|
Items in cart [1] |
Questions? Call 888-624-8373 |
HARDBACK + PDF HARDBACK PDF BOOK PDF CHAPTERS Free Resources |
||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||
|
|
|||||||||||||||
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Copyright © 2009. National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved. Terms of Use and Privacy Statement |
Below are the first 10 and last 10 pages of uncorrected machine-read text (when available) of this chapter, followed by the top 30 algorithmically extracted key phrases from the chapter as a whole.
Intended to provide our own search engines and external engines with highly rich, chapter-representative searchable text on the opening pages of each chapter.
Because it is UNCORRECTED material, please consider the following text as a useful but insufficient proxy for the authoritative book pages.
Do not use for reproduction, copying, pasting, or reading; exclusively for search engines.
OCR for page 109
4
Explaining Police Behavior:
People and Situations
C hapter 3 outlines the many things that police do. This chapter ex-
amines the forces that influence how, and how much, these things
are done. Knowledge about these influences is essential for imple-
menting policies that contribute to the fulfillment of the two public expec-
tations expressed as core themes of this volume: crime control effectiveness
and fairness. Achieving greater effectiveness and fairness depends in large
part on the capacity of a society to get its police to carry out legitimate
policies designed to further these ends. For example, knowing which prac-
tices will reduce domestic violence tells us nothing of how to ensure that
officers engage in these practices at the appropriate times and places. Do
the background characteristics of officers affect their enforcement practices?
Can officers be trained to behave in certain ways, and what sort of training
is most effective? Are certain work incentives and disciplinary practices nec-
essary? Or to consider an example about police fairness, it is one thing to
suggest that police who behave in a disrespectful manner toward citizens
are perceived as less fair and less legitimate than those who avoid disre-
spectful behavior. But it is quite another thing to determine what causes
police to behave disrespectfully toward some citizens and how to devise
ways of preventing disrespectful officer behavior. Can officers be trained or
disciplined not to be disrespectful? Can citizens be educated to behave in
ways that avoid precipitating police disrespect while maintaining their own
sense of self-respect? The first step toward answering questions such as
these is to appreciate the state of knowledge about the causes of police
practice.
109
OCR for page 110
110 FAIRNESS AND EFFECTIVENESS IN POLICING
Although most of the research in this review addresses academic ques-
tions about the causes of police practice, this literature has important impli-
cations for the central policy question of how to control police practice.
"Control" is probably a misnomer if it is interpreted as "ruling" or "deter-
mining" what police do--as in the "command and control" model of police
administration that became popular as an ideal by the mid-20th century
(Wilson, 1963). Most current analysts and reformers accept some degree of
police autonomy in decision making as a good thing, or at least an inevi-
table one (see, for example, Kelling, 1999; Moore and Stephens, 1991).
Thus the term, as it used here, is intended to connote a significant degree of
influence on police practice, but one that does not necessarily meet the
command and control ideal of determining it. Whenever possible, we at-
tempt to draw the implications of extant research for the control of what
police do and how they do it. Ultimately, the findings of Chapters 4 and 5
speak to the governability of policing as communities experience it. Ac-
countability of the police assumes a capacity to shape, if not determine,
what they do.
This review covers a wide range of police activities and policies--from
how police treat citizens they encounter on the street to the kinds of policies
and organizational structures implemented by police departments. The sub-
stantial literature involved in this broad range has been divided into four
general categories, beginning with the explanatory factors closest to every-
day police work, namely, the characteristics of the situations in which offic-
ers make decisions, such as whether to make an arrest, use force, or engage
in community policing. Such situational characteristics include, for example,
the strength of evidence available to an officer about a suspect's guilt, the
personal characteristics of the suspect, and the characteristics of the victim.
This chapter then examines the characteristics and outlooks of the police
officers who make those decisions--such things as their age, race, sex, edu-
cation, and training. We examine these two proximate elements: the degree
and the ways in which characteristics of people (both officer and citizen)
and situations influence police actions.
In the next chapter, we consider less proximate but presumably influen-
tial factors that affect police behavior. For instance, policies and other char-
acteristics of the police organization that may influence police behavior,
such as policies on deadly force, structures and styles of supervision, perfor-
mance incentive systems, and the nature of department leadership. The com-
mittee also examines forces external to police organizations, such as the
social and economic makeup of the neighborhoods or jurisdiction served by
the police, the political culture of the community, and political processes
and decisions made in the jurisdiction, including the law.
In order to distill the considerable research on each of the above types
of influences, the committee considers a series of commonly expressed views
OCR for page 111
EXPLAINING POLICE BEHAVIOR: PEOPLE AND SITUATIONS 111
about the causes of police practice that have received publicity or consider-
ation in the research literature. In many instances, there has not been enough
research from which to generalize, but whenever possible the committee
states a proposition about these influences based on its evaluation of the
research literature. When the evidence is inadequate, the committee indi-
cates the sort of research that would help to fill this knowledge gap. Before
turning to these propositions, each chapter considers the nature of the evi-
dence available in the research literature.
NATURE OF THE EVIDENCE
The studies reviewed for both this chapter and the next draw on a wide
range of measurement and data collection methods and employ a similarly
diverse set of designs. However, the preponderance of the literature is con-
centrated in certain areas; therefore this discussion is limited to the strengths
and limitations of those methods. By far the largest proportion of empirical
research on police practice has concentrated on patrol officers, who consti-
tute the largest portion of the nation's police force. There are a handful of
relevant studies on criminal investigators, juvenile officers, other sworn spe-
cialists, and telephone complaint operators and dispatchers. There are even
fewer systematic studies of the behavior of police executives and middle
management, constituting a major gap in knowledge about the causes of
police behavior outside the realm of the rank-and-file patrol officer. Thus,
most of the committee's analysis, especially when addressing the literature
on the influences on individual officers, is in effect a discussion of what is
known about police patrol.
Research on the forces that influence police behavior has been based
on: (1) police records, such as incident reports or firearms discharge re-
ports; (2) direct observation of police in the field; (3) surveys of the public
about their contacts with the police; and (4) surveys of police officers. Most
of the research on individual officer decision making draws on field obser-
vations of police, and much of that can be characterized as systematic social
observation (Reiss, 1971; Mastrofski et al., 1998). Such studies employ
trained observers who are assigned to accompany officers in selected beats
on selected work shifts. Observers take brief field notes on officers' activi-
ties and behaviors and on the citizens with whom they interact, and later
code data about police actions and other variables according to a standard-
ized form. Measures based on observational data are more valid than those
based on police records, which serve organizational purposes and hence
may be biased or incomplete. Some observational studies have linked obser-
vations to surveys of officers, so that observations of individual officers can
be combined with the same officers' survey responses.
OCR for page 112
112 FAIRNESS AND EFFECTIVENESS IN POLICING
Several systematic observation studies of police patrol, conducted since
the 1960s, have produced a significant number of publications.1 Three of
these warrant more detailed description, due to their scale and the extent to
which analyses of the data collected for these studies have been used by
police researchers. The first large-scale observational study of police was
undertaken by Albert J. Reiss, Jr., for the President's Commission on Law
Enforcement and Administration of Justice (Black and Reiss, 1967). Con-
ducted during summer 1966 in Boston, MA; Chicago, IL; and Washington,
DC, observers accompanied patrol officers on sampled shifts in selected
high-crime precincts. "In the data collection, emphasis was placed upon
gaining detailed descriptions of police and citizen behavior.... The social
and demographic characteristics of the participants as well as a detailed
description of the settings and qualities of the encounters were also ob-
tained" (Black and Reiss 1967:15; emphasis in original).
The Police Services Study (PSS), which was funded by the National
Science Foundation, was designed to examine the effects of institutional
arrangements on the delivery of police services. The second phase of the
study provided for the collection of various kinds of data about 24 police
departments in 3 metropolitan areas (Rochester, NY; St. Louis, MO; and
Tampa-St. Petersburg, FL), with attention focused particularly on 60 neigh-
borhoods served by those departments. During summer 1977, trained ob-
servers accompanied patrol officers on 900 patrol shifts, 15 in each of the
60 neighborhoods. Observers recorded information about 5,688 police-citi-
zen encounters. In addition, the observed officers (and samples of other
officers) were surveyed. The departments studied for this phase of the PSS
ranged in size from 1 with only 13 officers to 1 with over 2,000, serving
municipalities whose populations ranged from 6,000 to almost 500,000.
Within jurisdictions, neighborhoods were selected with explicit reference to
racial composition and wealth to ensure that different types of neighbor-
hoods were represented. The departments and neighborhoods provide a
rough cross-section of organizational arrangements and residential service
conditions for urban policing in the United States, and thus the PSS data
provide a much firmer basis for generalizing about police practices in U.S.
metropolitan areas (and not only in urban, high-crime areas).
Finally, the Project on Policing Neighborhoods (POPN), which was
funded by the National Institute of Justice, provided for direct observation
1See the following for details on the methodology of the more widely published of these
studies (Bayley and Garofalo, 1989; Black and Reiss, 1967; Frank, 1996; Frank and Travis,
1998; Klinger, 1994; Mastrofski and Parks, 1990; Mastrofski et al., 1995; Mastrofski et al.,
1998; Sykes and Brent, 1980; Worden, 1989). See Riksheim and Chermak, 1993, and Sherman,
1980, for reviews of the publications that drew on some of these projects.
OCR for page 113
EXPLAINING POLICE BEHAVIOR: PEOPLE AND SITUATIONS 113
of police in two cities, Indianapolis and St. Petersburg, during 1996 and
1997, respectively. Observation focused on 12 selected police beats in each
city and over 5,700 hours of observation (approximately 30 shifts per beat),
yielding information on approximately 11,000 police-citizen contacts. Beats
were selected from each of three strata of socioeconomic distress, with se-
lection biased toward the more distressed beats, in order to maximize the
number of police-citizen encounters subject to observation. In addition,
patrol officers and field supervisors in each department were surveyed.
Because of the rigor of the methodological design and the scale of
systematic observation studies, they comprise the strongest data from
which to draw conclusions regarding police behavior. Yet observational
data are not without shortcomings. They may be tainted by officers' "reac-
tivity" to observation, that is, officers might refrain from some actions
(such as the use of force, running personal errands) or engage in other
actions (such as stopping cars) due to the presence of observers. Efforts to
assess the bias introduced by reactivity suggest that the validity of observa-
tional data, in general, is quite high (Mastrofski and Parks, 1990; Spano,
2002); moreover, evidence shows that the relationships between some
forms of police behavior and other variables (such as characteristics of the
situation) are unaffected by reactivity (Worden, 1989). As Reiss (1971:24)
observes, "it is sociologically naive to assume that for many events the
presence or participation of the observer is more controlling than other
factors in the situation."
Observational data have other limitations. Direct observation of police
is labor-intensive, making observational studies very costly; only three large-
scale observational studies have been conducted. Furthermore, observa-
tional studies can be conducted only with the express permission and coop-
eration of the police departments, and as Fyfe et al. (1997) suggest, the
findings from research in such police departments may not be generalizable
to other U.S. police agencies.
Observational studies are best suited to inform judgments regarding the
proximate and immediate influences at work during a police-citizen en-
counter. In the next chapter, data and research methodologies that examine
police as organizations or look outside the police force--to the community,
for instance--to explain police behavior are examined.
Finally, it must be noted that the vast majority of studies in this area
rely on correlational designs. A smaller number are case studies, and a very
small number use quasi-experiments or experimental designs. Since all stud-
ies are subject to error, the committee has rated these studies differently
based on the strength of their design--that is, their ability to discount other
variables that might explain the behavior under examination. Throughout
we committee disclose our judgments regarding the strength and rigor of
research design.
OCR for page 114
114 FAIRNESS AND EFFECTIVENESS IN POLICING
SITUATIONAL INFLUENCES ON POLICE BEHAVIOR
Situational influences represent forces that operate at what is some-
times called the tactical level of police decision making. These represent
circumstances that vary from situation to situation and are expected to play
a central role in shaping how officers act. Situational influences that have
received considerable empirical evaluation include: the social class, race,
gender, and demeanor of complainants and their dispositional preferences
(e.g., whether they want offenders arrested or prefer that offenders not be
arrested); the social class, race, age, gender, sobriety, and demeanor of sus-
pects; the seriousness of the offense or problem and evidence available (if
any); the nature of the relationships between complainants and suspects;
the visibility of the encounters (whether they transpire in public or private
locations, whether bystanders are present); the numbers of officers at the
scene; and the character of the neighborhoods in which encounters take
place.
Which situational factors are studied and how they are interpreted de-
pends on the researcher's theoretical perspective. For example, Donald Black
and Albert Reiss (1967:8-9) posited that police action is influenced by a
citizen's "sanctioning capacity," which is, in turn, a function of the citizen's
status--both social (gender, age, race, class) and situational (as complain-
ant, suspect, witness, etc.)--and by the citizen's "subversive capability,"
that is, the "capability to undermine the means the police use to attain their
goals." From this perspective, situational factors (Sherman, 1980a) are the
cues on which officers form judgments about how incidents should be
handled (Wilson, 1968; Berk and Loseke, 1981). Perhaps the most compre-
hensive statement of situational factors was that of Bittner, who posited
that "the role of the police is best understood as a mechanism for the distri-
bution of non-negotiably coercive force employed in accordance with the
dictates of an intuitive grasp of situational exigencies" (Bittner 1970:46;
emphasis added). The situational framework has been applied most fre-
quently to the use of coercion by patrol officers, but also to the decisions of
juvenile detectives and other investigators (e.g., Bynum, Cordner, and
Green, 1982; Brandl, 1993; Terry, 1967).
To the extent that Bittner's is a valid and comprehensive description of
police work, it suggests that the greatest part of the variation in police
officer behavior will be accounted for by establishing those situational exi-
gencies that most powerfully shape police action. Other influences, such as
the officer's personal characteristics and attitudes, or department policy,
would manifest more subtle effects. That is, in fact, the finding of virtually
all studies that compare situational influences to officer and organization
characteristics (see Riksheim and Chermak, 1993, and Worden, 1989, for
reviews).
OCR for page 115
EXPLAINING POLICE BEHAVIOR: PEOPLE AND SITUATIONS 115
One objective in much of the research on situational influences is to
determine whether patterns of police behavior are affected by factors that
should, in a moral or legal sense, have no bearing on police dispositions,
such as race and gender (see Bernard and Engel, 2001). The analytic strat-
egy of such research has been to control statistically for the effects of legal
factors--particularly the strength of evidence, the seriousness of the offense,
and the preferences and cooperation of complainants--which are unam-
biguously legitimate criteria for police decision making and to estimate how
much if any of the remaining variation in police behavior is attributable to
extralegal factors, such as race. Research of this genre has found that most
extralegal, situational factors have weak and inconsistent effects.
LEGAL FACTORS
Proposition 1: There is considerable public concern that police officer
decision making ignores the constraints of the law. The evidence re-
viewed by the committee indicates that the exercise of police authority
to control citizens is most heavily influenced by legal factors associated
with each situation, particularly the seriousness of the reported inci-
dent, the evidence of wrongdoing, and the willingness of a complainant
to request a controlling intervention.
Public opinion surveys show that a significant minority of the Ameri-
can public regards police as unfair and untrustworthy, and some fear being
arrested when innocent (Gallagher et al., 2001; LaFree, 1998). However,
evidence reviewed by the committee indicates that officers' use of coer-
cion--their decisions to arrest or not and their use of physical force or
verbal control--is most heavily influenced by legal factors (Black and Reiss,
1970; Black, 1971; Lundman, 1974; Freidrich, 1977; Lundman et al., 1978;
Smith and Visher, 1981; Bayley, 1986; Mastrofski et al., 1995; Mastrofski
et al., 2000; Worden and Myers, 1999; Terrill, 2001). In their encounters
with suspected offenders, the likelihood that police will invoke their au-
thority by making arrests, using physical force, or verbal methods of con-
trol rises directly with the strength of the evidence of criminal wrongdoing.
So too does the likelihood of coercive action rise with the seriousness of the
offense: thus police are more likely to make arrests or use force when the
offense is a felony than when it is a lesser offense. But, as noted in Chapter
1, police frequently do not invoke the law, even when they have the author-
ity to do so; when they have evidence of offending; or even sometimes when
the alleged or suspected offense is a serious one. Important evidence on the
influence of legal factors comes from major observational studies. Black
(1971), for example, found that police were less likely to arrest when they
did not observe the offense themselves and had to rely on citizen testimony
OCR for page 116
116 FAIRNESS AND EFFECTIVENESS IN POLICING
instead; he also reports, however, that officers arrested only slightly more
than half of the felony suspects against whom they had testimonial evi-
dence. Most recently, Mastrofski et al. (1995), using a more comprehensive
measure of evidence, found that the likelihood of arrest rose directly, and
fairly steeply, with the strength of the evidence, a finding reproduced in a
later observational study that examined only those cases in which a com-
plainant requested that officers do something to control another citizen
(Mastrofski et al., 2000).
Officers' decisions to arrest are also strongly influenced by the prefer-
ences of complainants, especially (but not only) when the offense is a less
serious one and especially when the preference is for leniency. Complain-
ants do not always articulate a clear preference for or against legal action,
but when they do, police tend to comply. Smith and Visher (1981), for
example, found that police made an arrest in almost half (46.6 percent) of
the encounters in which the victim requested that an arrest be made, in only
one-fifth (18.8 percent) of the cases in which the victim expressed no prefer-
ence, and in less than one-tenth (6.6 percent) of the cases in which the
victim requested that an arrest not be made. Black (1971) observes that this
tendency "gives police work a radically democratic character" and also that
the standard of justice that police apply is not uniform but rather varies
with the moral standards of complainants. This is a pattern that has been
observed in domestic incidents (Berk and Loseke, 1981), and it is one that
recent pro-arrest statutory and policy changes have sought to alter, under
the assumption that victims of abuse are not always in a position to request
legal action against their abuser (see Ferraro, 1989; Jones and Belknap,
1999).
Researchers have observed that the preference of the complainant is
most influential when they request levels of police control lower than mak-
ing an arrest: advice and persuasion, warnings and threats, and banishment
from the scene (Mastrofski et al., 2000). Furthermore, the success of a
complainant's arrest request was highly sensitive to the strength of evidence
available; the likelihood that police officers would fulfill a request for an
arrest was found to be much higher in situations in which evidence was
strong compared to those in which it was weak. Complainants requesting
lesser forms of control experienced high levels of police compliance, regard-
less of evidence strength, although even here, stronger evidence produced a
significantly higher chance of having the request fulfilled.
One dispositional factor, juvenile status, does not appear to affect po-
lice practice, in that patterns of decision making are based on the same
criteria and weighed in the same ways (Worden and Myers, 2000). Riksheim
and Chermak (1993) note that in the 1970s age was inversely related to the
likelihood of arrest, but in the 1980s, controlling for other factors, suspects'
age did not affect the likelihood of arrest (e.g., Smith and Visher, 1981; but
OCR for page 117
EXPLAINING POLICE BEHAVIOR: PEOPLE AND SITUATIONS 117
compare Mastrofski et al., 1995). This shift may reflect the last decade's
well-documented trend in public attitudes and justice system practices to-
ward treating juveniles more like adults, especially those suspected of seri-
ous offenses (Triplett, 1996; National Research Council, 2001:Ch. 5).
One 1970 observational study of drunk-driving arrests in a Midwest-
ern city did produce results somewhat at odds with others reviewed above
(Lundman, 1998). It found that, although some legal variables showed sig-
nificant effects (whether the officers had to chase the suspect and the degree
of intoxication), they were less powerful than several extralegal influences,
such as the suspect's social class and demeanor.
Before turning to the extralegal considerations in police practice, two
caveats are in order. First, being influenced by the law is not the same as
being governed by it. Studies of arrest show that as evidence of wrongdoing
increases, so does the probability of arrest, but these studies do not judge
how often the police ignore the specific standard of legal evidence that ap-
plies to the case, such as probable cause. Indeed, because we know that
police often overlook minor violations, even when the evidence is strong,
we must be careful not to interpret these findings as suggesting that police
serve as legal automatons. Second, the available research suggests that of-
ficers tend to be constrained by law, but there are occasions when they
clearly act outside it. However infrequent such incidents might be, they
have a large impact on the perceived legitimacy of the police, in part be-
cause when they become known to the press, they are highly publicized, an
issue considered in Chapter 8.
Extralegal Factors
Although most research shows that many police actions constrained by
law (e.g., arrest) are most strongly influenced by legal considerations, it is
still possible for extralegal influences to exert a significant effect. Indeed the
available research shows that police behavior is also influenced by extrale-
gal factors, but, for the most part, findings have not been consistent as to
the nature and strength of those effects.
Citizens' Demeanor Toward the Police
Proposition 2: It is widely believed that officers punish citizens based
on the citizen's untoward demeanor toward the police, even when that
demeanor is itself not a legal violation. The committee finds conflicting
evidence regarding the impact of suspects' demeanor on police actions
toward suspects and victim-complainants.
OCR for page 118
118 FAIRNESS AND EFFECTIVENESS IN POLICING
The proposition that police officers respond punitively to suspects who
fail to accord them deference emerged from some of the earliest systematic
inquiry into police behavior. Westley (1953, 1970) found that the mainte-
nance of respect is an important norm among police. Disrespect for the
police, he reports, is symbolized by "the `wise guy,' the fellow who thinks
he knows more than they do, the fellow who talks back, the fellow who
insults the policeman" (1970:123; see also Van Maanen, 1978) and, fur-
thermore, such disrespect legitimates the use of force to compel deference.
Analyses of data collected in the 1960s and 1970s consistently found
that the demeanor of suspects toward police affects the likelihood that
they will be arrested and the likelihood that officers will use physical force
against them (Black and Reiss, 1970; Black, 1971; Lundman, 1974, 1994,
1996, 1998; Sykes et al., 1974; Smith and Visher, 1981; Worden, 1989,
1995a; Worden and Shepard, 1996; Worden and Myers, 2000; compare
Mastrofski et al., 1995; also see Van Maanen, 1978). Given the tendency
of the police to underenforce the law (Wilson, 1968; also see Black, 1971;
LaFave, 1965), this means that suspects who fail to show deference to
police authority are less likely to get a break--to avoid justifiable arrest or
to receive the benefit of an evidentiary doubt. Moreover, the magnitude of
the estimated effect was substantial: one analysis of data collected in 1977
indicated that a disrespectful demeanor raised the estimated likelihood of
arrest from .11 to .28 (Worden and Shepard, 1996), and the results of
another analysis of the same data (Engel et al., 2000) indicated that police
were 5.8 times more likely to use force against disrespectful suspects than
against more deferential suspects.
Analyses of more recent data, however, are mixed. Two studies using
data on police intervention into disputes, collected in 1986, yielded mixed
findings on the effect of demeanor on arrest (Klinger, 1994, 1996). An
analysis of data collected in 1992 showed that the likelihood of arrest was
greater when the suspect resisted police authority--if, for example, they
refused to comply with an explicit police command, acted threateningly, or
offered physical resistance (Mastrofski et al., 1995). The effect of resistance
on arrest was limited to citizens' actions that were illegal; resistance that did
not take the form of illegal action did not affect the likelihood of arrest.
Data collected for the Project on Policing Neighborhoods in 1996-1997
shows that disrespect by suspects raises the probability of arrest (Worden
and Myers, 2000), and it is by far the most powerful situational influence
on whether the officer will act disrespectfully toward the suspect (Mastrofski
et al., 2002a). Importantly, however, it has no detectable effect on officers'
use of coercion more generally (Terrill and Mastrofski, 2002). However,
another study, based on officer self-report data on custody arrests in six
jurisdictions, found that an antagonistic demeanor, as well as physical resis-
tance, substantially increased the likelihood of police use of physical force
OCR for page 119
EXPLAINING POLICE BEHAVIOR: PEOPLE AND SITUATIONS 119
(Garner et al., 2002). Thus it appears that the effect of demeanor on police
behavior may be quite complex, perhaps contingent on other factors: the
era (contemporary police may be less prone to apply the "attitude test"),2
the police department, and even the nature of the encounters in which po-
lice and suspects interact.
The demeanor of complainants and victims toward police has also dem-
onstrated mixed effects on how police treat them. In one study, disrespect-
ful demeanor from complainants was found to influence the likelihood that
police will exert the degree of control on another citizen requested by the
complainant, but this effect was evident in only one of the two cities studied
(Mastrofski et al., 2000). Another study of a single department found that a
complainant's display of disrespect toward the police did significantly re-
duce the likelihood that police would try to control the targeted offender
(Snipes, 2001). A disrespectful demeanor by the offender had no bearing on
the police response in the two-city study (Mastrofski et al., 2000), but an
uncooperative demeanor toward the police did produce a significantly re-
duced likelihood that the police would try to control the offender in the
single-city study (Snipes, 2001). When citizens asked the police for assis-
tance that did not require controlling another person (e.g., help with a flat
tire), the citizen's demeanor was found to exert no influence on the out-
come of the request (Snipes, 2001). However, this study found that disre-
spectful citizens requesting any form of assistance were generally less likely
to be treated by police in a friendly or comforting manner. This contrasts
with the finding of the two-city study, in which the likelihood that police
comforted citizens experiencing some form of distress was shown to be
unrelated to the citizen's demeanor toward the officer (Mastrofski et al.,
1998).
What can be taken from the studies on citizen demeanor that produce
such a mixed pattern of findings? First, some of the diversity of the findings
may be attributable to variations in how researchers have defined and mea-
sured citizens' demeanor (Worden et al., 1996). Some consider it to be any-
thing that police might interpret negatively; others emphasize failure to show
deference (involving both verbal and physical acts); and others distinguish
verbal acts of disrespect from acts of resistance (some defining it as physical
only, and others including both physical and verbal resistance). In general,
physical acts of resistance fairly consistently increase the risk of a punitive
police response. Second, effects of citizen demeanor may vary according to
the particular feature of police behavior under consideration: arrest, use of
force, granting citizens requests, and affective displays toward the citizen.
2However, a recent survey of police (Weisburd et al., 2000) revealed that nearly half agreed
with the statement "A police officer is more likely to arrest a person who displays what he or
she considers to be a bad attitude."
OCR for page 144
144 FAIRNESS AND EFFECTIVENESS IN POLICING
The contingent nature of training's effects appears to depend not only
on what kind of officer receives it, but also on the kind of organizational
environment in which the officer is operating. For example, training to deal
with drunk-driving violations (driving under the influence or DUI) was
found to be related to the number of arrests patrol officers made and that
the effects of this training depended on the organizational environment in
which the officers worked (Mastrofksi et al., 1996; Mastrofski and Ritti,
1996). When training was supported by ongoing supervisory and manage-
ment practices that favored DUI arrest (leading by example, having officers
work closely with victims' groups, closely monitoring arrest statistics, and
supporting and protecting from internal criticism officers whose DUI arrest
rates were exceptionally high). In departments that failed to provide a nur-
turing environment to sustain the DUI training, the amount of training re-
ceived had no effect on the officers' DUI arrest rate.
A study of community policing training produced similar conclusions
to the DUI study, in that academy training that was not reinforced in the
field usually failed to produce lasting changes in officers' attitudes and be-
liefs (Haarr, 2001). This study of Arizona police recruits found that at the
end of a 16-week program of training, recruits tended to show a more
positive outlook toward community policing, problem solving, and tradi-
tional policing than when they began the training. However, these effects
dissipated during the 12-week field training experience (except for views on
the need for good police-public relations), and by the end of their 1-year
probationary period, they tended to hold more negative attitudes toward
community policing than they did at the end of academy training (except
for police-public relations). Overall, with the exceptions of views on the
need for good police-public relations and self-assessed capabilities in
problemsolving, recruits entered the academy with more positive views than
they held after one year on the job. During field training, the most powerful
predictors of attitude were department policies supporting community po-
licing. The change in attitude from pre-academy to the end of the one-year
probationary period was strongly influenced by the officers' perceived view
of coworkers' attitude toward community policing and the assigned work
shift (presumably representing opportunities to spend time doing commu-
nity policing on less busy shifts). Although this study focused on attitude
changes and not performance, it underscores the notion that to sustain
training's effects, it must be reinforced. A survey of training for community
policing in over 500 police agencies indicated that few police agencies were
even going so far as to require that their field training officers have knowl-
edge of community policing (McEwen, 1997).
There are numerous limitations to the correlational research on train-
ing, including measurement of training itself. Most of this research is lim-
ited to measuring the amount of training but does not consider that the
OCR for page 145
EXPLAINING POLICE BEHAVIOR: PEOPLE AND SITUATIONS 145
character, quality, and timing of the training can vary, even within the same
department.7 For example, some observers have criticized much police train-
ing for attempting to change officers' belief systems, while paying little or
no attention to giving them the skills and incentives to change their prac-
tices, a common approach in the areas of domestic violence, cultural sensi-
tivity, and community policing (Buerger, 1998; Haar, 2001). According to
critics, such training is doomed to fail because it attempts to overcome
strongly embedded habits and norms using a relatively light dose (at most,
a few days of training), offers no really useful tools that officers can use,
and fails to reinforce the training on the job. Nonetheless, much contempo-
rary police training does attempt to imbue officers with a different set of
outlooks about their work, so it would behoove researchers to take the
content of the training into account. Another important unresolved issue
about training content is determining what sort of curriculum is most effec-
tive in promoting the practice of various aspects of community policing.
Minimum training standards are established by each state's police officer
standards and training council, but there is virtually no rigorous research to
guide them on how to structure recruit training curricula most effectively
(for example, whether to integrate community policing training seamlessly
throughout the curriculum or whether to highlight it in special segments).8
Similarly, evidence is lacking on what sort of curriculum will best promote
effective problem-solving projects. Should it be academic in nature (teach-
ing recruits the rudiments of social science evaluation research), or should it
be more inductive and experiential?
Correlational research has also failed to look for different patterns of
training effects according to the type of officer who receives it. For ex-
ample, it is conceivable that training on a given topic (such as handling
domestic disputes) will be most effective when introduced in discrete seg-
ments over time, rather than all at once. Officers may need an opportunity
to learn basic skills and try them out before moving on to more advanced
techniques. The notion that training should be designed to build on past
skill acquisition is different from the more common approach of simply
retraining officers with the same material periodically. Until studies get more
detailed information on when training of a given type was received in an
officer's career, little will be known about the most effective way to develop
a long-term training program for police.
What is known about the effects of training on police performance and
7Officers are typically asked to indicate how many hours of training on a given topic they
have received in the last x time period.
8One analysis suggests that even after more than a decade in which community policing
became very popular among police, training for officers has not changed much from its tradi-
tional focus on reactive activities (Bradford and Pynes, 1999).
OCR for page 146
146 FAIRNESS AND EFFECTIVENESS IN POLICING
practice is very limited, making the need for a systematic and rigorous re-
search program in this area quite compelling. For example, recommenda-
tions about what constitutes desirable training to control police abuse of
force do exist, but there is virtually no empirical validation of these claims
(Geller and Toch, 1995:318). A number of issues that in the committee's
view require attention:
· What should the content of training be? Should it focus on changing
attitudes, developing skills, or both? How generalized can training be, and
to what extent must it be tailored to the needs of the locale (Fyfe, 1995:171)?
· What training methods work best? Is realistic training that attempts
to simulate conditions on the job the most effective (Fyfe, 1995:167)? For
what kinds of training topics is "roll-call" training effective, and for what
types of topics is more training immersion required?
· Who make the most effective instructors, those who are experts in
training or those who are experts in the content area of interest?9 Does the
sworn versus civilian status of the instructor affect the willingness of offic-
ers to accept and implement the training?
· At what point in their career should officers receive training of a
given type, what kind of follow-up training is effective, and when and how
should it be given?
· What is the appropriate duration, intensity, or dosage of a given
type of training?
· For a given type of training, what kind of on-the-job reinforcement
is required to produce the desired change in officer behavior? How impor-
tant are departmental rewards and sanctions for performing according to
training compared with an individual officer's sense that the skills learned
in training are useful? Is training an effective way to initiate change in an
organization, or to be effective must it follow other organizational changes
in such areas as supervision, incentive and disciplinary systems, and perfor-
mance accountability?
· How long do the effects of training last? That is, how quickly do any
effects decay over time? The received wisdom is that police academy train-
ing is quickly undercut by what officers learn from their more experienced
colleagues on the job (Bayley and Bittner, 1984; Haar, 2001). Is this neces-
sarily so for all training? What kinds of recruit training, if any, do officers
find useful and follow as they gain experience?
· What kinds of control groups are appropriate?
9Experts may vary considerably in their ability to teach, but they will generally be far more
knowledgeable about their topic, motivated to "sell" the training, and have higher credibility
with the trainees (Buerger, 1998).
OCR for page 147
EXPLAINING POLICE BEHAVIOR: PEOPLE AND SITUATIONS 147
Given that departments invest extraordinary resources in training every
year, the committee strongly recommends more research on police training.
Perhaps the ultimate question for future research is to determine the limits
of the effects of training. That is, just how much can training influence
officers' attitudes, beliefs, knowledge, and skills? Much can undoubtedly be
learned by studies of the effects of training in the military, the clergy, medi-
cine, and the law. Ultimately, however, training competes with many other
forces that come into play, so it is especially important to gain a realistic
sense of what sorts of transformations can be expected. The committee
anticipates that research on this issue will benefit from a careful consider-
ation of two things: what skills and values police trainees bring to their
experiences and the organizational context to which they return when they
have been trained. Specifically, it is important for training evaluations to go
beyond a narrow focus on the training program itself; they need to incorpo-
rate the entire package of management decisions made for monitoring, su-
pervising, and rewarding desired behaviors.
EQUAL EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITY, AFFIRMATIVE ACTION,
AND THE EFFECTS OF OFFICER RACE AND SEX
As discussed in Chapter 1, the trend in federal and state laws over the
last 35 years has been to force police agencies to open their doors wider to
racial and ethnic minorities and women. Although the principal legal justi-
fication for these laws has been to end and rectify employment discrimina-
tion, reformers have also argued that minority and female officers (a) will
perform better (at least in certain situations or with certain groups of people)
than white and male officers and (b) that their presence on the force will
help to change the predispositions of the police subculture (Walker,
1998:232). Equal employment opportunity and affirmative action have
served as principles that appear to have increased the representation of ra-
cial minorities and females on America's police forces (Walker, 1985; Mar-
tin, 1990), but does the race and gender of the officer have a significant
effect on the way that officers exercise discretion?
The short answer to this question is that the limited research available
provides little support for the notion that race and gender have a significant
influence on officer behavior. Some recent research shows that female po-
lice officers are more inclined to engage in community policing and
caregiving behavior, but the pattern is mixed and the number of studies
limited. Indeed, the received wisdom from the research community is that
whatever influence race and gender may exert on behavior is overwhelmed
by the unifying effects of occupational socialization (see Donohue and
Levitt, 2001, for a review). This may be disappointing to some reformers,
who expected improved performance, but it may also be interpreted as good
OCR for page 148
148 FAIRNESS AND EFFECTIVENESS IN POLICING
news, inasmuch as it discredits past discriminatory practices that equal em-
ployment policies attempted to rectify, and it shows that no appreciable
differences in policing practice by officer race or sex should be anticipated.
Officer's Race
Proposition 15: Many reformers have argued that increasing the num-
ber of racial and ethnic minority group officers will lead to improved
policing and better police-community relations. This proposition is
based on the assumption that, for example, black officers will be less
likely to shoot, arrest, or stop black citizens than white officers. The
committee finds that in the small body of relevant studies there is no
credible evidence that officers of different racial or ethnic backgrounds
perform differently during interactions with citizens simply because of
race or ethnicity.
Reformers of American police have for some time couched their criti-
cisms and claims as if the race of the police officer has a significant influ-
ence on how the officer behaves (Kerner Commission, 1968:315). Many
have argued that police forces will be more caring and service-oriented when
the racial makeup of the police force approximates that of the department's
jurisdiction, and for most center-city urban areas, that has meant increasing
the number of minority officers on the force. Underlying this notion is that
people with the same racial background will be more solicitous of each
other. A contrary hypothesis is offered by Black (1976, 1980:9), who ar-
gues that citizens of high or dominant status are more likely to receive
favorable police response when the lawgiver (i.e., police officer) is of a lower
or nondominant status. Conversely, when the citizen is of a lower status
than the officer, the probability of a favorable police action is lowest. Like-
status individuals fall between these two poles, according to Black. Virtu-
ally all of the available studies compare whites and blacks.
Some research has found that officers of different races do tend to have
different occupational outlooks (Alex, 1969; Rossi, 1974; Jacobs and
Cohen, 1978; Decker and Smith, 1981; Leinen, 1984; Paoline et al., 2000;
Weisburd et al., 2000) and knowledge about their neighborhoods
(Mastrofski, 1983), but these differences do not seem to translate into sig-
nificantly different patterns of behavior. Virtually all multivariate analyses
that have tested for the effects of an officer's race on the use of coercion
(arrest or force) show no appreciable difference between races (Reiss, 1968;
Fyfe, 1981a; Smith and Klein, 1983; Worden, 1989, 1995a; Mastrofski et
al., 1998; Engel, 2000; Terrill, 2001). A study of police disrespect toward
suspects found that, in one of two cities studied, white officers were more
OCR for page 149
EXPLAINING POLICE BEHAVIOR: PEOPLE AND SITUATIONS 149
inclined to be disrespectful to white suspects than minority suspects, an
effect that the researchers suggested might have been due to the minority
chief's strenuous efforts to reduce both police incivility and racial discrimi-
nation (Mastrofski et al., 2002a).
As with the punitive aspects of police work, little evidence in support of
officer race effects has been found when researchers have attempted to pre-
dict various forms of order maintenance, police assistance, and engagement
in community policing. Novak et al. (1999:176) found no effects of officer's
race on the probability that officers would initiate order maintenance activ-
ity with suspects and disputants. DeJong (2000) found that the officer's
race had no significant effect on the likelihood that a citizen would be com-
forted. Mastrofski (1998) found the same result when looking at officer-
citizen race dyads. Two analyses of the effects of officer-citizen racial pair-
ings found no effect on the likelihood that officers would grant citizens'
requests to control another citizen (Mastrofski et al., 2000; Snipes, 2001).
Only one of the reviewed studies found an officer race effect (Engel et al.,
2000). White officers spent more time on problem-solving activities than
did black officers.
In contrast to the above studies, all of which are based on field observa-
tions of individual officers' encounters with the public, is an analysis of
arrest rates in 122 U.S. cities with populations greater than 100,000 for a
time period spanning 1977-1993 (Donohue and Levitt, 2001). This study
found that increases in the number of minority officers were associated
with increases in arrests of whites (but not minority citizens), while more
white police produced increases in the arrest rate of nonwhites (but not
white citizens). These effects were particularly strong for minor offenses,
such as public order offenses, prostitution, drunk driving, and other minor
crimes. Extrapolating their results, the researchers estimated that "moving
from random assignment of officers by race to a scenario in which same-
race policing is maximized would lead arrests to decrease by over 15 per-
cent" (Donohue and Levitt, 2001:390). It is important to note that this
research does not allow us to make valid predictions about the effects of
race on individual officers' behaviors, because the unit of analysis in this
study is at an aggregated level--the entire municipal department. Arrest
rates by officers' race may be affected by a number of factors not taken into
account in this study (beat and shift assignment patterns), as well as other
policies and practices that are associated with both the racial distribution of
the police force and the distribution of arrests across citizens of different
races. Moreover, arrest rates are calculated on the basis of people in a given
population rather than on the number of incidents that could have resulted
in an arrest. Inasmuch as quantitative analyses of individual officers' arrest
OCR for page 150
150 FAIRNESS AND EFFECTIVENESS IN POLICING
practices have not produced similar cross-race effects as found in this aggre-
gate study, it should be interpreted with great caution.10
One possible race effect is that the distribution of officers by race in a
department affects the way that individual officers (by race) behave (Walker,
1985; Mastrofski et al., 1998). The vast majority of officers in most Ameri-
can police agencies are white, but possibly in those few departments in
which the majority of officers are black, both black and white officers may
behave differently, because there are a sufficient number of minority offic-
ers to sustain an alternative culture to that which has been found repeatedly
in white-dominated departments. Underlying this notion is that a police
force that is well integrated provides a context for developing greater mu-
tual respect and understanding, as officers come to know each other as
individuals. That is, the process may also change police officers' stereotypi-
cal views about people of a race other than their own. It also seems reason-
able to hypothesize that when there is substantial racial heterogeneity in a
police force, and that force also experiences substantial race-based tensions,
officers' race may have an effect on how they practice policing, although
the nature of the effects could well differ from situations in which there is
racial heterogeneity and no such tension.
Although nearly all of the available multivariate research suggests that
an officer's race is not a significant influence on police behavior, this issue
should be explored more fully by considering different contexts in which
the officer's race might matter. Researchers could test more fully the possi-
bility that the effects of the officer's race depend on that of the citizens with
whom they interact. More importantly, researchers should compare officer
race effects in departments in which officers of a minority race constitute
the majority of the sworn force, thus considering the possibility that these
effects differ from departments in which minority race officers also com-
prise a minority of the sworn force.
10Indeed, a field observation study of Richmond, Virginia, in the early 1990s found that
white officers dealing with minority citizens were the most likely to receive a compliant re-
sponse when ordering a citizen not to engage in undesired behavior, and minority officers
dealing with white citizens were the least likely (Mastrofski et al., 1996). Like-race pairings of
officer and citizen were indistinguishable from each other in their success at securing citizen
compliance and fell between the two racially heterogeneous pairings. Assuming that citizen
compliance mitigates the need for arrest, these findings would predict that minority officers
would have fewer enforcement alternatives to arrest when dealing with white citizens, while
white officers dealing with minority citizens would have less need for arrest, given their higher
rate of compliance success with that racial group.
OCR for page 151
EXPLAINING POLICE BEHAVIOR: PEOPLE AND SITUATIONS 151
Officer's Sex
Proposition 16: Many argue that the employment of more female offic-
ers will lead to changes in policing. This assumption is based on the
belief that women are less aggressive and more nurturing than men and
therefore more likely to use less coercion, relying instead on persuasion
and assistance in dealing with citizens who cause problems or need
help. The committee finds that the body of available research is too
small and the findings too variable to draw firm conclusions about the
effects of officer sex on police practice.
Relatively little work has been done on the differences in how men and
women practice policing. A number of studies fail to find differences be-
tween male and female officers' beliefs and perceptions (Worden, 1993;
Lasley, 1994; Finn and Stalans, 1997; Stewart and Maddren, 1997), and
early evaluations of female officers indicated no sex-based differences in
officer performance (see Feinman, 1994, for a review), focusing on the
"masculine" or enforcement-oriented aspects of police work. Some of the
early empirical work on police behavior suggested that female officers are
less aggressive, less inclined to make arrests and citations, and less inclined
to misbehave (see Sherman, 1980; Mastrofski, 1990; Riksheim and Cher-
mak, 1993, for reviews). But this research suffers a number of methodologi-
cal limitations, such as inadequate control for such confounding factors as
age, experience, and duty assignment. Recent studies that control for many
of these potentially confounding effects also fail to show significant differ-
ences between male and female officers in making arrests, issuing citations,
and using force (Worden, 1989, 1995a; Engel, 2000; Terrill, 2001).
Some work has focused on specific community policing and order main-
tenance practices. Two of six systematic observation studies of patrol indi-
cated that women were more inclined to engage in assistance or community
policing; one study indicated that females were less inclined to do so; and
three showed no difference. Engel et al. (2000) found that female officers
spent more time on problem solving than male officers. Snipes (2001) found
no difference between male and female officers in the amount of time they
spent on encounters in which a citizen requested some form of assistance,
and DeJong (2000) found that females were significantly more likely to
comfort female citizens than males were to comfort male citizens. Cross-
gender pairings of officer and citizen were not significantly different from
the female officer-female citizen pairing. But Mastrofski et al. (2000) found
that female officers were less likely to grant citizens' requests to control
others who were causing trouble, regardless of the degree of control re-
quested (ranging from advice to arrest). Snipes (2001) found a similar rela-
tionship in another city, but the sample of cases was much smaller and the
OCR for page 152
152 FAIRNESS AND EFFECTIVENESS IN POLICING
results not significant. Finally, Novak (1999) found no difference between
men and women in their proclivity to initiate order maintenance activities
on their own. Thus, two of the studies do suggest that female officers are
more likely to engage in the caregiving sorts of community building and
problem-solving aspects of community policing, while the evidence is less
clear on the kinds of behaviors that constitute a projection of the more
intrusive and coercive aspects of police authority.
Future research exploring the possibility that officers' gender influences
practice would benefit from a number of improvements. First, more refined
measures of police practice should be considered. For example, whether or
not an officer makes an arrest may not be linked to an officer's gender, but
how that officer treats the people involved (whether or not an arrest was
made) might be influenced by the officer's gender. Whether female officers
tend to listen more to both sides of the story in a dispute is a question worth
answering. Second, an examination of how officers spend their time that is
free from assignments from the dispatcher and supervisors might reveal
sex-linked differences. That is, there are few formal constraints determining
when and where officers choose to mobilize, so any sex-linked inclinations
would be most likely to be revealed in these patterns of behavior.
IMPLICATIONS
The committee explored research relevant to a number of propositions
about the proximate influences of police behavior; both characteristics of
the situation and of the officers. Virtually all of the literature reviewed fo-
cused on patrol officers. We found that the evidence available to test most
of these propositions was inadequate to draw firm conclusions. Some impli-
cations are nonetheless possible.
That police practices, especially those tied to the enforcement function,
are influenced far more by legal than extralegal considerations is encourag-
ing news for those wishing to assess the state of policing in America. This is
not necessarily cause for celebration, however, since there are a sufficient
number of studies finding that race, sex, and social class influence police
practice to be cause for concern. And even if these effects are much smaller
than those of legal considerations, this says nothing about how much toler-
ance a society should have for these influences. Indeed the mixed evidence
calls for more rigorous research to determine the circumstances under which
the personal characteristics of the citizen do affect police practice. The situ-
ation with regard to the effects of citizen demeanor is different, inasmuch as
a great deal of research has found this to be a relatively strong influence on
whether a suspect is arrested. There is still debate about how much the
extralegal aspects of citizen demeanor influence police enforcement prac-
tices, once the legally relevant aspects of that demeanor (constituting viola-
OCR for page 153
EXPLAINING POLICE BEHAVIOR: PEOPLE AND SITUATIONS 153
tions of the law) are taken into account, an issue that future research should
resolve. More important for policy purposes, however, is determining what
interventions, such as training, supervision, and discipline, prove most ef-
fective in reducing the scope of the extralegal aspects of citizen demeanor.
Researchers still have plenty to learn about the effects of legal and ex-
tralegal situational influences on police practices, but future research will
make especially valuable contributions to improving policing if it can deter-
mine the sources of variation in these effects. For example, when legal con-
siderations are not as influential as desired, is this due to a lack of police
knowledge about legal requirements? Difficulties in applying the law to
specific situations? A negative attitude about the law? The impact of com-
peting priorities, such as the need to husband resources or deliver substan-
tive justice? Are extralegal factors, such as revealed in race effects, less likely
in departments with more active systems for detecting, correcting, or pun-
ishing racially biased officer practices?
Despite the considerable effort police leaders have devoted to winning
the hearts and minds of police officers, the available evidence is not encour-
aging about the prospects of changing officer behavior by changing their
outlook. Research on general outlooks (authoritarian personality, police
culture, cynicism, and job satisfaction) has for the most part not tested the
effects of these constructs, due in part to formidable measurement difficul-
ties. The small body of research that has tested the influence of specific
attitudes has shown at most only weak linkages between attitude and be-
havior, a finding that is consistent with findings in the field of social psy-
chology generally. One implication is that attitudes and attitudinal change
are poor proxies for actual practice when evaluating the impact of policy
interventions on actual police practices. A second implication is that poli-
cies and management practices designed to shape officers' philosophies
about their work appear to be unfruitful. However, an encouraging feature
of this pattern of results is that police agencies may be fairly effective in
breaking the link between individual beliefs and preferences on one hand
and practice on the other. What remains to be shown is how successful
organizations are--and through what mechanisms--in getting officers to
pattern their practices consistent with the goals of the organization.
While the improvement of knowledge, skills, and abilities of police of-
ficers seems an unassailable objective, available research leaves largely un-
tested the degree of influence these things exert on actual police practice, so
policy makers and the public remain uninformed on the actual return re-
ceived from these investments. This is also the case for two specific strate-
gies that have been the mainstays of professional reform: increasing the
quality and quantity of education and training for police. The small number
of studies and the methodological limitations of most studies mean that
particular programs to enhance police training and education are developed
OCR for page 154
154 FAIRNESS AND EFFECTIVENESS IN POLICING
and offered without scientific evidence of their likely effects. Given the im-
portance of these tools to those striving to improve policing, the committee
cannot overstate the importance of developing a comprehensive and scien-
tifically rigorous program to learn what is and is not effective in the educa-
tion and training of police officers. Such evaluations should measure out-
comes in terms of actual policing practices rather than tests and other
proxies.
The absence of effects on police behavior related to the officer's race
suggests that it may be irrelevant to actual practice on the street, although it
leaves untested the impact of a more racially diverse police workforce on
the legitimacy of the police (a topic for Chapter 8).
Because the available evidence on the effects of an officer's gender is
inadequate to draw conclusions, it is difficult to draw specific implications
in this area. Certainly there is a need for research that looks with greater
care for areas of police practice in which differences between the sexes are
most likely. Such studies will prove of limited practical value, however,
unless they are able to determine the source of those differences. To what
extent are they based on physiology, sex-role expectations, work environ-
ment differences, and so on?
Ultimately, the search for the causes and control of police behavior
must extend beyond the limited domains of the situations and individual
officers who handle them. Policing is shaped by the organizational and com-
munity contexts in which these events occur. These are the focus of the
following chapter.
Representative terms from entire chapter:
community policing
