Reproducing police culture in a British university: findings from an exploratory case study of police foundation degrees

Most of the research into police culture has been conducted by ‘outsider’ academics on police practitioners and finds the situated workplace to be the key site of cultural influence. This article turns that standpoint on its head. The author is a British police officer who carried out doctoral research into a scheme to train police recruits at a university. The research found unintended consequences and in this article the social theory of Pierre Bourdieu is employed to examine how the pedagogic practices of the academics and other aspects of the university programme operated to reproduce negative facets of police culture.