U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government, Department of Justice.

NCJRS Virtual Library

The Virtual Library houses over 235,000 criminal justice resources, including all known OJP works.
Click here to search the NCJRS Virtual Library

Stress and the Senior Police Manager (From Policing in Central and Eastern Europe: Comparing Firsthand Knowledge With Experience From the West, P 415-423, 1996, Milan Pagon, ed. -- See NCJ-170291)

NCJ Number
170328
Author(s)
J Brown; C Cooper
Date Published
1996
Length
9 pages
Annotation
This study examined the occupational stress experienced by police managers in England and Wales under the changes instituted by the 1979 Conservative Government.
Abstract
The changes were based in the Thatcher Conservative Government's introduction of market disciplines into the public sector. Under this policy, public services had to demonstrate efficiency, effectiveness, and value for money. There were attendant changes in managerial accountability, police consultation with the community, operational priorities, and organizational structure. The impact of these changes on the stress experienced by police managers was examined through a survey of a sample of police managers drawn from the Superintendents Associations of England and Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland. Only data from England and Wales are reported in this paper. Ten officers of the ranks of superintendent and chief superintendents were approached in the 43 forces of England and Wales (20 percent of all officers in these two ranks). A questionnaire that consisted of the Occupational Stress Inventory and a number of demographic and additional health questions was sent to respondents. Findings show that the main sources of job pressures for superintendents are similar to those found in other organizations, namely, work overload, staff shortages, insufficient resources, and lack of consultation. The most stressed senior officers were those who had served the majority of their service in one main area of policing and were promoted and moved into another area of responsibility. Overall, senior police managers describe job pressures similar to those experienced in such occupations as medicine and teaching. This implies that stress prevention, reduction, or management techniques used elsewhere may be imported to the police organization. This may include awareness training concerning both the generation of stress in others as well as being alerted to symptoms of stress in oneself and one's staff, as well as the setting up of inhouse specialists to monitor morale and job satisfaction and provide stress counseling. 5 tables and 1 note