Police organisational sub-culture has often been highlighted in media-driven expo­sés of scandals, and is a common theme in news media and fictional representa­tions of police work.

The ‘working personality’ of police officers is held to influence the ways in which officers interpret the law and exercise the discretion that is a hallmark of routine police activity.

Discretion is particularly significant because officers have to interpret how they will apply the law in particular circumstances, the power that they have over fellow citi­zens, and the ‘invisible’ circumstances in which routine police work is carried out. Police culture has often been cited in explanations of the poor response the service has offered to victims of domestic and sexual violence, and the apparent over-policing of minority ethnic communities.

Successive studies have characterised police working culture in many societies in terms of insularity, cynicism, conservatism, machismo and prejudice.

The failure of the police to respond to victims of domestic and sexual violence has often been attributed to a sub-culture dominated by male staff at all levels of the organisation. Women have always had a gendered role within the police service and until relatively recently have been formally barred from working in certain roles. As with other marginalised groups, the evidence suggests that female officers have often over-subscribed to the machismo of police sub-culture as a way of demon­strating their affinity to the service.

The position of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) communities within the police service has received less attention than that of other marginalised groups, and there is less statistical information relating to the representation of these groups within police ranks. Some studies suggest that LGBT officers have reported a relatively positive response within police services to their sexual identity.

Whatever its nature, the roots of police culture have been explained variously in terms of the profile of those who enter the service in the first instance, or the nature of police work itself.

While few studies have presented alternative perspectives on the character of police sub-culture, the impact that it has on police work is more contentious. First, police culture is not singular or unchanging, and not all officers fit the description outlined. Individual police officers have agency and are not dupes influenced by an overwhelming regressive sub-culture.

Additionally, police culture might be conceptualised as a response to police work, rather than something that determines operational practice.

The broader terrain of policing in the contemporary period has meant that many features associated with the public police, such as the recourse to the use of force, power over fellow citizens, and so on, are now increasingly shared with other agen­cies. If these characteristics of police work have, among other things, shaped the sub-culture of officers then it might be expected that the dominant features might also become shared among diverse policing networks.