The Impact of Rural Policing on the Private Lives of New Zealand Police Officers
| Author | Mei Wah Williams,Corrine Fowler,John Buttle |
| DOI | 10.1350/ijps.2010.12.4.202 |
| Date | 01 December 2010 |
| Published date | 01 December 2010 |
| Subject Matter | Article |
The impact of rural policing on the private
lives of New Zealand police officers
John Buttle‡, Corrine Fowler and Mei Wah Williams
‡(Corresponding author) Department of Social Science, Faculty of Applied Humanities,
AUT University, AUT Tower, Level 14, Cnr Rutland & Wakefield Streets, Private Bag 92006,
Auckland 1142, New Zealand. Tel: +64 9 9219999, ext. 8964; Fax: +64 9 9179698;
email: john.buttle@aut.ac.nz
Submitted 18 March 2010; revision submitted 15 July 2010;
accepted 21 July 2010
Keywords: rural policing, police officers and families, occupational impact
on private lives, centralised policing, New Zealand
John W Buttle
is a senior lecturer in criminology
for the Department of Social Sciences in Auck-
land University of Technology (AUT) in New
Zealand.
Corinne Fowler
is a researcher at Massey Uni-
versity and is currently working for the New
Zealand Community Probation and Psycho-
logical Services.
Mei Wah Williams
is a lecturer in forensic psy-
chology for the School of Psychology at Massey
University.
A
BSTRACT
This article is concerned with perceived differences
between rural and urban policing in New
Zealand. More specifically with how officers view
the effect that rural and urban policing has on
their private lives and those of their family
members. Using grounded theory as a research
method because of its reflexivity in regard to
generating questions from emergent data, 16
participants were interviewed. Seven of these
participants were stationed in an urban location
while nine were recruited from rural stations. The
results suggest that rural policing has a greater
and often more stressful impact on the private
lives of police officers and their families. This
suggests a need for the New Zealand Police as an
organisation to engage in policy-making that
gives greater recognition to the rural aspects of
policing, with a particular focus being the provi-
sion of support for the families of rural officers.
INTRODUCTION
It has often been argued that debates
regarding policing are essentially con-
structed from an urban perspective that
focuses on the inner city experience, while
ignoring the experiences of r ural police
officers (Crank, 1990; Falcone, Wells, &
Weisheit, 2002; Kuhns, Maguire, & Cox,
2007; Loader & Mulcahy, 2003; Maguire,
Fulkner, Mathers, Rowland, & Wozniak,
1991; Mawby, 2004; Sims, 1988, Weisheit,
Falcone, & Wells, 2006; Wolfer & Baker,
2000). This urban focus to the study of
policing is due to the metro-centric
emphasis placed on the understanding of
crime by the media, academics and, more
importantly, policy-makers (Buttle, 2006;
Schafer, Burruss, & Giblin, 2009; Reiss,
1992). Many of those involved with law
enforcement policy-making live and work
in, or near to, the city that contains the seat
of government. Also, with media construc-
tions of crime as well as academic research
being embedded in the urban experience, it
comes as no surprise that most police policy
Page 596
International Journal of Police Science & Management Volume 12 Number 4
International Journal of Police
Science and Management,
Vol. 12 No. 4, 2010, pp. 596–606.
DOI: 10.1350/ijps.2010.12.4.202
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