Cynicism Of Police Officers

In 1973, in an attempt to understand the conformity to roles of guards and prisoners, Zimbardo launched a role-playing experiment that modeled prison life and reflected the environment of an American prison. The experiment was to see if prison guards are brutal and cruel because that’s their sadistic personality types that cause conflicts with the prisoners or if its due to the prison setting itself. In other words, there is a dispositional hypothesis that states that prison guards act the way they do because their personalities cause

Are police ever justified in committing illegal acts that violate others rights are they ever justified especially when there is no personal gain but for reasons that may seem to be about a higher purpose. This is the argument for noble cause corruption. This idea brings it to the end justifies the means thinking. If we start down this line where can it lead us? The idea that we can justify any action that would violate civil rights and other laws because we feel that our cause is noble and it is not being done for personal gain but the good of others can lead us into some dark places. The noble cause thinking is

I choose to examine the Stanford Prison Study. This experiment was conducted by a famous psychologist named Philip Zimbardo. This study focused on testing if and how quickly individuals would conform to social roles they were assigned. The experiment took place on the bottom floor of the psychology building at Stanford University which was transformed into a mock prison. In order to achieve the appearance of a real prison, the cells included bare walls, limited space, and bared doors and windows. He then selected 21 males from 75 volunteers and appointed them as either a prisoner or a guard.

1. The researcher in this experiment was psychologist, Stanley Milgram. The study took place at Yale University in the year 1963. The researcher’s hypothesis was that if there is a demanding authoritive figure, then the other person will obey that authoritive figure just because of their position, even if it violates their morality and their ethical beliefs. He based this of his theory that people who would never hurt someone purposely, would if told to do so by a figure of authority.

This time I hated how it felt to be stereotyped. I really felt what people say about police officers. Police officers supposed to be the nice men or women in uniform. This time it felt awful to be on the side of questioning and feeling like a criminal just for minding our business. A group of friends and I were at Fort Lauderdale Airport, waiting for the arrival of two friends coming from their trip. While we waited in the garage filled with cars a security guard in his patrol car came and told us to move before the officers came. The Police officers approached us and asked us why we are here? We all politely answered that we were waiting for our friend to arrive. Thinking that the matter is resolved the officer radioed for backup. In a matter

Philip (2009) to try and see what was being said about prison treatment was true, this was called the Stanford prison experiment. This experiment only lasted 6 days due to the circumstances versus 6 weeks. Zimbardo had to find out whether the prisons were brutal due to the guards or due to the environment. It was clear that the role of the guards was the issue and not the environment. This was discovered when a sample was chosen from the population. Each induvial was set up to be a guard or a prisoner at random. In this study researchers got see the unfortunate power of social situations. Once prisoner and guard roles were assigned each group were told that they were being watched by the researcher and his colleagues, the guards were to not hit the prisoners, and debriefed about the experiment. Although all this was told the guards took situations into their own hands and the power took over. The guards began simply viewing them as prisoners and the prisoners began to fear the guards. It is important to note the researcher did not intervene but continued to observe when the hitting was taking place. This is particularly important because not only are the guards fitting the rod but the researcher is at fault for the fundamental attribution error but viewing the situation for what it

With the recent rise in discussions about prejudice in the police force, this issue remains at the forefront of my mind as of late. Starting in 2014 with the tragic death of Michael Brown, an eighteen year old African American boy who was gunned down by the white police officer Darren Wilson, the vast injustices hidden within the justice system have been continuously exposed and thus an entire movement began. Since then, the nature of law enforcement and prejudices within the police force have been the subject of an ongoing national debate, and civil unrest has characterized the political climate of the last few years.

When this loyalty to the subculture becomes too strong, the unity that follows can adversely affect the ethical values of the officers (Martin 2011). This type of work environment causes officers to feel like they are doing what is wanted by their organizations and the public and the officers may continue with the behavior because the pressure to produce results is greater than that to follow the rules. A law enforcement department might choose to punish an individual, but the fear of punishment usually is not enough to change unwanted behavior (Martin 2011).

The implicit bias of law enforcement officers to perceive White Americans as innocent, and non-White Americans as criminals, has lead law enforcement officers to profile non-White Americans. This is an example of white privilege because white offenders are virtually immune to being suspected of drug use. And because law enforcement officers do not suspect white people of drug use in proportion to the number of them that actually use drugs, they do not arrest white drug users accordingly. Moreover, court officials do not charge white offenders proportionately. Thus, disproportion in incarceration rates is a form of racial inequity. If white people used their privilege to advocate for non-white people we could eliminate this racial inequity. But first, we must take steps to educate white children on white privilege. Only then can white children use their privilege to advocate for non-white people. How then, specifically, does educating white children on white privilege work?

The topic of police brutality has been an issue in America for many years, especially among minorities. When referring to ethnicity, most American citizens are white with European background. Therefore, the minorities include American citizens that include African, Hispanic, Asian, Arab, Indian, or native background. Although the amount of racism among citizens has decreased over years, prejudice, racial profiling, and stereotypes still exist. Hence it is a privilege to live in any society and be a part of the majority, which in the case of American citizens is to be white. Many police officers are also white, and most of the residents that live in inner cities are minorities, which has led to controversy, even in recent years. A common stereotype

Would you look at the world as a safe place to live? Or would you say that the world could be a rather violent situation. Police brutality is a serious rights violation in the United States. Police violence has been part of our history for many years. Police officers has represented in a way that make people question is they doing their job, can they be trusted.

We have been investigating how the language of police changes over the course of 24 hours. There were 3 interviews conducted in the 24 hour period. In the first interview the police, suspect and solicitor are very relaxed. They converse about sports and they seem to be more like friends than police. This also allows them to have a common ground between them.

Police work has many different stages of cynicism. According Arthur Niederhoffer in 1967, these stages include pseudo-cynicism, romantic cynicism, aggressive cynicism, and the resigned cynicism. First stage, pseudo-cynicism, is in the beginning of an officer’s career, where the recruit has very high ideals and a sense of mission. Transitioning into the second stage, romantic cynicism, occurs usually around the 3-5 year range. Romantic cynicism Niederhoffer states is where the officer is committed to his/her high values, and ideals, tackling the job vigorously and zealously.

The Stanford Prison Experiment was designed to allow 24 participants (college students) to be arrested in a mock police state scenario without any charges being brought against them. The participants were hooded and put into a prison cellblock with other mock prisoners. The purpose of the experiment was to see how non-criminals would be affected by the prison culture and the oversight of prison guards. Philip G. Zimbardo (2004)

In recent years, society has heard cases of police brutality at an increasingly shocking rate, thus creating a sense of distrust among communities towards police officers and other authority figures. As the first line of defense against crimes such as home invasions or crimes against persons, police officers are expected to be an ally towards victims; however, it seems that society is now viewing officers as the perpetrators of crimes as opposed to the protectors. This has already posed an issue because community members are choosing not to seek police help when needed, and when they do decide to seek help, forgoing police assistance results in being uncertain of where else to go.