Police Practitioners Research Articles

An international view of the extent, causes, and effects of government and police corruption: Summary of the proceedings from the IPES conference in Poland, 2001

This article is based on information provided by police practitioners, government officials, researchers and academics from twenty‐four countries who met in Szczytno, Poland in May, 200l as part of the Annual Meeting of the International Police Executive Symposium. The meeting participants sought to define and describe the forms and causes of institutional and police corruption, to document the extent and effects of this corruption, and to propose methods for governments and police organizations to uncover, deal with and reduce corruption.

Value consistency within the police: the lack of a gap

This paper reports the results of a 1992 City of Tacoma, Washington study of police values which was designed to test similar research conducted by Milton Rokeach in 1971. Our data support the hypothesis that individual value systems are more important than occupational socialization in understanding police selection and behavior. Value patterns not only were consistent over time, but also reflected a pattern of conservative beliefs. This work suggests that any attempt to reform or improve police community relations must begin with the restructuring of recruiting practices and the re‐socialization of police practitioners.

Police Challenges: A Hungarian Perspective

With examples from Hungary, this paper describes how police researchers and police practitioners may differ on their perspectives in regard to challenges of fear of crime, criminal violence, drugs and drug-related crimes, and the like. The authors conclude that greater collaboration between police researchers and practitioners is needed. The paper also contains a brief account of the different aspects of the police in Hungary.

Ethical Considerations in Community Policing and Problem Solving

Although the literature concerning community-oriented policing and prob lem solving (COPPS) is rapidly growing, very little has been written con cerning its relationship with ethics—a relationship that is critical to the success of COPPS. Many academics and practitioners are concerned that the potential for ethical dilemmas is increased with the shift to COPPS, given the nature of ethics training, decentralization, expanded discretion ary authority and officers' greater proximity to citizens. This article dis cusses ethics in general as well as police ethics and ethical considerations under COPPS. In addition to academics and police practitioners, this in formation should also be useful to citizens, who demand and expect ethi cal behavior from their police. Included are four case studies of situations that are likely to occur within a COPPS framework; each scenano is ac companied by an ethical analysis of the situation.

TOWARDS MULTI-AGENCY VIOLENCE PREVENTION AND VICTIM SUPPORT: An Investigation of Police-Accident and Emergency Service Liaison

Since many serious violent offences are not reported, effective police-accident and emergency department (AED) joint working is important in increasing the chances of offenders being brought to justice and increasing access to victim support services. The research was driven by hypotheses that detection is hindered by poor liaison; that the roles of AED personnel are confused; that treatment of injured victims is not based on an ethical framework to protect their interests or the interests of society; and that there is insufficient time in the AED to address criminal justice and other issues as well as treating physical injuries. Liaison was investigated by means of triangzdated methods comprising surveys of random stratified samples of police officers and AED personnel and a case series of victims treated in five large AEDs. It was found that there was almost no knowledge of existing formal guidance among health and police practitioners who actually deal with victims. Most of the injured were transported from bars and the street to the AED where, for long periods, they became trapped in a medical environment dominated, to the exclusion of all else, by the need to treat physical injuries. This, in effect, prevented them from reporting offences. Efforts to preserve confidentiality, far from protecting the interests of patients and society, meant that AED health professionals ignored the circumstances and psychological impact of injury and risk of further injury. This meant that the roles of other agencies were not considered. This very narrow focus was at odds with the instincts of most health professionals, half of whom believed they should have some role in victim protection and support, the detection of crime and community crime prevention. The results of this study suggest that, based on the exercise of victim choice, there are extensive opportunities ethically to improve rates of detection and access to victim support.

Professional attitudes regarding treatment and punishment of incest: Comparing police, child welfare, and community mental health

Brief case histories involving incest were presented to police officers, child welfare workers, and community mental health practitioners in a rural area in Canada. Intervention priorities involving “treatment versus punishment” were assessed across the three professional groups for each specific case vignette. Attitudes were assessed on three factors: perpetrator mentally ill rather than criminal, view regarding treatment of victims and mothers, and support for court mandated treatment. Police and community mental health practitioners had significantly different attitudes as to whether perpetrators of child sexual abuse should be viewed more as criminals or as mentally disturbed. Both mental health and child welfare staff differed significantly from police with a less punitive view towards victims and their mothers. All three profressional groups showed no difference in their modest endorsement of the use of mandated treatment by the courts. Gender was not found to influence response to case vignettes.

Cultural diversity and social order: Rethinking the role of community policing

One of the difficulties confronting anyone interested in community policing is understanding just what the term community refers to. For criminologists and police practitioners alike this presents a danger. Being less than specific about the use of this key term often serves to conceal cultural diversity and tame ideological differences between the police and the public's interest in social order. Rather than attempting to impose a definitive image of community, this article focuses on everyday strategies of interaction that, while promoting social order, also effectively eclipse the necessity of confronting the very plurality of values that any form of community involvement must consider. What becomes clear from this perspective is that many of the difficulties that beset community policing programs can be seen to take root in problems inherent in the practical achievement of community life itself.

Three faces of police referral: Welfare, Justice and business perspectives on multi‐agency work with drug arrestees

There are a series of loosely connected debates in Britain about forms of punishment, diversion and case disposal that might be financially economical, fair in terms of justice, and in the welfare interest of persons caught up in the criminal justice system. This paper describes and analyses schemes in which arresting police officers and/or custody officers offer to arrested persons an opportunity for referral to specialist drugs advice and/or wider forms of services (debt advice, housing advice, health services, etc). Such schemes have variously been piloted, abandoned, forgotten and proposed afresh, in many areas of Britain from the mid‐1980s onwards. The application of three perspectives upon police referral ‐ welfare, justice and business ‐ illuminates some quite problematic aspects of police referral and, it is suggested, pinpoints some possible ways forward for police and other practitioners. A summary checklist of suggested police referral ‘dos and donts’ is offered for those contemplating or manag...

Law Enforcement Policy and Management for the '90s: A Professor's Caveats as Viewed from the Street

Issues surrounding law enforcement administration for the 1990s are discussed by an academician who recently completed an eight-month term as a police practitioner. This experiential period afforded a unique opportunity for participant-observation and assessing the status of police methods and policies as professional American policing approaches its sesquicentennial anniversary. Implications and concerns for the future are discussed in the areas of law enforcement methods and practices, personnel issues, civil liability, and discipline and corruption. The general proposition is tendered that the 1990s hold several anticipated problems and challenges for law enforcement administrators; there is a need for "enlightened" chief executives to address these issues and in some instances to employ non-traditional methods and philosophies toward solving them.

Police use of deadly force: Research and reform

Police use of deadly force first became a major public issue in the 1960s, when many urban riots were precipitated immediately by police killings of citizens. Since that time scholars have studied deadly force extensively, police practitioners have made significant reforms in their policies and practices regarding deadly force, and the United States Supreme Court has voided a centuries-old legal principle that authorized police in about one-half the states to use deadly force to apprehend unarmed, nonviolent, fleeing felony suspects. This essay reviews and interprets these developments.

The Badge and the Bullet: Police Use of Deadly Force

It may seem ironic to conclude a study of police use of deadly force with surprise that more people are not shot by police. Yet, Scharf and Binder's observation typifies the insights in their excellent book, The Badge and the Bullet. Their assessment of the complexity of the issue, organizaton and examination of the contextual causes and effects and the realism of proposed solutions distinguish this as an outstanding volume. Contemporary Sociology This excellent book provides a serious discussion of a highly controversial issue ...exceedingly well written, with significant anecdotal episodes to capture and hold reader interest. Destined to become the standard work in its subject area ...highly recommended to students of human behavior, especially students in police science and criminal justice, sociology, psychology, and the law ...also recommended to concerned police practitioners and others who are involved in policy-making decisions regarding the police. Choice

Joining anthropology and law enforcement

The role of anthropology in law enforcement involves three aspects of law enforcement activity; forensic anthropology, police-community relations research, and legal ethnographic research on the law enforcement agencies themselves. The first of these contributions to law enforcement by physical anthropologists faces competition from other closely related fields. Police-community relations research is a potential growth area for the application of anthropological efforts, as is legal ethnographic analysis of police organizationa. These latter two areas are within the realm of social anthropology, while the former is a specialty of physical anthropology. This article reviews the contributions of anthropologists and the applications of anthropological methods to law enforcement. It contends that criminal justice educators and police practitioners alike can benefit from knowing more about how these anthropological specialties have contributed and can continue to contribute to law enforcement.

Critiquing Critiques

In 1974 the results of widely publicized police experiment, the Kansas City Preventive Patrol Experiment (KCPPE), were released. The experiment generated considerable dialogue among police practitioners and researchers alike, who debated such issues as the policy implications of the research findings and the methods employed for obtaining those findings. This author was one of several who wrote critiques of the KCPPE. In a recent issue of Evaluation Review, an article critiquing my critique was published. This note represents my response to that article.

Resistance to Change in Police Organizations: The Diffusion Paradigm

This paper presents an analysis, bi use of a diffusion paradigm, of factors which inhibit innovations in police organization. An in-depth review and analysis of the diffusion of innovations paradigm is presented and its application to resistance to departmental changes is evaluated. Police organizational structure, leadership styles, ideology, perceived attributes of the innovations, type of innovation, timeliness, communication channels and the community-social system are discussed as determiners of the acceptance or rejection of policY and operational decisions within police organizations. A review of literature on each of the cited areas with general recommendations for the reduction of that resistance is also included. The future of changes in police departments is discussed with the conclusion that academicians have tended to be overly optimistic concerning changes within police organizations and police practitioners and chiefs have often acted without due consideration to possible areas of conflict innovative programs mays create within a department or community.