An intensive Critical Realist analysis into the over-representation of poor mental health within UK policing

In Britain, the academic study of police culture began in earnest from the 1960's and was predominantly from the schools of law, sociology, and criminology (Reiner 2000). As a result, the locus of academic concern centred on breaches of "law and order", using methods such as ethnography and interviewing (Reiner 2000, p.210). However, as Bottoms (2008, p.81) suggests, one should be careful of methodologically or theoretically "pigeonholing" social research. Therefore, this study will consider the over-representation of mental ill-health within police culture (Mind 2015).
Upon reviewing the wider academic field, rather than the singular criminological version posited by Skolnick (1966) and more recently Loftus (2012), one finds various studies that concern police officer's mental ill-health, for instance, see (Ainsworth 2002; Armitage 2017; Bell and Eski 2015; Bonifacio 1991; Bullock and Garland 2018; Mind 2015; Police Care 2018; Rufo et al. 2016). However, in utilising an interdisciplinary approach, a meta-theoretical "Critical Realist embrace" will be advocated to incorporate different methods within a strategic philosophical schema (Danermark et al. 2019, p.185). This, in turn, leads to the style of the research question which is,'what properties enable mechanisms to cause a disproportionate level of mental ill-health within UK policing?'