‘We deal with human beings’

Abstract

Dealing with emotions is a central feature of everyday police work. This is especially the case in relation to criminal investigation work, in which police investigators must grapple with both their own emotions and those of the victims and families with whom they deal. Despite the importance of emotional labor in understanding criminal investigation work, this aspect of their work remains understudied. This study is based on data from 13 in-depth qualitative interviews with members of the Canadian police services. Within it, we explore how officers engage in emotional labor, as well as its impact on these individuals. Although our results are preliminary in nature, they do reveal how managing emotions according to organizationally sanctioned display rules can affect officers’ well-being, and highlight the need for future research to enable police organizations to deal more effectively with this form of work-related stress.

To Conserve and Protect: “Making Sense” of Conservation Officer uses of Emotional Labour

“…There are limited connections in the current literature (Moreto, 2016) and carefully examining the concepts from this literature makes it possible to clarify core ideas, articulate definitions, and extend the concepts of EL to conservation officers within Canada. Helpfully, there has been some research into the EL work undertaken by police officers and correctional officers (Huey and Kalyal, 2017;Stenross and Kleinman, 1989;Tracy, 2005) and this research functioned as a reference point for the work undertaken in this project. This project is inductive in nature and themes emerged based on what respondents said about emotions and work.…”

“…EL as a concept has been drawn upon extensively to garner understanding of employee behaviours (Dashper, 2020), and it has been the subject of critique and testing among many prominent scholars in sociology and criminology (Bolton, 2004;Bolton, 2009;Brook, 2009;Gabriel et al, 2015). Dealing with emotions is a circadian feature of investigative work (Huey and Kalyal, 2017) and Hochschild (1983) has provided a useful reference point for indexing how people shape and manage their feelings and how social structure and institutions mandate or attempt to constrain or control these efforts (Wharton, 2009). Hochschild describes EL as the management of feelings to generate publicly observable body and facial displays that are intended to invoke a particular state of mind in others (1983).…”

“…"Emotional labour" (EL) is a term coined by Hochschild (1983) which describes how workers modulate their emotions to accomplish occupational tasks as maintained by workplace norms. Although previous studies have considered the EL aspects of other law enforcement groups (Huey and Kalyal, 2017;Stenross and Kleinman, 1989), few researchers have considered the degree to which emotion management is a critical aspect of the work of conservation officers (Moreto, 2016).…”

“…There is a spectral layer to managing emotions in law enforcementone that is fortified and unified by the prevalence of violence in their everyday work. Officers undertake a great emotional toll while making sense of this violence (Huey and Kalyal, 2017) and the spectral presence looming over the profession produces these traumatic experiences. Officer's emotional experiences remain suspended in time; they are unable to move forward without anticipation of fear, anxiety, and anguish and unable to look back without seeing violence, trauma, and injury.…”

“…Following this introduction will be the literature review, which assesses the current state of knowledge regarding the interaction between conservation officers and EL, sensemaking and coping, and an in-depth analysis of hauntology and its spectral presence embedded within law enforcement. I also review the methodological application of a grounded theory study using Huey and Kalyal's (2017) analysis of investigator uses of EL as the main method-guide for this qualitative research design. This project is inductive in nature and themes emerged based on what respondents said about emotions and work; importantly, following the inductive protocol of grounded theory was essential for this project to reach its full potential.…”