recent discussions about trauma and misconduct is therefore valuable, but it may not go far enough.
We should be asking:
“How can policing organisations create relational environments that support accountability, learning and wellbeing simultaneously?”
Answering this question requires moving beyond purely punitive or procedural approaches to discipline. It also requires policing organisations to develop clearer and more explicit understandings of how relational practice functions.
Toward Explicit Relational Practice
Policing has historically evolved through experience and tradition. While this has produced many effective practices, the absence of clearly articulated frameworks has limited the profession’s ability to explain and refine its relational work.
Developing explicit relational practice frameworks offers one possible path forward.
Such frameworks would help practitioners articulate:
– the relational dynamics that influence behaviour
– how accountability can occur without destructive shame dynamics
– how organisations can learn from mistakes rather than merely punish them
– how professional standards can be strengthened through practitioner engagement rather than solely through bureaucratic enforcement
Importantly, this approach would not weaken professional standards. On the contrary, it may strengthen them by creating environments in which officers are more willing to engage openly with difficult experiences and reflect on their practice.
Conclusion
Policing organisations face complex challenges involving trauma exposure, misconduct risk and organisational culture. While trauma may play a role in shaping behaviour, focusing solely on individual psychological factors risks overlooking the broader relational environment in which policing occurs. Cultural surveys consistently indicate that many of the profession’s most persistent challenges are relational in nature.
If policing reform is to move beyond repeating the same patterns, it may require a shift in focus — from procedural control toward explicit relational understanding. In other words, the most important reform question may not be how to enforce standards more effectively.
It may be how to build organisational environments in which professional standards, learning and relational trust can coexist. The greatest challenge is likely to be getting police to describe what they would observe in such an organisational environment: answering what does good look like? There has been so much focus on what bad looks like we have forgotten to focus on where we would like to be, which is many ways why we’ve not got there yet.
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