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Police Vulnerability

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Policing Practices and Vulnerable People

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Abstract

The vulnerability of police officers is a relatively new business priority for police organisations. This is a logical development of policing as a profession, since there are operational and ethical implications in dealing with the constant exposure to danger, risk, or social hardship. The context in which police officers operate puts them at constant and consistent risk of being injured physically and psychologically. While issues of mental and physical well-being have traditionally been perceived separately, there is new international evidence that they are complex issues that should be considered concurrently. In this chapter, we argue that the vulnerability of police officers spans many concerns, and that vulnerability needs to be perceived through individual, operational, and organisational lenses.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    There is evidence of police officers using alcohol as self-medication, to numb feelings of helplessness or depression, to relax, gain sleep, and in order to deal with the trauma associated with exposure to tragedy (Karaffa and Koch 2016).

  2. 2.

    Police officers also sometimes come to the profession with the intent to bring closure to their own trauma (such as child abuse or the witnessing of a crime). Such background is acknowledged as a predisposition or predictor to further trauma in the career of an officer.

  3. 3.

    By first responders, we mean police officers, as well as emergency personnel such as firefighters, medical personnel, paramedics, rescuers, active and deployed military personnel.

  4. 4.

    We note that it is a critique of stressor-strain clinical studies that they fail to capture such existing coping styles and individual appraisals of hardship, backgrounds and experience (Nelson and Smith 2016).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Tasmanian Institute of Law Enforcement Studies, University of Tasmania, Hobart, Tasmania, Australia

    Nicole L. Asquith & Isabelle Bartkowiak-Théron

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  1. Nicole L. Asquith
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  2. Isabelle Bartkowiak-Théron
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Correspondence to Nicole L. Asquith .

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Asquith, N.L., Bartkowiak-Théron, I. (2021). Police Vulnerability. In: Policing Practices and Vulnerable People. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-62870-3_10

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-62870-3_10

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  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-62869-7

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-62870-3

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