Social network engineering and race in a police academy: A longitudinal analysis

This research examined an attempt to facilitate racial integration by populating squads (i.e., workgroups) in a police academy with mixes of recruits that reflected the racial demographics of the larger cohort. This was part of the social infrastructure of the academy. Additionally, a fixed seating arrangement was considered as a second element of academy infrastructure capable of impacting racial integration. We examined the consequences of these academy components over time with regard to race by combining ethnographic accounts with social network data collected throughout the academy and using a variety of network analytic tools. These consequences with regard to race were examined as a part of social network evolution. The academy’s social arrangements did accelerate the creation of social knowledge of recruits about each other and the formation of friendship ties both within and between races. However, our results point to clear limitations to such infrastructural engineering and have implications for both recruitment to police academies and dealing with race. They shed light also on processes of homophily ver ti and group composition o . Introduction: race in the police context The conflict between the police and racial minorities has been ne of the most serious problems facing urban law enforcement ince its inception (Mann, 1993). In July 2009, the USA received vivid reminder. “The arrest of Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr., he eminent Harvard scholar, at his own home thrust the police’s reatment of minorities, particularly black men, back into the potlight” (Blow, 2009). While minorities have been subjected o racial profiling for a long time (Weitzer and Tuch, 2002) the olice–minority conflict extends into the occupational culture of olicing itself. Specifically, most black officers report being vicims of racial profiling (Barlow and Barlow, 2002) and share a erception that racist attitudes and institutional obstacles prevent ull-participation within their departments (Bolton, 2003). Howver, with regard to professional fulfillment, blacks were found o be more satisfied with both their police careers and the orgaizational environment than their white and Hispanic colleagues Friday and Friday, 2003; Lasley and Hooper, 1998). Such divergent ndings paint a complicated picture of race relations both within olice departments and for interactions between police and soci∗ Corresponding author at: Department of Sociology, University of Pittsburgh, 602 WWPH, Pittsburgh, PA 15260, United States. Tel.: +1 412 648 7537; ax: +1 412 648 2799. E-mail addresses: [email protected] (N. Conti), [email protected] (P. Doreian). 378-8733/$ – see front matter © 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. oi:10.1016/j.socnet.2009.08.001 me and have implications for studying social networks. © 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. ety. They also prompt us to question whether this situation can be altered by socializing recruits with regard to race while instructing them in the nuts and bolts of policework in police academies.More specifically, we wonder if increased contacts between recruits of different races can be used to increase understanding and to counteract racism within policing. We seek to answer these questions through an examination of one academy’s attempt to bridge racial divides during their training regimen. The presentation is organized in the following way. Section 2 outlines the substantive foundations through which we attempt to understand relation formation during training in a police academy. The areas upon which we draw are environments and elements of behavior (Homans, 1950), a phase model of police socialization (Conti, 2009), distinctiveness theory (McGuire, 1984) and homophily (McPherson et al., 2001). Section 3 describes our methods for data collection and analysis. Section 4 is devoted to detailing our empirical findingswhile our conclusions andpolicy recommendations are contained in Section 5. 2. Substantive foundations As social relationships form in all organizations, one simple hypothesis is our start point. Hypothesis 1. Social knowledge of recruits regarding each other increases throughout the course of the academy.