Police Officers’ Theories of Crime

What factors do police officers point to in explaining offending and victimization? A limited amount of prior research has addressed this question, despite the possibility that such theories impact police practice. Moreover, the findings that do exist are based solely on municipal police; yet a different socio-environmental context could lead officers to adopt different explanations. In the present paper, we draw on qualitative data obtained in interviews with campus police officers to explore how they explain common crimes on campus. They theorized petty larceny, underage drinking, and drug possession to result from a variety of factors, including opportunity, social learning, supervision, culture, peer pressure, the psychopharmacological effect of alcohol on crime, and deterrence; as a collective, these ideas form officers’ rational choice theories. After presenting our findings, we suggest how officers’ explanations of crime may be shaped by working in particular contexts and also affect how they police; implications for future research and police practice are discussed.     

Public Satisfaction with Police Control of Disorder Crime: Does the Public Hold Police Accountable?

This study expands the research on public satisfaction with the police by attempting to disentangle the relationships among disorder crime incidents reported to the police, residents' perceptions of disorder, and citizen satisfaction with police performance on order maintenance. The police accountability model and the demographic model are utilized to predict the variation of public satisfaction with police control of disorder (SWPD). The data used in this analysis were derived from a random-sample telephone survey of 1,215 Houston residents. Crime data were provided by the Houston Police Department and further extracted from the area surrounding each individual respondent's residence surveyed by using Geographic Information Systems technology. The main findings are that while the actual incidence of disorder crime had no direct impact on residents' perceptions of police performance on order maintenance, it did have a significant direct impact on their perceptions of disorder. This shows the utility of the accountability model in future research. Moreover, it was found that global satisfaction with police crime prevention was an important predictor of public SWPD in their immediate neighborhood.     

White-Collar Crime and Police Crime: Rotten Apples or Rotten Barrels?

In the research literature on white-collar crime, there seems to be a tendency to claim individual failure rather than systems failure. Occupational crime is often emphasized at the expense of corporate crime. In the research literature on misconduct and crime by police officers, however, there seems to be a tendency to claim systems failure. It is argued that police crime is a result of bad practice, lack of resources or mismanagement, rather than acts of criminals. Based on two empirical studies in Norway of business and police crime, this paper is concerned with the extent to which the rotten apple theory versus the rotten barrel theory can explain crime in business organizations and police organizations.     

Confessing their Crime: Factors Influencing the Offender’s Decision to Confess to the Police

Confessions are crucial to successful police investigations but scholars have significantly overlooked factors that contribute to an offender’s decision to confess a crime. This study aims to examine a large array of factors that play a role in the offender’s decision to confess a crime to the police and potential interaction effect among them. A total of 221 adult males incarcerated in a federal Canadian penitentiary were recruited. Correctional files, police reports, and offenders’ self‐reported data were collected and analyzed. Controlling for sociodemographic, criminological, and contextual factors, a series of logistic regression analyses were conducted. Findings highlighted the predominant role of police evidence over and above other factors analyzed. Furthermore, sociodemographic and criminological factors played a more important role in the offender’s decision to confess when police evidence was weak. Findings are discussed in light of the current scientific literature on the determinants of offenders’ decision to confess their crime.     

Police Manipulations of Crime Reporting: Insiders’ Revelations

Social scientists have theorized about the corruption of crime reports (Bayley, 1983; Campbell, 1976). Yet, scant empirical research has examined the impact of modern policing methods on the accuracy of crime reporting. Our research uses an anonymous survey of 1,770 retired New York City police officers examining retirees’ experiences with crime report manipulations across their years of retirement. This includes retirees from the community policing as well as police performance management eras. We subject the data to various statistical tests including tabular analysis, graphical trends to visualize the data, MANOVA, and logistic regression to explain report manipulations. Results indicate that the misuse of the performance management system and pressures on officers from management are key explanations for manipulating crime reports. Individual explanatory variables such as gender, educational status, rank, race, and marital status had no effect. Our research supports Bayley’s and Campbell’s theories. We recommend greater transparency to remedy this.     

How Much Time Should the Police Spend at Crime Hot Spots? Answers from a Police Agency Directed Randomized Field Trial in Sacramento,California

Hot spots policing has been shown to be an effective strategy for reducing crime across a number of rigorous evaluations, but despite this strong body of research, there still exist gaps in our knowledge of how officers can best respond to hot spots. We report on a randomized experiment in Sacramento, California that begins to address these gaps by testing the recommendation from prior research that police officers randomly rotate between hot spots, spending about 15?min patrolling in each. Our results suggest significant overall declines in both calls for service and crime incidents in the treatment hot spots relative to the controls. Additionally, the study was carried out primarily by the Sacramento Police Department without any outside funding. In an era of limited economic resources for policing, this experiment suggests a model by which police agencies can take ownership of science and oversee the implementation and evaluation of evidence-based interventions.     

The Effect of Prior Police Contact on Victimization Reporting: Results from the Police–Public Contact and National Crime Victimization Surveys

Objectives

This study explores the association between past-year face-to-face contact with the police and subsequent victimization reporting. It also examines whether this relationship depends on the type of encounter (citizen-initiated contacts, routine vehicle stops, invasive encounters associated with being a suspect), its perceived justness, or victim characteristics. Among victims who did not notify the police, the reasons behind this decision are assessed to understand the mechanisms through which police encounters are related to reporting.

Methods

This research is the first to use longitudinal data that link the 2002, 2008, and 2011 Police Public Contact Surveys to the 2002–2014 National Crime Victimization Surveys. Multivariate logistic regression is used to examine the effect of prior contact on police notification among victims of personal (N = 1073) and household (N = 11,433) crimes.

Results

Prior contact with the police has no main effect on the reporting of personal crimes; however, the negative effects of police-initiated and unjust contact are amplified for the poor and African Americans. The reporting of household crimes varies based on prior police experiences and whether they were viewed as just. Personal crime victims with invasive contact are more likely than other contact groups to attribute non-reporting to fear of reprisal.

Conclusions

Using national data tells a complex story about how race/ethnicity, poverty, and recent experiences with the police interact to shape victims’ behavior. The intricacies of these findings suggest that efforts to increase reporting may need to be multifaceted and address victims’ concerns about safety and justness.

     

Examining the Paradox of Crime Reporting: Are Disadvantaged Victims More Likely to Report to the Police?

This study uses an intersectional approach to examine the “paradox” that disadvantaged victims often mobilize the police, despite their distrust and lack of confidence in the law. Data from the National Crime Victimization Survey (1994–2016) were analyzed using logistic regression to model the predicted probabilities of police notification by victims of crime. Economic disadvantage, as measured by family poverty and lack of a high school education, increased the probability that females reported their victimization to the police, but decreased the likelihood that males did so. Economically disadvantaged black females had the highest probability of reporting, while economically disadvantaged black and Hispanic males had the lowest. Examining the intersectional differences across social groups shows that reporting behavior is not just a function of one attribute but rather is a function of multiple identities and structural inequalities.     

Does Minority Representation in Police Agencies Reduce Assaults on the Police?

Following recent high-profile deaths of unarmed African American suspects at the hands of police, a number of reforms have been proposed, among them improved minority representation in the ranks of law enforcement organizations. Previous research has explored the effects of minority representation on complaints against the police and other behaviors, but very few studies have examined violence toward the police. We merged several data sources together and tested the hypothesis that minority representation within police departments is inversely associated with assaults against the police. In an extension of prior research, we also conducted separate analyses for African American, Hispanic, and Asian officer representation. The results did not support the expectation that diversity within police organizations results in improved police-citizen interactions, as measured by assaults on police. This study is one of the few to examine how different measures of minority representation in police agencies relates to assaults on the police.     

Why Do the Finns Trust the Police?

Ideological trends in the criminal policy of the Nordic countries since the 1960s are analysed. Although criminal policy in these countries is not unified, one can argue for the existence of a 'Scandinavian criminal policy' characterized by several common features concerning historical tradition, intensive cooperation and a similar approach to crime prevention and control. The following trends and characteristics are examined in some detail: the cycle from criticism of the treatment ideology to a reappraisal of the role of the criminal justice system and the function of penal sanctions; the differentiation of criminal policy strategies (e.g. social and situational crime prevention, cost-benefit thinking, criminal law policy, sanctions policy). Discernible tendencies towards more unified or, at least, more harmonized criminal policies on the international and European level are also examined. Active participation in this developmental process is encouraged to ensure that the fundamental principles of Scandinavian criminal policy are properly utilized.     

Imagining the law and the constitution of societal order in Los Angeles Police Chief William Parker＇s 1965 ＂Crime and the Great Society＂ address

Legal scholar James Boyd White has challenged both lawyers and rhetoricians to imagine the law as an enterprise of language. In contending that members of the legal profession should see law as an activity of speech and imagination occurring in a social world, he has urged lawyers to view the legal profession as an interaction of authoritative texts and as a process of legal thought and argument instead of thinking of law as a technical system of regulations and applying its rules in a mechanical way. By asking members of the legal professional to consider law as rhetoric, White has encouraged them to recognize the socially constitutive nature of language, which runs contrary to a perspective of law as machine or, rather, the law as only a mechanistic system of rules and regulations. His ideas have inspired the ＂law and literature＂ movement, which has motivated other scholars to analyze the texts of judicial opinions, for example, according to White＇s theories. However, this essay takes White＇s concept of imagining the law and applies it public address and, specifically, to the 1965 ＂Crime and the Great Society＂ speech given by former Los Angeles Police Chief William Parker. Chief Parker＇s address reveals a vision for the City of Los Angeles in which Parker, himself, asks his audience of citizens and civic leaders to share for advancing a specific agenda for law enforcement＇s role in society.     

Review of Børge Bakken,Crime and the Chinese Dream

Asian Journal of Criminology -     

Is Sincerity the First Virtue of Social Institutions? Police,Universities, and Free Speech

In the final chapter of Speech Matters, Seana Shiffrin argues that institutions have especially stringent duties to protect speech freedoms. In this article, I develop a few lines of criticism. First, I question whether Shiffrin’s framework of justified suspended contexts is appropriate for institutional settings. Second, I challenge the presumption that the knowledge-gathering function performed by police is necessarily compromised by insincere practices. Third, I criticize Shiffrin’s characterization of the university as involving a complete repudiation of enforced consensus, and I express doubts about the close connection between education and democratic legitimation that Shiffrin endorses. Finally, I raise a problem with the book’s overall argument: even if one agrees that speech freedoms are necessary for moral development, they also may be threatening to moral development. The upshot is that the protection of speech should be modulated in order to account for the potential conflicts between sincerity and other valuable ends, rather than being oriented above all to sincerity.

     

Suspect Police Officers Investigated by Former Police Officers: Good Idea,Bad Idea?

Up to 1992, all illegal use-of-force complaints against police officers in Israel were handled internally by the police department. In 1992, following public and political pressure, an external civilian board was established to handle such cases. In this framework, investigations of suspect police officers are conducted by former police officers. In this study, investigators' and suspects' personal and organizational characteristics were examined, as well as their attitudes to the civilian board and the manifestation of police violence. In general, the two groups were found to differ significantly on both levels. The employment of former police officers with high professional qualities seems to have some advantages in this investigative situation.     

‘Disband,Disempower, and Disarm’: Amplifying the Theory and Practice of Police Abolition

Critical criminologists have challenged the utility of efforts to reform the criminal justice system for decades, including strong calls to abolish the prison system. More recently, the rebellions in Ferguson, Baltimore, Milwaukee, and Charlotte have made racialized police violence and police reform issues of national concern. In this article, we examine abolitionist claims aimed at law enforcement institutions in the aftermath of Ferguson and other subsequent rebellions. We consider the implications for abolitionist organizing when the institution of law enforcement, rather than prisons, becomes the explicit target of our movement(s). How are groups theorizing and practicing police abolition and how does this align with, challenge, or expand past conceptualizations of abolition? To answer this question, first we sketch the broad parameters of abolitionist thought, particularly as it is taken up in the disciplines of political theory and criminology. Second, we analyze an emergent praxis of police abolition that revolves around the call to disband, disempower, and disarm law enforcement institutions. We argue that by attacking the police as an institution, by challenging its very right to exist, the contemporary abolitionist movement contains the potential to radically transform society. In this spirit, we amplify abolitionist praxis that (1) aims directly at the police as an institution, (2) seeks to dismantle the racial capitalist order, (3) adopts uncompromising positions that resist liberal attempts at co-optation, incorporation, and/or reconciliation, and (4) creates alterative democratic spaces that directly challenge the legitimacy of the police.