Police Problems Research Articles

Commodifying Policing: A Recipe for Community-Police Tensions

Deadly police-citizen encounters do not occur in a vacuum. They reflect our times and our society. Some view them as an internal police problem, others as a symbol of larger societal challenges, especially racism, or as a function of failed criminal justice policies. On a yet larger scale, police actions, and the ensuing community response, are intimately tied to the dominant economic and political climate. In many parts of the country decreased funding for vital governmental functions, especially since the depression of 2008, has shaped police enforcement goals and tactics. Those have contributed to the deterioration of community-police relations and the civilian death toll at the hands of police. Not all police departments have been impacted equally but many have had to continue to diversify their funding streams with the downturn in municipal funding. The choices made to support department budgets – and those of other governmental entities – have impacted policing priorities and strategies, often leading to more intensive policing of poorer and minority neighborhoods. In turn, those decisions have increased community tensions with police. The focus on the larger economic picture is not designed to absolve police departments of blame for decisions made but to highlight the interdependencies between different government entities and broader challenges police will face in restructuring. With the downturn in funding for all municipal activity, including policing, police forces turned to other sources of funding. Those have included forfeiture; revenues derived from citations for traffic and municipal violations; fees added to fines; free equipment, donated by the Department of Defense; and grants from the federal and state governments. Pressures to make budget enhanced the incentives to seize private property and increase the issuance of tickets. The latter has led to the now well-documented reinstitution of the so-called debtor’s prison for individuals who have found themselves unable to pay off court-ordered debt. Measurements of police performance that went along with grant funding continued numbers- and dollars-driven enforcement by emphasizing numbers of arrests, amounts of drug or money seizures, or numbers of citations issued. Combined these policies have increased the stakes in interactions between community members and police, leading to greater dangers for both sides.

The “silver bullet” to good policing: a mirage

PurposeProcedural justice (PJ) during police-citizen interactions has often been portrayed as a “silver bullet” to good policing, as it could function as a means to gain trust, voluntary obedience and public cooperation. PJ research is based on the assumption that there exists “true fairness.” However, it is still unclear what people actually mean when they evaluate the police as “fair” in surveys. By focusing the analysis to underexplored aspects of PJ, namely, the identity and political antecedents of the attribution of procedural fairness, the authors highlight the social and ideological reasons that influence people’s perceptions of police fairness. The paper aims to discuss these issues.Design/methodology/approachIn order to explain the attribution of fairness of police, the study comprises a range of independent variables organized into five overarching domains: prior experience with police, victimization, socioeconomic status and (disadvantaged) context of residence, ethnicity and political attitudes and punitive values. The analysis is based on a representative sample of France, as well as a booster sample of a deprived, urban province (Seine-Saint-Denis) in order to better incorporate ethnic effects into the model (March 2011; n=1.498, 18+).FindingsThe present study finds support for the notion that aggressive policing policies (police-initiated contacts, e.g. identification checks, road stops) negatively impacts attributions of fairness to police. In addition, the findings show that attributions of fairness are not only interactional (i.e. related to what police do in any given situation) or related to individual cognitive phenomena, but for the most part pertain to broader social and political explanations. Political and ethnic cleavages are the key to understanding how police are judged by the public. The findings therefore question the nature of what is actually measured when fairness is attributed to police, finding that more punitive and conservative respondents tend to assess the police as fair. The authors find that the attribution of fairness seems to correspond to upholding the existing social order.Research limitations/implicationsThis study has limitations inherent to any cross-sectional survey and the findings pertain only to a single country (France). Furthermore, the authors did not analyze all possible confounding variables to perceived fairness.Social implicationsThe findings pose a practical problem for police and government to implement, as the authors ultimately find that there is no single recipe, or “silver bullet,” for being deemed fair across all social, ethnic and political groups – and, of course, the expectations of one group might conflict with those of another.Originality/valueThe study demonstrates that existing theory needs to better incorporate those explanations of fairness which extend beyond interactional processes with police, and refer instead to the social and political cleavages in society.

To what extent do Canadian police professionals believe that their agencies are ‘Targeting, Testing, and Tracking’ new policing strategies and programs?

Some researchers suggest that police professionals see little value in adopting evidence based approaches to tackle policing challenges. To examine this issue, 586 Canadian police professionals were surveyed. We explore responses to one particular question, which caused 353 respondents to reflect on whether they think their agencies enact evidence based policing (EBP) principles in daily operations; specifically, the principles of targeting, testing, and tracking the implementation of new policing strategies. Mixed views were expressed by respondents in relation to their agency’s ability to target high priority policing problems and to test strategies for fixing these problems. However, views were overwhelmingly negative when respondents reflected on how well they thought their agencies track the effectiveness of strategies over time. If these views accurately describe how agencies target, test, and track the implementation of policing strategies, they underline potential challenges associated with the adoption of EBP in Canadian police organizations.

Race, violence and neoliberalism: crime fiction in the era of Ferguson and Black Lives Matter

ABSTRACTThis paper uses recent instances of police killings of African-American men, and of the retaliatory violence that has flared up in cities across the US, and of the emergence of Black Lives Matter since 2012, as a starting point to think about how well crime fiction can help us to make sense of the larger problem of political violence in the contemporary US. Crime fiction is well-placed to offer insight into the problem of race, drugs, poverty and policing but by paying close attention to The Wire, Walter Mosley's Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned and Chester Himes's Plan B, I argue that the issue of depicting police violence in a form where the law must in part be validated and that is narratively orientated towards rational explanation and resolution requires careful consideration. What is different about our contemporary moment is not simply that young black men are being killed by the police or that violent retaliation inevitably follows but rather that these circumstances are also tied to the precariousness experienced by poor black people under neoliberalism. The issue at stake is how exemplary crime fictions make sense of, and critically interrogate, the relationship between race, violence and neoliberalism.

Volunteer police: History, benefits, costs and current descriptions

People in free societies are best governed when members of the community take active participation in the oversight of the community. One mechanism for participation in such oversight is volunteer police. Volunteer police have been part of western policing since the inception of the concept of police, and the practice currently continues. Of benefit to police organizations, modern volunteer police provide financial, personnel and strategic benefits to police agencies. The communities policed benefit from having greater community participation in the policing process. Those who volunteer, as auxiliary or reserve police officers or sheriff’s deputies, gain from the participation as well. And the world of security can benefit from having members volunteering with police agencies. After presenting a discussion on such benefits, this article discusses the potential costs and problems of volunteer police. It continues with data on national estimates of volunteer police in the United States, in addition to a more detailed presentation of volunteer police policies and data from a single state and data from single local agency within that state. It also suggests future research needs.

The prevalence and associated factors of depression in policing: a cross sectional study in Sri Lanka.

BackgroundPolicing is regarded as a high-risk profession for the development of mental health disturbances owing to various critical incidents and potential traumatic events they encounter. Exploration of mental health problems in policing in Sri Lanka, which recently concluded a civil war expanded over three decades, is a timely, yet, a neglected issue. Hence, the present study was conducted with the aim of determining the prevalence and associated factors of depression among police officers in the Kandy police division, Sri Lanka.MethodsA cross sectional study was conducted using a simple random sample of 750 police officers employed in the Kandy police division, Sri Lanka. A self administered questionnaire, including “Peradeniya Depression Scale” to assess depression, was used to collect data. The prevalence of depression was calculated as point prevalence with 95 % confidence intervals. Multivariable logistic regression was carried out using backward elimination method to quantify the association between depression and selected predictors identified at bivariate analysis at p < 0.10.ResultsA total of 750 Police officers were invited for the study. The response rate was 94.5 % (n = 709). The mean age of the police officers in the sample was 39.6 years (SD 9.2 years). Majority of police officers (n = 591, 83.4 %) were males. The estimated prevalence of depression in the study sample was 22.8 % (95 % CI 19.9–26.1 %). However, the adjusted prevalence of depression was 10.6 % (95 % CI 6.6–15.1 %). In the multivariable analysis, of the postulated occupational factors, satisfactory welfare facilities at work place was negatively associated with depression (adjusted OR 0.5; 95 % CI 0.3–0.7; p = 0.001). Satisfaction of the opportunity to serve the public (adjusted OR 0.2; 95 % CI 0.1–0.6; p = 0.003) and satisfaction related to social status gained in policing (adjusted OR 0.5; 95 % CI 0.3–0.8; p = 0.04) were identified as significant occupational factors that lowered the likelihood of being categorized as having depression.ConclusionsThe prevalence of depression among police officers was found to be higher in comparison to other study findings in Sri Lanka. Given the modifiable nature of the significant predictors, it is recommended to design a package of interventions and implement adaptive measures to rectify the problems related to depression among police officers.

U.S. v. Warren Oh: The Case for Applying Aristotelian Modeling in Police Reforms

Scholarship regarding police reform tends to emphasize the bureaucratic nature of problems in policing, and, in turn, proposes administrative solutions, such as providing more training or critiquing specific language in a manual. I argue that instead of viewing policing problems as at their core administrative, we should be willing to view them, at least in part, as moral failings warranting solutions. This perspective allows research on police reform to draw from a much larger corpus of existing writings. I realize the application of theory to police reform in the specific context of U.S. v. Warren, arguing that the success of the reforms implemented in the Warren Police Department is due in large part to the department's use of Aristotle's theory of ethical modeling, which argues that ethics is best taught by providing people with moral models whose behavior they can emulate. Other police departments can apply Aristotelian theory by providing positive models from whom officers can learn proper policing practices. This can be accomplished in several ways, such as expanding the use of mentoring programs, using more hypothetical role playing in training, and publicizing stories of officers who properly de-escalated tense situations.

A Simple Solution to Policing Problems: Women!

Ruggs et al. (2016) describe paths through which industrial–organizational (I-O) psychology can make a dent in the ongoing policing problems in the United States. These paths include traditional I-O areas such as improved selection models, increased training, and changed organizational climates. However, there might be one fairly straightforward way in which police organizations can quickly reduce use-of-force problems: women. Because Title VII of the Civil Rights Act prevents selection based on sex, police departments obviously cannot hire women just because they are women. But police departments can and, we argue, should recruit more women to apply for police officer positions, create work practices and experiences that are attractive to and supportive of women (Hassell &amp; Brandl, 2009), and make efforts to retain female officers because of the evidence that female officers use less force when policing (Bolger, 2015). Additionally, police organizations and I-O psychologists should also work together to discover why women are less likely to use force and, subsequently, determine whether these characteristics can be selected or trained for in either sex.

The continued marginalization of campus police

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine a campus community’s knowledge and acceptance of their campus police as “real” police. Design/methodology/approach Using the liminality theoretical framework, this study surveyed students, faculty, staff, and administrators (n=1,484). Students were surveyed in-person, while staff, faculty, and administrators participated through an e-mail link to an online survey. Findings Results indicate that campus police are stuck in a liminal state. While 80 percent of the sample thought campus police should be armed, almost two-thirds (64 percent) did not know or were unsure of campus police officer tasks and three-quarters (75 percent) did not know or were unsure of campus police training requirements. Research limitations/implications The participants come from one university campus, so the generalizability of the sample is limited. Originality/value This study provides more evidence of the marginalization of campus police. Specifically, this study highlights that a majority of participants could not or were unable to identify campus police officers’ training and duties. Instead of using small qualitative samples, this study utilized over 1,400 participants on one campus, which provides more explanatory power about the perception problems of the campus police. This study also continues to advance and expand liminal theory.

Do the police really protect and serve the public? Police deviance and public cynicism towards the law in Nigeria

This study empirically examines the everyday problem of corrupt policing and other related abuses in Nigeria, and how these deviant behaviours engender public cynicism towards the law. In any democratic society, police officers are expected to be accountable for their actions and inactions. But the perennial problem in Nigeria is that the police are not accountable to anyone. The history of Nigeria policing is littered with accounts of deviance, malevolent attitudes towards the public and failures of the police organization in detecting or disciplining errant officers. Using a sample of 462 participants from a cross-sectional survey, this study examines whether actual or vicarious experiences of police deviance are likely to predict public cynicism towards the law. This current study corroborates previous assertions that the relationship between the police and the public in Nigeria is poor and that police deviance engenders cynicism towards the law. Implications for policymaking and law-abiding behaviour are discussed.

Policing the private: Social barriers to the effective policing of domestic violence

Problems in policing are commonly framed as institutional failures. This is frequently the case in the policing of domestic violence, where the limited ability of police to assist abuse victims is often reported to be a consequence of a lack of resources or inadequate training for police. This paper examines the challenges and limitations of policing domestic violence from a different angle. Reflecting on key findings from a qualitative study of local perceptions of and attitudes towards domestic violence in the South African township of Khayelitsha, we highlight the strong disciplinary influence of cultural norms and beliefs in shaping victims’ reluctance to involve police in cases of abuse. While our findings clearly underscore the limits of focusing on improved policing absent cultural change, we nuance and qualify this argument by identifying important exceptions from the norm and mapping gendered and intra-gender differences in participants’ concerns.

Policing the private: Social barriers to the effective policing of domestic violence

Problems in policing are commonly framed as institutional failures. This is frequently the case in the policing of domestic violence, where the limited ability of police to assist abuse victims is often reported to be a consequence of a lack of resources or inadequate training for police. This paper examines the challenges and limitations of policing domestic violence from a different angle. Reflecting on key findings from a qualitative study of local perceptions of and attitudes towards domestic violence in the South African township of Khayelitsha, we highlight the strong disciplinary influence of cultural norms and beliefs in shaping victims’ reluctance to involve police in cases of abuse. While our findings clearly underscore the limits of focusing on improved policing absent cultural change, we nuance and qualify this argument by identifying important exceptions from the norm and mapping gendered and intra-gender differences in participants’ concerns.

Policing the private: Cultural norms and beliefs as barriers to the effective policing of domestic violence

Problems in policing are commonly framed as institutional failures. This is frequently the case in the policing of domestic violence, where the limited ability of police to assist abuse victims is often reported to be a consequence of a lack of resources or inadequate training for police. This paper examines the challenges and limitations of policing domestic violence from a different angle. Reflecting on key findings from a qualitative study of local perceptions of and attitudes towards domestic violence in the South African township of Khayelitsha, we highlight the strong disciplinary influence of cultural norms and beliefs in shaping victims’ reluctance to involve police in cases of abuse. While our findings clearly underscore the limits of focusing on improved policing absent cultural change, we nuance and qualify this argument by identifying important exceptions from the norm and mapping gendered and intra-gender differences in participants’ concerns.

PROTOCOL: Police Training Interventions to improve the democratic policing of protests

PROTOCOL: Police Training Interventions to improve the democratic policing of protests

Orlando: Observances

528 Feminist Studies 42, no. 2. © 2016 by Feminist Studies, Inc. Orlando: Observances In the wake of the June 12 mass shooting at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida, many individuals and groups spontaneously organized vigils to mark the massacre. Given the transitory nature of public attention to news stories, our editorial board felt that it was important to record the sensibility of the collective responses to this tragedy. We have compiled here a selection of first-person accounts from vigils held within and outside the United States. It is not surprising that several contributors mention the complex interplay between racism and homophobia. The problem of violent policing in US communities of color (which we discuss in our “Forum: Teaching about Ferguson,” Volume 41, Number 1) has also continued to haunt our imaginations and animate resistance efforts. Many of the accounts below mention how people of color express their solidarities with multiple struggles. * * * Joseph Allen Ruanto-Ramirez, San Diego, CA Within hours of the news on the shooting at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida, a Facebook invite spread throughout San Diego’s social media networks to attend a vigil in front of the rainbow flag in the community of Hillcrest, San Diego. Hillcrest is the center of (predominantly white) LGBT communities, where gentrification has been very prominent and where the commercialization of LGBT identities (so-called LGBT culture) has been growing in the past couple of years. Pockets of queer and trans people of color disturb these spaces, but for many, the hashtag #gayissowhite has transformed to #hillcrestissowhite. Although the tragic incident that happened in Orlando, Florida, has galvanized both LGBT and allied communities, the rhetoric being used during the News and Views 529 vigil by the participants differed starkly from what many of the speakers and community leaders were saying on the mic. Armed officers surrounded the flagpole and the vigil, while police cars drove around the streets to “guarantee the safety” of the LGBT community . Signs that read “We are Orlando” and “Love is love” were carried by individuals in silent protest as people gathered around the rainbow flag lighting candles, burning sage, and writing notes. Hugs and kisses were exchanged as tears flowed. More radical signs and comments from predominantly (and visibly) queer women and queer people of color stating “Islam means peace” and “Islamophobia is not the answer” were in evidence, yet some conversations among queer men standing near me were clearly anti-Arab, xenophobic, and Islamophobic. Queer men joked about bringing guns to clubs and to Pride to protect themselves from “terrorists.” When a speaker talked about the failed attempt of an attack at Pride in Los Angeles, some men next to me joked about how this white domestic terrorist was possibly “radicalized” by Islam, although there was no information in the news that the Los Angeles attacker was Muslim. Being in the sea of contradictory and gendered responses at the event made me feel uncomfortable as I took off my t’ndung (head wrap in Iranun culture) to avoid being racialized and Orientalized , and I was asked how I might have felt about the attack if I were mistaken to be a queer Muslim. As speaker after speaker addressed the situation, the rhetoric of “this is us” or “this could have been us” created considerable discomfort for me. Who is this “us,” and how is it that people can imagine a direct connection to LGBT clubbers in Orlando, but that “us” does not include queer Palestinians or queer Black activists from Baltimore? Where is the “us” they kept on addressing? Was I part of this “us?” Then the politicians came up. They praised the LGBT community for being about diversity and inclusion, yet it was these same politicians who questioned the validity of having ethnic studies classes in San Diego high schools and who stated that restrooms for trans high school students might be a financial burden for the districts. The politicians praised the police officers and the police state, the same officers who regulated not just bodies of color, but also LGBT people during the Trump rallies in the city. As I turned around, I noticed that two white male police officers...

Opiniones, percepciones y prácticas de médicos ginecobstetras respecto a informar de las pacientes con aborto inducido a la policía, Lima, Perú, 2014

Problema: La práctica de informar a la policía los casos de mujeres con aborto inducido es relativamente frecuente y agrega complicaciones policiales y judiciales a estas pacientes. Objetivo: Conocer la percepción, opinión, conocimiento, actitudes y prácticas de los médicos ginecoobstetras con respecto a informar a la policía los casos de mujeres con aborto inducido. Diseño: Estudio cualitativo participativo y cuantitativo observacional transversal prospectivo. Institución: Tres hospitales del Ministerio de Salud (MINSA), Lima, Perú. Participantes: Médicos ginecoobstetras. Metodología: En tres hospitales de Lima se seleccionó sistemáticamente 33 médicos ginecoobstetras y se les aplicó una entrevista en profundidad. Otros 69 médicos ginecoobstetras llenaron un cuestionario estandarizado y autoadministrado. La participación fue voluntaria y el estudio revisado y aprobado por el comité de ética de los tres hospitales. Principales medidas de resultados: Información a la policía de los casos de aborto inducido. Resultados: El 78,3% de los participantes sabía que existe una ley que obliga a informar a la policía los casos de aborto inducido. Sin embargo, 43,5% no estaba de acuerdo con esta norma y 58% estaba de acuerdo con el derecho al secreto profesional. Sin embargo, 43,5% de los médicos reportó a la policía el último caso de aborto inducido atendido y la principal razón fue el cumplimiento de la ley y el temor a ser identificado como encubridor y las consecuencias penales posibles. Conclusiones: La práctica de informar un caso de aborto inducido a la policía atentaría contra la confidencialidad del acto médico. Recomendaciones: Se propone la modificación o derogación del artículo 30 de la ley general de salud del Perú y, en su lugar, implementar un programa articulado y coherente de paternidad responsable a nivel nacional.

The Divergence of Democratic Policing: Reflection on Brazil and Argentina

This paper highlights the existing literature on the nature and problem of policing by investigating their obvious and not so obvious origins, their enabling culture, reforms, and the immense challenges encountered by those trying to shake up the status quo. By way of literature review, further investigates the intricacies and complexities of democratizing policing in Latin America: Brazil and Argentina, in light of the fact that their governance systems have transitioned from military rule to electoral democracy and have been in operation for over two decades. The paper also explores why the police reforms that were introduced and implemented are yet to yield the desired results. Police in democratic states have increasingly been questioned over their roles and responsibility in order to determine whether they are actually reducing crime or merely increasing the fear of crime. Throughout the articles reviewed, common themes of trust and improved collaboration with stakeholders emerge, giving directions to where possible solutions of the problems may lie.

National Security's Broken Windows

This Article examines the federal government’s community engagement efforts with American Muslim communities as part of a larger infrastructure for policing radicalization and countering violent extremism (CVE). While the federal government presents community engagement as a softer alternative to policing, community engagement is integrated into a larger policing apparatus, making the reality far more coercive. Community engagement efforts are staged within the greater context of radicalization discourse, counterradicalization and CVE programs. Radicalization theory posits that increased religiosity and politicization in Muslims provokes an increased threat of terrorism. Government counterradicalization programs aim, therefore, to monitor and influence the political and religious cultures of Muslim communities so as to prevent radicalization, bringing tremendous scrutiny to bear on these communities. The federal government situates its national security community engagement efforts within the history of community policing in the ordinary criminal context. Community engagement and community policing are celebrated as forms of policing that emphasize communication and collaboration with marginalized communities and serve ideals of inclusion and democratic participation. In both contexts, however, efforts at police-community communication and collaboration are warped by law enforcement’s commitments to preventive theories of crime control, narrowing the space for the inclusion of and democratic contestation by the subject communities. Broken windows theory and radicalization theory invest local social and cultural norms an outsized role in the origination of criminal activity, creating a rationale for the policing of everyday life. In linking noncriminal activity to the potential for crime, both theories reinforce a punitive lens through which police interact with communities, further marginalizing communities on the grounds of their racial and religious difference. In putting community engagement in conversation with community policing, this Article’s central insight is as straightforward as it might be surprising: Community engagement in the national security context shares some of the problems of community policing in the ordinary criminal context. Community engagement efforts increase the presence of law enforcement in already overpoliced communities, and exacerbate intracommunity inequalities. Rather than enhance participation, community engagement may simply provide opportunities for select members of Muslim communities to approve preexisting law enforcement commitments — and create an additional source of pressure on Muslim communities to perform their Americanness — without meaningful openings for Muslim communities to communicate, collaborate, and contest the relationship, its modalities, and its outputs.

Gender Policing in the Clinical Setting: Discussion of Sandra Silverman’s “The Colonized Mind: Gender, Trauma, and Mentalization”

This is a discussion of Sandra Silverman’s clinical paper “The Colonized Mind: Gender, Trauma, and Mentalization.” Her patient, David née Ava, started early in life as a gender variant child. In adolescence, she became more stereotypically gender conforming. She entered treatment with Silverman as a young adult who was feeling great shame about both her past and present gender dysphoria. This discussion focuses on the clinical problem of gender policing, its external and internal manifestations as well as its appearance in the countertransference.

“Policing Is Not Work: It Is Stealing by Force”: Corrupt Policing and Related Abuses in Everyday Nigeria

This article critically and empirically examines the everyday problem of corrupt policing and related abuses in urban Nigeria, with attention to the threat posed to ordinary Nigerians’ basic human rights. The analysis, sociohistorically anchored, foregrounds colonial and military policies that have entrenched a culture of predation in the Nigeria Police Force. The article contributes to existing scholarship by directly relating corrupt and abusive policing to complex sociohistorical conditions, rather than seeing it as a purely managerial problem, whose solution lies in simplistic demands for internal reform. The article attempts to fill a gap in empirical scholarship by approaching corrupt and abusive policing from the angle of everyday practice, rather than by taking normative structural approaches and basing suppositions of actual behavior upon these. The article draws on evidence from eight months of ethnographic fieldwork research in Lagos State, southwestern Nigeria. The fieldwork evidence is supported by analyses of public discourse, a review of extant literature, some semiformal interviews, a review of national constitutions and international human rights law, and historical research. These together suggest conclusions pertinent to democratic reform of the Nigerian police.