Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Police Criminology'

Decisions made by street-level police officers during encounters with the public have an immediate and long-lasting effect. Bad choices can cause a loss of trust, respect, and legitimacy for the police in a community and lay a foundation for violent confrontations between officers and citizens. Layers of culture that shape human decisions consist of social and institutional culture, including interactions that shape an individual’s culture and beliefs and demographics and technology that affect cultural development. Police culture (which includes these layers of culture and factors like rank, units, and history) shapes attitudes and opinions about communities and people in a police jurisdiction, leading to barriers to officers’ acceptance of training initiatives to implement new methods of dealing with the public. Understanding police culture is the first step in making positive changes in police decision-making and improving trust, respect, and legitimacy between officers and the community. Acker’s theory of social structure social learning provided the theoretical framework for understanding police culture, which could lead to positive changes such as training programs that address police culture’s influence on decision-making. A qualitative research method with a phenomenological approach for interviewing officers was used to investigate police culture and how it affects decision-making. Results indicated that officers think of culture as a family or brotherhood and not a culture. The most significant impact on decision-making is experience. These findings can lead to positive social change by making officers stakeholders in developing training in positive social relationships with the community.

As technology advances, law enforcement agencies continue to implement new strategies to effectively control crime and preserve social order. Over the past two years, several key events have shifted public concerns from crime control to police-community relations. In an effort to improve these relations and increase police legitimacy, many police agencies have recently implemented body-worn cameras. These devices have several presumed advantages, including the enhancement of procedural justice practices. Research on procedural justice links the quality of treatment and quality of officer decision-making to police legitimacy and higher levels of citizen satisfaction. Thus, this study analyzes how the application of body-worn cameras affects perceptions of procedural justice and citizen satisfaction. Using data collected from community member surveys, results show that fair officer treatment towards community members and impartial officer decision-making practices positively impact police interactions. Such practices combined with body-worn cameras can increase citizen satisfaction.

A Likert Scale Attitudinal Survey was distributed to sworn, non-supervisor, police officers at six police departments in the state of California in a department roll-call setting to measure the counterbalance of power, trust, and influence between police managers and police union leaders. The relationship between a police management and police union leadership is critical component in the internal dynamics of the police organization. The results from this study provide evidence that although on average rank and file police officers tend to trust and attribute more power within police organizations to police unions rather than to police managers, an analysis of the survey responses by inferential statistics showed that these differences were not statistically significant. Furthermore, an analysis of the survey results measuring the relationship between the specific leadership bases of power and trust revealed a statistically significant relationship between the perception of trust by rank and file officers and the use of specific bases of power by police managers and police union leaders. In conclusion, the implications for studies of leadership, power, and policing are discussed.

With overwhelming public support, pressure has been mounting on police departments to improve accountability and public trust by equipping their officers with body worn cameras (BWCs) to reduce police violence and hold officers responsible for excessive use of force, unjustified shootings, and other forms of misconduct. As police departments have begun to employ BWCs, however, concerns have risen regarding the application of this new technology and its potential to benefit police officers more so than the communities they serve. This study focuses on the city of Chicago’s recently implemented Body Worn Camera Pilot Program. The goals of this study were to determine if racial demographics could predict which of Chicago’s 22 police districts received BWCs during its pilot program, and whether and to what extent BWCs and the racial makeup of those districts influenced the arrest to crime ratios within them. A preliminary analysis revealed crime rates were not a statistically significant predictor for whether a district received BWCs. There was, however, an association between race and BWCs, where majority white police districts were much less likely to receive the technology. Standard multiple regressions indicate that as the white population percentage increases, arrests decrease. This finding was statistically significant at the .05 alpha level while controlling for the crime rate and BWC implementation. Three-way mixed ANOVA models were run to compare arrest to crime ratios pre- and post-BWC implementation for overall crime, serious crime, violent crime, non-index crime, and property crime. Although no significant two- or three-way interactions were found in any of the ANOVA models, when plotting the pre- and posttest arrest ratios there were noticeable differences between control and experimental groups across race.

Critical incidents in law enforcement often either lead to a great divide between police agencies and the communities they serve, or they exacerbate a volatile relationship that already exists. Critical incidents may cause outrage within the community due to: misconceptions about the incident, extreme distrust of police, allegations of police misconduct, or racial tension. In an effort to improve and enhance organizational police and community resilience following a critical incident, a case study comparison of four recent high-profile critical incidents seeks to answer the following question: What lessons can we learn from police critical incidents and how do the events surrounding them affect police and community resilience? Analysis of the cases identifies specific factors that affect resiliency among police agencies and communities during and after critical incidents. The analysis leads to recommendations for police agencies to enhance police-community relations and resilience.

The recent decline in police legitimacy (Gallup Poll, 2015) has increased the need for procedural justice. Law enforcement agencies that employ procedural justice can restore legitimacy, build trust, and enhance citizen satisfaction. Using secondary data collected from 99 homeless injecting drug users in Skid Row, Los Angeles, this study shows that despite the legal outcome of a police encounter (i.e., arrest, citation), when officers utilize procedural justice (e.g., act fairly, treat the individual with respect, and refrain from using unnecessary force, yelling or using inappropriate language), citizen satisfaction with the encounter is positive. This study provides compelling evidence for the need for procedurally just practices to re-establish the diminishing legitimacy of and trust in law enforcement agencies.

Secondary employment activities for police officers may have negative outcomes both for officers and their employers. The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of secondary employment (also known as moonlighting, specials, side-jobs, off-duty employment, and multiple job holders) on operational stress, organizational stress, and burnout among police officers. The study was based on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and on strain theory. The sample was 199 full-time sworn law enforcement officers from seven law enforcement agencies in the north-central and southeastern United States. Participants were ages 18-65 with a rank from officer to lieutenant. They completed the Operational and Organizational Police Stress Test developed by McCreary, D., & Thompson, M. (2006) and the Maslach Burnout Inventory, developed by Maslach, C., Leiter, M., & Jackson, S. (1995) as well as a demographic questionnaire. Three subscales where used to examine the effect of age, gender, and years of experience on organizational and operational stress, as well as the effect of stress on burnout. Multiple linear regression analyses showed no significant relationship between operational and organizational stress and the three variables of age, gender, and experience. Data analysis did reveal a significant relationship between burnout and both organizational and operational stress. Results of this study will help police departments improve their policies and procedures governing secondary employment, thus improving officer morale and effectiveness and also public safety.

Over the years, police departments have incorporated various techniques to secure citizen compliance with the law and local authorities. Despite the advancement of policing, support for police has reached a historic low. Research consistently demonstrates that styles of policing are linked to overall perceptions of police legitimacy. Specifically, procedurally just policing or process-based policing generates voluntary compliance with the law and secures trust from citizens. Departments that incorporate the components of procedural justice receive fewer complaints and show reductions in use of force incidents. This study adds to the existing literature regarding citizen perceptions of police through procedurally just policing. It also adds data on modern policing tactics utilized by law enforcement to increase perceptions of legitimacy: body worn cameras. Utilizing data collected from mail-out surveys, the results demonstrate that confidence in police is elevated when officers are trustworthy, open, and perceived as operating in a fair and neutral manner.

This thesis examines the Los Angeles School Police Department’s (LASPD) arrest diversion program currently used by the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD). The diversion referral program offers an alternative to arrest and citation for LAUSD students between the ages of 13 and 17 who commit minor law violations on school grounds. The goal for this collaborative program is to offer a “non-punitive” enforcement model that supports strategic problem solving and addresses the behavioral, social, and emotional needs of students and their families. Using a mixed methods approach, combining interview and survey techniques, I assess whether the program was implemented according to intended protocol and procedures. Findings from the survey and interviews suggest a lack of consistency in the assessment of juveniles’ progress along with several obstacles preventing successful outcomes for participants. The majority of officers surveyed did not believe the arrest diversion program strengthened relationships between police and participants or police and the community. This process evaluation revealed barriers to successful implementation including a lack of communication between involved parties and lack of parental involvement and follow through by participants.

Realignment, instituted in October 2011, was California’s latest effort at prison reform by realigning responsibility for prisoners labeled nonviolent, non-serious, and non sex-related from the state to counties. Many of these offenders were in state prison upon conviction of property crime offenses. Realignment had a net decarcerative effect on offenders. Simultaneously, California cities’ officer staffing levels shrunk during the great recession. To determine what impact realignment may have had on property crime in small California cities, and to identify effective response strategies, property crime and officer staffing data was analyzed and a survey administered to the chiefs of those cities.

Fifty-six California cities with a population of between 25,000 and 50,000 and their own police departments were studied. This study analyzed data for the full year before and after realignment’s implementation, 2010 compared to 2012. Analysis of these data indicated an overall trend of increase in property crimes reported to the police, and a significant decrease in officer staffing pre-and post-implementation. Many of the 36 chiefs who responded to the survey identified realignment as the primary factor in the increase of property crime, closely followed by overcrowding in their local or county jail. Of the response strategies offered in the survey, most chiefs said they had made progress on increasing partnerships with allied law enforcement agencies. Finally, a majority of the chiefs identified increasing partnerships with allied agencies the most effective strategy followed by the creation or reorienting specialized units to respond to the issue of realigned offenders.

In the aftermath of the tragic events of September 11, 2001, the role of the local police has undergone a continual expansion process that has become a vital component in safeguarding our national security. Despite numerous technological advancements in intelligence operations, the local police remains the only 24/7 emergency operations entity that is capable of gathering intelligence, investigating, mobilizing operations, and apprehending threats to our nation. With this expanded role in national security, police leadership and management is faced with increased levels of accountability, including the safeguarding of critical infrastructure in their respective jurisdictions, often without financial commitments and resources acquisitions. This qualitative study served to address the local police as a component of national security through five police chiefs’/directors’ perceptions of their roles in safeguarding critical infrastructure, examining their perceptions as they pertain to their current delivery mission model, through interviews and the development of pervasive themes. Themes from the data were well-saturated, as well as overarching, and emerged as follows: (a) critical infrastructure (CI) identification, (b) policy and patrol practice, (c) police officer knowledge, (d) technology impacts on critical infrastructure, and (e) budget. Identification regarding the relationships between local police and civil/national security, leadership/management and policy were made that suggest changes and sweeping support for future frameworks. The paper concludes with a discussion of the research, along with recommendations for policy, practice and future research.

The purpose of this qualitative phenomenological study was to explore the lived experiences of what it means to be a Latino police officer within the theoretical foundation of the Latino Critical Theory (LatCrit). The research questions focused on how Latino police officers lived experiences influence their ability to maintain ethnic self-identity and assimilate into the police organizational culture. This study examined Latino police officers who have an intersectional status when their identity as an ethnic minority is in competition with their professional identity status as a police officer. The study was composed of Latino police officers who shared a common connection in the use of the Spanish language. The researcher used a convenience sampling strategy based on current or past membership within the Arizona National Latino Police Officer Association (AzNLPOA) who represented various police agencies in the Phoenix, Arizona Metropolitan area. In person, semistructured, open-ended interviews served as the data collection instrument, while a modified van Kaam phenomenological approach was used to analyze the transcripts. Results indicate that the police organizational culture was the most influential factor in what it means to be a Latino police officer, but challenged the beliefs that the police organizational culture will eventually strip away the racial identity of an individual. For these Latino police officers, the use of the Spanish language caused them to maintain a heightened sense of awareness of their Latino ethnic self-identity, yet allowed them to succeed and thrive within the police organizational culture and the Hispanic or Spanish speaking community.

Police officers are often the first contact a victim of rape has with the criminal justice system and may be the first people to whom rape victims disclose. To examine the extent to which police officers endorse rape myths, this quantitative study assessed their views about rape victims, along with the effects of demographics and experience. The Illinois Rape Myth Acceptance Scale--Short Form was administered to 66 patrol officers in Southern California. The officers scored in the mid-range of this scale, which addresses seven different categories of common rape myths, such as "she lied" and "she asked for it." For some rape myths, females and ethnic majority officers indicated less endorsement of rape myths. These findings reveal a need for more in-depth research on police officers. Social workers who work with the victims of rape should advocate for increased education of law enforcement personnel about rape and its victims.

The primary purpose of this study was to determine if effective university police officers differ from less effective university officers based on their perceptions/dispositions according to perceptual psychology theory. By establishing that effective university police officers possess specific dispositions, strategies can be developed to identify these dispositions in police officer candidates during the hiring process and to continue supporting their dispositional growth afterwards. This could potentially lead to the hiring of effective university police officers who are more likely to become engaged in the university community and ultimately improve organizational effectiveness. Effective university police officers typically approach their duties with the same philosophy as effective educators, social workers, or coaches would approach their work. Four dimensions associated with officer effectiveness were studied: perceptions of self as identified, perceptions of others as able, perceptions of purpose as larger, and a frame of reference as people-oriented.

In the past five years, there have been numerous newspaper reports on police-involved deaths (PID) in the U.S, many of which have involved African American males as victims (Shane, Lawson, & Swenson, 2017). Police-involved deaths (PID) is defined as a death of an individual that results from police action (i.e., by firearm, by electroshock weapon [commonly known as a Taser©], or by vehicle). Given the amount of coverage of police-involved deaths, it is important to investigate which PID victims receive the most coverage in U.S. newspapers. This study merges three databases (Fatal Encounters , the Washington Post, and the Guardian ) which collect information about PID cases that occurred in the U.S. Once a list of PID victims was compiled, Nexis Uni (formerly Nexis Lexis) was used to obtain U.S. newspapers that covered PID incidents. In this study, I examine the race, age, region, and manner of death to distinguish which of these independent variables are the strongest predictors of the number of words and articles used in describing PID incidents. Using a linear regression model, the findings indicate that PID incidents involving African American males had significantly more articles and words written about them than PID incidents involving non-African American males and this effect remained after controlling for other correlates of PID incidents. Additionally, PID incidents involving firearm deaths received significantly more media attention as well. Given the amount of newspaper coverage on PID victims, the ways in which the media portray the victims in those contexts can influence the criminal process for officers involved in the killing. In addition, media portrayals of these incidents can impact policies that revamp the ways in which officers communicate with people of color, specifically African American men (i.e., cultural sensitivity training).

In the context of policing, an officer’s risk perception of felonious death and likelihood of using deadly force as a risk response are paramount among police concerns in the United States. Prior research on these topics has predominantly involved macro-analytical methodologies under a mono-disciplinary approach, with limited emphasis on theoretical-based perspectives. Risk perceptions and responses were examined using a quantitative, interdisciplinary correlational methodology. Its purpose was to examine whether the Social Amplification of Risk Framework applied to a specialized occupational population of Missouri police officers. The methodology included a pilot study of an adapted instrument designated the Cognitive Appraisal of Felonious Death Risk questionnaire (CAFDR), followed by a full study using the final form of the CAFDR. The participants were full time Missouri police officers. A total of 192 surveys were completed, from which 154 surveys were randomly selected for analyses. Key findings indicated that only two of the 30 permutations of the analyses reached statistical significance. Those two outcomes equated with extant literature while the remaining results largely contradicted the contemporary literature on the influence of these covariates. The result was that Social Amplification of Risk Framework did not explain the relationships between risk perceptions and risk responses in this specialized occupational population. What was discovered concerns the influence that socio-cultural, legal, and psychological influences from controversial police shooting events may have on these Missouri officers. Results of the debriefing questionnaire portion revealed significant psychological resilience among the officers, but raised the possibility that a stigma associated with accessing mental health services was present within police cultures. Practical application recommendations involved the development of policies and training paradigms that recognize/mitigate aberrations in risk perception and response, bench-marking force tendencies and unconscious risk bias among officers as a management tool, and use of these findings under an interactive educational tool for police-community outreach. Future theoretical research opportunities include a hypotheses-testing model under Social Amplification of Risk Framework employing a qualitative methodology, and exploration of perception/response anomalies as a form of occupational delinquency under Differential Association.

During the decades between 1950 and 1970, unionization in the United States was at its peak. Private and public employees gained advances in the improvement of working conditions and other terms and conditions of employment through cohesive action and collective bargaining. Today, unions represent only 11.1% of America’s workforce with the numbers constantly declining with one exception – the public sector. Employers, both public and private, lament the involvement of an outsider, asserting that the collective bargaining relationship impedes management’s ability to manage workforces and to accomplish agency performance objectives effectively. Law enforcement management, plagued by problems of increasing crime and decreasing fiscal and staffing resources, confront the same challenges. However, evidence is lacking regarding whether there are variances in performance between union and non-union departments from a public safety perspective. This research measures police department performance in 76 municipal non-union and union departments using crime rates, arrest rates, clearance rates, and community relationships. Statistical analysis was conducted using multiple regression and MANCOVA. There was a significant, positive relationship between collective bargaining status and department size. As department size increased, the departments were more likely to have collective bargaining. There was no significant relationship between collective bargaining status and crime rates, arrest rates, clearance rates, and total community score in a univariate analysis. However, when considering the inter-correlation of these factors, there was a statistically significant relationship. Therefore, collective bargaining status was not significantly related to police department performance. The null hypothesis for Research Question One was not rejected. The findings of this research indicate no measurable difference in individual performance indicators between unionized and non-unionized police departments. However, significance was indicated when examining the performance indicators together as a whole using MANCOVA. Therefore, the null hypothesis for Research Question Two was rejected.