Making Sense of Police Reforms

Abstract

Sensemaking is an ongoing process members of organizations engage in to explicate their world. When faced with changes in their environment, members try to make sense of uncertainties and disruptions and 'enact' their interpretations into the world to give it a sense of order. This article draws on a longitudinal study of police recruits to describe how officers make sense of reforms that have considerably altered the field of policing. It argues that sensemaking provides a processual frame that helps connect Bourdieu's concepts of field and habitus : it describes how agents translate changes in the field into shared understandings and values that inform the occupational habitus. Sensemaking is thus an important element for the theorizing of police culture and practice.