Measuring the Impact of Police Discretion on Official Crime Statistics: A Research Note

Abstract

This article examines the effect that collective bargaining had on official crime statistics compiled between 1998 and 2009 in Montreal, Canada. Police officers collectively decided to reduce their use of record-discretion on two occasions, to increase administrative workload and pressure their employers. Considerable increases of recorded assaults and mischief were observed, despite no apparent variation of reported infractions measured by calls for service. Recorded and reported car thefts and burglaries displayed no significant variation. Results suggest that observed variations can be explained in terms of temporary differential treatment of specific incidents rather than increases of reported criminality or proactive police activity. This research challenges the reliability of official statistics as measures of crime and demonstrates that external circumstances can influence police recording practices.

Police record-discretion as misconduct in South Korea

“…That is, record-discretion renders "fertile soil for abuses of discretionary decision making" (Warner, 1997, p. 682). Indeed, Boivin and Cordeau (2011) found that administrative efforts (treatment) to reduce record-discretion in Canada resulted in increased amount of recorded crimes (i.e., assaults and mischief) although the number of CFSs was the same between before and after the treatment.…”

“…It is likely that the use of record-discretion itself causes citizens to perceive biased law enforcement (Boivin andCordeau, 2011). Warner (1997), for example, indicated that neighborhood poverty level affected record-discretion.…”

“…The first type of record-discretion is well studied by extant literature (see e.g., Boivin and Cordeau, 2011;Walker, 2011).…”

“…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.…”

Une mesure de la gravité moyenne des crimes enregistrés par la police1

“…Il a été démontré que les pratiques d'enregistrement des infractions pouvaient varier considérablement d'un endroit à l'autre, et d'une année à l'autre (O'Brien, 1996(O'Brien, , 2003Boivin & Cordeau, 2011 ;Boivin & Ouellet, 2011). Statistique Canada met d'ailleurs en garde contre les éventuelles variations des pratiques d'enregistrement mais reconnaît qu'il est diffi cile d'en évaluer l'impact.…”