The Challenges Police Officers Face When Leaving the Force

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The service-to-civilian transition is a major life event that can riddle law enforcement officers with anxiety and angst.

At one end of this spectrum are those who have voluntarily made the decision to retire or resign. Still, on the job, they may experience a certain unease with an unforetold future that festers in the weeks or months prior to departure. Even those who have carefully planned their exit may feel a sense of fear, hesitation, or doubt about what lies ahead.

At the other end of this spectrum are officers who have finally crossed over to the “other side” of the yellow police tape. They comprise both officers who leave of their own accord, as well as ones who face an unexpected departure for a variety of reasons associated with their police career or personal life.

Now immersed in full-time civilian roles and routines, they may feel a sense of dread or “philosophical dissatisfaction” with their life at home, a new career, or even with the world around them that can be difficult to explain. While a host of transitional stress factors can provoke such angst, a theory of compensatory control may offer additional insight into the difficulties associated with the end of a police career.

In Pursuit of Control

Like a number of buzzwords in the industry, control is firmly embedded in the police vernacular. To successfully accomplish most police-oriented tasks, officers must establish and maintain control—of themselves, other people, and their environment. Safe and orderly societies are the rewards of such action and so officers are keenly aware of its professional utility.

Beyond the badge, however, the pursuit and maintenance of control have long been considered a fundamental human motivation. (Kelley, 1971)

Psychological research over the decades has converged on the notion that a person’s belief that they can predict, affect, and steer events (now or in the future) contributes to well-being and adaptation to life stressors. (Langer & Rodin, 1976; Luck et al., 1999; Shepherd et al., 2021) These perceptions of personal control buffer the uncomfortable reality that randomness and chance can determine important life outcomes.

To believe that the world haphazardly distributes success or failure can be anxiety-inducing, thereby motivating individuals to sustain their “delusion” of a predictable system of cause and effect. (Kay et al., 2009; Lerner, 1980)

Compensatory control theory suggests that when an individual is confronted with life events that challenge their feelings of personal control, they may invest in compensatory systems as psychological and perceptual substitutability. (Kay et al., 2008; Shepherd et al., 2021) In other words, should control become situationally or chronically low, a person might imbue their social, physical, and metaphysical environments with order and structure. (Kay et al., 2009)

This process serves as a “shield” from the anxiety associated with chaos or unpredictability, thereby allowing an individual to engage with their external environment and pursue meaningful goals. Compensatory control can take a number of forms, including superstitious behaviors, ritualism, divine intervention, and endorsing institutions that tightly enforce norms and rules. (Antanovsky, 1979; Friesen et al., 2014; Kay et al., 2009)

Occupationally-Oriented Structure

Vocationally, a law enforcement career offers an exceptional level of imposed order and structure, which makes it an attractive and effective instrument of external control. The stage is often set for this dynamic to take hold when individuals gravitate toward occupations that match up with their personality and psychosocial needs.

Typically, aspiring officers are recruited to the field of law enforcement during a time of emerging adulthood. This creates a more seamless process of cultural adaptation because it is a normative time of self-exploration marked by rapid development and considerable vulnerability, especially as it relates to opportunity, challenge, and changing self-esteem. (Chung et al., 2014; Shepherd et al., 2021)

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Next comes an officer’s acclimatization to an institutionalized lifestyle through recruit training. They are separated from loved ones and removed from the conventional freedoms associated with civilian life. Curricula are centered around a collective mission. Daily tasks are met with persistent oversight and abundant feedback loops. Cultural expectations of the job—couched in officer safety and the rule of law—are reinforced through formal and informal socialization methods.

Upon graduation from the academy, the "baton" of discipline, obedience, hierarchy, and other features of the institutionalized structure is passed to the agency for field training before an officer earns a seat at the table. Once there, in-service training and street experiences cultivate positive self-regard, while tightly enforced rules and norms offer concrete answers to common existential questions. (Shepherd et al., 2021)

It could therefore be suggested that a police career uniquely satisfies the human motivation to seek and preserve control and does so through a daily dose of positive and negative reinforcements aimed at mission readiness. The consequence of failure, of course, is punitive with important life outcomes at stake, including job security, personal freedom (vs. prison), and going home alive.

General well-being also hangs in the balance as peer bonding ensures a sense of belonging, identity, enjoyment, and the moderation of negative effects associated with traumatic events. (Martin et al., 2000)

Transitional Woes

When law enforcement officers retire or otherwise separate from their careers, these strong and sustained external sources of control suddenly vanish. As a result, they may experience dramatic fluctuations in perceptions of personal control, especially when threatened by the cultural shift that transition engenders.

This can be exceptionally cumbersome when an officer has depended on their career to meet this psychosocial need. As a result, they may enter civilian life with a significant imbalance between their personal and external control, compared to others who live in this space. (Shepherd et al., 2021)

On a cultural front, the shift from high structure to little or no structure can be a disorienting event that places transitioning officers in a state of inertia. In my experience working with this population, they will report struggling with the loss of a predictable, guided, and orderly environment, as well as the expectation of self-initiative.

Unfortunately, conflict ensues when their families misunderstand this restlessness and perceive problem behaviors as a lack of personal motivation or indifference to the needs of the family.

Considering that police veterans often pursue new employment either by necessity or desire, navigating the labor market can also be a frustrating and challenging experience. By comparison, civilian organizations are more decentralized, egalitarian, flexible, and autonomous in roles and responsibilities. (Silverman, 2012; Trice & Beyer, 1993) Moreover, employees are often rewarded for showing initiative and engaging creatively with their work.

This is a sharp contrast to the collectivistic nature of policing where self-driven behavior and inventiveness can lead to policy and ethics violations, criminal conduct, and compromise officer safety. In terms of group identity, modern workplaces lack the same kind of common and shared purpose found in policing, which may create an unexpected void in belongingness and disrupt stable self-esteem.

Through the lens of compensatory control, veterans may respond to these threats by continuing to behave according to police cultural norms and attempting to replicate certain features of the job. If executed poorly, however, this process may only serve to aggravate belongingness issues and create a greater sense of chaos, especially when individuals, groups, and institutions fail to cooperate.

Such outcomes may become obvious at home when attempts are made to impose order and structure upon the family or control their behaviors, routines, and environments. It may also become evident as new workplace trajectories take hold.

If veterans are not proactive in the socialization process or fail to learn, respect, or follow the norms, values, and power structures of the organization, it may lead to a revolving door of jobs and the perception of never being a good fit.

On a final note, it is important to state that not all transitioning officers will be threatened by this cultural shock, and some may welcome less structure at home, recreationally, or at work. There are a number of internal and external factors that affect each officer, which highlight the heterogeneous nature of transition stress.

Nonetheless, compensatory control theory may assist in understanding, predicting, and addressing the unique challenges associated with an abrupt or permanent removal of the police cultural system.

Note: The information in this post is for educational purposes only and is not intended to provide clinical or legal advice.

Copyright © Brian A. Kinnaird. All rights reserved.