Domestic Violence and Police Response in a Pro-Arrest Jurisdiction

ABSTRACT

The Minneapolis Experiment indicated that police could have a positive impact on domestic violence. Though these results are presently being challenged, the time seems ripe to look at factors affecting the likelihood of police to arrest in a jurisdiction with pro-arrest legislation supported fully by departmental policy. The following factors were studied in terms of their impact on self-reported likelihood to arrest when responding to a domestic violence call: officers' demographics and attitudes towards women; the amount of domestic assault training received; their understanding of the departmental domestic assault policy; the degree to which they view police involvement as beneficial in responding to these calls; and their use of violence in their own homes. Results indicate that belief in the utility of police involvement, knowledge of the department's policy, and attitudes towards women are all significant in accounting for the variation in the likelihood of police to arrest.     

Domestic Violence Victims' Behavior in Favor of Prosecution

Abstract

This article examines how economic, emotional and social-power related factors affect victims' behavior in favor of prosecution during police investigations. Data drawn from police records and police narrative reports indicated that mutual charge, dual arrest, the severity of assaults and the severity of injuries suffered by victims negatively affected the victims' behavior in favor of prosecution. These findings suggest that the norm of unequal relationships between men and women combined with an indiscriminate use of mutual charge and dual arrest without considering the defensive or offensive nature of violent acts can reduce trust in the criminal justice system among women victims of domestic violence and decrease the victims' interest in pursuing prosecution.     

The Effects of Suspect Characteristics on Arrest: A Meta-Analysis

PurposeSynthesis research on the correlates of arrest has had a long history of analysis in police decision making research. Yet, much of this line of synthesis research has found mixed results and has been unable to definitively state whether relationships exist between suspect demographic characteristics, race, gender, age, and ethnicity, and arrest. This research attempts to clear this confusion created by previous synthesis attempts particularly.MethodsMeta-analysis was used to generate weighted mean effect sizes of the effect of race, gender, age, and ethnicity on arrest. Effect sizes were weighted using the inverse variance method and random effects modeling was also used. Moderator analyses were also performed.ResultsBlack individuals, males, and Hispanic individuals were significantly more likely to be arrested than white individuals, females, and non-Hispanic individuals. These effects persisted across the majority of moderator categories. Age was not a significant predictor of arrest.ConclusionsThe results here bring some degree of order to a large amount of arrest decision making literature. The findings confirm the results of a previous meta-analysis on race and arrest and also expand upon that research. These results expand “what we know” about the effect of race on arrest.     

Short-term trends in crime and delinquency: A comparison of UCR,NCS, and self-report data

This study examines short-term (five- to ten-year) trends in crime and juvenile delinquency using FBI Uniform Crime Reports data on arrests and offenses known to the police, National Crime Survey data on victimization, and National Youth Survey data on self-reported delinquency. The focus is on FBI Index offenses, but less serious offenses are also considered. FBI statistics indicate generally increasing rates of crime, while NCS and NYS data indicate stable and occasionally decreasing rates. Data on the self-reported incidence of delinquency are more compatible with arrest data than are data on the self-reported prevalence of delinquency, but the two self-report measures are more compatible with one another than with arrest data. Attempts to reconcile official statistics with victimization surveys and self-report studies seem unlikely to overcome the differences among the sources when trends in crime, rather than rates of crime at a single time, are considered.     

Preventive and Repressive Strategies to Limit the Number of Commercial Robberies in Denmark

In this article, the impact of preventive and repressive measures to limit the number of commercial robberies is evaluated. This is done by analysing national statistics, register data, police documents and interview material of inmates convicted for commercial robbery. Preventive measures are met by counterstrategies. The effect of the introduction of paint cartridges - after detonation the bills are rendered unusable because of paint damage - is documented. The effect is, however, not a longlasting one. Arrest is a crucial marker in the decision to continue or to desist from commercial robbery. The arrest rate is high. Most convicted commercial robbers have a tendency to continue with crime after arrest and completion of sentence, but only a few continue with commercial robbery. The empirical data do not allow for a definitive conclusion on whether it is the offender's perception of the probability of future arrests, or of the severity of their outcomes that is responsible for desisting from commercial robbery. Both factors presumably influence this decision, but perceptions concerning the likelihood of arrest are likely to be more important.     

The Impact of Police Strength and Arrest Productivity on Fear of Crime and Subjective Assessments of the Police

We explore the effect of police strength and arrest productivity on citizens’ fear of crime and perceived risk of victimization, as well as their subjective perceptions of the police including their confidence in the police and ratings of police response time. Police strength is measured as the rate of officers per 1,000 and productivity is calculated as the average number of arrests per officer; we also controlled for the crime rate using crimes reported to the police. We use nationally representative survey data (n?=?1,005) and conduct a supplemental analysis of data drawn from a representative sample of urban counties (n?=?1,500). Police force size and productivity have limited and inconsistent effects on fear of crime, perceived risk, and ratings of response time and no apparent effects on confidence in the police. We also find a modest yet statistically significant negative effect of police confidence on fear of crime. Our findings indicate that it is questionable whether adding more police will reduce fear or perceived risk of victimization to any measurable degree. Consequently, we suggest that rather than hiring binges and increased arrests, the focus should be instead on making positive contacts with citizens.     

Mental health outreach and street policing in the downtown of a large French city

ContextMarseille, the second largest city in France, has a large population of homeless persons. A mental health outreach team was created in 2005 as a response to high rates of mental illness among this group. In a national political context where security is a government priority, a new central police station was created in Marseille in 2006 to address robberies, violence and illegal traffic in the downtown area of the city. While not directly related to such crimes, police also are responsible for public safety or behavioral issues related to the presence of individuals who are homeless in this area.ObjectiveThis report on a two-year pilot study (2009–2011) addresses collaborative work between a mental health outreach team and the police department responding to the clinical needs of persons who are homeless with serious psychiatric disorders. It also describes the homeless persons' interactions with, and perceptions of the presence of, police and mental health professionals on the streets.MethodsInvestigators adopted a mixed-methods approach. Data were collected on 40 interactions using brief standardized report for each interaction. Focus groups were conducted with police officers, outreach team members, peer workers, and service users. Minutes of partnership meetings between police officers and outreach workers also served as a source of qualitative data.ResultsOutreach workers initiated just over half (n = 21) of the encounters (n = 40) between police and outreach workers. Interactions mainly involved persons with psychosis (77%), the vast majority (80%) of which involved persons in an acute phase of psychosis. Two key themes that emerged from data analysis included the violent nature of life on the streets and the high percentage of ethnic minorities among subjects of the interactions. In addition, it was found that the practices of the outreach workers are sometimes similar to those of the police, especially when outreach workers use coercive methods. “Users” (homeless persons) described police as sometimes using less coercion than the outreach team, and noted that they were more fearful of psychiatrists than police.ConclusionFormal initiatives between mental health outreach teams and police departments involve some common street practices. This study demonstrates the potential for closer working relationships between the two parties to help persons who are homeless with mental illnesses receive needed care, and to reduce inappropriate coercion including involuntary hospitalization and arrests.     

Deterrence,Firearm Arrests,and Subsequent Shootings: A Micro-Level Spatio-Temporal Analysis

Do police firearm arrests reduce later shootings in nearby locations and in the days immediately following the arrest? This question is examined at a more detailed level than in previous work in order to better describe the spatio-temporal dynamics linking these two event types. All firearm arrests (n?=?5,687) and shootings (n?=?5,870) in Philadelphia from 2004 to 2007 were analyzed using a modified close-pair method. Following a firearm arrest shootings declined significantly, 28–47% up to a couple of blocks away. These significant declines, however, lasted for just a few days. Overall, results suggest police firearm suppression effects occur, may extend up to two blocks away from a firearm arrest, but also are short-lived. Potential implications for deterrence are discussed.     

Police handling of domestic calls: The importance of offender''s presence in the arrest decision

Though much has been written about the correlates associated with the police decision to arrest when responding to domestic incidents, the current literature is almost completely silent about the effect of offender's presence on disposition. Using police records from one large jurisdiction in South Florida, this research investigates differences between offenders who are present when police arrive and those who are absent in terms of offender, victim, and situational characteristics. Consistent with prior research, this study found that 48 percent of domestic violent offenders were absent when police arrived. Furthermore, offender's presence was found to be the most powerful predictor of an arrest outcome.     

You can lead a horse to water …: A case study of a police department's response to stricter drunk-driving laws

We present a case study illustrating the complexity of the process that determines how vigorously local police agencies enforce recent drunk-driving laws. Police enforcement practices are influenced most strongly by the play of local factors in a system of “games.” The local forces exerting greatest influence are 1) the local demand for drunk-driving enforcement, 2) the police leadership's priority for DUI enforcement, 3) the police leadership's capacity for command and control of the organization, and 4) the disposition of the local police culture regarding drunk driving and related work issues. In “Melville,” the study site, there is little external demand for drunk-driving enforcement, and police management tries to suppress it while making only symbolic gestures of support. Management's capacity to control street-level enforcement practices is limited, however, and a small cadre of officers generates a disproportionate number of arrests for personal financial gain (bounty), giving the department a much higher arrest rate than the department desires. Thus Melville's responsiveness to the state's drunk-driving law is not due to external political pressure or formal policy, but rather to the inability of local authorities to impose their will on street-level practices. Melville's case suggests that the degree to which police implement a new criminal law may be entirely independent of efforts to ensure political accountability and organizational control.     

POLICE VIOLENCE AS A FUNCTION OF COMMUNITY CHARACTERISTICS

The authors find that existing models concerning police violence are not i designed to explain variation among the states in the rates of police use ‘of deadly force. This variation correlates significantly with numerous cultural attributes of the public. The strongest correlates are with the public rates of violence. Therefore, the authors propose to moody existing modeb, and explain the police use of violence as a response to community characteristics. Where public violence is neither normative nor commonly occurrent. the police will be self-restrained. Where the incidence of violence reveals a common means of conflict resolution, the police will adopt its use. Thus, the police use of violence is a culturally determined characteristic and not a police pathology.     

A longitudinal analysis of the arrest-crime relationship: A further examination of the tipping effect

This study examines the contextual effect of arrest clearance rates, over time, on the arrest-crime relationship. The bivariate autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) analyses of monthly crime and arrest data for seven Pennsylvania cities for robbery, burglary, larceny, and auto theft suggest that the deterrent effect of arrests on crime is probably limited to smaller cities whose police department are able to clear an appreciable proportion of crimes over time, through arrests.     

Recording of offences on police domestic violence call outs

ABSTRACT

Due to new legislation passed in 2011, Finnish police have been legally obligated to record and investigate all assaults, including petty assaults, occurring in close relationships. Referred to as domestic violence (DV), these assaults can be prosecuted even without victim consent. Much like pro- and mandatory arrest policies, this reform was aimed at decreasing victim and police discretion, based on the assumption that recording and preliminary investigation of every DV incident would help prevent further violence. Comparison between police call outs and the number of offences indicate that in reality not every DV incident is recorded. Using Police and Emergency Call Database data merged with 410 police officer survey responses, the current study presents the first empirical results on legal and extra-legal factors associated with recording DV as an offence in Finland. Factors explaining non-recording are discussed based on police officers’ free-text comments, and implications for policy and practice are presented.     

Sexual Assault Case Outcomes: Disentangling the Overlapping Decisions of Police and Prosecutors

The rape reform movement of the 1970s and 1980s was designed to improve the likelihood of prosecution and conviction in sexual assault cases. However, there is evidence that the attrition rate for sexual assaults reported to the police remains high, and that the locus of case attrition is arresting and charging decisions. In this paper, we analyze police and prosecutorial decision-making in sexual assault cases using quantitative data on sexual assaults reported to the Los Angeles Police Department and the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department in 2008. We argue that decisions made by police and prosecutors should not be examined in isolation from one another and that researchers who analyze arrest decisions by examining only cases that are formally cleared by arrest or who focus only on charging decisions that follow the arrest of a suspect may be ignoring important aspects of police and prosecutorial decision-making. This is confirmed by the results of our study, which reveal that a significant proportion of cases in which the police appear to have probable cause to make an arrest do not result in the arrest of the suspect and that a substantial number of cases are rejected for prosecution by the district attorney before an arrest is made. Moreover, the factors that predict arrest and charging vary depending upon the way in which the outcome is operationally defined. These results have a number of important policy implications for police and prosecutors handling sexual assault cases.     

Driving While Black

Abstract

The phenomenon of “driving while black” has ignited a heated debate: Do the police use race to target drivers? Most research on the topic compares the number of police stops and searches for a racial group to that group's distribution in the population. This approach ignores sociological theories of law, the driver's social status, the combined influence of race and sex, and whether the driver carries drugs in the car. In addition, the police are aware of being observed. To address these limitations, we surveyed undergraduates (N = 1,192) at one of the most diverse universities in the nation about their experiences with the police and their personal criminal behavior. Drawing on Black's (1976) theory of law, we examine whether a driver's race, sex, and social status influence police behavior (stop, exit, frisk, search, ticket/arrest). We also examine which drivers are most likely to have drugs in the car. The results suggest that a driver's race, sex, and social status all shape police behavior: African American men and Hispanic men experience more social control than white men; all men experience more social control than women; and low status drivers experience more social control than high status drivers. But despite the police focus on minority males, white males were the most likely to report carrying drugs in the car.     

Global and specific attitudes toward the police: Disentangling the relationship

Since the 1960s, a substantial body of research has focused on citizens' attitudes toward the police. These studies tap a rather wide variety of outlooks: some ask about specific assessments of the police (e.g., satisfaction with the police in particular incidents), while others ask about more global assessments (e.g., satisfaction with the police in general, police in the community, or police in the neighborhood). Using data obtained through a panel survey of 398 residents of a large midwestern city, we compare specific assessments of police performance with more global attitudes toward the police. We also examine the effects of global and specific attitudes on one another. The results show that the two measures produce similar levels of support for the police. The results reveal further that global attitudes have substantial effects on specific assessments of police performance, and that the effects of specific assessments of police performance on global attitudes are modest by comparison.     

The impact of license plate recognition technology (LPR) on trust in law enforcement: a survey-experiment

Objectives

We examine the extent to which individuals' knowledge of an advanced police technology (license plate recognition or "LPR") may impact perceptions of police. Technologies with the capacity to track individuals' movements are becoming increasingly common in police practice. Although these technologies may yield positive benefits, their use may also heighten community concerns about increased surveillance, data storage, and data security, thereby potentially negatively impacting community-police relationships.

Methods

We utilize a survey-based experiment with randomized assignment of participants (n=405) to investigate the impact of individuals' knowledge of LPR use on a variety of police perceptions, including trust in police, community approval, respect for citizens, and respect for individual rights.

Results

Most respondents were unaware of LPR use prior to the survey. When compared with a control group, respondents who encountered brief mentions of LPR functions on the survey expressed significantly lower levels of trust in police. Additionally, "strong agreement" with other positive statements about police also appears to have declined in this sample in response to LPR information. Notably, the sample contained high pre-existing levels of trust and support for police, factors which may have moderated the impacts of LPR information.

Conclusions

These results support the hypothesis that awareness of LPR use may negatively impact perceptions of police, including trust in police. More generally, although technologies like LPR represent technological innovations, they may also yield unintended consequences, including the potential to undermine police-community relations if adoption decisions are not accompanied by sufficient transparency or community support.

     

The ‘Usual Suspects’

Abstract

A key issue in contemporary criminology is the role that social status, and particularly race, plays in legal processes. Previous research suggests that criminal justice proceedings-including arrest, conviction, and sentencing rates-are influenced by victim and offender race, but rarely examines the role of race in reporting events to the police. The following research uses data from the rape sub-sample of the National Crime Victimization Survey of households 1992-2001; logistic regression analyses are conducted to determine how victim and offender race influence reporting of rape to the police, controlling for other incident characteristics. The findings suggest that rapes with a Black perpetrator are much more likely to be reported to police, regardless of whether the victim is white or Black.