NCJ Number
139872
Journal
Criminology Volume: 30 Issue: 3 Dated: (August 1992) Pages: 327-346
Date Published
1992
Length
20 pages
Annotation
Information technologies, especially computer-based recordkeeping and dispatching, represent a material resource and a symbolic statement when introduced into police departments.
Abstract
Such statements can produce counterstatements and a dialectic, a technological drama that alters social fields and centrally features power and control. Ethnographic evidence is used to explore different symbolic aspects of information technology. The author suggests that the introduction of information technology involves a sociotechnical drama, that is, the selective use of messages to convey an impression. The drama is context-dependent and plays itself out differentially in vertically ordered segments of police organizations. As a symbol, technology can point to one of several referents, each with overt and covert meanings: regulatory aspects of technology; modes of adjustment created by technology; reconstitution of technology; and social reintegration processes. These referents signal positive and negative meanings of technology while concealing relevant dissimilarities. It is concluded that police organizations are a useful setting for observing technological dramas and alterations in traditional police roles. Technological regularization and associated reconstitution, in tandem with processes of symbolic counterstatement, manifest the balance of power in police organizations. 48 references