Police Crime: The Criminal Behavior of Sworn Law Enforcement Officers

This essay examines the criminological conceptualizations and research on police crime, that is, the criminal behavior of sworn law enforcement officers. It starts with an overview of the conceptualization of police crime as it relates to organizational and scholarly perspectives of social deviance. Police deviance is often conceptualized to include various misconduct, corruption, and/or crime committed by police organizations and police officers. This essay focuses on police crime resulting in the arrest of a sworn law enforcement officer and is organized within a conceptual framework that incorporates five types of police crime: sex‐related police crime, alcohol‐related police crime, drug‐related police crime, violence‐related police crime, and profit‐motivated police crime.     

AN EMPIRICAL CHARACTERIZATION OF THE DYNAMIC EFFECTS OF POLICE SPENDING ON VIOLENT AND PROPERTY CRIME

The study estimates the dynamic effects of shocks to police expenditures on measures of violent and property crime rates using annual U.S. state-level data for the period 1960–2015. We employ a structural panel VAR model and achieve identification by imposing the restriction that police spending responds to structural shocks to crime with at least a lag of 1 year. Results indicate that a shock to police spending leads to (a) persistent and significant decreases in violent and property crime rates and (b) significant and persistent negative impacts on crime rates in periods of high crime but little impacts in periods of low crime. Variance decompositions show that shocks to police spending account for moderate to large proportions of the variability of U.S. state-level crime rates. Our findings are robust across separate measures of violent and property crime rates, as well as to the inclusion of additional variables to the baseline panel VAR model. (JEL K42)     

Beyond Neighborhoods and Crime: Expanding the Scope of Social Disorganization to Explain Occupational Deviance

This article proposes a structural explanation for the occupational deviance dimension of white collar crime. The systemic model of social disorganization theory is used as a framework for understanding organizational conditions that produce high rates of occupational deviance. The model of workplace disorganization proposed here posits parallel mechanisms can be found in communities as well as organizations. Marginalized workplaces, employee turnover, and employee heterogeneity are antecedent factors that discourage employee network formation and collective action against deviance. By refocusing on organizational factors, we offer a broader understanding of occupational deviance, one that can predict and explain the workplace conditions under which counterproductive behaviors occur.     

The isolation of crime,law, and deviance from the core of sociology

The study of crime, law, and deviance is considered to be an isolated subarea of sociology that draws upon but does not contribute to the core of the discipline. Subareas, the specific and substantive topics of sociology, may be expected to make less obvious and direct contributions to the core than do theory, methodology, social organization, and social psychology as the major areas of sociology. And within subareas, studies that are readily applied may be considered less integrated and contributory to the discipline than the more “pure” or basic science subareas. This analysis examines the relationships between areas, subareas, and the core of sociology; the subject matter of sociological subareas; the actual versus perceptual isolation of crime, law, and deviance studies from the core; and the meaning of contribution. Measurement of contribution is limited to a survey ofSociological Abstracts, theCumulative Index of Sociology Journals, and the 1993 program for the American Sociological Association annual meetings. Comparing area and subarea publications and conference sessions suggests that, contrary to expectations, crime, law, and deviance research constitutes a significant portion of the available knowledge base. The perceived isolation of crime, law, and deviance from sociology may be explained by professional bias against applied studies of stigmatized populations. An earlier draft of this paper was presented at the 1992 American Sociological Association Annual Meetings.     

Neighborhood Organizations and Resident Assistance to Police1

Police and scholars note that successful crime fighting requires police and residents to “co‐produce” public safety. However, residents are often reluctant to get involved in policing initiatives or even report crimes they witness. One possible means of stimulating resident involvement in crime‐control activities is through neighborhood organizations. This research, conducted on 1,313 residents of 42 neighborhoods in western South Carolina, investigates whether neighborhood organization participation increases the likelihood of assisting police in crime‐control efforts. Results indicate that organization participants are more likely to assist police than are nonparticipants, even after controlling for social cohesion, perceptions of police legitimacy, various policing strategies, fear of crime, and demographic factors.     

Community policing in racialized communities: A potential role for police social work

ABSTRACT

Despite lack of strong empirical evidence about its effectiveness, community policing remains the approach of choice for police organizations in managing the complexity of crime and neighborhood disorder. It is also the preferred strategy for improving relations between police and racialized communities. Anchored in ongoing public conversations and protests about the tense relationships between police and racialized communities, this article offers a theoretical analysis of community policing. An overview of its objectives, principles, and use in Canada is first provided. Next, a critical reading of community policing is presented, which suggests that its end may be near, given that it has not fulfilled its promise of improved police-minority relations. Finally, the case of Abdirahman Abdi in Ottawa is discussed, to illustrate this failed promise. The author contends that, in the absence of a change model for transformation in police-minority relations, police social workers are an important but overlooked component of community policing. The article concludes with several recommendations, one of which is to employ police social workers in police organizations, since the challenge of community policing requires a multidisciplinary perspective that the police alone cannot provide.     

CIVIL ASSET FORFEITURE,CRIME, AND POLICE INCENTIVES: EVIDENCE FROM THE COMPREHENSIVE CRIME CONTROL ACT OF 1984

The 1984 federal Comprehensive Crime Control Act (CCCA) included a provision that permitted local law enforcement agencies to acquire up to 80% of the proceeds derived from civil asset forfeitures obtained in joint operations with federal authorities. We investigate how this rule governing forfeited assets influenced crime and police incentives by taking advantage of pre‐existing differences in state‐level civil asset forfeiture law and the timing of the CCCA. We find that after the CCCA was enacted crime fell about 17% in places where the federal law allowed police to retain more of their seized assets than state law previously allowed. (JEL K42, K15, H76)     

Relations between Known Crime and Police Spending in Large United States Cities

Abstract

Among 130 large U.S. cities, strong support is found for Turk's (1973) view of relatione between various collective needs and subsequent supplies. That such relations reflect the availability of linkage within the city—as Turk holds they do—is strongly suggested here when per capita known violent crime and per capita police spending are seen, respectively, as measures of need and supply. The positive correlation between these two rates is always stronger among high linkage than among low linkage cities, whichever of five indices is used to measure linkage. Evidence is cited to justify viewing known violent crime as causally prior to police spending, rather than vice versa. Controlling the effects of five potentially confounding variables fails to disturb the findings.     

Crime, policing and social order: on the expressive nature of public confidence in policing

Public confidence in policing is receiving increasing attention from UK social scientists and policy-makers. The criminal justice system relies on legitimacy and consent to an extent unlike other public services: public support is vital if the police and other criminal justice agencies are to function both effectively and in accordance with democratic norms. Yet we know little about the forms of social perception that stand prior to public confidence and police legitimacy. Drawing on data from the 2003/2004 British Crime Survey and the 2006/2007 London Metropolitan Police Safer Neighbourhoods Survey, this paper suggests that people think about their local police in ways less to do with the risk of victimization (instrumental concerns about personal safety) and more to do with judgments of social cohesion and moral consensus (expressive concerns about neighbourhood stability, cohesion and loss of collective authority). Across England and Wales the police may not primarily be seen as providers of a narrow sense of personal security, held responsible for crime and safety. Instead the police may stand as symbolic 'moral guardians' of social stability and order, held responsible for community values and informal social controls. We also present evidence that public confidence in the London Metropolitan Police Service expresses broader social anxieties about long-term social change. We finish our paper with some thoughts on a sociological analysis of the cultural place of policing: confidence (and perhaps ultimately the legitimacy of the police) might just be wrapped up in broader public concerns about social order and moral consensus.     

The Sliding Scale of Snitching: A Qualitative Examination of Snitching in Three Philadelphia Communities

We conducted an in‐depth interview study with 77 young men in three moderate to high‐crime neighborhoods in Philadelphia to hear their stories about community violence and relations with police. In this article, we have analyzed how Latino, African‐American, and white young men experience policing and how they discuss the guidelines around cooperation with the police and what they view as snitching. Contrary to popular perception, talking to the police is not always banned in poor or high‐crime neighborhoods. Instead, the respondents present a variety of personal rules that they use to assess when cooperation is called for. We argue that the policing they experience within disadvantaged neighborhoods shapes their frame of legal cynicism, which in turn makes decisions not to cooperate with the police more likely.     

Narratives of Crime and Criminals: How Places Socially Construct the Crime Problem1

A common narrative about crime in the contemporary United States is that offenders are primarily young black men living in poor urban neighborhoods committing violent and drug‐related crimes. There is also a local context to community, crime, and fear that influences this narrative. In this article, I address how narratives of crime and criminals play out differently within particular places. The article is based on participant observation and interviews conducted in two high‐crime Boston‐area communities. Although both communities are concerned with stereotypical offenders, there are differential community constructions of crime, formed through interactions between crime narratives and place identities. In one, crime is a community problem, in which both offenders and victims are community members. In the other, outsiders commit crime against community members. Media portrayals of crime and community, community race and class identities, and concerns over neighborhood change all contribute to place‐specific framing of “the crime problem.” These frames, in turn, shape both intergroup dynamics and support for criminal justice policy.     

How protecting a suburban forest as a natural reserve effected small mammal communities

Restoration of mammal communities was studied between 1975–1984 and 2001–2009 (over ca. 30 years) in two suburban forests in central Poland: one protected as a natural reserve and one not protected. The mammal community in the legally protected forest showed more extensive changes than in the case of the nonprotected forest. In the natural reserve, the numbers of Microtus subterraneus, Apodemus agrarius, Rattus norvegicus and Mus musculus decreased while insectivores (mostly Sorex araneus), bats and Apodemus flavicollis increased in numbers. The community of small mammals in the reserve became more similar to the community from the relatively natural area – Białowieża Primeval Forest (eastern Poland). A protection supported restoration processes of tree stands and consequently started to increase the numbers of mammalian species typical of more natural habitats, as well as to reduce the numbers of synanthropic species and those connected to open areas. In the nonprotected forest, fewer species changed their abundance (M. subterraneus decreased, insectivores, bats and A. flavicollis increased). However, an increase in the percentage of bats and a decrease of M. subterraneus in mammal communities of both forests could reflect general trends in their populations noted in recent decades. The population decline of Warsaw’s urban species – A. agrarius perhaps is the best indicator of the restoration of suburban forests.     

Nurturing the Seeds of Restorative Justice

Abstract

Communities are looking for community-building responses to the issue of crime. Traditional social and political discourses have presented only two responses to crime, “get tough” or rehabilitate offenders. An alternative view has begun to emerge in community criminal justice discourse and practice. Restorative justice emphasizes the restoration of relationships and community peace that are damaged by the harm of crime, and the repair of these social injuries. This article presents the findings of a pilot study that was conducted to assess a community's openness to restorative justice principles.     

Round up the usual suspects: Crime,deviance, and the limits of constructionism

In the 1960s and early 1970s, the sociological study of deviance underwent a sharp break in orientation; many observers in the field began to shift their focus away from an examination of etiology to the study of social control. Examining the social construction of deviance and crime to the exclusion of crucial and unavoidable material features that cannot be defined away lead to certain conclusions that could not be sustained and were vulnerable to successful challenge from later approaches. The lives and work of Frank Tannenbaum, Jack Henry Abbott, and Alvin Gouldner, as well as the work of other labelists and Marxists, offer testimony to the limits of constructionism in the sociological study of deviance and crime.     

THE EFFECTS OF ASSET FORFEITURE ON POLICING: A PANEL APPROACH

Asset forfeiture has proven highly controversial in the United States since its expansion in 1984. Most contentious is the widespread policy that allows police agencies to keep the assets seized, which both proponents and critics assert changes police behavior. From newly developed panel data sets, we find some statistical support for the proposition that police agencies change the intensity and pattern of policing in response to forfeiture. However, in economic terms these effects are very weak and do not support the proposition that forfeiture provides vital funds and incentives for crime policing. (JEL H39, H71, K42)     

Expressed trust and compliance in police‐civilian encounters: the role of communication accommodation in Chinese and American settings

Research has demonstrated that police officers' communicative practices are potent predictors of individuals' expressed reactions to law enforcement. The present study continues this line of work in Taiwan, the People's Republic of China, and the United States by testing a theoretical model pertaining to the influence of perceived police officer accommodation and reported trust on attitudes about compliance with police requests. In addition to differences in reported levels of these variables across locations, findings indicated that perceived police officer communication accommodation predicted trust in police which, in turn, predicted attitudes about compliance with police requests. The empirical and practical significance of these findings are discussed.     

SPORTING EVENTS,EMOTIONAL CUES,AND CRIME: SPATIAL AND TEMPORAL EVIDENCE FROM BRAZILIAN SOCCER GAMES

Utilizing a novel data set of police reports that provides granular street‐ and vehicle‐level information on vehicle thefts and robberies in the city of São Paulo, Brazil, we explore the impact of soccer games and their outcomes on crime and study its spatial heterogeneity. Estimates from a regression discontinuity design suggest that crime increases immediately after home games in streets that are within a tight radius from the stadiums. The effect is driven by vehicle thefts with popular car models being more likely to be targeted and is particularly salient after upset losses and derby games.(JEL D91, R12, Z2)     

Bad Sports: Explaining Sport Related Deviance

While sometimes dismissed as an unimportant subject for analysis, the study of sport has offered important insights into our social world. Yet the academic study of sport‐related deviance has not kept pace with the explosion of popular media products regarding deviance in sport over the past four decades. This can be explained in part by the sheer diversity of sport related deviance which defies applying a singular theoretical explanation. A number of approaches from the sociology of sport and other social sciences offer useful ways of making sense of sport related rule‐breaking while also providing valuable insights into larger questions regarding crime and deviance. This paper reviews three contemporary perspectives used in the study of sport deviance: deviant overconformity, moral panics and consumptive deviance. Drawing from exemplary studies of performance‐enhancing drug use, hooligan violence, and sport celebrity scandals, I highlight the ways in which these perspectives offer a “sociological corrective” to media misrepresentations as well as insights that extend beyond sport and into contemporary social issues including race and gender relations, economic inequalities, crime, youth violence, and celebrity culture. I conclude by addressing new developments and avenues for future research.     

Crime,citizenship and community: neoliberal communitarian images of governmentality

This article discusses the emergence, in the field of crime and safety, of a formula of government that can be called neoliberal communitarianism. This is a paradoxical governmental strategy that combines a focus on ‘individual responsibility’, ‘community’ and a ‘selectively tough state’. The discussion is based on the Foucaultian triangle of strategy, political programmes and techniques. The substance of this application consists of a discussion of recent Dutch political programmes and techniques in crime and safety policies. The discussion includes the local case of Rotterdam, a city at times regarded as a ‘policy laboratory’. Specifically, the role that notions of citizenship and community play in crime and safety policies is analysed. We hereby point at two different manifestations of responsibilization – repressive responsibilization and facilitative responsibilization – aimed at two governmentally differentiated populations. In addition, we describe how neoliberal communitarianism entails the selective exclusion of subjects imagined as ‘high risk’. Because the government of crime tells us much about the government of ‘society’, neoliberal communitarianism is a useful concept to grasp contemporary changes in government in the Netherlands and in other European countries.     

URBANIZED PERIPHERIES: A REGIONAL STUDY OF CRIME IN ISRAEL

This study explores the regional patterns of crime in Israel for the first time. It examines crime rates and interregional crime by comparing the home region of offenders and the region of the offense. In a society small in size and population, urbanization has a limited impact on crime rates. This analysis, based on variables drawn from a national census and police crime statistics, stresses three types of peripheral region: regions that "attract" property offenses, regions that "export" property offenders, and regions of a "typical" peripheral nature. However, the findings indicate that some urban characteristics serve to shape the crime situation in peripheral regions. It is suggested that regional variations in crime are best explained by a multicausality approach.