Before the Badge: How Academy Training Shapes Police Violence
Author: Samantha J. Simon
Publisher: NYU Press, 2024. 304 pages.
Reviewer: Ryan Brown | Spring 2025
Samantha J. Simon’s Before the Badge: How Academy Training Shapes Police Violence is a timely and thought-provoking exploration of police recruitment and training in the southern United States. In an era where police violence and systemic inequality continue to be subjects of intense public debate, Simon’s work offers an empirical investigation of how police officers are socialized before they ever take to the streets. The book provides a nuanced understanding of how fear, distrust, and aggressive tactics are inculcated in trainees, often with profound consequences for the communities they are sworn to protect.
Simon’s research is grounded in her observations of academy training, where she reveals a culture steeped in hyper-vigilance, fear-based conditioning, and an ‘us vs. them’ mentality. Throughout the book’s seven chapters, Simon offers detailed accounts of how recruits are taught to view the public with suspicion and how this perspective is reinforced by the institution. From the initial stages of recruitment to the final evaluations, Simon provides a detailed account of how the values of aggression, compliance, and control are prioritized over de-escalation and community engagement. The book reveals how the training environment normalizes a culture of adversarial interactions and teaches recruits to respond to ambiguity with escalating threats of violence and a clear willingness to use deadly force.
The book’s strength lies in the author’s illustration of the interplay between belief systems, ideological commitments, organizational practices, and the structured nature of the recruitment and training processes designed to sustain policing in the US. Simon’s detailed account of her interviews and observations provides readers with an in-depth analysis of the police-making process – how recruitment and the academy experience are designed to transform civilians into officers, the theoretical and practical creation of the institutional “insider.” In one example, the author’s account of use-of-force decision-making during academy training provides a clear link between the perceived ambiguities that exist when deciding to use force and her perception of the emphasis on force application. For instance, Simon (2024) recounts the academy instructors’ level of frustration when insufficient force is used (pp. 165-166). This illustrates the preference academy instructors show towards the use of deadly force; often prioritizing it over avoiding force altogether or applying less severe measures. Her account of training scenarios, where recruits are encouraged to use force under the pretext of officer safety, highlights how the institutionalization of fear can lead to tragic outcomes. Simon draws on a wealth of theoretical and empirical data to bolster her analysis, making her work a significant contribution to the policing literature. Similarly, the author’s firsthand accounts from both trainees and trainers provide the reader with critical insights into the diverse views, experiences, and tensions that inhabit police training institutions.
Beyond its empirical focus, Before the Badge raises critical ethical and philosophical questions about the nature of policing. Simon’s exploration of how fear becomes an operational value for police officers speaks to broader discussions on institutional legitimacy and the socialization of state violence. Her work aligns with Crank and Langworthy’s (1992) arguments on institutional legitimacy, while also reflecting Du Bois’s (1989) concept of double consciousness and Collins’s (1986) notion of the ‘outsider within.’ By doing so, Simon offers a critical perspective that frames policing not merely as a profession but as an ideology deeply intertwined with perceptions of authority, security, and social order.
Despite its strengths, the book could benefit from a broader comparative perspective and a view of police recruitment and training through a more critical lens. Although some readers may appreciate Simon’s objective and somewhat balanced commentaries, other readers may likewise appreciate the author’s critical perspectives. In closing, Simon aligns herself with the critical abolitionist police reform approach, which was not explicit in the book. However, I believe a more critical approach would have been instrumental in guiding readers to some critical areas that were overshadowed by the wealth of information. Furthermore, while the book provides rich descriptive and procedural accounts of recruitment and training, a deeper engagement with theoretical frameworks could enhance its analytical depth. Again, guided by the author’s own critical perspective, a greater emphasis on the philosophical and theoretical underpinnings of police institutions would have proved useful to readers while navigating the complex interplay between police recruitment, training, and institutional pathogenesis. Whether disclosure of researcher positionality and identity in ethnographic policing research may be a question that needs further exploration. Finally, readers would have benefited from an introduction or afterword to capture the various components in the book that were not evident in the title of each chapter.
In conclusion, Before the Badge is an essential read for anyone interested in gaining deeper insights into police ideological commitments, belief systems, and organizational practices as evident through officer recruitment and training. Simon’s work is a “critical” addition to the literature on policing, providing both empirical insights and thought-provoking questions that invite further exploration. Its rich narrative description and analytical depth make it an important resource for scholars, practitioners, and anyone interested in a broader understanding of the intersection of policing from an institutional and often personal perspective, as Simon recounts.
References
Collins, P. H. (1986). Learning from the Outsider Within: The Sociological Significance of Black Feminist Thought. Social Problems, 33(6), S14–S32. https://doi.org/10.2307/800672
Crank, J. P., & Langworthy, R. (1992). An Institutional Perspective of Policing. The Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology (1973-), 83(2), 338–363. https://doi.org/10.2307/1143860
Du Bois, W. E. B. (1989). The souls of Black folk. Bantam Books.
Simon, S. J. (2024). Before the badge: How academy training shapes police violence. New York University Press.
Ryan Brown is a Ph.D. Student at Rutgers University – Newark.
