| Abstract: | The chronic inattention of U.S. Forest Service police to persistent tree theft provides an opportunity to explore police nonenforcement as institutional patterns of accommodation to deviance. Pattern analysis of qualitative data reveals three patterns of accommodation defined as Assimilatory, Anticipatory, and Atrophic. Theses types of accommodation are based in organizational philosophy that reflects a shared meaning of the forest community that is inconsistent with traditional views of crime and police. Patterns of accommodation preserve the cultural closeness between the Forest Service and the forest community by withholding the formal label of crime and the associated consequences. Accommodation of deviance serves to preserve the image of the forest community as a desirable place, frequented by honest people, requiring minimal policing. |
