Zeitschrift Polizei & Wissenschaft: Ausgabe 2/2023

Von Clemens Lorei

Kompetentes Handeln basiert allgemein auf der Kombination praktischer Erfahrung und wissenschaftlicher Erkenntnisse. Grundlage hierfür ist die Kommunikation und Diskussion zwischen Wissenschaftlern und Praktikern. Dies gilt ganz besonders für eine moderne Polizei.

Die Zeitschrift Polizei & Wissenschaft bietet die Möglichkeit zur wissenschaftlichen Kommunikation polizeirelevanter Themenbereiche. Sie versteht sich als Schnittstelle zwischen Wissenschaft und Polizei. Durch ihre interdisziplinäre Ausrichtung werden unterschiedlichste wissenschaftliche und praktische Perspektiven miteinander vernetzt. Dazu zählen insbesondere die Bereiche Psychologie, Rechtswissenschaft, Soziologie, Politikwissenschaft, Medizin, Arbeitswissenschaft und Sportwissenschaft. Aber natürlich wird auch polizeirelevantes Wissen der Disziplinen genutzt, die nicht klassisch mit dem Begriff Polizei verknüpft sind, wie z.B. Wirtschaftswissenschaften, Sprachwissenschaften, Informatik, Elektrotechnik und ähnliche.

Polizei & Wissenschaft regt als breit angelegtes Informationsmedium zur Diskussion an und verknüpft Themenbereiche. Sie erscheint vierteljährlich und geht mit ihrer interdisziplinären Interaktivität über einen einseitigen und fachlich eingeschränkten Informationsfluss hinaus. Dazu nutzt sie die Möglichkeiten des Internets und fördert durch die Organisation von Veranstaltungen auch eine direkte Kommunikation.

• Sprache: Deutsch
• Herausgeber: Verlag für Polizeiwissenschaft
• Erscheinungsdatum: 31. Mai 2023
• ISBN: 9783866768048

Buchvorschau

Police Careers in Series and Reality

The Influence of Police Series on Career Expectations of Law Enforcement Students

Jochen Kinast, Volker Gehrau & Katja Driesel-Lange

Popularity on Screen and in Career Choice

European Union’s states currently face significant shortages of skilled labor in occupational fields essential for the security and welfare of their societies. Skill shortages arise if the supply of sufficiently trained experts is permanently lower than the demand for experts (Bundesinstitut für Berufsbildung, 2022). Long reemployment periods, misbalanced vacancy-applicant ratios and the need of a state to hire foreign specialists are indicators for such skill shortages (Bundesagentur für Arbeit, 2021).

One professional field lacking sufficiently skilled professionals in Europe is the law enforcement sector. A drastic example is Belgium where police schools have to cancel police student training due to the lack of staff (Kockartz, 2022). This highlights that skill shortages have already become a multi-level problem. However, also in Germany a shortage of skilled police officers has been a constant problem for years (Deutsche Polizei, 2022; Gewerkschaft der Polizei Nordrhein-Westfalen, 2020). Significant skill shortages in the law enforcement sector directly threaten the security and welfare of the German society (Deutsche Polizei, 2022). Already in 2017, the German Police Union (Gewerkschaft der Polizei - GdP) demanded a rise of 4,000 recruits per year to tackle the immanent lack of police officers (Deutsche Polizei, 2017). The main reasons for shortages in the field are older generation’s retirement from the force and an unattractive perception of the profession among younger generations (Deutsche Polizei, 2017). Therefore, in 2022 the GdP still stresses the need for an increase in applicant numbers by 33 % as young adults perceive other professional fields as more attractive (Deutsche Polizei, 2022). A recent study carried out by PWC (2022) suggests that to counter the unattractive perception, working conditions in regard to payment, workload and work-life balance must be improved to remain competitive on the search for qualified applicants. The problem of skill shortages in the sector is amplified by high dropout rates at German police universities. Here, 20 % of the law enforcement students drop their studies (Magoley, 2022). The general reasons for dropping one’s studies are multifaced and reach from students’ unrealistic study motives to bad study conditions at the universities (Neugebauer et al., 2019). This indicates that it is not only important to attract young adults to the profession but to also hold them during their education.

Zusammenfassung

In dem vorliegenden Aufsatz wird untersucht, ob das Schauen von Polizeiserien mit den Karriereerwartungen von Polizeistudierenden zusammenhängt. Um mögliche Serien-Karriere-Beziehungen zu identifizieren, werden 238 Studierende im Studiengang Polizeivollzugsdienst der Fachhochschule für Öffentliche Verwaltung NRW in Münster mit einem quantitativen Fragebogen befragt. Der hier präsentierte Datensatz ist ein Auszug aus dem Dissertationsprojekt des Hauptautors. Die Datenanalyse wird mit Hilfe von linearen und logistischen Regressionsmodellen durchgeführt. Die Ergebnisse deuten darauf hin, dass der Konsum von Polizeiserien signifikant mit dem Berufswunsch Polizist*in zusammenhängt. Jedoch geht ein mediales Vorbild als Einfluss auf die Berufswahl mit einem geringeren erwarteten Einkommen und einer höheren erwarteten Arbeitszeit einher. Abschließend gibt der Artikel Implikationen für die zukünftige Forschung und diskutiert das Potenzial von Polizeiserien für die Rekrutierung.

Medieneffekte, Polizei, Serien, Streaming, Karriereerwartungen, Berufswahlforschung, Rekrutierung.

Abstract

The presented paper investigates whether entertainment series exposure is related to the career expectations of law enforcement students. To identify possible series-career relationships, 238 students studying Law Enforcement at the Fachhochschule für Öffentliche Verwaltung NRW in Münster, Germany, are surveyed with a quantitative questionnaire. The presented data is an extract of the main author’s dissertation project. Data analysis is conducted with the help of linear and logistic regression models. Findings suggest that watching police series is significantly linked to the choice of studying Law Enforcement. However, having a media role model as study choice influence goes along with a lower expected income and a higher expected workload. The article concludes by giving implications for future research and discussing the potential of police series for recruitment.

Media Effects, Police, Series, Streaming, Career Expectations, Career Development, Recruitment.

While in social reality the law enforcement sector is struggling to gain and hold young adults’ interest, the depiction of police work in series is highly popular. This is represented by the following figures. Already in 2017, more German households had subscripted to a streaming service like Netflix or Amazon Prime Video than to a newspaper (Feierabend et al., 2017). Studies suggest that streaming is especially popular among young adults (Feierabend et al., 2020). This is for instance reflected by Feierabend et al. (2021) who show that more than half of the teenagers watch alone Netflix at least multiple times per week. Of the streamed content, series depicting work in specific occupational fields are especially popular (Statista, n.d.). These series will be referred to as ‘vocational series’ in the following. Series of this kind usually depict the following set of occupational fields: law, law enforcement, politics, medicine and business (Esch, 2011; Gehrau, 2014). Especially crime and police series can be considered an evergreen in series entertainment. This for instance includes series like Brooklyn Nine-Nine or The Blacklist (Kinast, 2022). Work life in series is most often presented as thrilling (Signorielli, 1993). Law enforcement officers are commonly depicted while chasing dangerous criminals (Signorielli, 1993). This usually includes car chases, the use of force and of course catching the murderer right on time. The officers on screen achieve this without being restricted by rules or any kind of boring paperwork. Especially in European crime fiction this is often paired with the detectives being depicted as overworked and troubled by personal problems (McCabe, 2012, 2015; Stougaard-Nielsen, 2022). However, this strong focus on the thrilling aspects and the omission of administrative work in policing heavily derives from law enforcement in the real world (Signorielli, 1993).

Due to the immense popularity of such series among young adults, governments have been trying to use series formats for their recruitment campaigns in recent years. Possible examples for such employer branding campaigns are the German Bundeswehr’s web-series Die Rekruten or Ehrenpflegas initiated by the German Federal Ministry of Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth. However, outcomes of such series vary. While the Bundeswehr claims that Die Rekruten was followed by an increase of 20 % in recruits (Krei, 2017), Ehrenpflegas ended in a public relations disaster (Ernst, 2021).

Possible media effects of entertainment series on career development are of high relevance for branches with skill shortages and in turn the security and welfare of a society. Nevertheless, empirical research in this context is rare (Morgan, 2017). This is especially surprising since the few published studies consistently imply effects of entertainment television on the career development of children and young adults (Gehrau et al., 2016; Hoffner et al., 2008; Kinast, 2022). A study by Pollock et al. (2021) for example suggests that crime media consumption is related to the desire of becoming a police officer.

Against this backdrop the paper investigates the following question: Is police series exposure related to the career expectations of law enforcement students in Germany? In this context, it will be discussed, if police series can be utilized as potential employer branding tool to tackle skill shortages in the German police force. The data presented in this paper is an extract of the main author’s dissertation project. To answer the questions 238 law enforcement students of the Fachhochschule für öffentliche Verwaltung NRW (FHöV) in Münster, Germany, were surveyed in a quantitative study. The study searches for possible relationships with the help of multiple linear and binomial logistic regression models. It is important to highlight that this paper discusses relationships between series exposure and career development and not causalities. Therefore, the direction of possible relationships is not predicted. The study understands itself as groundwork in the field by giving an initial overview over series-career relationships to provide future in-depth research with promising attachment points.

2. Taking a Double Perspective on Series-Career Relationships: Theoretical Framework

An optimal theoretical foundation for explaining the outlined series-career relationships is Albert Bandura’s (1979) general Social Cognitive Theory (SCT). The theory discusses how individuals learn and behave (Hipeli & Süss, 2013). In this context Bandura (1979) understands human behavior as reciprocal interplay of environmental and personal factors as well as behavioral determinants. Two theoretical perspectives on series-career relationships can be derived from the theory and its developments: one of communication and one of career development. In this research, the former vantage point is supported by the cultivation theory of Gerbner and Gross (1976).

The main theoretical perspective in this study is the one of communication science. Thus, it is argued with Bandura’s (2001) social cognitive theory of mass communication. The theory is a direct development of his initial SCT. Due to the complexity of the theory this paper focusses on the introduction of its observational learning aspect. On a basic level the theory argues that individuals have the ability to learn by observing the behavior of (fictional) others (Hipeli & Süss, 2013). According to Hipeli and Süss (2013), two different levels of media effects can be explained with SCT. At the first level, the theory explains modeling of particular behavior (Hipeli & Süss, 2013). A possible example is a law enforcement student adapting the sports exercises of his or her favorite series detective. At level two, the theory seeks to explain the adaptation of more abstract constructs like values and images (Hipeli & Süss, 2013). A law enforcement student adapting the series detective’s views on police violence is a suitable example. In the context of career development, media effects at the second level are more likely to occur. Nevertheless, such effects strongly depend on the viewer’s identification with the role model on screen (Hipeli & Süss, 2013).

Figure 1: Interest and Choice Model

Note (Kinast, 2022). Own illustration in accordance with Brown and Lent (2019, p. 153). Moderator effects are represented by dashed lines.

Within this study the vantage point of communication is supported by Gerbner and Gross’ (1976) cultivation theory. The theory is based on the hypothesis that heavy viewers have a distorted perception of social reality in comparison with light viewers (Gerbner & Gross, 1976). According to Gerbner and Gross (1976, p. 69) heavy viewers perceive the real world in ways that reflect the most common recurrent messages of the televised world. Right from its development the theory has been applied to analyze the influence of television on people’s perception of police officers. In its first publication the theory was applied to determine if heavy viewers overestimate the manpower of the police (Gerbner & Gross, 1976). In the context of this study a possible example is the hypothesis that heavy viewers of Brooklyn Nine-Nine overestimate their future weekly workload. The empirical applicability of cultivation theory has long been confirmed in research practice. If the field of mass media effects has any paradigms at all, cultivation must be one of them (Morgan & Shanahan, 2010, p. 349).

Figure 2: Theoretical Framework Linking Series Consumption and Career Development

Note (Kinast, 2022).

The second vantage point on series-career relationships is the one of career development. Within this study the Social Cognitive Career Theory (SCCT) by Lent and Brown (2019) is the best match. As the name indicates, the theory is a career focused development of Bandura’s general SCT. The theory aims to explain and predict the conditions under which people develop career and academic interests, make career and academic choices, and achieve various levels of success in work and school (Brown & Lent, 2019, p. 147). The theory’s authors have developed a set of five SCCT models (Brown & Lent, 2019). For this research the interest and choice model is considered the most suitable one (see Figure 1