This paper presents the viewpoint of civil and military police officers of the State of Rio de Janeiro on the issue of professional and human self-image. It adopts five qualitative indicators as parameter of analysis, namely dignity, achievement, recognition, security and promising prospects, drawn from the sociological theory of social roles and proposals for human resource management. From the methodological standpoint, the study provides a contextual analysis of texts written by these agents at the end of a closed questionnaire on work, health and life conditions, conducted in a series of studies that began in 2003 and provided material for two books about these categories. The analysis considered the relevance given by the authors themselves when they describe their situation, using the five indicators mentioned as parameters. The results of this study show that the two categories have serious problems with professional self-image, especially with regard to wages, housing conditions, access to health services and to institutional and psychological support.
Occupational health; Professional self-image; Psychological support; Institutional support