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New recruits within policing are involved in a process of negotiating and creating meaning within their newly shaped identities. Within this identity formation, members engage in both categorisation and comparison in an attempt to sustain the group and to enhance the selfimage of the group member. The benefits of inclusion and enhanced group identity however must be analysed alongside the inevitable exclusion and 'othering' that also occur. Using the framework of social identity theories, this paper seeks to consider new police recruits in England and their perceptions of, and attitudes towards, victims and potential victims of crime. It does this through an analysis of qualitative data obtained through a piece of longitudinal, ethnographic research which focussed upon new police recruits to an English police force. The research followed the police recruits for four years and attempted to produce a holistic description of their developing cultures. What emerged from the findings was an enthusiasm for assisting victims of crime but within the context of culturally defined notions of what a 'victim' might constitute. By sharply delineating between 'deserving' and 'undeserving' victims of crime, police officers are contributing to the 'diminishing status' of certain potential victims through privileging certain identities over others. Police officers are one of the key definers of victim status and through this process of 'informed neglect' are contributing to the discrimination and alienation of certain parts of the community. This has the potential to add to the exclusion of those who are already socially, educationally and economically ostracised.

The numbers of police officers in England and Wales who resigned voluntarily from the service have been increasing rapidly in recent years. Despite this, there has been scant attention paid to this issue academically or organisationally. Using the guiding framework of organisational commitment with its focus upon active institutional identification, this paper considers police officer decisions to resign voluntarily from the police service. It does this through an analysis of a survey distributed to police officers from one English force who had resigned voluntarily between November 2014 and June 2019. The findings demonstrate that resigning police officers highly value the occupation they have joined, the nature of their work, the opportunities for fulfilling public service ambitions and the satisfaction of working with policing colleagues as part of a team. The findings also indicate however that they are ultimately frustrated by the perceived inability of the organisation to manage the demands upon them and by a sense of organisational 'injustice' emanating from perceptions of a lack of 'voice', leadership, autonomy and support. This damages the exchange-based working relationship between officers and managers, causing a decline in affective organisational commitment. Consequently, these factors have a negative personal impact upon their physical and mental health and an impact upon their caring responsibilities and personal relationships outside of their working environment.

Purpose -The purpose of this paper is to explore the nature of humour within two different organisations, policing and ambulance work, which are linked by their focus on emergency work. Design/methodology/approach -Semi structured interviews with 45 police officers and ambulance staff sought to understand more about the relationships between these two distinctly different professions who work together closely and regularly in often very difficult situations. Findings -Interviews with police officers and ambulance staff revealed that humour is a key component in the working relationship of police officers and ambulance staff. The humour of superiority and the humour of exclusion are used to both cope with the demands of their work, reinforce group values and to strengthen the shared bonds between the two occupations. Originality/value -Humour has been studied within organisations but this paper reveals that humour also functions across occupational divides. Police officers and ambulance staff draw from a mutually acceptable but culturally defined joke-book in the course of their work. The informal forces of humour appear, ironically, to provide a means of enhanced interoperability between the two organisations but at the expense of other agencies involved within the emergency service field.