Dirty Harry and the station queens: a Mertonian analysis of police deviance

In this article, we take advantage of the versatility inherent in Merton's work and apply his theory of social structure and anomie to the realm of policing. Specifically, we argue that police deviance can be understood as a function of an anomic social structure in which an exuberant cultural emphasis on police as noble, masculine ‘crime-fighters’ occupies a disproportionate relationship to the availability and/or efficacy of institutionally accepted means. The outcomes, we argue, are forms of deviant behaviour that coincide closely with Merton's four classic modes of adaptation.