Sheriff's Departments Research Articles

COVID-19 and Policing: A Qualitative Study of Sheriff Departments in Rural Indiana

The main objective of this research was to explore and analyze the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on practices in law enforcement and jails, with a specific focus on sheriff departments serving in small, rural counties in the state of Indiana. This study identified and analyzed various issues and trends pertaining to COVID-19's effect upon jail and offender management, patrol and criminal investigation, personnel and offender safety, public service and expectations, courthouse trial and case management, and community trust in sheriff departments. Semi-structured interviews were employed with current sheriffs working in four different counties in Indiana in this qualitative research. The results showed that COVID-19 has brought to the forefront two major themes: (a) precautions taken by sheriff departments against COVID-19 and (b) changes in the way the criminal justice system works. Findings were further grouped into three categories according to each sheriff’s sentiments: negative (e.g., increase in expenses, loss of workforce, and mental health), positive (e.g., decrease in the workload and decrease in jail population), and mixed (e.g., precautions against COVID-19, changing crime patterns, and trust). The study concluded that COVID-19 caused a wave of change that sent ripples through these communities, the criminal justice system, and sheriff departments in particular.

A 20-year follow-up survey of police officers' experience with Tarasoff warnings: How law enforcement reacts to clinicians' duty to protect.

Since the Tarasoff case of 1976, mental health professionals are recognized to have a “duty to protect” third‐party targets from violence‐threatening patients, but little is known about what happens after clinicians warn law enforcement. In 2000, Huber et al. published a study that surveyed Michigan police about “Tarasoff warnings.” We conducted a 20‐year follow‐up study, inviting all Michigan police and sheriff departments to participate. There were no significant differences between studies about knowledge of Tarasoff‐related policies, which was low in both surveys. We found significant decreases in the number of officers who had ever intervened due to warning calls. Of the survey respondents, 83% supported documenting warning calls. For those who received warnings, 96% followed up with at least one intervention. In both studies, notifying other officers was the most common action taken. 56% said they would take action to remove a firearm. We identified opportunities for training law enforcement.

Women in Law Enforcement and Police Use of Deadly Force

We test the hypothesis that law enforcement agencies that have a larger share of female officers should experience lower rates of police use of deadly force. We use the Law Enforcement Management and Administrative Statistics 2013 survey of police and sheriff departments (N = 1,983). We measure police-involved violence as the number of civilians killed by law enforcement officers from 2013 through 2015 as reported by the website Mapping Police Violence. Using a variety of empirical estimators to take into consideration the structure of the distribution of police-caused deaths, we find consistent results that a higher share of female officers is associated with a higher likelihood of police-caused deaths. These results are consistent with prior findings within the literature and implies that in order to “fit in” with their male counterparts female officers will use coercive tactics to the same extent.

A Spatial Analysis of Officer-Involved Shootings in Los Angeles

Officer-involved shootings have spawned large-scale protest movements, intense media scrutiny, and a measure of political backlash from social conservatives. Over the years, Los Angeles County has suffered several rounds of extreme rioting following controversial episodes of police violence, yet continues to witness hundreds of officer-involved shootings each year. We analyze the spatial distribution of officer-involved shootings in Los Angeles County using ordinary least squares regression and hot-spot mapping techniques. We find the highly uneven distribution of officer-involved shootings across the many enforcement divisions of the LA Police and Sheriff Departments is statistically associated with neighborhood levels of violent crime and the average age of local citizenry. Other common predictors of officer-involved shootings, including race, ethnicity, and neighborhood economic conditions, are discussed, along with implications for policy and practice.

Immigration and the War on Crime: Law and Order Politics and the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996

The 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA) was a momentous law that recast undocumented immigration as a crime and fused immigration enforcement with crime control (García Hernández 2016; Lind 2016). Among its most controversial provisions, the law expanded the crimes, broadly defined, for which immigrants could be deported and legal permanent residency status revoked. The law instituted fast-track deportations and mandatory detention for immigrants with convictions. It restricted access to relief from deportation. It constrained the review of immigration court decisions and imposed barriers for filing class action lawsuits against the former US Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS). It provided for the development of biometric technologies to track “criminal aliens” and authorized the former INS to deputize state and local police and sheriff's departments to enforce immigration law (Guttentag 1997a; Migration News 1997a, 1997b, 1997c; Taylor 1997). In short, it put into law many of the punitive provisions associated with the criminalization of migration today.Legal scholars have documented the critical role that IIRIRA played in fundamentally transforming immigration enforcement, laying the groundwork for an emerging field of “crimmigration” (Morris 1997; Morawetz 1998, 2000; Kanstroom 2000; Miller 2003; Welch 2003; Stumpf 2006). These studies challenged the law's deportation and mandatory detention provisions, as well as its constraints on judicial review. And they exposed the law's widespread consequences, namely the deportations that ensued and the disproportionate impact of IIRIRA's enforcement measures on immigrants with longstanding ties to the United States (ABA 2004).Less is known about what drove IIRIRA's criminal provisions or how immigration came to be viewed through a lens of criminality in the first place. Scholars have mostly looked within the immigration policy arena for answers, focusing on immigration reform and the “new nativism” that peaked in the early nineties (Perea 1997; Jacobson 2008). Some studies have focused on interest group competition, particularly immigration restrictionists’ prohibitions on welfare benefits, while others have examined constructions of immigrants as a social threat (Chavez 2001; Nevins 2002, 2010; Newton 2008; Tichenor 2009; Bosworth and Kaufman 2011; Zatz and Rodriguez 2015).Surprisingly few studies have stepped outside the immigration policy arena to examine the role of crime politics and the policies of mass incarceration. Of these, scholars suggest that IIRIRA's most punitive provisions stem from a “new penology” in the criminal justice system, characterized by discourses and practices designed to predict dangerousness and to manage risk (Feeley and Simon 1992; Miller 2003; Stumpf 2006; Welch 2012). Yet historical connections between the punitive turn in the criminal justice and immigration systems have yet to be disentangled and laid bare.Certainly, nativist fears about unauthorized migration, national security, and demographic change were important factors shaping IIRIRA's criminal provisions, but this article argues that the crime politics advanced by the Republican Party (or the “Grand Old Party,” GOP) and the Democratic Party also played an undeniable and understudied role. The first part of the analysis examines policies of mass incarceration and the crime politics of the GOP under the Reagan administration. The second half focuses on the crime politics of the Democratic Party that recast undocumented migration as a crime and culminated in passage of IIRIRA under the Clinton administration.IIRIRA's criminal provisions continue to shape debates on the relationship between immigration and crime, the crimes that should provide grounds for expulsion from the United States, and the use of detention in deportation proceedings for those with criminal convictions. This essay considers the ways in which the War on Crime — specifically the failed mass incarceration policies — reshaped the immigration debate. It sheds light on the understudied role that crime politics of the GOP and the Democratic Party played in shaping IIRIRA — specifically its criminal provisions, which linked unauthorized migration with criminality, and fundamentally restructured immigration enforcement and infused it with the resources necessary to track, detain, and deport broad categories of immigrants, not just those with convictions.

Police culture: individual and organizational differences in police officer perspectives

PurposeMuch of the commentary about police culture treats it as a monolithic and problematic feature of the police occupation that inhibits change and progress. The purpose of this paper is to draw on surveys completed by over 13,000 sworn police to describe officers’ occupational outlooks and explore the extent to which they vary across individuals and police agencies.Design/methodology/approachThis paper draws upon employee survey data from 89 US police and sheriff departments collected in 2014-2015 to examine police culture through officers’ views of the community, police work, and police administration and to explore the extent to which these beliefs and opinions are affected by personal characteristics and organizational affiliation.FindingsResults indicate that officers’ perspectives are more positive than might be expected and do not vary greatly by officer personal characteristics. They differ more substantially across police agencies. This suggests that police culture is to a significant extent an organizational phenomenon, not simply an occupational one.Originality/valueExamining the views and perspectives of over 13,000 sworn police employed in 89 different police organizations provides a more representative and generalizable picture of police culture than previous studies that typically analyzed officers in only one police department.

The SHIELD (Safety & Health Improvement: Enhancing Law Enforcement Departments) Study: Mixed Methods Longitudinal Findings.

The SHIELD (Safety & Health Improvement: Enhancing Law Enforcement Departments) Study is a worksite wellness team-based intervention among police and sheriff departments assessing the program's effectiveness to reduce occupational risks and unhealthy lifestyle behaviors. The SHIELD program focused on improving diet, physical activity, body weight and sleep, and reducing the effects of unhealthy stress and behaviors, such as tobacco and substance abuse. The SHIELD team-based health promotion program was found to be feasible and effective at 6 months in improving diet, sleep, stress, and overall quality of life of law enforcement department personnel. Both intervention and control groups were followed for 24 months, and we report those durability findings, along with qualitative group interview results that provide insight into the changes of the long-term outcomes. Long-term effects were observed for consumption of fruits and vegetables, and there was some evidence for effects on tobacco and alcohol use. Assessment of dietary habits, physical activity behaviors, weight loss maintenance, and substance use is rare more than 1 year following an intervention, and in general, initial positive changes do not persist in prior research. The SHIELD program was feasible, effective, and durable for improving dietary changes.

Did John Lott Provide Bad Data to the NRC? A Note on Aneja, Donohue, and Zhang

In an "American Law and Economics Review" article published during 2011, Abhay Aneja, John Donohue III, and Alexandria Zhang (hereafter ADZ) examined Chapter 6 of Firearms and Violence: A Critical Review, a 2005 report from the National Research Council (hereafter NRC). The chapter examined by ADZ is concerned with the effect that right-to-carry laws have on crime. The laws are also known as shall-issue laws, and we employ that term. Shall-issue laws require authorities to issue concealed carry permits to all persons who meet certain legislated requirements. Aside from Illinois, states that have not passed shall-issue laws leave it up to the issuing authorities, typically local police or sheriff departments, to determine whether or not to grant the applicant a concealed weapons permit. Such states are known as "may-issue" states. It is usually the case that may-issue states, especially in urban cities and counties, issue very few concealed carry permits, and most of these go to celebrities, wealthy individuals, and politicians (Snyder 1997). An interesting policy question is whether shall-issue laws, which increase the number of concealed carry permits, increase or decrease crime. One theory is that criminals, knowing that some ordinary citizens may be carrying firearms and being unable to tell those who are from those who aren’t, will be more likely to forgo a violent crime for fear of being met with armed resistance. Under this theory, violent crime should go down as a result of the passage of shall-issue laws.

Resisting Federal–Local Immigration Enforcement Partnerships: Redefining ‘Secure Communities’ and Public Safety

Constructing undocumented immigrants as a security threat has allowed the US government to justify extraordinary measures that have pushed immigration enforcement increasingly inward from the border to states, counties, municipalities, and sheriff and police departments. The Secure Communities program, which integrates federal criminal and immigration databases to identify and deport undocumented immigrants, represents only the latest attempt. Most of the academic literature on local immigration enforcement has elaborated on the diffuse, ubiquitous and often paralyzing nature of the biopolitical power of the state vis-a-vis undocumented immigrants. In contrast, in this article, we focus on the contestations that challenge and go beyond repressive state power. We conceive of these not simply as a reaction to state techniques of power, but as productive and affirmative power that promotes alternative imaginaries and institutional change. As the Obama administration has sought to roll out the program to ever...

The Digital Crime Tsunami

This study examines the current level of digital crime experience and investigative capabilities of law enforcement in Michigan. Information was obtained through interviews with members of Michigan Sheriff Departments. Following the collection and analysis of data, the results were extrapolated to the national level in order to provide a picture of what is facing law enforcement at the national level. The extrapolation was supported by FBI crime reports and other information sources. The results of the study argue that law enforcement is in a dire situation when it comes to dealing with digital crime. The pace of technical change and digital/cyber crime trends when juxtaposed with law enforcement’s ability to deal investigate and prosecute these crimes provides for a bleak prognosis for the law enforcement and legal system.

Policing for Homeland Security

Since the terrorist attack of September 11, 2001, Federal, State and local governments have increasingly moved toward establishing Homeland Security as an institutional response to not only the threat of future terrorist attacks, but as a means of preparing and responding to natural disasters. Every plan at every level has stated that a critical element to any Homeland Security program is the local police and sheriff's departments. What specifically the police are to do under the concepts of Homeland Security has been unclear and poorly communicated and departments across the country have responded very differently from one another. To date, research in the area of Policing and Homeland Security has been lacking. This article addresses that deficiency, introduces the collection of research articles contained within this special issue of Criminal Justice Policy Review, and establishes an agenda for future research.

Relation of Taser (Electrical Stun Gun) Deployment to Increase in In-Custody Sudden Deaths

Despite controversy concerning their safety, use of electrical stun guns (Tasers) by law enforcement agencies is increasing. We examined the effect of Taser deployment on rates of (1) in-custody sudden deaths in the absence of lethal force, (2) lethal force (firearm) deaths, and (3) officer injuries (OIs) requiring emergency room visits. Under the Public Records Act and the Freedom of Information Act, 126 police and sheriff departments from California cities were mailed surveys requesting rates of each of the outcomes of interest for each of the 5 years preceding Taser deployment through the 5 years after deployment. To control for population size and crime rates, we used total annual arrests per city as reported to the Department of Justice. Fifty cities provided predeployment and postdeployment data on in-custody sudden death, 21 cities reported firearm deaths, and 4 cities reported OIs. The rate of in-custody sudden death increased 6.4-fold (95% confidence interval 3.2-12.8, p = 0.006) and the rate of firearm death increased 2.3-fold (95% confidence interval 1.3-4.0, p = 0.003) in the in the first full year after Taser deployment compared with the average rate in the 5 years before deployment. In years 2 to 5 after deployment, rates of the 2 events decreased to predeployment levels. We observed no significant change in the rate of serious OIs after Taser deployment. In conclusion, although considered by some a safer alternative to firearms, Taser deployment was associated with a substantial increase in in-custody sudden deaths in the early deployment period, with no decrease in firearm deaths or serious OIs.

Firearm Death Rates and Association with Level of Firearm Purchase Background Check

Past ecologic analyses of firearm deaths have studied the effects of various gun-control laws; however, no study has analyzed the effects of the differences among states in the background checks required for firearm purchase. Some states utilize a federal agency to conduct the background checks; others use a state agency; still others use a local agency. The information potentially available to checking agencies at different levels of government varies; the consequence of this variation is not known. In 2007, negative binomial regression models were used to assess the association between the Department of Justice classification of agencies conducting firearm background checks for each state in 2002-2004 and firearm suicide and homicide rates for the same years from the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control while controlling for age, race, unemployment, crime, income inequality, poverty, alcohol consumption, urbanization, and divorce rate. Performing local-level background checks was associated with a 27%-lower firearm suicide rate (incidence rate ratio [IRR]=0.73, 95% CI=0.60, 0.89) and a 22%-lower homicide rate (IRR=0.78, 95% CI=0.61, 1.01) in adults>or=21 years. Using local-level agencies to perform firearm background checks is associated with reduced rates of firearm suicide and homicide. Methods to increase local-level agency background checks, such as authorizing local police or sheriff's departments to conduct them, or developing the capability to share local-level records with federal databases, should be evaluated as a means of reducing firearm deaths.

Photos of Shackled Youngster Prompt State to Ban Practice

Back to table of contents Previous article Next article Government NewsFull AccessPhotos of Shackled Youngster Prompt State to Ban PracticeRich DalyRich DalySearch for more papers by this authorPublished Online:16 Jun 2006https://doi.org/10.1176/pn.41.12.0002A recently approved Vermont law will end the mandatory use of restraints on residents transported by the state for mental health care.The law addressed a previously little-known issue that burst onto the state's agenda with the publication of photographs of an 11-year-old boy transported for mental health care in leg irons and handcuffs.Mental health advocates cited the photos of the young autistic boy— taken by his father and published by newspapers across the state— with spurring the state to change its policies on the transport of those with mental illness.“It raised all kinds of questions, including why we were transporting children in a way that would induce trauma when there was no hard evidence that these types of precautions were needed,” said Larry Lewack, executive director of NAMI-Vermont, about the events that unfolded when Shane Brown was directed to treatment at the state's psychiatric hospital.Approved by the Vermont legislature and signed by the governor, the measure (H 306) bars state officials who oversee the transport of minors, adults, and pregnant women for mandated care from using restraints unless individual circumstances warrant their use.In cases where they are used, senior state officials must describe in writing why they are required for that patient.Shane Brown was one of 45 children in mental health crises who were shackled in police vehicles in 2005, according to the Vermont Association for Mental Health. The association identified about 750 children in the custody of the Department of Children and Families who also were restrained when transported. An analysis by the association determined that more than half of those youngsters had no history of violence or attempts to flee and were not acting in a manner to justify the use of shackles.“Our bill was never intended to ban the use of restraints but to limit it and to make sure when it is used, it is clinically called for,” said Ken Libertoff, executive director of the Vermont Association for Mental Health.Vermont Human Services Secretary Michael Smith condemned the routine use of shackles on children and administratively changed the decades-old policy, but mental health advocates pushed for the new law to ensure the policy could not be administratively reinstated.The state has already begun to use less-coercive transportation methods for children through private transportation organizations when restraints are not necessary to protect the patient or the public.Since summer 2005, the state has already cut in half the use of restraints in such cases, according to Libertoff.The restraint practice stemmed from wide-spread use by sheriff's departments throughout the state to provide “secure transport” under contract with the state. The practice was common because the cost to localities to transport children to involuntary treatment in this manner was covered by the state.Secure transport meant passengers were restrained by handcuffs and leg irons and traveled in the backseat of a sheriff's vehicle.Before enacting the legislation, advocates held discussions with representatives of sheriff's departments to amend the policy, but the representatives rejected such changes based on concerns for the safety of their officers, according state Rep. Michael Fisher (D), who supported the bill.“Some discussions were held with the sheriff's offices to make sure they knew the advantages of less-restrictive devices,” Fisher said.The bill followed a 2004 law that required the state to offer less-restrictive transportation to mentally ill patients of all ages, but“ that law wasn't being followed,” Fisher said.The latest measure, which began as an effort to limit the use of shackles on children and was later expanded to include adults and pregnant women, also includes strict reporting deadlines to the legislature to ensure the law's quick implementation.Vermont bill H 306 is posted at<www.leg.state.vt.us/docs/legdoc.cfm?URL=/docs/2006/bills/passed/H-306.HTM>. ▪ ISSUES NewArchived

Getting 5000 Families Back Together: Reuniting Fractured Families After a Disaster: The Role of the National Center for Missing &amp; Exploited Children

Although the hurricane season of 2005 was one of the worst on record, 2 storms, Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, were particularly devastating to the Gulf Coast region. Among the other tragedies came the news that nearly 5000 children became dislocated from their families as a result of these 2 storms. Before the hurricanes, the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) had systems for locating missing children in place: a 24-hour hotline, a database of missing children, and connections with law enforcement throughout the United States and the world. The success of NCMEC is well documented; they have a recovery rate of 96% in the long-term cases with which they deal. They have become the nation's primary resource to work with law enforcement in the search for missing children. Technology has become the hallmark of searching for missing children. The use of computers, digital images, and the media has led to great improvements in finding these children. NCMEC had created programs by using retired law enforcement officers to assist in the search for missing children in the many locales where there may not be adequate resources. Project ALERT (America's Law Enforcement Retiree Team) is a program wherein these retired officers assist local police and sheriff's departments who may not have officers fully trained in missing child cases. A second program sponsored by the Michael and Susan Dell Foundation was patterned after the National Transportation Safety Board's Go Team program. When there is a plane crash or other transportation emergency, a specialist from the Go Team is sent directly to the scene to evaluate and assist local officials. Similarly, NCMEC has developed Team Adam, a group of retired law enforcement officers and agents, each of whom is an expert in the field of child abduction and missing children. They are … Address correspondence to Daniel D. Broughton, MD, FAAP. E-mail: dbroughton{at}mayo.edu

A risk management analysis of the claims, litigation, and losses of Michigan law enforcement agencies: 1985‐1999

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to show that claims filed against law enforcement agencies alleging the violation of constitutional rights continue to plague police administrators, officers, agency trainers, and risk managers. This technical paper seeks to report on the analysis of 151 police and sheriff departments' claims, losses, and litigation in order to assess the trends, costs, and nature of these claims.Design/methodology/approachUsing official records of a risk management entity in Michigan, 15 years of incidents were analyzed in order to identify the trends in third‐party claims, liability, and losses of police and detention centers.FindingsThe general findings of 11,273 claims are provided as well as a detailed analysis of 2,929 claims, representing 25 common categories in police work and detention facilities. The findings illustrate the current trends in police liability and reveal important managerial concerns which can direct administrators in revising policy and procedures, in focusing training endeavors, and incorporating risk management strategies in order to reduce the risk of police liability.Originality/valueThe findings will be useful for police trainers in structuring their training efforts. Suggestions for future research which examine successful risk management practices and avert liability are also discussed.

The Reconstitution of Law in Local Settings: Agency Discretion, Ambiguity, and a Surplus of Law in the Policing of Hate Crime

An important yet poorly understood function of law enforcement organizations is the role they play in distilling and transmitting the meaning of legal rules to frontline law enforcement officers and their local communities. In this study, we examine how police and sheriff's agencies in California collectively make sense of state hate crime laws. To do so, we gathered formal policy documents called “hate crime general orders” from all 397 police and sheriff's departments in the state and conducted interviews with law enforcement officials to determine the aggregate patterns of local agencies' responses to higher law. We also construct a “genealogy of law” to locate the sources of the definitions of hate crime used in agency policies. Despite a common set of state criminal laws, we find significant variation in how hate crime is defined in these documents, which we attribute to the discretion local law enforcement agencies possess, the ambiguity of law, and the surplus of legal definitions of hate crime available in the larger environment to which law enforcement must respond. Some law enforcement agencies take their cue from other agencies, some follow statewide guidelines, and others are oriented toward gaining legitimacy from national professional bodies or groups within their own community. The social mechanisms that produce the observed clustering patterns in terms of approach to hate crime law are mimetic (copying another department), normative (driven by professional standards about training and community social movement pressure), and actuarial (affected by the demands of the crime data collection system). Together these findings paint a picture of policing organizations as mediators between law-on-the-books and law-in-action that are embedded in interorganizational networks with other departments, state and federal agencies, professional bodies, national social movement organizations, and local community groups. The implications of an interorganizational field perspective on law enforcement and implementation are discussed in relation to existing sociolegal research on policing, regulation, and recent neo-institutional scholarship on law.

Assessing law enforcement preparedness to address Internet fraud

Recent societal concern regarding computer crime was well documented in the research literature. To date, however, modest research addressed how large, local police and sheriff's departments confront Internet fraud. Using data collected from surveys distributed to the seven hundred largest police- and sheriff's departments, the present article addresses law enforcement: (1) preparedness to enforce Internet fraud crimes; (2) perceptions of Internet fraud; (3) cooperative policing efforts; and (4) Internet fraud information dissemination practices. Among other things, results suggested that individuals within these departments believed Internet fraud was problematic, although they lacked the resources to properly address the problem. These results are discussed as they relate to the organizational design of law enforcement agencies and their potential to adapt to innovative crimes. Suggestions are offered for a more effective approach to confronting Internet fraud.

Law Enforcement's Response to Sexual Assault

After the major reforms of sexual assault laws between 1960 and 1975, a number of studies examined the changes in sexual assault reports to the police and the prosecution of these cases; however, little research has studied changes in law enforcement investigative procedures of sexual assault cases. This study examines the processes used in the investigation of sexual assault cases by police and sheriff departments in nine counties of North Carolina. The procedures of these departments are compared with a set of new practices identified as effective by Epstein and Langenbahn (1994). These practices, or reforms, include specialized sexual assault investigative units, in-house victim/witness advocates, acceptance of anonymous reports from victims who do not wish to prosecute, written procedures, multiple interviews, confidentiality of the victim from the media, specialized training for investigators as well as patrol officers, and specific criteria for the selection of investigators. The law enforcement departments examined in the current study vary in their implementation of the reforms advocated by Epstein and Langenbahn. The relationships between specific characteristics of the departments and the community and the variation in implementation are not significant; however, the departments' association with the rape crisis centers in their communities is significantly related to the existence of written procedures, a specialized unit, and the use of blind reports. Sexual assault to some degree continues to focus on the issue of consent and the victims' behavior, but there does appear to be an increase in officers' sensitivity to victims' needs.

A Comparative Analysis of Women Policing in India

This study, which includes a comparison of American experience, focuses on women policing in India. Using a standardized survey questionnaire, data were collected from women officers on line duty in all district police departments in the State of Tamil Nadu, India, and in municipal and sheriff's departments in New Jersey. A discriminant analysis found important differences between the samples in the officer's preferred roles, with more of the officers from Tamil Nadu preferring a traditional role. Other differences were also found between the samples in terms of deployment experience, career commitment, perceived interests and perceived capability in performing various tasks compared with male officers. These differences appeared to be due to both organizational and cultural factors.