Gender and Rural Policing: Lack of Opportunities for Male Police Constables in Rural Police Departments in Trinidad and Tobago

Abstract

Within the past two decades, there has been increased research interest in rural policing on a global level. While most of those studies were oriented in the United States, Britain, Canada, and Australia, there is a slowly growing corpus of literature on rural policing in the Global South, including the Caribbean. Most of the studies on rural policing have examined rural policing in the context of domestic violence, mental health, administration of justice, conditions of employment, and female issues. Unfortunately, most of these scholarly efforts have not examined male police officers as a distinct group. As conjecture and media reports suggest that male police officers in rural locales in Trinidad and Tobago are treated indifferently, the current research effort presents data gathered from thirteen male police constables attached to rural police stations on the island. This research aims to understand whether this group of police officers suffer from lack of opportunities due to the rural location of their police stations. Three themes: (1) lack of access, (2) fathering/parenting challenges, and (3) favouritism, emanated from the data. Several forms of opportunities that are for male police officers attached to rural police stations in Trinidad and Tobago also emanated from the data and these are presented and discussed.