Austin Turk,stratification reinforcers and reversals,and traffic ticket decisions by Boston police during April and May of 2001

Austin Turk theorizes that places in stratification hierarchies affect police–citizen encounters by reinforcing or reversing the positional authority of police officers. To this point, however, there have been only three direct tests of the stratification portions of Turk's theory. Two examined overt conflict and all represented Turk's concepts using aggregated measures. The results are mixed. The present research adds a fourth test to the stratification and policing literatures by examining the effects of aggregated as well as disaggregated measures of stratification reinforcers and reversals on traffic ticket decisions by Boston police officers during April and May of 2001. Net of important control measures, there is no support for Turk's theory using the aggregated stratification measures employed in previous research. However, support for Turk's theory is clearly visible when viewed through the lens of some of the disaggregated stratification measures advanced for the first time in present research. We conclude that more research is needed to determine whether stratification reinforcers and reversals are among the factors affecting people in police blue and the people they police, with a sustained focus on both aggregated and disaggregated measures.     

Conflict Methodology: an Introduction and Preliminary Assessment1

Proponents of conflict methodology have recently asserted that consensus methodologies are ineffective in the study of elite-controlled, large-scale organizations. They have proposed utilization of a variety of techniques which place researchers in a condition of hostile contrast to subject organizations. The purpose of this paper is to introduce and assess the conflict methodology position. It, therefore, identifies the organizational subjects of conflict research, examines the assertion that consensus methodologies are ineffective in the study of elite-controlled, large-scale organizations, and provides a definition of conflict methodology. The paper concludes by assessing the implications, problems, and possible contributions of conflict methodology.     

NEWS ABOUT MURDER IN AN AFRICAN AMERICAN NEWSPAPER: Effects of Relative Frequency and Race and Gender Typifications

Previous scholarly research on selection bias in news about murder indicates that race and gender stereotypes and, to a much lesser extent, the relative frequency of particular murders explain why some homicides are made into news and others are not. However, previous research has directed nearly exclusive attention to white newspapers. The present research remedies this omission by directing attention to the factors that shape selection bias in news about murder in a big-city African American newspaper. The results indicate that the relative frequency dimension of newsworthiness is a weak and inconsistent explanation of selection bias in news about murder in the black newspaper examined. Race, however, has profoundly different effects in white and African American newspapers. Whereas white newspapers use long-standing race stereotypes to filter news about murder, the data from the African American newspaper signal a firm rejection of the black image in the white mind (Entman and Rojecki 2000). Newspaper images of women and men are another matter. In both black and white newspapers, gender stereotypes uniformly filter news about murder and fundamentally distort gender effects. The implications of these findings are discussed including the clear need and ample scholarly room for replicative analyses of news about murder in other African American newspapers, with a keen eye on both "raced ways of seeing" (Hunt 1999, pp. 181–215) and gendered ways of seeing.     

The Newsworthiness and Selection Bias in News About Murder: Comparative and Relative Effects of Novelty and Race and Gender Typifications on Newspaper Coverage of Homicide

Previous research suggests that journalists assess the newsworthiness of homicide occurrences using the relative frequency of particular types of murders and how well specific murder occurrences mesh with stereotypical race and gender typifications. However, previous research also is marked by four important limits, including the failure to systematically examine intersections of race and gender. The present research remedies these problems and clarifies existing understandings of selection bias in news about murder in two important respects. Newsworthiness as represented by novelty is an incomplete explanation of selection bias. Instead, news about murder is the product of journalistic assessments of newsworthiness firmly grounded in long-standing race and gender typifications.     

Sociologist Austin Turk and Policing: Structural Reinforcers and Reversals of the Positional Authority of Police

Austin Turk (1969) offers a distinctly sociological explanation of policing by theorizing that structural reinforcers (e.g., older police officer, younger citizen) and reversals (e.g., younger police officer, older citizen) of the situationally absolute positional authority of police officers affect the relationship between police officers and citizens. To this point, however, there have been only three direct tests of Turk’s theory ( Greenleaf and Lanza‐Kaduce, 1995 ; Lanza‐Kaduce and Greenleaf, 2000 ; Weidner and Terrill, 2005 ). All have examined overt conflict and the results are mixed. The present research therefore adds a fourth test of Turk’s (1969) theory to the sociological literature by examining the effects of structural reinforcers and reversals on citizens’ perceptions of the legitimacy and propriety of police actions during routine traffic stop encounters. Net of control measures, including the legal reason for the traffic stop, and extra‐legal measures, such as driver gender, the data provide modest to strong support for parts of Turk’s (1969) theory and absolutely no support for others. The conclusion of the present study is that more research is needed to determine whether Turk (1969) is correct in theorizing that there is a sociology, and not just a social psychology, to police‐citizen encounters.     

Deviant Acts by Complex Organizations: Deviance and Social Control at the Organizational Level of Analysis1

The study of deviance and social control can be expanded to recognize that (1) organizations, not just individuals, commit deviant acts, and (2) other organizations have responsibilities for preventing or controlling that deviance. This paper focuses on these phenomena. It defines organizational deviance, applies Blau and Scot?s cui bono taxonomy to suggest types of organizational deviance, provides a categorization of controller organizations by the types of deviance they control, and considers the social control of organizational deviance. The paper concludes by suggesting that organizational deviance should be among the theoretical, empirical, and methodological interests of an increasing number of contemporary sociologists.