Weak links and warrior hearts: a framework for judging self andothersin police training

This paper examines professional socialization within a metropolitan police academy in the USA. Specifically, the research documents how the normative orders of the occupational culture come to function as a framework used to either stigmatize or idealize fellow recruits. A series of narratives regarding and reactions to particular events in the training serve as examples that detail the manner by which recruits internalize the occupational culture as they evolve through the training. The paper also discusses how recruits are eventually able to utilize their burgeoning understanding of normative orders to discredit police administrators and the training structure itself.