Police Compliance Research Articles

Police compliance with the social contract as an antecedent of police legitimacy, of satisfaction with the police, and of willingness to obey: findings from a two-stage vignette experiment

Abstract Objectives Test the effects of police compliance with the restrictions on their authority embedded in Social Contract Theory (SCT) on police legitimacy, satisfaction with the police, and willingness to obey police officers. Methods A two-stage vignette experiment. In the first, 1356 participants were randomly assigned to one of four study conditions: control, procedural justice (PJ), police performance (PP), and compliance with the social contract (SC). In the follow-up stage, 660 participants were randomly assigned to either a control or proportionality/least restrictive alternative (PL) condition. Results Compared to the control condition, the SC manipulation improved evaluations of all three dependent variables. For legitimacy, its effect was no different than that of PJ and PP. For satisfaction, it was similar to that of PP and stronger than the effect of PJ. For willingness to obey, it was no different than the effect of PJ, but stronger than that of PP. The second stage of the experiment revealed that compared to the control condition, the two unique components of the SC model (PL) significantly improved the scores of all three DVs. Conclusions Police adherence to the SC, and particularly to its two unique components, is an important determinant of police legitimacy and other outcomes, and should thus be acknowledged by researchers and practitioners. Future research is encouraged to disentangle the relative effects of the “building blocks” making up PJ, PP, and compliance with the SC.

Challenges in creating humane and equitable policing: A focus on the Global South

AbstractResearch SummaryPolice brutality is a widespread phenomenon around the world. Particularly gruesome human rights abuses in the course of policing take place in Latin America, the world's most violent region outside war zones. Democratic institutions such as competitive elections, checks and balances, and judicial independence are insufficient to prevent police from abusing their power. What factors explain that police engage in abusive behaviors, including illegal arrest, the fabrication of evidence, the use of torture to extract confessions, and the excessive use of force causing injury or death? How can societies restrain these abusive behaviors and subject police to the rule of law? Police behavior is shaped by a combination of institutional, societal, political, organizational, and individual factors. Inquisitorial criminal justice institutions, inherited from the colonial past, have persisted in Latin America until very recently. This meant that democracies in the region were born with weak due process protections that have enabled state authorities and police to abuse their coercive powers as they investigate and prosecute crimes. Police brutality is further the product of security policies. High crime rates and the presence of highly organized criminal groups have pushed many Latin American governments to adopt militarized security interventions ‐including deploying the armed forces to control crime and militarizing police forces. Populist demands for harsh policies, moreover, generate incentives for politicians to adopt security strategies that violate human rights and which, in the long run, increase violence in society. The most affected groups are the poor, people of color, and those living in impoverished minoritized communities.Policy ImplicationsIt is essential to strengthen due process protections and judicial oversight over police to reduce torture and other forms of police brutality. Police demilitarization and, under some conditions, community‐oriented policing approaches can sharply reduce the use of excessive force causing injury or death. Body‐worn cameras (BWC), moreover, can effectively be used to reduce police abusive behavior —and violence against police officers — even in high violence situations and where toxic police‐community relations prevail. One limitation of this technology is that it gives too much leeway to frontline officers to turn their cameras on. Poor supervision can further undermine police compliance with camera protocols. These problems can be overcome by assigning cameras to supervisors and using more advanced technologies that allow turning cameras on from the main station. Monetary incentives that reward police officers “to kill less” is another effective policy intervention to reduce police violence causing injury or death.

El control del cumplimiento en la Policía

Today's police activity goes beyond the mere application of criminal regulations. The concept of compliance implies having the objectives, mission and ethics that affect the organization in question well defined and regulated. The main difference of compliance with respect to other systems such as transparency, internal affairs, accountability, and the like is that the commitments assumed before society are established by law, responsibilities are assigned, and the consequences of non-compliance are specified. In any Police compliance proposal, the commitment and motivation of all members of the organization is essential. Compliance profiles are a phased or maturity compliance strategy. As part of the compliance profile, the statement of applicability is the set of measures that are applicable to compliance.

Ethical perspectives and police science: Using Social Contract Theory as an analytical framework for evaluating police legitimacy

Abstract It has recently been argued that ethical/moral considerations could be better integrated into the science of policing. The present study picks up the gauntlet and examines if a central normative theory of government authority—Social Contract Theory—can contribute to our understanding of police legitimacy. Building on five constraints on police authority derived from Social Contract Theory, the present study examines the relationship between citizen views of police compliance with the social contract while enforcing COVID-19 regulations, and of police legitimacy. A community survey carried out in Israel reveals that public evaluations of the appropriate balance between liberty, safety, and police authority, have a significant, independent correlation with legitimacy, surpassed only by views of procedural justice. These findings have implications for the theory, practice, and future study of police legitimacy, but more generally demonstrate the utility of theoretical–philosophical theories and concepts concerned with ethics for contemporary research questions in policing.

Can individualism/collectivism paradigm explain disparate roles for intermediaries in an organizational justice model of police compliance with agency rules?

PurposeThis paper examines whether dissimilarities in societal cultures impact the path by which a key component of organizational culture—supervisory procedural justice (SPJ)—influences police officer compliance with police agency rules.Design/methodology/approachThe study utilized structural equation modeling across a data set of 1,189 Croatian and Taiwan police officers to test whether a societal value (individualism/collectivism) impacts the role of three intermediary variables (trust in the public, job satisfaction and pro-organization initiative) in a procedural justice model of officer compliance with the rules.FindingsThe study found that, despite a strong statistical similarity in the individual attitudes of Croatian and Taiwan police officers, the intermediary variables in the model significantly differed between the two countries. Most notably, the role of trust in the public and pro-organization initiative supported past research suggesting that collectivist versus individualistic societal cultures lead to divergent organizational attitudes and policing outcomes.Originality/valueThis is the first empirical study to compare the impact of societal values on a model of SPJ on officer compliance with agency rules.

Street‐Level Bureaucrats as Policy Entrepreneurs: The Nexus between Timing of Traffic Enforcement Activities and Road Safety Policy Outcomes

This article examines the influence of street‐level bureaucratic discretion over the timing of implementation on road safety policy outcomes. It is premised on freshly collected data from road users and traffic enforcement officers in Nairobi, Kenya. It employed Street‐Level Bureaucratic Theory for purposes of conceptualization. It observed that traffic police divisions, like most street‐level bureaucracies, are chronically under‐resourced. They do not have sufficient officers and equipment to monitor safety police compliance and conduct traffic control activities among other roles. To cope with these challenges, they make discretionary choices over activities to concentrate on at any given time. Given that the police play an important role in fostering road safety policy compliance, the study concludes that their failure to target safety implementation at the time when the violations are prevalent is linked to the incessant road safety policy failures across the globe.Related ArticlesBrogan, Michael James. 2017. “Evaluating Risk and Natural Gas Pipeline Safety.” Politics & Policy 45 (4): 657‐680. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12211Shock, David R. 2013. “The Significance of Opposition Entrepreneurs on Local Sales Tax Referendum Outcomes.” Politics & Policy 41 (4): 588‐614. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12028Shrock, Peter. 2010. “Changes in Relationships between State Characteristics and Regulatory Enforcement over Time.” Politics & Policy 38 (5): 991‐1013. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1747‐1346.2010.00261.x

Influencing factors of employees’ information systems security police compliance: An empirical research in China

It is widely agreed that information systems security police compliance plays a pivotal role in safeguarding organizational information security. This study empirically investigated organizational and individual factors in predicting employees’ ISSP compliance. With a survey data of 525 civil servants in China, results showed that organizational information security training and information security climate were significantly related to employees’ ISSP compliance. Specifically, information security climate had stronger effect on ISSP compliance than information security training. Furthermore, it was found that employees’ perceived severity, perceived vulnerability and response efficacy were positively related to employees’ ISSP compliance. We discussed the key implications of our findings for managers and researchers.

Empowering the Exclusionary Rule: Using suppression motion data to improve police searches and searches in the United States

The Exclusionary Rule (i.e. a U.S. Supreme Court created rule that bars evidence, obtained in violation of a defendant’s constitutional rights, from being used by the prosecution at trial) remains a highly controversial measure, with questionable ability to deter unreasonable searches and seizures. In fact, many decades since its enactment, allegations of unconstitutional stops, searches, and seizures continue to plague police departments across the United States. Examining these allegations is a critical step toward assessing police compliance with constitutional mandates and developing needed corrective measures. Content analyses of suppression motions (brought by criminal defendants to exclude incriminating evidence from trial based on allegations of unconstitutional police action) and hearings, conducted in an urban U.S. city, demonstrate how these data provide unique information from multiple perspectives (e.g. defense, prosecution, court, lay and police witnesses)—involving pretexual stops, defendant targeting, and over-reaching searches—that may be used to develop police training protocols, support early intervention systems, and improve local patterns of officer behavior. In this way, data generated by the Exclusionary Rule may not only empower the rule to achieve its intended purpose of enforcing constitutional protections in the United States, but also provide a framework of police accountability (by demonstrating the utility of court data) that may improve police searches and seizures in other countries.

Manipulating Random Assignment: Evidence From Consumer Bankruptcies in the Nation's Largest Cities

Random case assignment is thought to be an important feature of decision-making in federal courts because it helps guard against favoritism (actual or perceived) toward particular parties or types of cases. In bankruptcy courts, cases are randomly assigned to both judges and trustees. In Chapter 7 cases, for example, the trustee is a quasi-judicial actor, typically a private-sector lawyer, who has been selected to audit the debtor's finances, find and liquidate assets, and police compliance with the law. We study three major bankruptcy jurisdictions (covering Chicago, Los Angeles, and parts of New York) and find that the random-assignment process for Chapter 7 trustees is failing in two of them (Chicago and New York). We introduce several measures of non-random assignment. Across all measures, random assignment is failing: Trustees within the same court have substantially different case characteristics, despite the purportedly random assignment process. We present evidence that the imbalance in case characteristics is caused by attorney manipulation: Attorneys strategically time their case filings to avoid or attract particular trustees (trustee shopping). By contrast, among cases filed by debtors who have not hired attorneys (pro se filers), there is no case imbalance across trustees. Because they do not engage in manipulation, pro se filers – who account for the bottom decile of income and asset values among Chapter 7 debtors – are the debtors most burdened by trustee-shopping by bankruptcy attorneys. We conclude by presenting evidence that trustee-shopping is less prevalent in Los Angeles due to differences in its random-assignment protocol.

Continued State Liability for Police Inaction in Assisting Victims of Domestic Violence: A Reflection on the Implementation of South Africa's Domestic Violence Legislation

AbstractNow that it has been in operation for 20 years, it is necessary to reflect on the impact the South African Domestic Violence Act has had on women's lives. This article analyses this key legislation and the police's duty to ensure its proper implementation. It focuses on the reports of the Independent Complaints Directorate and Civilian Secretariat of Police, the bodies responsible for measuring police compliance with the act. The reports identify serious transgressions, highlighting the police's perception that domestic violence is a private affair with which it should not interfere. This perception plays a particularly subtle and destructive role in legitimizing, supporting and permitting violence against women. In focusing on key court decisions in which the state (police) was held financially accountable for the failure to protect women against violence, the author highlights the importance of challenging the social and legal understanding of women's experiences with violence in promoting a system that takes account of those experiences.

Accounting for Prosecutors

What role should prosecutors play in promoting citizenship within a liberal democracy? And how can a liberal democracy hold its prosecutors accountable for playing that role? Particularly since I’d like to speak in transnational terms, peeling off a distinctive set of potential “prosecutorial” contributions to democracy – as opposed to those made by other criminal justice institutions – is a challenge. Holding others – not just citizens but other institutions – to account is at the core of what prosecutors do. As gatekeepers to the adjudicatory process, prosecutors shape what charges are brought and against whom, and will (if allowed to) become shapers of citizenship. They also can can promote police compliance with legal and democratic norms. Because the prosecutorial role in case creation is largest when crimes are not open and notorious, prosecutors can also play an outsized role in the bringing of cases that target instances of illegitimate subordination (including domestic violence) and corruption that are antithetical to a liberal democracy. After considering ways in which prosecutors might promote democratic values, I explore (quite tentatively) how prosecutors can be held to account. Working from existing practices and structures, I consider how we might promote their potential contributions through legal and institutional design with respect to reason-giving obligations; geographic scale; insulation from direct political influence, and modulation of their message.

Beyond Police Compliance with Electronic Recording of Interrogation Legislation: Toward Error Reduction

Video recording police interrogations is a widespread reform designed to reduce false confessions. An exploratory survey of Michigan police departments following the adoption of a video recording law indicates that the policy is uniformly followed. A significant number of agencies go beyond the law’s requirements by video recording in the investigation of all crimes and not only major felonies. Most recording captures both the interrogator and suspect. Prior to passage, half of the agencies supported the law and half were neutral. The law stimulated a quarter of the agencies to video record interrogations. A literature review and policy analysis suggests that video recording is a necessary but not a sufficient reform to reduce false confessions and wrongful convictions. Progress toward less confrontational investigative interviewing, used in several European countries and gaining a foothold in the United States, is recommended.

Beyond Police Compliance With Electronic Recording of Interrogation Legislation: Toward Error Reduction

Video recording police interrogations is a widespread reform designed to reduce false confessions. An exploratory survey of Michigan police departments following the adoption of a video recording law indicates that the policy is uniformly followed. A significant number of agencies go beyond the law’s requirements by video recording in the investigation of all crimes and not only major felonies. Most recording captures both the interrogator and suspect. Prior to passage, half of the agencies supported the law and half were neutral. The law stimulated a quarter of the agencies to video record interrogations. A literature review and policy analysis suggests that video recording is a necessary but not a sufficient reform to reduce false confessions and wrongful convictions. Progress toward less confrontational investigative interviewing, used in several European countries and gaining a foothold in the United States, is recommended.

Organizational justice and officer “buy in” in American policing

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to explore the dimensions of organizational justice in police organizations and evaluate how they contribute to organizational commitment, job satisfaction and compliance with agency rules.Design/methodology/approachA survey of 15,236 sworn officers from a national sample of 88 agencies was used, as well as other agency- and community-level variables. Multi-level models assessed how four dimensions of organizational justice affected these outcomes.FindingsMore favorable perceptions of organizational justice were strongly related to increased commitment to the organization, job satisfaction and compliance with agency rules. Perceptions of organization-wide justice, leadership justice and diversity justice were especially important in predicting those outcome measures.Research limitations/implicationsWhile the sample of agencies was broad and diverse, it should not be considered representative of smaller municipal police departments and sheriff’s offices in the USA.Practical implicationsThe findings suggest that “buy in” to reforms and police compliance with rules is much more likely when supervisors and leaders are fair, respectful, give officers input, provide growth opportunities and show concern for officers’ welfare. As such, agencies would benefit from leadership and leadership training that values the core principals of organizational justice.Originality/valueThe study provides clarity about how organizational justice is perceived by police officers, including women and officers of color, and provides an unprecedented test of organizational justice theory in diverse police agencies.

Expanding Appropriatee Police Behavior Beyond Procedural Justice: Bounded Authority & the Legitimation of the Law

This paper draws upon recent work in the field of legal socialization (Trinkner & Tyler, in press; Tyler & Trinkner, in press) to expand previous conceptualizations of appropriate police behavior beyond procedural justice. The focus of the current study is on the role of bounded authority – i.e. respecting the limits of one’s power – and its association with perceptions of police legitimacy, legal legitimacy, and compliance. Using survey data from a nationally representative sample of US adults, we show that concerns over bounded authority, respectful treatment, and neutral decision-making combine to form a strong predictor of police and legal legitimacy. Additionally, legal legitimacy is associated with greater compliance behavior, even while controlling for personal morality and perceived likelihood of sanctions. Our conclusions address some future directions of research, particularly in the extension of procedural justice theory.

Interrogation Expectations: Individual and Race/Ethnic Group Variation Among an Adult Sample

A vignette methodology was used to assess interrogation expectations (IE) among a diverse sample of adults. Vocabulary level, comprehension of Miranda rights, and demographic variables were also assessed. Substantial individual and racial/ethnic group variation in IE was found, with Black participants exhibiting significantly lower expectations of police compliance with Miranda protections compared to White participants. Multiple regression analysis indicated that the combined contribution of vocabulary scores, comprehension of Miranda rights, and multiple demographic variables accounted for only 19% of the variance in IE scores. The findings suggest that suspects have varied expectations of police behavior during interrogation, which may influence the Miranda waiver decision.

Do Alcohol Compliance Checks Decrease Underage Sales at Neighboring Establishments?

Underage alcohol compliance checks conducted by law enforcement agencies can reduce the likelihood of illegal alcohol sales at checked alcohol establishments, and theory suggests that an alcohol establishment that is checked may warn nearby establishments that compliance checks are being conducted in the area. In this study, we examined whether the effects of compliance checks diffuse to neighboring establishments. We used data from the Complying with the Minimum Drinking Age trial, which included more than 2,000 compliance checks conducted at more than 900 alcohol establishments. The primary outcome was the sale of alcohol to a pseudo-underage buyer without the need for age identification. A multilevel logistic regression was used to model the effect of a compliance check at each establishment as well as the effect of compliance checks at neighboring establishments within 500 m (stratified into four equal-radius concentric rings), after buyer, license, establishment, and community-level variables were controlled for. We observed a decrease in the likelihood of establishments selling alcohol to underage youth after they had been checked by law enforcement, but these effects quickly decayed over time. Establishments that had a close neighbor (within 125 m) checked in the past 90 days were also less likely to sell alcohol to young-appearing buyers. The spatial effect of compliance checks on other establishments decayed rapidly with increasing distance. Results confirm the hypothesis that the effects of police compliance checks do spill over to neighboring establishments. These findings have implications for the development of an optimal schedule of police compliance checks.

How to Address Standardless Discretion after Jones

The Supreme Court held in United States v. Jones that prolonged GPS tracking infringes upon a Fourth Amendment interest, but left for another day whether that means that a warrant is required for all such surveillance activity. Building on Supreme Court precedent that directly addresses the problem of and unconstrained we propose that courts test the constitutionality of police action of this kind by examining the adequacy of procedural safeguards and actual police compliance therewith. Accordingly, in a range of settings involving new technologies, the state would need to craft reasonable safeguards against standardless discretion, and then comply with those safeguards in order for state action to be deemed constitutional.

Mapp v. Ohio’s Unsung Hero: Suppression Hearings as Morality Play

The exclusionary rule is back under the judicial magnifying glass. Recent opinions, most notably by Justice Scalia, have sparked speculation that the Roberts Court is inclined to overrule Mapp v. Ohio and send Fourth Amendment disputes back to the realm of civil suits and police disciplinary actions. As the Court’s rulings have made clear, any reevaluation of the exclusionary rule’s future will be conducted under the now familiar rubric of whether the rule’s “benefit” of deterring police misbehavior outweighs the “cost” of lost evidence and convictions. This essay argues that if any such reevaluation does occur, the Court must take into account something overlooked in evaluations of the past: the benefits of a suppression hearing itself. The hearing acts much like a morality play for those involved in the nitty gritty of law enforcement – police, judges, prosecutors, and defense attorneys – by instructing everyone involved both as to the Fourth Amendment’s rules and why those rules are of a constitutional magnitude mandating honor and respect. And because the exclusionary rule reaches a wide variety of police behavior – unlike civil suits and disciplinary proceedings which reach only the most egregious instances of misbehavior – the suppression hearing becomes an invaluable public forum for providing transparency and promoting police compliance with the Fourth Amendment. In short, the suppression hearing is the exclusionary rule’s unsung hero, and in the end offers the Court a means to find the truest measure of the exclusionary rule’s costs and benefits.

Contemporary Hate Crimes, Law Enforcement, and the Legacy of Racial Violence

This article investigates the association between past lynchings (1882 to 1930) and contemporary law enforcement responses to hate crimes in the United States. While prior research indicates a positive correlation between past levels of lynching and current social control practices against minority groups, we posit an inverse relationship for facets of social control that are protective of minorities. Specifically, we hypothesize that contemporary hate crime policing and prosecution will be less vigorous where lynching was more prevalent prior to 1930. Analyses show that levels of past lynching are associated with three outcome variables germane to hate crime policing and prosecution, but the effect of lynching is partly contingent on the presence of a minority group threat. That is, past lynching combined with a sizeable black population largely suppresses (1) police compliance with federal hate crime law, (2) police reports of hate crimes that target blacks, and in some analyses (3) the likelihood of prosecuting a hate crime case. Our findings have implications for research on law and intergroup conflict, historical continuity in the exercise of state social control, and theories that emphasize minority group threat.