The Neighborhood Context of Police Behavior

Smith, D.

doi:10.1086/449126

Cited by 384 publications

(424 citation statements)

References 13 publications

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“…Smith (1986) supports this contention, finding police recording behavior is greater in higher status neighborhoods and less likely in transient neighborhoods. Importantly, Smith's (1986) findings suggest that neighborhood influences are dependent on the type of police behavior considered. That is, police exert more coercive authority in minority communities but more assistance-like behavior in upper-income neighborhoods with more elderly persons.…”

Section: Neighborhoods and Police Resource Mobilization -Prior Researchmentioning

confidence: 67%

“…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. With a few notable exceptions (Block & Block, 1980;Goldstein, 1960;Klinger & Bridges, 1997;Maxfield, Lewis, & Szoc, 1980;McCleary, Nienstedt, & Erven, 1982;Smith, 1986;Sung, 2002;Warner, 1997), police responses to reported crime and the degree to which responses are conditioned by neighborhood characteristics has received limited attention from the research community. This is an important shortcoming in the literature because it is ultimately the police who have the legal authority to determine which reported crimes are recorded as crimes.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Constructing crime: Neighborhood characteristics and police recording behavior

Varano

Schafer

Cancino

et al. 2009

Journal of Criminal Justice

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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.

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Section: Neighborhoods and Police Resource Mobilization -Prior Researchmentioning

confidence: 67%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Constructing crime: Neighborhood characteristics and police recording behavior

Varano

Schafer

Cancino

et al. 2009

Journal of Criminal Justice

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…We do not assume that offenders generally think police officers are ineffective, or Btoothless^ (Ariel 2012, p. 39)-at least in western democracies-as the evidence suggests otherwise (Braga et al 2012), but it still begs the question, what is it about the Bpolice officer^that elevates the risk of apprehension? As Wilson (1968) showed many years ago, and Smith (1986) confirmed, the odds of a police officer making an arrest after witnessing a crime vary widely across communities. Why, then, should we expect more policing to reduce crime in hot spots in all communities?…”

Section: Quantifying the Certainty Of Apprehensionmentioning

confidence: 97%

“Soft” policing at hot spots—do police community support officers work? A randomized controlled trial

2016

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Objectives To determine whether crime-reduction effects of increased police patrols in hot spots are dependent on the Bhard^threat of immediate physical arrest, or whether Bsoft^patrols by civilian (but uniformed) police staff with few arrest powers and no weapons can also reduce crime. We also sought to assess whether the number of discrete patrol visits to a hot spot was more or less important than the total minutes of police presence across all visits, and whether effects based on counts of crime would be consistent with effects on a Crime Harm Index outcome. Methods We randomly assigned 72 hot spots into 34 treatment units and 38 controls. Treatment consisted of increases in foot patrol by uniformed, unarmed, Police Community Support Officers (PCSOs) who carry no weapons and hold few arrest powers beyond those of ordinary citizens. GPS-trackers on every PCSO and Constable in the city yielded precise measurements of all patrol time in all hot spots. Standardized mean differences (Cohen's d), OLS regression model, and Weighted Displacement Quotient are used to assess main effects, to model the interaction effect of GPS data with treatment, and to measure the diffusion-of-benefits of the intervention, respectively. Outcomes included counts of incidents as well as the Cambridge Crime Harm Index. Results As intended, patrol visits and minutes by Police Constables were equal across the treatment and control groups. The sole difference in policing between the treatments groups was in visits to the hot spots by PCSOs, in both the mean daily frequency of discrete visits (T = 4.65, C = 2.66; p ≤ .001) and total minutes across all visits (T = 37.41, J Exp Criminol (2016) 12:277-317 DOI 10.1007/s11292-016-9260-

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“…It controls for segregation because segregation is associated with health, and because police use the racial and economic composition of neighborhoods to develop surveillance strategies. 54 …”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Collateral Damage: The Health Effects of Invasive Police Encounters in New York City

2016

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The health effects of police surveillance practices for the community at-large are unknown. Using microlevel health data from the 2009-2012 New York City Community Health Survey (NYC-CHS) nested within mesolevel data from the 2009-2012 NYC Stop, Question, and Frisk (NYC-SQF) dataset, this study evaluates contextual and ethnoracially variant associations between invasive aspects of pedestrian stops and multiple dimensions of poor health. Results reveal that living in neighborhoods where pedestrian stops are more likely to become invasive is associated with worse health. Living in neighborhoods where stops are more likely to result in frisking show the most consistent negative associations. More limited deleterious effects can be attributed to living in neighborhoods where stops are more likely to involve use of force or in neighborhoods with larger ethnoracial disparities in frisking or use of force. However, the health effects of pedestrian stops vary by ethnoracial group in complex ways. For instance, minorities who live in neighborhoods with a wider ethno racial disparity in police behavior have poorer health outcomes in most respects, but blacks have lower odds of diabetes when they live in neighborhoods where they face a higher risk that a stop will involve use of force by police than do whites. The findings suggest that the consequences of the institutionalization of the carceral state are far-reaching.

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The Neighborhood Context of Police Behavior

Cited by 384 publications

References 13 publications

Constructing crime: Neighborhood characteristics and police recording behavior

Constructing crime: Neighborhood characteristics and police recording behavior

“Soft” policing at hot spots—do police community support officers work? A randomized controlled trial

Collateral Damage: The Health Effects of Invasive Police Encounters in New York City

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