Policing the Platonic Cave: Ethics and Efficacy in Police Training

This article seeks to understand the form, content and broader implications of police academy ethics training. We begin by detailing the mechanisms borrowed from (near) total/greedy institutions that are key elements in the academy training structure. These are noted in an ethnographic account that points out the importance of obedience to authority, and the resultant shame and honour, which function as the core of police socialization. We conclude by explicating the theoretical foundation of the police function and then move on to question how ethics training supports, or resists, this structure. Findings suggest that, even at its best, ethics training is likely to serve in restraining the professional vision of incoming police officers. Despite what can only be assumed to be the best of intentions, a traditional model of police as law enforcers is (re)generated within a recruit cohort while more progressive notions of the police role (i.e., working toward neighbourhood efficacy) are ignored. With this, truly ethical behaviour is structurally inhibited by theatrical efforts at maintaining the collective fiction of the police mandate.