Document Type
Master Thesis
Disciplines
Social sciences
Abstract
Ethnic and racial diversity in police services has been a focus for criminologists and policing scholars for some considerable time. But despite intense efforts, most multicultural societies still struggle to get Black minority communities recruited into their police services. Two widely held interconnected assumptions appear to be at issue. The first is that police occupational culture, which has been shown in some studies to be prejudicial, is, in many cases, blatantly racist. This may well be a catalyst or “push factor” in discouraging members of Black communities in particular from taking up police careers. The second is that members of Black minority communities are disinterested in police careers, an assumption that their lack of interest lies within their ethnic culture. A further complicating assumption is that African immigrants’ perceptions of the police in their host country, are related to negative experiences of harsh, brutal, and coercive models of policing that they have experienced in Africa. Hence, the uptake of police careers is related to factors within the ethnic culture of sub-Saharan African (SSA) people. In this context, procedural justice theory holds those perceptions of fairness shape trust, confidence, and legitimacy in police forces. Hence, the study analyses this two-sided problem shaping the way choices might be made: perceptions of fairness and ethnic culture. Despite efforts in the Irish context to recruit a more ethnically diverse police force, from the sub-Saharan Africans, many of whom have been in Ireland for more than two decades, the record of recruitment from this community appears to be very low. To research these issues, this study explores influences on police career decision-making with a sample of first and second-generation sub-Saharan African (SSA) migrants in Ireland. In addition, the study examines perceptions of police practices and how these are related to how decision-making for police careers is shaped among the SSA community in Ireland, on the assumption that these police practices stem from police occupational culture.
DOI
https://doi.org/10.21427/9SBZ-VR79
Recommended Citation
Adekanle, Adeyemi, "Recruitment of Black Minority Community into Irish Police: Evaluating the Dynamics of Culture in Decision-making." (2026). Dissertations. 114.
https://arrow.tudublin.ie/aaschssldis/114
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