Samenvatting

The main issue of this scientific essay is that the police identity, seen as a social construction created, objectified and internalized by police officers and other relevant stakeholders, is increasingly under pressure not only because of external social developments, but also because of several internal developments in the police. This paper analyses three of these internal developments: the digitalization and datafication of the police, resulting in the rise of new (data)professions in the police organization; changes in the dominant institutional logics in the police, less reactive and incident-driven and more proactive and risk- and data-driven; the introduction of new social-cultural contradictions because of changes in the social and educational backgrounds of new police officers. Each of these changes has created new conflicts and contradictions in the police organization, or what is called here new fracture lines. One of the main consequences is that it has become much more difficult to maintain an integrated identity or a shared feeling of a collective ‘blue’ mission among police officers. This paper concludes with the question of why integrity and unity of police identity and mission may still be considered as important in the contemporary age of individualization, fragmentation and differentiation.