On the force
Does Minority Representation in Police Agencies Reduce Assaults on the Police?
Turgut Ozkan, John Worrall & Alex Piquero
American Journal of Criminal Justice, September 2016, Pages 402-423
Abstract:
Following recent high-profile deaths of unarmed African American suspects at the hands of police, a number of reforms have been proposed, among them improved minority representation in the ranks of law enforcement organizations. Previous research has explored the effects of minority representation on complaints against the police and other behaviors, but very few studies have examined violence toward the police. We merged several data sources together and tested the hypothesis that minority representation within police departments is inversely associated with assaults against the police. In an extension of prior research, we also conducted separate analyses for African American, Hispanic, and Asian officer representation. The results did not support the expectation that diversity within police organizations results in improved police-citizen interactions, as measured by assaults on police. This study is one of the few to examine how different measures of minority representation in police agencies relates to assaults on the police.
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Eric Hedberg, Charles Katz & David Choate
Justice Quarterly, forthcoming
Abstract:
Recent citizen deaths involving police use of force have increased discussion surrounding police accountability and community relations. One piece of this discussion is the use of body worn cameras (BWCs) by officers. Unfortunately, little rigorous research has been conducted to estimate the effectiveness of BWCs in reducing problematic police-citizen interactions. In this paper, we estimate two measures of effectiveness of BWCs by comparing incidents that occur in a squad assigned cameras to incidents that occur in a squad assigned control. First, we estimate the effect of being assigned a BWC (but not necessarily using the camera) on reducing complaints and resistance associated with incidents. Second, we employ data on BWC use to estimate the effect of cameras if they were used with full compliance. Together, these two estimates provide a plausible range of effectiveness that policymakers can expect from BWCs. We find that BWCs have no effect on the rate of arrest or resistance, but can substantially reduce complaints.
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Weston Morrow, Charles Katz & David Choate
Police Quarterly, September 2016, Pages 303-325
Abstract:
The perceived benefits that generally accompany body-worn cameras (BWCs) include the ability to increase transparency and police legitimacy, improve behavior among both police officers and citizens, and reduce citizen complaints and police use of force. Less established in the literature, however, is the value of BWCs to aid in the arrest, prosecution, and conviction of intimate partner violence (IPV) offenders. We attempt to fill that void by examining the effect of pre- and post-camera deployment on a number of outcomes related to arrest, prosecution, and conviction. The findings provide initial evidence for the utility of BWCs in IPV cases. When compared with posttest non-camera cases, posttest camera cases were more likely to result in an arrest, have charges filed, have cases furthered, result in a guilty plea, and result in a guilty verdict at trial. These results have several implications for policing, prosecuting, and convicting IPV cases.
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Estimating the determinants of arrest-related deaths at the state level
Mark Gius
Applied Economics Letters, forthcoming
Abstract:
The purpose of the present study is to ascertain the determinants of arrest-related deaths (ARDs) at the state level. ARDs are civilian deaths that occurred during or shortly after an arrest or detention by state or local law enforcement. These deaths may be attributed to a variety of factors, including use of force by police, injuries sustained when attempting to elude police, self-inflicted injuries and medical conditions. Using data compiled by the Bureau of Justice Statistics for the period 2003-2009 and employing a Poisson regression model, the results of the present study suggest that race is not statistically related to ARDs. Hence, the percentage of a state's population that is African-American has no effect on ARDs. The factors found to be most significantly related to ARDs include the gun-related murder rate, the percentage of the state population that is under the age of 35, population density and police per capita. All were found to be positively related to ARDs. This study is one of the first studies that examines the determinants of state-level ARDs, and this study is one of the few studies on ARDs that finds that race is not a factor in ARDs
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Did Drug Courts Lead to Increased Arrest and Punishment of Minor Drug Offenses?
David Lilley
Justice Quarterly, forthcoming
Abstract:
Drug courts were implemented nationwide during the 1990s to expand alternatives to incarceration for individuals with substance use disorders that were charged with nonviolent felonies or misdemeanors. Although these courts were publicized as a facilitator of treatment and alternative to incarceration, researchers and advocates have suggested that this approach may have unintentionally intensified law enforcement focus on casual drug users and individuals with minor substance dependency. The primary objective of this study was to determine whether there is evidence that drug courts systemically increased the arrest and punishment of misdemeanor drug use and possession by conducting a series of panel data analyses among more than 8,000 city and county jurisdictions while controlling for economic, demographic, and nationwide law enforcement trends. Analyses in this study provide evidence that local police increased their attention toward minor drug offenses in jurisdictions where drug courts were implemented across the nation.
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Identifying Classes of Explanations for Crime Drop: Period and Cohort Effects for New York State
Jaeok Kim, Shawn Bushway & Hui-Shien Tsao
Journal of Quantitative Criminology, September 2016, Pages 357-375
Objective: This paper advances current understanding of the contemporary crime drop by focusing on the changes in the age distribution of arrests from 1990 to 2010. Using the New York State Computerized Criminal History (CCH) file, which tracks every arrest in the state, we apply standard demographic methods to examine age-specific arrest rates over time. We test whether the 25 % drop in the felony arrest rate can be best explained by period or cohort effects with special attention to how the phenomenon varies across crime types and regions within the state.
Methods: Following the analytic approach of O'Brien and Stockard (J Quant Criminol 25(1):79-101, 2009), we fit the age-period-cohort (APC) model using the generalized inverse matrix, which creates an estimable model. We partition the model variation into each factor by subtracting the variation of the two-factor model from the variation of the three-factor model to provide a direct comparison of the two different classes of explanations for crime drop: period and cohort.
Results: Our analysis supports a cohort explanation over a period explanation. Controlling for the (substantial) variation due to age, the cohort effect accounts for twice as much of the remaining variation as the period effect. Specifically, the drop in arrest rates is concentrated in more recent birth cohorts across all ages. Although we found statistically significant age-period interaction effects for the younger age group (ages 16-20) in 1990 and 1995, the cohort effect was still a much stronger predictor of felony arrest rates than the period explanation, even with the age-period interaction.
Conclusions: The current study reports that the overall drop in felony arrest rates from 1990 to 2010 is mostly due to decreased arrests among those who were born after 1970 rather than a universal drop across different age groups. We discuss but do not test two potential explanations - the legalization of abortion and the ban on leaded gasoline - for the underlying factors associated with a different criminal propensity among birth cohorts.
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Counterterrorist Legislation and Subsequent Terrorism: Does it Work?
Eran Shor
Social Forces, forthcoming
Abstract:
Over the past four decades, and especially in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, many countries around the world have passed various types of counterterrorist legislation. It remains unclear, however, whether such laws are effective in achieving their most important declared goal: reducing terrorist activities. Some scholars believe that counterterrorist legislation should indeed reduce terrorist activities through protecting people and infrastructure, disrupting terrorist plots, and deterring some potential terrorists. Others, however, remain doubtful, suggesting that such legislation often serves merely as lip service or, worse, actually contributes to increasing terrorist activities. Using a newly assembled database on national-level counterterrorist legislation, I conduct a cross-national time-series analysis of legislation and subsequent terrorism for the years 1981-2009. The analyses demonstrate a discrepancy between the short- and long-term effects of national-level counterterrorist legislation. In the short term, laws have no effect on the number of terrorist attacks and their severity. In the long term, however, the cumulative effects of most legislation are counterproductive and harmful, although some types of legislation do produce beneficial results and are associated with a reduction in future attacks.
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Kevin Schnepel
Economic Journal, forthcoming
Abstract:
I estimate the impact of employment opportunities on recidivism among 1.7 million offenders released from a California prison between 1993 and 2008. The institutional structure of the California criminal justice system as well as location-, skill-, and industry-specific job accession data provide a unique framework for identifying a causal effect of job availability on criminal behaviour. I find that increases in construction and manufacturing opportunities at the time of release are associated with significant reductions in recidivism. Other types of opportunities, including those characterised by lower wages that are typically accessible to individuals with criminal records, do not influence recidivism.
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Increasing Cooperation With the Police Using Body Worn Cameras
Barak Ariel
Police Quarterly, September 2016, Pages 326-362
Abstract:
What can change the willingness of people to report crimes? A 6-month study in Denver investigated whether Body Worn Cameras (BWCs) can change crime-reporting behavior, with treatment-officers wearing BWCs patrolling targeted street segments, while control officers patrolled the no-treatment areas without BWCs. Stratified street segments crime densities were used as the units of analysis, in order to measure the effect on the number of emergency calls in target versus control street segments. Repeated measures ANOVAs and subgroup analyses suggest that BWCs lead to greater willingness to report crimes to the police in low crime density level residential street segments, but no discernable differences emerge in hotspot street segments. Variations in reporting are interpreted in terms of accountability, legitimacy, or perceived utility caused by the use of BWCs. Situational characteristics of the street segments explain why low-level street segments are affected by BWCs, while in hotspots no effect was detected.
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Must Work for Food: The Politics of Nutrition and Informal Economy in an American Prison
Michael Gibson-Light
University of Arizona Working Paper, August 2016
Abstract:
One of many negative consequences of the prison boom and so-called punitive turn in the US criminal justice system is an increase in "punitive frugality" inside the nation's prisons. Health, education, and food services (among others) have been greatly reduced as privatization increases. Often, the costs of programs and services are passed on to inmates-they pay fees for doctor visits, increased charges for GED test taking, and commissary costs for food beyond the minimum calories provided by the state. Yet, inmates are not unresponsive in the face of prison cost-cutting measures or perceived downturns in the quality of services; they react in many ways that can be empirically observed. In addition to overt demonstrations of dissatisfaction such as rioting, inmates also engage in covert displays. Drawing on ethnographic observations within a state prison and in-depth interviews with inmates, this paper outlines one such covert response: the adaptation of informal prison markets and currency to reflect inmate needs and counter a gradual reduction of food services. In my fieldsite (as in many state prisons), "luxury" goods like tobacco have been replaced by nutritional items, such as ramen noodles, as the de facto currency of the informal prison economy. This paper discusses this transition to ramen currency and outlines the prison ramen market. In doing so, it aims to connect trends in micro transactions (e.g., trading packets of ramen for other goods or services in prison) with the macro conditions of the US carceral field in the era of mass incarceration.
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The Effects of Criminal Propensity and Strain on Later Offending
Jessica Craig, Stephanie Cardwell & Alex Piquero
Crime & Delinquency, forthcoming
Abstract:
Recently, Agnew has narrowed the focus of General Strain Theory by arguing certain factors must converge for criminal coping to occur. Specifically, individuals must have certain crime-related traits, experience strains that are perceived as unjust and high in magnitude, and occur in situations that encourage criminal coping. A longitudinal sample of serious adolescent offenders was used to assess the impact of direct and vicarious victimization on later offending among those with higher and lower criminal propensity. Regardless of their criminal propensity, youth who experienced victimization were more likely to engage in antisocial behavior compared with those who were not victimized. The results are mixed regarding Agnew's thesis and suggest that victimization experiences may push justice-involved youth into further crime.
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Scott Culhane, John Boman & Kimberly Schweitzer
Police Quarterly, September 2016, Pages 251-274
Abstract:
We conducted two studies, wherein participants from across the United States watched, heard, or read the transcript of an actual police shooting event. The data for Study 1 were collected prior to media coverage of a widely publicized police shooting in Ferguson, Missouri. Results indicated that participants who could hear or see the event were significantly more likely to perceive the shooting was justified than they were when they read a transcript of the encounter. Shortly after the events in Ferguson, Missouri, we replicated the first study, finding quite different results. Although dissatisfaction with the shooting was seen in all forms of presentation, video evidence produced the highest citizen perceptions of an unjustified shooting and audio evidence produced the least. Citizens were nonetheless overwhelmingly favorable to requiring police to use body cameras. Body-mounted cameras with high-quality audio capabilities are recommended for police departments to consider.
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Short-Run Externalities of Civic Unrest: Evidence from Ferguson, Missouri
Seth Gershenson & Michael Hayes
American University Working Paper, July 2016
Abstract:
We document externalities of the civic unrest experienced in Ferguson, MO following the police shooting of an unarmed black teenager. Difference-in-differences and synthetic control method estimates compare Ferguson-area schools to neighboring schools in the greater St. Louis area and find that the unrest led to statistically significant, arguably causal declines in students' math and reading achievement. Attendance is one mechanism through which this effect operated, as chronic absence increased by five percent in Ferguson-area schools. Impacts were concentrated in elementary schools and at the bottom of the achievement distribution and spilled over into majority black schools throughout the area.
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Examining Prison Effects on Recidivism: A Regression Discontinuity Approach
Ojmarrh Mitchell et al.
Justice Quarterly, forthcoming
Abstract:
The "get-tough" era of punishment led to exponential growth in the rate of incarceration in the United States. Recent reviews of the literature indicate, however, that limited rigorous research exists examining the effect of imprisonment on the likelihood of future offending. As a result, scholars have called for assessment of this relationship, while using methodologies that can better account for selection effects. This study addresses these calls directly by applying regression discontinuity, a methodology well suited to account for selection bias, on a cohort of felony offenders in Florida. Results suggest that prison, as compared to non-incarcerative sanctions, has no appreciable impact on recidivism. Although no differential effects surfaced across race/ethnicity, the analyses indicated that imprisonment exerts a differential effect by gender with the effect being more criminogenic among males than females.
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The efficacy of foot patrol in violent places
Kenneth Novak et al.
Journal of Experimental Criminology, September 2016, Pages 465-475
Objectives: This study examines the effectiveness of foot patrol in violent micro-places. A large urban police department deployed foot patrol in micro-places (hot spots) for a period of 90 days for two shifts each day. Our objective is to determine whether this activity impacted violent crime in these hot spots and whether spatial displacement of crime occurred.
Methods: Eight eligible foot beat locations were set by examining crime rates for previous years in order to identify micro-places of high criminal activity. We employed a quasi-experimental design comparing the four treatment to the four control areas, estimating panel-specific autoregressive models for 30 weeks prior to and 40 weeks after the treatment.
Results: Time series models revealed statistically significant reductions in violent crime in the micro-places receiving foot patrol treatment, while no such reductions were observed in the control areas. The deterrent effect, however, was short and dissipated quickly. Control areas did not experience any crime prevention benefit during this time period. No evidence of crime displacement to spatially contiguous areas was detected.
Conclusions: This contributes to the growing body of knowledge that focused police strategies within hot spots impact violent crime. Specifically, the implementation of foot patrol in high crime hot spots led to measurable reductions in aggravated assaults and robberies, without displacing crime to contiguous areas.
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Separating State Dependence, Experience, and Heterogeneity in a Model of Youth Crime and Education
Maria Antonella Mancino, Salvador Navarro & David Rivers
Economics of Education Review, forthcoming
Abstract:
We study the determinants of youth crime using a dynamic discrete choice model of crime and education. We allow past education and criminal activities to affect current crime and educational decisions. We take advantage of a rich panel dataset on serious juvenile offenders, the Pathways to Desistance. Using a series of psychometric tests, we estimate a model of cognitive and social/emotional skills which feed into the crime and education model. This allows us to separately identify the roles of state dependence, returns to experience, and heterogeneity in driving crime and enrollment decisions among youth. We find small effects of experience and stronger evidence of state dependence and heterogeneity for crime and schooling. We provide evidence that, as a consequence, policies that affect individual heterogeneity (e.g., social/emotional skills), and those that temporarily keep youth away from crime, can have important and lasting effects even if criminal experience has already accumulated.
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Racial Resentment and Attitudes Toward the Use of Force by Police: An Over-Time Trend Analysis
Scott Carter & Mamadi Corra
Sociological Inquiry, forthcoming
Abstract:
On the heels of recent police shootings of an unarmed Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, Walter Scott in North Charleston, South Carolina, and the death of Freddy Gray in Baltimore, Maryland, that stoked racial tensions, this article examines how beliefs about race and racial inequality influence whites' attitudes toward the use of force by the police since the mid-1980s. Our main dependent measure is a composite index ("Police Force Index") constructed from four survey items from the 1986-2012 National Opinion Research Center's General Social Survey (GSS). Results show that (1) beliefs about race do indeed significantly predict whites' attitudes toward police use of force, and more importantly, (2) this effect has remained constant since the mid-1980s. We discuss theoretical and practical implications of these findings and suggestions for future research.
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Police and Crime: Evidence from Cops 2.0
Steven Mello
Princeton University Working Paper, July 2016
Abstract:
The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act increased funding for the Department of Justice's local police hiring (COPS) grant program from $20 million in 2008 to $1 billion in 2009 and over $150 million annually in 2010-2012. Among grant winners, program rules generate quasi-random variation in the timing of grant-induced police increases. I leverage this variation to overcome simultaneity bias and estimate the causal effect of police on crime. Event study and instrumental variables estimates suggest that police added by the program resulted in large and statistically significant declines in robberies, larcenies, and auto thefts. I find evidence that these crime reductions are achieved through deterrence rather than incapacitation. Under conservative assumptions, the program's costs outweigh its benefits, but the program is easily cost-effective under more generous assumptions about its crime effects or associated stimulus benefits. The results highlight that police hiring grants may offer higher benefit-cost ratios than other job creation programs.
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Neighborhood-Level Economic Activity and Crime
Christina Plerhoples Stacy, Helen Ho & Rolf Pendall
Journal of Urban Affairs, forthcoming
Abstract:
Theories of criminology suggest that neighborhood-level economic activity affects the conditions that make crime more likely. However, most studies on neighborhoods and crime focus solely on residential characteristics and ignore the commercial ones. In this article, we estimate the effect of neighborhood-level economic activity on crime holding residential characteristics constant. To do so, we use crime and census data combined with a detailed data set on establishments in Washington, DC from 2000 to 2010 to create a comprehensive measure of neighborhood-level economic activity. We exploit the panel nature of the data to identify the directionality of the results by removing unobserved heterogeneity and estimating lags and leads of economic activity. Results indicate that increases in economic activity are associated with reductions in property crime, but that the reduction in property crime occurs before the growth in economic activity and rises afterward. Violent crime declines the same year as growth in economic activity.
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Jennifer Reingle Gonzalez et al.
Journal of Disability Policy Studies, September 2016, Pages 106-115
Abstract:
Previous research suggests that prisoners have a higher rate of disability than non-institutionalized adults. This study used nationally representative data to update the prevalence rate, identify correlates of disability, and evaluate disability-related disparities in use of prison-based educational services, vocational programs, and work assignments. Data were obtained from 18,185 prisoners interviewed in the 2004 Survey of Inmates in State and Federal Correctional Facilities. Survey logistic regression procedures were conducted using Stata 13. Disability prevalence remained substantially higher among prisoners than among the non-institutionalized population. Prisoners were more likely to report specific learning, sensory, and speech-related disabilities than non-institutionalized adults. Prisoners with at least one type of disability had more criminogenic risk factors and come from a more disadvantaged background than prisoners without disability. Prisoners with disabilities were also less likely to utilize vocational programs and work assignments but were more likely to use educational programs than prisoners without disabilities. In summary, 41% of prisoners reported a disability, most commonly, learning disabilities. Prisoners with disabilities were identified as an at-risk group for recidivism, given their pre-incarceration experiences, and limited vocational and work-related training received in prison.
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Racial Discrimination and Pathways to Delinquency: Testing a Theory of African American Offending
James Unnever, Francis Cullen & J.C. Barnes
Race and Justice, forthcoming
Abstract:
The current study draws on two cohorts of African American youths from the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods, Longitudinal Cohort Study to examine whether perceived racial discrimination directly and indirectly affects juvenile delinquency. The analyses reveal that racial discrimination may foster offending by increasing (1) the likelihood that African American youths will drop out of school and (2) the degree to which they associate with delinquent peers. Evidence supporting the pathway between racial discrimination, associating with delinquent peers, and offending was found after introducing controls for demographic, social, and individual trait factors. In a society that remains racialized, it thus appears that a full explanation of African Americans' offending should take into account the ways in which racial subordination may place African American youths on pathways that lead toward criminal involvement.