Date of Award

8-2022

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts in Criminal Justice

Department

Criminal Justice

First Reader/Committee Chair

Norris, Alexis (Ph.D., Dr.)

Abstract

Several studies have reported an increased amount of Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) being caused by the Police Sub-Culture and its three constructs of Authoritarianism, Burnout and Cynicism within law enforcement families (Blumstein et al., 2012; Johnson et al., 2005; Anderson & Lo, 2011; Rose & Unnithan, 2015). IPV remains a problem within law enforcement families. And we must ask why police officers who are more embedded with the police sub-culture exhibit higher rates of IPV. We used data from Gershon’s (2000) study of police officers (n=1104) that focused on police work stress, especially on police stress-related domestic violence. And, created two multiple regressions that examined the correlation between the three constructs of police sub-culture and (a) Acts of IPV, (b) Tolerance of IPV. Similar to what has been found in previous literature, the results of the multiple regressions showed that two of police sub-cultures constructs; authoritarianism and burnout were statically significant. Our results also found that in (a) Acts of IPV, the predictor variables of Rank and Alcohol Abuse were statically significant. Contrary to what has been found previous literature, cynicism was not found significant in either of the multiple regressions. This could be in part of limitations regarding how different studies measured cynicism that did not coincide with our measure. Still the present study offers results that support those police sub-culture does increase IPV within law enforcement families.

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