The new ancillary offenses

This paper was originally presented at the first conference of the Society for the Reform of Criminal Law, Inns of Court, London, England, July 26–29, 1987. It constitutes part of a chapter in a larger work in progress.     

Police officer perceptions of promotion as a source of motivation

This article is an examination of the role of promotion in police motivation. Promotion represents only one source of motivation within the police department, but it is considered to be a significant source. Officers from two Connecticut Police Departments were used in this study, and Q-Methodology was used. The study investigated the need structure (which needs were important) of police officers, and the extent to which promotion satisfied need. The results indicated that officers felt higher order needs were more important than lower order needs. Moreover, officers were divided over the instrumentality of promotion fulfilling their needs, and there were demographic characteristics which appeared to contribute to these differences.     

Crime Prototypes,Objective Versus Subjective Culpability,and a Commonsense Balance

Crime prototypes, which have been linked to jurors' story constructions and verdicts, were elaborated through narratives, yielding 600 detailed stories, across seven different cases, in two experiments. These stories were manipulated under conditions that explored the prototypicality of the case, she verdict outcome, and whether it was a rightful or wrongful decision; the latter two manipulations, when combined, allowed for a comparison of actual outcomes versus true outcomes, and a measure of true culpability. Three or four prototypes, rather than one, emerged for all crimes, and though extraordinary rather than typical, they were far from simplistic. While the subjective element of motive dominated the culpability determination in Experiment I, objectivity prevailed in most cases in Experiment II. A commonsense and complex balancing of objective and subjective factors is the rule, while simplism was the rare exception.     

Voluntary turnover of field operations officers: A test of confluency theory

This article explores classic and contemporary explanations for voluntary police turnover in one of the largest police departments in the Southeast—the Birmingham (Alabama) Police Department (BPD). It specifically tests confluency theory and eight variables associated with job satisfaction as predictors of turnover among field operations officers. Confluency theory, an untested theory, attributes police turnover to an absence of preemployment job awareness and to incongruencies between job expectations and job realities. Results from a survey of 232 current officers and 60 former officers disagreed with conventional wisdom and the majority of turnover research findings. Former BPD officers were generally more satisfied with their jobs in BPD than current officers. Logistic regression further indicated that confluency theory and the job satisfaction variables investigated are poor predictors of field operations officers who leave the BPD.