The thin blue line meets the big blue sky: perceptions of police legitimacy and public attitudes towards aerial drones

Police departments across the United States are now integrating new visual monitoring technology (e.g. unmanned aerial vehicles [UAVs or ‘drones’], body cameras) into routine police practices. Despite their potential use in multiple areas of proactive and reactive policing, public attitudes toward police use of UAVs, and visual monitoring technology overall, is mixed. As an extension of previous research, the current study uses a national survey to assess how well individuals’ perceptions about police legitimacy, effectiveness, and other criminal justice attitudes predict the level of public receptivity and opposition toward police UAV use in various contexts. The implications of these findings for public policy and law enforcement practices are discussed.     

Reversing the historical tide of iatrogenic harm: A therapeutic jurisprudence analysis of increases in arrests of domestic batterers and rapists

Therapeutic jurisprudence (TJ) proposes that the law is a social force that can heal or cause harm to parties in a legal action. Historically, women victims of intimate partner rape and domestic violence could not seek justice in the legal system because police, like other actors in the justice system, treated these offenses as private matters or fabrications. In domestic violence and intimate rape cases, TJ is concerned with the needs of the victims, and how the law and police play a role in increasing their well-being. In this article, we use a TJ approach to the study of police responsiveness to victims of these offenses by investigating arrests of the offenders pursuant to law reforms that encourage or mandate arrest. Given that in these offenses, victims have the lowest reporting rates of any violent crime, the victim decision to call the police represents an expectation that the mere physical presence of a police officer may redefine the nature of the violence from a private conflict to a societal wrong that will not be tolerated. Police partnership with and treatment of the victim with respect and dignity can change the dynamics of the violence, terminate the violence, and set the criminal justice process in motion by arresting the offender in most cases. Police arrest, and subsequent prosecution and conviction, sends a message to offenders that society does not tolerate their violence, and allows the victim to begin to heal. Yet, past research indicates that police are less likely to arrest intimates than acquaintances and strangers in misdemeanor and aggravated assault, rape, and sexual assault cases. Using the National Incidence Reporting System (NIBRS) for the year 2000, we examine police arrests of intimate partner rape and domestic violence in jurisdictions with mandatory and presumptive arrest policies compared to police arrests in full discretion jurisdictions. We also ascertain whether arrest rates are higher for strangers and acquaintances than for intimates in misdemeanor and aggravated assault, kidnapping, and rape and sexual assault. Third, we determine whether police arrests of intimate partner rape is more likely if there is evidence of violence, injury to the victim, and use of a weapon. Our multivariate findings suggest that both the rape and the domestic violence reform movements have reversed the tide of historical negative treatment of female victims of these offenses. Logistic regression analysis indicates that police agencies in mandatory and preferred arrest jurisdictions increase the odds of arrest for domestic violence incidents and violations of orders of protection, compared to police agencies in jurisdictions with permissive/discretionary arrest policies. In addition, intimate violence increases the odds of arrest by 98%; forcible rape accompanied by simple assault or kidnapping increases the odds of arrest by 467 and 222%, respectively whereas forcible fondling accompanied by simple assault increases the odds of arrest by 293%. We discuss the implications of our findings for future law reform as well as TJ.