Implications For Policing Research Articles

Law enforcement training on child trafficking: Engaging all stakeholders

Abstract Since the passage of the Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act in 2000, there have been rapid changes in the criminal justice and juvenile justice systems’ ability to identify, investigate, and prosecute cases of human trafficking and work effectively with survivors. Law enforcement officers are often the first to encounter victims, and their training in this area is critical. While trainings have expanded, they are still missing in many jurisdictions and are understudied. The impact of a 2-day, interdisciplinary, skill-based, and victim-centred child trafficking in-service training is evaluated via regression analysis of pre–post surveys with 187 participants. Results indicate that the training significantly improved both perceived trafficking-related knowledge and self-efficacy. Implications for policing and research include expanding and deepening skill-focussed interdisciplinary child sex trafficking training for law enforcement personnel that engages multiple stakeholders, including trafficking survivors.

A follow-up evaluation of a coordinated police-social services response to recidivist family violence

Coordinated multi-agency approaches are a key strategy for responding to recidivist family violence. This paper presents a follow-up quantitative evaluation of Alexis: a coordinated police-social services approach to recidivist and high-risk family violence piloted in Victoria, Australia. State-wide police data was collected for 75 perpetrators 20 to 36 months since case closure following Alexis intervention. Results indicated that 38 perpetrators (51%) had no further recorded incidents of family violence. The remaining non-mutually exclusive categories indicated that 17 (22%) had perpetrated family violence against the original Alexis victim in another location (outside the pilot catchment zones); 28 (37%) had perpetrated family violence against a different victim; and 8 of the prior two groups (11%) had perpetrated violence against both Alexis and non-Alexis victims. Those classified as low recidivists before intervention were less likely to have a further recorded incident of family violence during the follow-up period compared to high recidivists. Implications for police and policy-makers are discussed with reference to intimate partner violence and parent abuse by adult children.

Impact of Children's Presence on Police Responses to Domestic Violence Call Situations.

The link between children exposed to intimate partner violence (IPV) and child maltreatment is well established; however, less is known about the impact children's presence may have on domestic violence disputes. This study investigated the role of children's presence in IPV police calls using data (N = 2709) from supplementary reports provided by an Ontario, Canada police force, one-third of which led to criminal charges (n = 909). When children were present: charges were less likely to be laid; the accused's emotional state was more likely to be rated by police as calm and the accused was less likely to be identified as using alcohol and/or drugs at the time of the call; and victim support interventions were more likely to be offered and accepted. Findings were considered in the context of when charges were laid versus not laid. Implications for police and support service interventions were discussed.

Eyes on the Streets: Media Use and Public Opinion About Facial Recognition Technology

This study examines how different forms of media use predict attitudes toward the development of facial recognition technology (FRT) and applications of it by law enforcement to identify criminal suspects, identify potential terrorists, and monitor public protests. The theoretical framework builds on theories of cultivation and genre-specific viewing to develop hypotheses and research questions. The analyses draw on original data from two nationally representative surveys of the U.S. public conducted in 2020, amid a series of controversies and protests about policing and racial justice. The results demonstrate that overall television viewing and crime media viewing predicted support for multiple uses of FRT, while Fox News viewing predicted support for using FRT to monitor protests. The findings advance our understanding of public opinion toward the technology and its implications for policing, protests, and social justice.

The Fall and Rise of Racial Inequality in London Homicides: a Challenge for Policing by Consent

Research QuestionHow have London’s racial and demographic disparities in homicide victimisation rates changed in 2 decades of the twenty-first century, with what implications for policing by consent?DataWe collected Metropolitan Police Service homicide victimisation counts in London for each financial year (April through March) so far in the twenty-first century, by race, gender and age. We also collected the estimated residential population size of those groups from the 2001 and 2011 Census results.MethodsWe divided the number of homicides each year in each demographic category by the estimated population size of that category, and then computed victimisation rates per 100,000 for each of the 21 years. We plotted trends in the rates of each group over time, whilst calculating ratios between victimisation rates of Blacks and Whites, and of South Asians and Whites, in each year.FindingsOver the past 2 decades in London, Black homicide victimisation rates have fallen by almost half, but they remain about 5 times higher than homicide victimisations of Whites and South Asians. Inequality of homicide rates between Black and White victimisations declined substantially, but then became worse: the most recent 5 years showed 19% more inequality than in the century’s first 5 years. Three major changes in homicide inequalities have occurred since 2001: (A) The total Black homicide victimisation rate dropped by 71% from 2001 to 2014; (B) homicides of Blacks then increased by 92% in the 5 years to 2019–2020, whilst the White victimisation rate remained unchanged; (C) from 2019 to 2022, Black victimisation rates declined again by 27%, whilst White rates also declined, by 26%. Young Black males aged 16–24 were 10 to 20 times more likely than White counterparts to become homicide victims in 2017–2022. Yet Black female homicide victimisation dropped by 82% over 21 years. Female inequality reduced from up to 400% higher for Black females than Whites at the beginning of the century to 67% higher in the most recent 5 years. For Asians of all ages, inequality of homicide victimisations to Whites disappeared by 2022. Inequality persisted between young Asian males and young White males.ConclusionChanges in London’s racial inequality in homicide victimisation are both substantial and volatile. Understanding their fall and rise may help police to renew and sustain reductions of racial inequality in risks of violence. Learning lessons about what police may have done to cause substantial reductions in Black victimisation requires both retrospective and ongoing tracking of both homicide and policing at local levels. Providing transparent tracking is also essential to public dialogue about policing strategies, which could help to renew policing by consent based on precise statistical evidence.

Violent crimes and homicide in New York City: The role of weather and pollution

This paper studies the effect of weather and air pollution on violent crimes and homicide. We use all crimes committed in New York City between 2006 and 2020 and match each individual crime to the measures of the nearest weather, pollution station respectively. Our results show that neither weather nor pollutants have a contemporaneous effect of on homicide. In contrast, higher concentrations of carbon monoxide increase violent crimes in a U-shaped relation, that more rainfall linearly reduces violent crimes, and that sulphur dioxide has an inverted-U shaped relationship with violent crimes. Our results have implications for policing and environmental regulation.

Policing futures: transforming the evidence-based policing paradigm through interdisciplinarity and epistemological anarchism

ABSTRACT Evidence-based policing (EBP) has gained prominence in jurisdictions across the core anglosphere. Its paradigmatic approach to knowledge production, and the assessment and validation criteria for research designs and their outputs remains in contention. Concurrently, interdisciplinarity (ID) has proliferated in other areas of research and practice, yet EBP remains untouched by these global developments and it appears a neglected area of academic debate. In combination with limited uptake at institutional and practice levels, a troubled landscape, and predictions of an uncertain and extraordinarily complex future operating environment (FOE): the question arises whether the present EBP paradigm is sufficient to meet the challenges and implications for policing and police research. This conceptual paper makes an epistemic assessment of the paradigm and drawing on ID and epistemological anarchism (EA) it contributes a perspective on its theoretical and methodological innovation as a futures-focused endeavour. It concludes that if EBP is to be maximised as a knowledge enterprise in support of policing in the FOE, a broader epistemology is necessary, that embraces methodological pluralism, eschews epistemic monolithism and proactively applies ID and EA to research, policy and practice.

Are estimates of faces\u2019 ages less accurate when they wear sunglasses or face masks and do these disguises make it harder to later recognise the faces when undisguised?

This study examined whether our ability to accurately estimate unfamiliar faces’ ages declines when they are wearing sunglasses or surgical-style face masks and whether these disguises make it harder to later recognise those faces when undisguised. In theory, both disguises should harm age estimation accuracy and later face recognition as they occlude facial information that is used to determine a face’s age and identity. To establish whether this is the case, we had participants estimate the age of unfamiliar faces that were pictured wearing no disguises, sunglasses, or face masks. The participants then completed a face recognition test where they had to distinguish between the previously seen faces and new faces. Importantly, none of faces wore disguises in this latter test. Participants’ estimates of the undisguised faces’ ages were inaccurate by a Median of 5.15 years. Their accuracy barely changed when the faces wore sunglasses but declined by a Median of 1.30 years when they wore face masks. Moreover, subsequent undisguised face recognition was less likely to occur when the faces previously wore sunglasses or face masks, with large effects observed. These findings demonstrate the relative importance of different facial areas when estimating faces’ ages and later recognising them. They also have implications for policing as they suggest it may be harder for eyewitnesses to accurately estimate the age of criminals who wear face masks during offences, and it may be harder for them to later recognise criminals in line-ups if the criminals wear sunglasses or face masks during offences.

The Case for Expanding Adverse Childhood Experiences to Include Police Violence.

The Case for Expanding Adverse Childhood Experiences to Include Police Violence.

Antecedents of Trust in the Jamaican Police: Findings from a Cross-Sectional Study

This study contributes to the extant literature by being the first to examine the relative impacts of instrumental factors of policing (police performance, risk of sanctioning, and distributive justice) and experiences with police (personal and vicarious) on trust in the police in Jamaica. This study’s importance is enhanced by the fact that it was carried out in a region that has been understudied by policing scholars. Using cross-sectional data from a sample of Jamaicans, homeownership predicted trust in the police. In addition, distributive justice, effectiveness, and personal experiences, but not risk of sanctioning and vicarious experiences, predicted Jamaicans’ trust in their country’s police. The implications for policing, policy, and future research are addressed.

Testing encoding specificity and the diagnostic feature-detection theory of eyewitness identification, with implications for showups, lineups, and partially disguised perpetrators

The diagnostic feature-detection theory (DFT) of eyewitness identification is based on facial information that is diagnostic versus non-diagnostic of suspect guilt. It primarily has been tested by discounting non-diagnostic information at retrieval, typically by surrounding a single suspect showup with good fillers to create a lineup. We tested additional DFT predictions by manipulating the presence of facial information (i.e., the exterior region of the face) at both encoding and retrieval with a large between-subjects factorial design (N = 19,414). In support of DFT and in replication of the literature, lineups yielded higher discriminability than showups. In support of encoding specificity, conditions that matched information between encoding and retrieval were generally superior to mismatch conditions. More importantly, we supported several DFT and encoding specificity predictions not previously tested, including that (a) adding non-diagnostic information will reduce discriminability for showups more so than lineups, and (b) removing diagnostic information will lower discriminability for both showups and lineups. These results have implications for police deciding whether to conduct a showup or a lineup, and when dealing with partially disguised perpetrators (e.g., wearing a hoodie).

Policing in pandemics: A systematic review and best practices for police response to COVID-19

The COVID-19 pandemic has created a range of unforeseen and unprecedented challenges for police departments worldwide. In light of these challenges, the goal of this review is to understand the potential short- and long-term effects of disasters and public health emergencies on policing organisations and officers. A total of 72 studies were eligible for inclusion, based on their focus on policing and police work during and in the aftermath of natural disasters and public health emergencies. Through an extensive review, we compile and analyse the most common issues and best practices identified in the literature, and discuss ‘what works’ in the context of policing such emergencies. The literature reveals four categories of issues predominantly raised in this context, namely police-community relations, the mental health and wellbeing of officers, intra-organisational challenges, as well as inter-agency collaboration and cooperation. Based on our review and analysis, we offer a list of recommendations relevant for policing the current COVID-19 outbreak. The findings of this review have immediate implications for policing during COVID-19 but also cover long-term effects, providing valuable recommendations for after the crises has passed.

Institutionalizing partnerships: a mixed methods approach to identifying trends and perceptions of community policing and multi-agency task forces

ABSTRACT Cooperation with citizens and community agencies is fundamental to successful community policing. Considerable scholarship has documented cooperation between police and residents; however, cooperation among police agencies at the local, state, and federal level is also important. We use a variety of methods to investigate if such multi-agency partnerships in the United States have become more common and, if so, why such cooperation occurs. In interviews, officers frequently report that the use of interagency collaboration increased as community policing became institutionalized. We then test our assertions using trend data to demonstrate that community policing and multi-agency joint task forces became increasingly popular since the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001, and these trends are correlated at the departmental level. We contend that institutional pressures contribute both to the continued dominance of community policing as a policing style as well as the increasing occurrence of multi-agency task forces. This research has implications for policing in nations where numerous agencies comprise a fragmented system and policing decisions are made at the local level (e.g., Belgium, England, the Netherlands, U.S.) or other polycentric political communities such as the European Union.

The Impact of Acute Stress Physiology on Skilled Motor Performance: Implications for Policing.

Investigations of police performance during acutely stressful situations have primarily focused on higher-order cognitive processes like attention, affect or emotion and decision-making, and the behavioral outcomes of these processes, such as errors in lethal force. However, behavioral outcomes in policing must be understood as a combination of both higher-order processes and the physical execution of motor skills. What is missing from extant police literature is an understanding of how physiological responses to acute stress contribute to observed decrements in skilled motor performance at the neuromuscular level. The purpose of the current paper is to fill this knowledge gap in the following ways: (1) review scientific evidence for the physiological (i.e., autonomic, endocrine, and musculoskeletal) responses to acutely stressful exposures and their influence on skilled motor performance in both human and animal models, (2) review applied evidence on occupationally relevant stress physiology and observed motor decrements in performance among police, and (3) discuss the implications of stress physiology for police training and identify future directions for applied researchers. Evidence is compelling that skill decay is inevitable under high levels of acute stress; however, robust evidence-informed training practices can help mitigate this decay and contribute to officer safety.

The relative impacts of normative and instrumental factors of policing on willingness to empower the police: A study from Jamaica

This study is the first to assess citizen willingness to empower the police in the Caribbean. The study examines the relative impacts of normative and instrumental models of policing on willingness to empower the police in a sample of Jamaican citizens. Using data from a survey of Jamaican citizens, procedural justice and educational level predicted police empowerment; obligation to obey, age, sex, police effectiveness, and risk of sanctioning did not. The study’s findings point to the importance of the process-based model of policing in different geopolitical contexts. Specifically, the study addresses why procedural justice, a normative model, may engender willingness to empower the police in this group of Jamaican citizens. This finding is important because normative models generally exert a stronger influence than instrumental models in advanced democracies, whereas the opposite is the case in emerging democracies and postcolonial societies, such as Jamaica. The implications for policing, policy, and future research are discussed.

Now That Was A Riot!: Social Control in Felonious Times

ABSTRACTIn early 2017, dozens of US states introduced legislation designed to further criminalize confrontational protest tactics through expanding the scope of felony prosecutions and summoning the specter of the “riot” to depoliticize political action; indelibly linking it to criminal violence. This shift towards felonies and rioters took the form of legislation, intelligence reports, prosecutions, and rhetorical attempts at nearly every level of government. Demonstrations and campaigns were recast as felonious conspiracies, and the participants, rioters. In doing so, demonstrators were denied legibility as political actors, and instead held up in courts and newspapers as anti-social, irrational, and unruly criminal mobs. These legalistic, rhetorical, and strategic maneuvers can be critically interpreted through a mixed methodological approach embedded within Discourse Analysis and Autoethnography, and interpreted through a genealogical, social control framework. Through a close reading of these rhetorical shifts and their implications for policing and political repression, social movements adopting revolutionary nonviolence can increase resiliency through focusing on creating power, not simply challenging it.

The worldwide public impact of identifying super-recognisers for police and business

Super-recognisers occupy the extreme top end of a wide spectrum of human face recognition ability. Although test scores provide evidence of super-recognisers’ quantitative superiority, their abilities may be driven by qualitatively different cognitive or neurological mechanisms. Some super-recognisers scoring exceptionally highly on multiple short-term face memory tests do not achieve superior performances on measures of simultaneous face matching, long-term face memory and/or spotting faces in a crowd. Heterogeneous performance patterns have implications for police, security or business aiming to utilise super-recognisers’ superior skills. Drawing on a global participant base (N ≈ 6,000,000), as well as theory and empirical research, this paper describes the background, development, and employment of tests designed to measure four components of superior face processing to assist in recruitment and deployment decisions.

Cognitive and neural markers of super-recognisers’ face processing superiority and enhanced cross-age effect

Super-recognisers inhabit the extreme high end of an adult face processing ability spectrum in the population. While almost all research in this area has evaluated those with poor or mid-range abilities, evaluating whether super-recognisers’ superiority generates distinct electrophysiological brain activity, and transcends to different age group faces (i.e., children's) is important for enhancing theoretical understanding of normal and impaired face processing. It may also be crucial for policing, as super-recognisers may be deployed to operations involving child identification and protection. In Experiment 1, super-recognisers (n = 315) outperformed controls (n = 499) at adult and infant face recognition, while also displaying larger cross-age effects. These findings were replicated in Experiment 2 (super-recognisers, n = 19; controls, n = 28), although one SR with frequent infant exposure showed no cross-age effect. Compared to controls, super-recognisers also generated significantly greater electrophysiological activity in event-related potentials associated with pictorial processing (P1) and explicit recognition (P600). Experiment 3, employing an upright and inverted sequential matching design found super-recognisers (n = 24) outperformed controls (n = 20) at adult and infant face matching, but showed no upright cross-age matching effects. Instead, they displayed larger inversion effects, and cross-age inversion effects, implicating the role of holistic processing in their perceptual superiority. Larger cross-age effects in recognition, but not matching suggests that super-recognisers’ adult face recognition is partly driven by experience. However, their enhanced infant face recognition suggest super-recognisers’ superiority is also experience-independent, results that have implications for policing and for models of face recognition.

Body-worn cameras and officer perceptions: a mixed-method pretest posttest of patrol officers and supervisors

ABSTRACTThe adoption of police body-worn cameras (BWCs) is likely inevitable. This technology has significant implications for police–community relations, enhanced trust and transparency, and complaint investigation. Little is known about officer, or supervisor, attitudes toward BWCs. These dimensions are critical as officer investment and agency policy influence BWC usage and effectiveness. This research uses a mixed-method approach, pairing officer surveys with focus groups of patrol officers and focus groups of supervisors. University police officers participated in the survey using a census approach with near full participation. Quantitative and qualitative data were collected pre- and post-implementation to address attitudinal changes toward BWCs. Results indicate officer and supervisor support for BWCs. Many of the concerns that officers raised in the pretest, including fear of negative evaluations, internal investigations, and technology issues, were not realized. Connecting officer and supervisor perspectives provides guidance for agencies considering adoption and/or implementation of BWCs.

Sexual Assault Case Outcomes: Disentangling the Overlapping Decisions of Police and Prosecutors

The rape reform movement of the 1970s and 1980s was designed to improve the likelihood of prosecution and conviction in sexual assault cases. However, there is evidence that the attrition rate for sexual assaults reported to the police remains high, and that the locus of case attrition is arresting and charging decisions. In this paper, we analyze police and prosecutorial decision-making in sexual assault cases using quantitative data on sexual assaults reported to the Los Angeles Police Department and the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department in 2008. We argue that decisions made by police and prosecutors should not be examined in isolation from one another and that researchers who analyze arrest decisions by examining only cases that are formally cleared by arrest or who focus only on charging decisions that follow the arrest of a suspect may be ignoring important aspects of police and prosecutorial decision-making. This is confirmed by the results of our study, which reveal that a significant proportion of cases in which the police appear to have probable cause to make an arrest do not result in the arrest of the suspect and that a substantial number of cases are rejected for prosecution by the district attorney before an arrest is made. Moreover, the factors that predict arrest and charging vary depending upon the way in which the outcome is operationally defined. These results have a number of important policy implications for police and prosecutors handling sexual assault cases.