Chief Zurcher agreed that it would be interesting to study how men become socialized into the role of police officers and what went into transforming a rookie into a “good cop.” Great idea, I replied, but that would require a big grant that I didn’t have. But I did have a small grant to study what went into the making of a prison guard, since that was a role narrower in function as well as in territory. How about creating a prison in which rookie cops and college students would be both mock guards and mock prisoners? That sounded like a good idea to the chief.
