Constructing crime: Neighborhood characteristics and police recording behavior

Abstract

a b s t r a c tIt has long been acknowledged that police officers have substantial levels of discretion in their day-to-day activities. There is a well developed body of literature that considers how this discretion is exercised across a broad array of situations including the decision to arrest, use force, and grant citizen requests for official action. Using both social disorganization and conflict theories as conceptual models, the purpose of this study was to determine if neighborhood characteristics affect police reporting behavior across a wide cross-section of reported call types. The findings indicated that reporting behavior widely varies across crime types with a greater percentage of more serious crimes translated into official crime. Neighborhood characteristics did affect reporting practices, but surprisingly only for more serious forms of disorder where discretion was perceived to be less. The findings lent support for both social disorganization and conflict theories. Theoretical implications are discussed.© 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. IntroductionQuestions about when and how police use discretion have been a pressing concern among scholars for decades. A large body of literature seeks to explain discretionary decision-making by police, particularly regarding the use of force and decision to arrest. Less empirical consideration has focused on how police use discretion when recording citizen reported calls for service into official crime, despite the broad effect this decision has on victims and communities.

Fear of crime, incivilities, and collective efficacy in four Miami neighborhoods

“…For example, Varano, Schafer, Cancino, and Swatt (2009) found that police were less responsive to crime, property crime in particular, that occurred in higher poverty neighborhoods. Lai and Zhao (2010) found that satisfaction with the police work was strongly related to general attitudes about the police and specific trust in the police department.…”

Police record-discretion as misconduct in South Korea

“…Additionally, situational factors influence an officer's decision to record an incident. For example, Varano et al (2009) indicated that two types of situational factors (i.e., percent commercial land and percent CFS on weekends) affected, albeit partially, police recording behavior for assault, drug/vice, and minor property crime. They also found that community racial characteristics influenced police record-discretiond police tended to record fewer victimizations in Black neighborhoods (Varano et al, 2009).…”

“…The first item measures "how often do you quit investigating a case although there is a possibility to discover further crimes beyond what the original facts indicated?". This type of record-discretion has not been reported by prior recorddiscretion research because most publications employed official police records (i.e., calls for service (CFS) and crime incident data) (see e.g., Tasca et al, 2012;Varano et al, 2009;Warner, 1997). The second item asked "how often do you decide not to start an investigation that you independently recognize?".…”

“…The initial case screening role of the police is meaningful because for most citizens this interaction is the only touchstone to assess the quality of law enforcement services (see e.g., Varano et al, 2009;Walker, 1993). The nearly invisible record-discretion tends to engender potential "inequality, arbitrariness, and abuse" (Kadish, 1961, p. 913).…”

“…Most previous studies used police official data (e.g., calls for service (CFS) and crime incident data) to examine record-discretion (see e.g., Boivin and Cordeau, 2011;Tasca et al, 2012;Varano et al, 2009;Warner, 1997; see also Nickels, 2007). This approach could not include individualand organizational-level situational variables due to data constraints.…”