Role Call: Preprofessional Socialization into Police Culture

This article examines the process by which individuals actively seek status elevation through selection into police academy training. In pursuit of departmental authorization, aspirant police recruits navigate through three stages of self: civilian, contestant and anticipatory recruit. That evolution, where civilians negotiate admission into the police academy, is the focus of analysis in this project. Data were collected through full participant observation within the recruit selection process in a large American city. This selection process maintains some structural similarities to Goffman's prepatient stage of the mental patient's moral career; his model of the betrayal funnel is retooled into a framework more appropriate for preprofessional socialization. Additionally, examples are presented that demonstrate how race functions in mitigating this process for minority recruit candidates.