Penalty notices for disorder: influences on police decision making

This research examined, via a multi-method linked design, the influences over police decision making when disorderly behaviour is being dealt with in the context of a new type of offence disposal, the penalty notice for disorder (PND). The results of a multivariate analysis of the factors predicting the real-life issuance of PNDs to offenders formed the basis of an experiment (using serving police officers as participants) that probed officers’ decision-making processes in disorder scenarios. This approach presents an opportunity to gain insight into how police use the power of arrest when an alternate, less-punitive, option is available.     

Rationalizing police operations: Some explanatory factors

This study attempts to explain different degrees of bureaucratization or rationalization in a sample of 949 municipal police departments in the United States. The dependent variable operationalizes rationalization interms of officer education and training. Factors expected to explain variations among departments are the backgrounds and expectations of department chiefs, the manner in which chiefs are chosen, and departmental sizes and workloads. Two major patterns of explanation resulted after analyzing a number of independent variables: the educational achievements and administrative training of chiefs; and department size. These findings underline the key role played by chiefs who appear to appreciate both the benefits and the costs of rationalization.     

A note on the status of discretion in police research

“Discretion” holds an unrivaled position at the core of the notional inventory employed in the study of criminal justice generally and policing particularly. Efforts to systematically define the term have been irregular and its status in the empirical literature is an ambiguous one. While spoken of as a quantitative aspect of the policing which influences behavior, measurement is rarely addressed. After sketching problems in present formulations, discretion is recast in terms of perceived job autonomy and an outline of two general constructs is contributed in hopes of renewing consideration of the potential relevance of the concept for police theory and research.     

Decision games applied to police decision making -an exploratory study of information usage-

An analysis of police decision making is presented using the decision board technique developed by Leslie Wilkins. This method assumes that decision making can be measured by observing a subject's response to stimuli presented in the form of pieces of information. A board was created and employed with fifty municipal police officers. Findings suggest that police demonstrate individualized preferences for varying amounts and kinds of information. The nature of the offense was considered most frequently. The attitude of the offender was also an important determinant of the decision outcome; and the offender's attitude then influenced the amount and type of information subsequently used.     

The stalking victim's decision to contact the police: A test of Gottfredson and Gottfredson's theory of criminal justice decision making

There is a significant body of research exploring the reporting behaviors of crime victims. Much of this literature has focused on specific types of victimization (e.g., sexual assault) and the correlates of victim reporting. Recently, the crimes of stalking and cyberstalking have received empirical attention; however, few studies have examined the reporting behaviors of victims of these crimes. Using the theoretical framework proposed by Gottfredson and Gottfredson (1988), the current study explored how offense seriousness, the victim-offender relationship, and the prior record of the offender influenced a victim's decision to contact the police. Data were drawn from the 2006 stalking supplement to the National Crime Victimization Survey, which examined stalking in the United States. Results offered support to Gottfredson and Gottfredson (1988) and highlighted the significance of understanding the reporting behaviors for this sample of crime victims. Differences in reporting for victims of stalking and cyberstalking were also examined.     

Maturity of judgment in adolescence: Psychosocial factors in adolescent decision making

To date, analyses of differences between adolescents' and adults' judgment have emphasized age differences in cognitive factors presumed to affect decision making. In contrast, this article examines research and theory on threepsychosocial aspects of maturity of judgment: responsibility, temperance, and perspective. For several psychosocial dimensions of maturity that are likely to affect judgment, the existing pvidence, while indirect and imperfect, indicates that the greatest differences are found in comparisons between early adolescents versus middle and late adolescents. Developmental research on maturity that focuses specifically on mid-and late adolescence, that simultaneously examines both cognitive and noncognitive factors, and that investigates the relation between these factors and the ability to make good decisions is greatly needed.     

Juror decision making

Much of the research on juror decision making is concerned with whether jurors are swayed by irrelevant-or extralegal-issues in their judgments of defendants. Such studies examine whether jurors' attitudes and victims' and defendants' characteristics have a measurable impact on these decisions. Yet, in the typical study, evidential issues are either poorly measured or ignored, hence the effects of extralegal issues may be exaggerated. Moreover, jury simulations are often chosen to study these questions despite critics' concerns about the generalizability of the results. The present study uses data gathered from actual jurors to assess whether the emphasis on juror competence is justified. The results indicate that these jurors' decisions are dominated by evidential issues, particularly evidence concerning the use of force and physical evidence. Jurors were considerably less responsive to characteristics of victims and defendants, although some of these factors significantly affected their decisions.The research reported here was supported by the National Institute of Mental Health under grant No. R01 MH29727 and the National Institute of Justice under grant No. 82-IJ-CX-0015. The author would like to thank Douglas Smith, Barbara Reskin, and Lowell Hargens for helpful comments on earlier drafts.     

Preference for decision control in organizational decision making

Two studies examined preference for authority or subordinate decision control in dispute resolution and allocation procedures in an organizational setting. In both studies, a marked preference for the authority/subordinate sharing of decision control was found. In Study 1, nearly one third of respondents preferred that subordinates share decision control with supervisors in both dispute and allocation situations; for several of the situations decision sharing was the modal preference. The study also found a tendency to prefer subordinate decision control in disputes but supervisor decision control in allocations. In Study 2, again the most preferred procedure was one in which subordinates shared decision control with their supervisors. The procedure high in decision sharing was rated as the one most fair. It was also rated as more likely to improve relationships among members and to result in the best decision. Some differences in preference for decision control and decision sharing depending upon social factors predominant in the setting were found.     

The crime vanishes: Mob lynching,hate crime,and police discretion in India

Jindal Global Law Review - Amidst high-profile incidents of hate violence against religious and caste minorities, the Indian Supreme Court laid down a series of guidelines to address mob violence...     

Social ecology and police discretion: The influence of district crime, cynicism, and workload on the vigor of police response

This study provided a partial test of Klinger's (1997) postulations on the ecological correlates of police vigor using data drawn from the Project on Policing Neighborhoods (POPN). Klinger's theory hypothesized that a form of police behavior he called vigor would vary inversely with district crime levels because officers would be more cynical of residents, view crime as normal, perceive victims as less deserving, and have less time to devote to calls in high crime districts. Although data limitations precluded a full test, the current study examined two of the four mediating variables (officer cynicism and district workload) and their influence on the crime/vigor relationship. Findings revealed variables other than those examined might mediate the effect of district crime on vigor or the relationship between district crime and vigor might be spurious. Implications for future research and theoretical development are discussed.     

Bail decision making and pretrial detention

Bail practices became the target of reform efforts during the 1960's and 1970's not only because of issues concerning economic bias against indigent defendants but also because of criticism of the bail decision itself. Questions were raised about the appropriate uses of bail (e.g., to prevent flight or pretrial crime, or to inflict pretrial punishment), the rationality of the criteria relied on by judges in deciding bail, and the discretionary allocation of pretrial detention through high cash bail. In this article, case law and statutes governing bail practices in the United States are reviewed first to characterize the ambiguous legal framework from within which bail judges must operate. Then bail decisions in a large urban jurisdiction are analyzed as a case study to discover the factors most influential in determining pretrial release options. It is inferred that, even after years of reform, community-ties measures do not play a major role in the bail decision or the determination of pretrial custody; rather, the nature of the charged offense appears most influential. A finding of special significance is that a large proportion of these decisions could not be explained systematically (i.e., a large share of variance remained unexplained). The article concludes by suggesting a guidelines approach to bail that could narrow disparity in bail options and the use of detention, enhance the rationality of the decision process and contribute to more equitable pretrial practices.Revised version of a paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Psychological Association, Toronto, August, 1978. This research was supported, in part, by a grant from the Statistics Division of the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration to the Criminal Justice Research Center. Points of view or opinions stated are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official position of policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.     

Jurors' interpretations and jury decision making

In arriving at their verdicts, jurors must determine what really happened in the case at hand. Their interpretations then guide their decision making and become influential in the group deliberation process. This article uses conversational data from simulated jury deliberations to describe jurors' practice of articulating schematic interpretations as accounts for their verdict choices, and as means for persuading other jurors. As jurors contribute additional interpretations during deliberations, the group decision-making task becomes more complex, deliberations las longer, and they are more difficult to resolve. A significant negative relation is established between the number of interpretations articulated and the jury's likelihood of reaching a unanimous verdict. Articulating multiple interpretations in support of a candidate verdict appears to militate against its unanimous adoption.I am endebted to Andre Modigliani and Joseph Sanders for their invaluable assistance on this project.     

Procedural justice and ethical decision making

Procedural justice, in the form of voice and respectful treatment by supervisor, and ethical decision making are examined in this research. Ethical decision making is hypothesized to be a direct function of moral intent, as indicated by willingness to use moral criteria in decision making. Moral intent is, in turn, expected to be a function of the decision-making context, including perceptions of voice, respect and trust between supervisor and subordinate, and moral climate. Individual moral development is also expected to have a positive effect on moral intent. Results generally support the model, with two exceptions. First, perception of voice has a negative effect on moral intent, while caring climate and respectful supervisory relations have the expected positive effect on moral intent. These results suggest either a compensatory model of ethical decision making or a complacency effect. Second, individual characteristics had very little effect on either the decision made or the level of moral intent developed, save for one decision. These results suggest an important overlooked variable, the salience of issues for procedural justice concerns.     

Collective decision making by committee

Implicitly or explicitly, economic decisions always contain elements of compromise. However, the bargaining models of economic theory treat only the two decision maker case with linearly aggregated priorities; i.e. compromise decisions under Pareto optimality and no side payments. Even then the relative importance of the decision makers remains indeterminate. This paper proposes a simplified bargaining model with three new features: (a) it allows multiple participants; (b) it uses optimal voting patterns to combine the policy proposals, rather than the policy priorities, to form those compromise decisions; and (c) it determines the relative power of each participant endogenously. Perhaps more important, the method does not depend on each decision maker knowing the preferences of his colleagues exactly.     

Juror decision making in eyewitness identification cases

The lay-person's knowledge of the factors that influence eyewitness memory was examined by evaluating the manner in which mock jurors integrated eyewitness evidence to draw inferences about defendant culpability and the likelihood that an identification was correct. Three hundred and twenty-one undergraduates viewed a videotaped trial within which ten witness and identification factors were manipulated between trials. Manipulation checks showed that subjects demonstrated superior memory for the evidence and the manipulated variables had their intended impact on appropriate rating scales. However, only one variable, witness confidence, had reliable effects on subjects' perceptions of culpability, on the perceived likelihood that the identification was correct, and on several other relevant dependent variables. Eight variables that have been shown to affect identification accuracy in the empirical literature had trivial effects on mock jurors' inferences. It was concluded that lay-people are insensitive to the factors that influence eyewitness memory.     

Race and the decision making of juries

The relationship between race and jury decision making is a controversial topic that has received increased attention in recent years. While public and media discourse has focused on anecdotal evidence in the form of high‐profile cases, legal researchers have considered a wide range of empirical questions including: To what extent does the race of a defendant affect the verdict tendencies of juries? Is this influence of race comparable for jurors of different races? In what ways does a jury's racial composition affect its verdict and deliberations? The present review examines both experimental and archival investigations of these issues. Though the extant literature is not always consistent and has devoted too little attention to the psychological mechanisms underlying the influence of race, this body of research clearly demonstrates that race has the potential to impact trial outcomes. This is a conclusion with important practical as well as theoretical implications when it comes to ongoing debates regarding jury representativeness, how to optimize jury performance, jury nullification and racial disparities in the administration of capital punishment.