Law enforcement misconduct can be heavily fueled by police subculture, which leads to police organizational failure. The main categories of dysfunctional and disruptive police subcultures include subunit identity, cultural separation, normalized deviance, rewards, and loyalty. Subunit identity fuels law enforcement misconduct by decoupling a subunit from the core or parent organization, including the latter’s goals and standards of conduct.
Such separation leads to non-adherence to professionalism and correct behavior. Similarly, police divisions can develop their internal cultures highly divergent from the fundamental principles of policing. Normalized deviance is a result of making misconduct a commonplace and normalcy of policing, which shifts the notion of what is correct behavior. The reward is a strong facilitator of police misconduct because peer pressure and approval from fellow officers can promote such acts. Loyalty and the development of tribalism within a group can lead to deviance in policing.