Research Briefs

Evaluating Witness Testimony: Juror Knowledge, False Memory, and the Utility of Evidence-Based Directions

Helm, The International Journal if Evidence & Proof, 2021

Helm states that there is a general assumption that jurors are capable of accurately assessing the truthfulness of witnesses, including the accuracy of their recollections of the incident in question, based on their own experiences with memory recall. However, research in law and the cognitive sciences suggest that they do in fact have difficulty assessing the validity of other individuals’ memories. Jurors understand that factors like fearful and stressful emotions and intoxication, and observation circumstances such as distance from an event or lighting, will affect the recording of a memory. However they are less knowledgeable about the factors that affect memory recall, such as suggestion, after the memory is encoded, which can alter the recall of specifics or generate inaccurate or nonexistent events. This is problematic as false or misleading eyewitness testimony has been identified as a leading cause of wrongful convictions. Distinguishing between true and false memories can be challenging and jurors likely have a poor understanding of the cues that suggest a memory could be false. Juries are provided little guidance in identifying false memories and make mistakes based on intuitive concepts of memories rather than established cognitive science. Helm suggests how legal procedure can facilitate the presentation of information in this way, specifically in cases involving potential false memory.

False memories can be generated in a few ways. For example, source misattribution can occur when people are incapable of distinguishing between two or more sources of their memories. The image that people generate in their minds when thinking about an occurrence can be confused and misattributed to something that happened in reality. False memories can also be generated spontaneously when people recall the gist of something occurring. This familiarity with a person or event but not a specific, verbatim, precise recollection can result in a false memory For example, recalling a general description of an offender may produce a familiarity but is lacking in enough precise details that would determine the suspect is not a true match for the offender, which results in misidentification of a suspect. Helm also notes that “spontaneous false memory can also arise as a result of what is known as change blindness where a witness does not notice that a perpetrator and a bystander are actually different people. These errors can lead to an occurrence known as unconscious transference, or the familiar bystander effect. This effect refers to a memory error whereby a witness identifies a familiar, but innocent person, as an offender. For example, research has shown a tendency to misidentify an innocent bystander to a crime as an offender or to identify a familiar person from an entirely different context as an offender”.

While research has demonstrated how false memories can occur and is well accepted and understood in legal contexts, lay persons’ viewpoints on the generation of false memories diverge from the experts and as well are over confidant in the accuracy of memories. Helm states this lack of understanding must be accounted for and corrected by legal procedure. Direction can be provided to jurors, warning them of a need for caution before convicting a defendant in reliance on the correctness of the identification, debunk relevant memory “myths” (such as the belief that a confident witness is always reliable), list potential influential encoding factors, or explain relevant discrepancies in witness statements. It is also possible to call expert witnesses to explain memory pitfalls to jurors and judges.

Helm states that “in order to be effective, directions relating to witness memory must both appropriately alter juror knowledge relating to witness memory, and facilitate the application of that knowledge in a case context.” However in referencing the Turnbull directions in use in England and Wales, they may do neither and are essentially ineffective. As in the U.S., judges are not memory experts and the application of juror direction is dependent on the discretion of judges and that many cases are moved through the system based solely on eyewitness information. However, even if accurate information regarding memory is presented to jurors there may be a problem in the delivery of this information through a relatively superficial judicial direction following the presentation of the evidence. With jurors having their own “common sense” intuitions of about memory that needs to be dispelled, the relevant research and information about memory must be related with enough detail and background to be persuasive enough to update jurors beliefs. To influence jurors a more central direct approach may not be influential enough to change jurors’ minds. For example simply giving direction to the jurors that a confidant witness may not be accurate will be unlikely to change a juror’s mind as it lacks the meaningful information for the jurors to evaluate and substantiate the claim.

A different approach to jurors may be necessary as research indicates the leading model of jury decision making, the Story Model, indicates juries make decision by a narrative “story” organization on trial information. Evidence is incorporated into a narrative that explains what happened and verdicts are reached by matching the best fitting narrative to a verdict category. Their mental representations of evidence in story structure indicate that “jurors are more likely to remember evidence that is consistent with the story associated with their verdict, and that jurors are likely to find evidence more important where that evidence has a causal role in the story that is associated with their verdict”. Existing direction on witness testimony based on their recollections is insufficient to establish an understanding with jurors how those concerns may apply or how they fit into their narratives. For example, not being given detailed information, based on research, on the types of situations were witnesses may not be reliable or credible, or how jurors can be helped evaluate whether the “confident witness” is indeed accurate. Also, directions may be too cursory to be effectively incorporated into their narratives. Jurors too often consider the overall gist, or inferred meaning of the evidence, provided rather than verbatim details. It’s thus necessary to make the evidence and directions regarding it more meaningful to jurors, which will facilitate more informed decision making. Overly simplified directions by a judge that “warns the jury that even a witness who is very confident may be incorrect, but without being told why this might be the case, or being given examples of the types of other cases in which memory has been impaired in this way, it is likely to be difficult for jurors to extract meaning from it appropriately”. Lacking this context may result in either jurors being dismissive of all witness evidence, jurors not attributing meaning to the information at all and disregarding it in decision making, or attributing meaning to the information in a biased way-judging the importance of the warning based on their unrelated conceptions of the case-for example if they feel overall that the defendant seems guilty they might conclude that although confident witnesses can be wrong, the confidence in the case at hand does signal accuracy. A third problem exists if the directions are not provided prior to the presentation of evidence as it will be difficult for jurors to incorporate this new information into a narrative that has already been constructed or they will simply alter the understanding of this new information to fit into the already established narrative.

Helm states to be effective juror instruction about the accuracy and validity of witness testimony should follow these guidelines:

Provide jurors with sufficient information to allow them to evaluate the case for the conclusions presented and update their beliefs accordingly.
Provide jurors with sufficient information to allow them to understand the types of cases in which particular concerns may be important, and why; and
Instructions that are consistently given prior to the presentation of case evidence in order to inform juror narrative construction from evidence, and to reduce effects of motivated cognition or confirmatory bias in juror interpretation and analysis of information given.

Helm’s recent research sought support for these contentions utilizing 411 participants as mock jurors reading case vignettes. Participants were grouped into no instruction, basic instruction, and detailed training instruction groups and were also asked a series of memory questions rating their agreement with statements regarding 1) Eyewitness testimony about an event often reflects not only what they actually saw but also information they obtained later on, 2) Eyewitnesses sometimes identify as a culprit someone they have seen in another situation or context, and 3) An eyewitness’s confidence can be influenced by factors that are unrelated to identification accuracy. Helm’s results provide support for more in-depth training instruction for jurors. Basic instruction did increase consensus with existing scientific research on false memory compared to no instruction to a small degree. However, the training instruction was clearly more effective at increasing the level of juror belief with the scientific consensus. The training group, but not the basic instruction group, also indicated an influence on case outcomes. In vignettes with weak evidence less guilty verdicts were produced, however in strong evidence cases the training direction did not influence the number of guilty verdicts, which Helm states demonstrated that training directions helped jurors effectively identify an enhanced risk of false memory, rather than just introducing a general skepticism of towards any eyewitness testimony.

While the study did have some limitations it did indicate that more specific detailed instruction can assist jurors in making informed decisions and can be utilized with other juror misconceptions such as witnesses that are inconsistent are lying or mistaken (when they could be influenced by trauma), or in using them to dispel rape myths. Helm states more work needs to be done in research with real life juries, which can lead to policy that can be put into actual practice in the courtroom.

Helm, R. K. (2021). Evaluating witness testimony: Juror knowledge, false memory, and the utility of evidence-based directions. The International Journal of Evidence & Proof, 25(4), 264-285.

Predicting Rapist Type Based on Crime-Scene Violence, Interpersonal Involvement, and Criminal Sophistication in U.S. Stranger Rape Cases

Mellick, Jeglic, Bogaard, International Journal of Police Science & Management, 2021

The authors contend that in stranger rape cases, physical evidence like DNA and fingerprints may be absent or inconclusive and that in these cases, offender profiling, linking crime scene behavior to an offender, may be useful in resolving those cases. Similarities in crime scene behaviors may point to offenders whose past offenses may have exhibited the same behaviors or suggest a certain type of offender has perpetrated the offenses.

While offender profiling may in some ways be lacking scientific rigor, two assumptions underlie profiling: the consistency assumption and the homology assumption. Consistency assumes that the actions of any offender are consistent across offenses, i.e. there will be a repetition of particular aspects of behavior if the same offender engages in the same type of offense again, such as in serial murder or serial rape. Homology assumes a likeness between the character of an offender and the behavior they engage in at a crime scene, so rather than differentiating between offenders by the presence or absence of singular individual behaviors it examines groups of behaviors across groups of offenders. This “accounts for the possibility that a serial offender may not engage in the exact same behavior across a series of crimes, or likewise, that two different offenders may not engage in the same exact behavior but have rather thematically similar behavior”.

Rapists can be classified based on their behavioral themes by analyzing their crime scene behavior. As these offenders interact with other people in a similar way in non-criminal scenarios, they will interact with victims in a similar way during their offenses. This means it’s possible to link a crime and offender based on their behavioral themes. So a serial offender will exhibit similar behavior across similar offenses, and offender distinctiveness, meaning that two offenders will not behave in the exact same way, makes it possible to distinguish between them.

The authors state that previous research has found different themes explain the differences between rapists; themes of hostility, involvement, and control. Hostility entails overtly aggressive interaction, involvement pertains to physical or verbal attempted contact with the victim such as kissing, complimenting, or reassuring the victim, and control utilizes a surprise attack or weapon to control the victim. Other research suggests similar theme methodology, such as hostility, dominance, and compliance gaining. However, the behaviors tied to these themes may be altered or varied in the offense depending on the context of the situation, namely the victims behavior, making analysis of the factors important in understanding offender behavior. Offenders’ level of initiating violence, victim age, and offender mobility are all factors that will affect the characteristics of the behavioral themes, Offenders will also decide how to act based on the effort, rewards, and costs involved in their course of action which contributes to their profile.

The authors state it’s also important to distinguish between single victim rapists and serial rapists but there has been little research examining the differences between the two. However, research has indicated that single victim rapists are usually known to their victims and use a confidant approach compared to the overwhelming characteristics of serial rapists being strangers to their victims and utilizing surprise attacks. Some research in this area indicates more violence and interpersonal contact (such as inducing the victim to participate) with single victim rapists than serial rapists, however serial rapists show more criminal sophistication (in avoidance of detection and apprehension) in comparison. While stranger rape is more difficult for the police to investigate, their crime scene characteristics can be used to profile offenders. The authors contend that while research has examined serial rapes, single victim rapes, and stranger rapes separately, or comparing serial rapists to single victim rapists, no studies have compared single victim rapes and serial rapes in the stranger rapist context. In the authors’ study, they sought to examine these differences in the stranger rape context hypothesizing that single victim rapists would use more violence and interpersonal contact while serial rapists would show a greater criminal sophistication than there single victim counterparts.

Utilizing the case files of 3,168 male sex offenders they composed a sub-sample of stranger rapes involving 244 single victim rapists (SVR) and 141 serial rapists (SER) (37% White, 47% Black, and 14% Latino) whose victims were 84% female. The violence component examined the amount of physical violence and included offender threats and oral, anal, and digital penetration. The criminal sophistication component involved, the use of weapons, drugs and alcohol, isolation of the offense location, bondage or incapacitation of the victim, and grooming or luring the victim. The interpersonal theme examined whether the offender caressed the victim, performed oral sex on them, induced participation, or introduced pornography into the crime.

Significant differences were found in the demographics of SVR and SER with most SVR being single while SER tended to be divorced. Significant racial differences were also found. While SVR were more evenly represented among White (35%), Black (45%) and Latino (18%), the SER sub-sample demonstrated fewer Latinos were represented (8%) and Whites comprised 40% and Blacks 51%.

Significant differences existed in the three crime scene behaviors between SVR and SER. In the violence theme there were no significant differences between most penetration and actual physical violence between the two groups however, SVR were more likely to use threats of violence and digital penetration compared to SER. Significant differences were also found in different areas of criminal sophistication. Compared to SVR, SER were significantly more likely to use a weapon, more likely to use a gun or knife as a weapon, incapacitate/choke their victims, and groom/meet or lure their victims to a location. However SVR were more likely to have used drugs or alcohol during the crime and commit the crime in an unknown or new location, compared to SER. The only significant difference in the interaction theme was that SER were more likely to induce participation from the victims compared to SVR. The significant characteristics, placed in a logistic regression model for prediction of type of rapist was found to explain 35% of the variance in rapist type and overall correctly classified 75.8 percent of the type of rapist cases.

The authors conclude that “these findings could be used to identify potential suspects in stranger rape cases because the crime scene information could help law enforcement determine whether they are looking for individuals who have committed these types of crimes previously and may already be in the system”. They also suggest that “the crime-scene behaviors associated with serial rapists could also be used to identify unknown offenders as possible serial offenders. This includes individuals who may have committed sexual offenses before, but who have never been caught and cases where offenders have just started their rape career. This allows for law enforcement to narrow down their suspect pool and thus assist the investigation”.

While this study is exploratory the findings can guide future research by testing the predictive power in actual crime scenes as well as more closely examine different regions and cultural groups as well as include more crime scene characteristics not examined here such as developmental factors, triggering behaviors before an attack, or the cognitive processes involved in the offender’s planning before an attack.

Mellink, I. S., Jeglic, E. L., & Bogaard, G. (2021). Predicting rapist type based on crime-scene violence, interpersonal involvement, and criminal sophistication in US stranger rape cases. International Journal of Police Science & Management, 14613557211036564.

Cannabis Use Among Mental Health Professionals: A Qualitative Study of Cannabis-Related Risk Perceptions

Ghelani, Journal of Drug Issues, 2021

The author recognizes that there are potential risks and harms in marijuana use. Research indicates the potential for issues of dependence, cognitive deficits, anxiety, and the risks of driving while intoxicated. These risks may be poorly understood or not attributed to marijuana use if users assume that marijuana is considered to be harmless, specifically considering the current legal status of marijuana in Canada.. The author explores whether mental health professionals who were themselves marijuana users, were cognizant of the risks that do exist in treating individuals who were also marijuana users.

The small qualitative Canadian study consisted of seven professionals (three social workers, two psychotherapists, a nurse, and a nurse practitioner) whose clients worked with marijuana users and explored the extent that study participants were aware of and addressed marijuana use risk with their clients and in their own use.

Overall, all the participants recognized the psychosocial risks involved in marijuana use by their clients and in some cases, when relevant, in their own use. Anxiety, panic, and avoidance behavior was the most prevalent risks mentioned by the participants, especially amongst young and/or inexperienced users, though two participants noted they do experience some anxiety in social situations. Most of the participants noted that marijuana use could also negatively affect interpersonal relationships through anxiety caused by peer pressure or a fear of separation from their peers who used. Some participants noted the effects on clients stemming from tension in parental or spousal relationships from non-users, as well as the social stigma that results when their clients are viewed as “criminal”, a “stoner”, or ” lazy” because of their marijuana use. The participants were also very well aware of the dangers of driving while intoxicated on marijuana and related how chronic use may also affect employment if their clients’ jobs require the operation of a vehicle.

Beyond social issues, the participants also discussed the cognitive and neurological impairments and risks their clients might face or experience. Five of the participants discussed how marijuana use could lead to psychosis and exacerbate symptoms of schizophrenia. The suggestion put forth to their clients was to stop using cannabis because they were experiencing symptoms along the schizophrenic spectrum, with some participants noting that cannabis has the potential to make young people more vulnerable to psychosis or for long term users to be more resistant to anti-psychotic medications. Most of participants discussed how cognitive functioning could be impaired, especially in the brains of adolescents and young adults, cautioning against their use of marijuana. Some participants discussed the possibility of decreased motivation and reduced day to day function with some clients as well as how it may affect memory, attention, and concentration. Two participants themselves noted that it decreases their concentration and smoking too much “allows their mind to wander”. Most of the participants noted that these issues can affect education and employment function and cautioned their clients from using before or during work, or when starting a new position, as memory issues, motivation, and interaction with others can be negatively affected.

Four of the participants noted the potential for cannabis use to lead to a chronic habit or dependence. Unhealthy use patterns like “wake and bake” (starting the morning by getting high) may signal dependence. Two of the participants expressed some concerns about developing a psychological dependence themselves, such as habitual use in a situation where they felt like they should have refrained, or in using to calm themselves or help cope with stressful situations rather than utilizing other methods.

The authors discuss how the framework of rational choice can be utilized to examine these results. While the participants and their clients are aware of the risks or negative outcomes that can be associated with marijuana use, in the cost benefit analysis the benefits such as relaxation, mood enhancement, relief of anxiety, and pain relief outweigh the potential costs for both study participants and their clients as well. Indeed, few of the participants noted any negative outcomes from their use but they all held a comprehensive understanding of the potential risks. Interestingly, while there is some evidence of small physiological risk from marijuana use, only one of the participants mentioned the potential pulmonary or cardiovascular effects. However this may stem from a greater focus from the participants on the psychosocial aspects of use as it relates to their employment field. The study does provide evidence that legalization, acceptance, and use does not preclude mental health professions from recognizing the potential risks involved with marijuana use nor does it inhibit them from sharing that information and treating clients who may be struggling with use, abuse or dependence issues.

Ghelani, A. (2021). Cannabis Use Among Mental Health Professionals: A Qualitative Study of Cannabis-Related Risk Perceptions. Journal of Drug Issues, 51(4), 679-689

The Role of Context in Understanding the Use of Tactical Officers: A Brief Research Note

Jenkins, Semple & Bennell, International Journal of Police Science & Management, 2021

The authors note that the use of tactical officers and services are being utilized more frequently in North America and in more incidents than in what is typically recognized as high risk incidents, like hostage taking, such as in proactive policing and warrant service. Some observers are concerned that these activities are disproportionally focused on minority communities. While the authors do give consideration to the view that the use of tactical police officers and services may not be called for in all instances, where they are used the authors contend that view often doesn’t consider the risk factors in those incidents that suggest the appropriateness and utility of those officers and services. They state that analyses of tactical operations use too often focuses on the type of call rather than the risk factors that may be present in the calls themselves. What might appear to be a relatively benign domestic disturbance type call may not account for risk factors like the violent or resistive history of the subject, situational factors like intoxication, and the presence of weapons. Feedback from tactical officers indicated these risk factors are typically in play in the calls that they respond to but these risk factors are typically not examined in studies of the use of tactical officers. The authors sought to use their current project to analyze more detailed contextual factors in the use of Canadian tactical officers. Using the same Winnipeg Police service data used in a previous study to suggest an increase in the use of tactical officers, the authors broke out the contextual data from the incidents to analyze the risk assessment for these types of situations. A coding scheme was setup and the four contextual risk factors analyzed were the history of the subject, (for example, their propensity of violence toward the police), the state of the individual, (for example, intoxication), the subject making threats to their own or others safety, and the belief that weapons were present, along with other contextual data contained in incident reports. Call type was also hierarchically coded to indicate the level of risk in the type of call.

Analyzing differences in the number of tactical responses between 2013 and 2016 indicated that a significant increase in deployment (from 474 in 2013 to 2757 in 2016) was more of a result in a change in reporting rather than change in their actual use. Data showed tactical officers responded to 78 different types of calls, though the vast majority (81% ) were reactive as opposed to planned operations. The most common calls tactical officers responded to were active warrant arrests, gun and weapons calls, shots fired, breaking and entering, domestics, alarm calls, suspicious persons, and well-being checks.

In regard to weapons believed to be on the scene, despite the variation in calls, on average, 60% of the calls indicated a weapon was involved, with more weapons present in the 2016 data than in 2013. Of the weapons believed to be present firearms were mostly commonly reported in 2013 (42%) and in 2016 (48%). In the cases where additional information reported, call types that indicated a firearm was likely to be present on the scene, such as gun call, shots, fired, and gunshot wound, made up approximately half the calls where guns were thought to be present. However, of the calls in which a firearm was believed to be present, 59% of those calls were not firearm related. The authors state the findings suggest that simply looking at the call type is not a reliable indicator of the presence of weapons and suggests a variability of situations within call categories. It also appears that weapons are frequently believed to be present on seemingly benign calls like domestic disturbances, traffic incidents, and warrant executions, etc. With the concern over the use of tactical officers responding to “routine” calls the authors sought to determine how frequently firearms were believed to be present at some of these reportedly routine calls. The presence of firearms were believed to be present at 45% of suicidal threat and mental well being checks, as well as half of warrant executions and domestic disturbances, suggesting these are not low risk routine calls but actually pose a significant risk to officers and the public.

The other risk factor with enough additional information to be analyzed was the subjects’ history. Less information on the subject was available on reactive calls that tactical officers responded to (28% of tactical officer calls) versus planned operations (like warrant executions). The most frequently reported history risk factors in incidents were possessing weapons (8%), gang affiliations and previous murder or attempted murder charges (slightly greater than 1% for each). However 6% of calls also entailed the individual making explicit threats toward themselves, the public or the police.

The research indicated that the majority of tactical officer responses were utilized in planned operation like warrant executions which entailed a variety of entry approaches from no-knock (approximately 1/3 of warrant executions), to knock and announce, knock and talk, or surround and call out, as well as being involved in subject takes downs and surveillance. Exploratory analysis between the roles of tactical officers and the belief that weapons were present on the scene, utilizing Chi Square, found a significant relationship. Specifically, knock and talk, and knock and announce, were used significantly more when no weapons were believed to be present compared to situations where firearms were believed to be present, while surround and call out and high risk takedowns were used significantly more when weapons were believed to be present. No knock entries were significantly more frequent when the belief that weapons were not present suggesting other factors, such as the likelihood of destroying evidence, contributed to that entry method, supported by the evidence that controlled drug and substance warrants made up nearly all the no knock warrants.

The authors conclude that a view that tactical officers are misused on routine calls, including warrant executions, and should be scaled back, misjudges the seemingly benign nature of these calls. Rather, the belief that weapons were present at the majority of these calls and that call type was generally not of indicative of the risk posed to the public or officers as the belief in weapons being present at supposedly low risk situations prompted the use of tactical officers. Thus the belief that a tactical response is unwarranted in routine calls may be a misguided view when this additional context is included. The authors did recognize that the limited contextual information in some call data prevents them from making policy recommendations but rather illustrates that contextual data is an important consideration in regard to making tactical police utilization and policy decisions. However this does require policing agencies to collect more detailed contextual information more frequently, in a standardized manner, in order to better assess the use of these officers and the policies recommendation affecting their deployment.

Jenkins, B., Semple, T., Bennell, C., & Huey, L. (2021). The role of context in understanding the use of tactical officers: A brief research note. International Journal of Police Science & Management, 23(4), 385-391.

Research Briefs

Vulnerabilities Relevant for Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children/Domestic Minor Sex Trafficking: A Systematic Review of Risk Factors

Franchino-Olsen, Trauma, Violence, and Abuse, 2019

The author states that the commercial sexual exploitation of children (CSEC) and domestic minor sex trafficking (DMST) which occurs across the United States, violates the rights and health of far too many children and youth. She contends that adequate prevention efforts should seek to understand the factors that make minors vulnerable to sexual exploitation in order to properly design programs to prevent victimization. Her study seeks to identify risk factors associated with CSEC and DMST based on a systemic literature review that then examined, in depth, 15 studies which based on their original research status, contained a focus on the risk factors, vulnerabilities, or statistics of CSEC/DMST and a domestic focus on CSEC/DMST (for U.S.-based journals) with findings that did not combine associations between minors and adults.

Franchino-Olsen notes the devastating effect CSEC/DMST can have on victims but states that are limitations on both the knowledge of the practices and effective means of identifying or screening victims. This need becomes more tangible as there has been a shift in a law enforcement perspective toward minors as victims rather than just underage sex workers following the Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act (VTVPA) of 2000, which sought to decriminalize selling sex for both underage and adult victims of trafficking (prior to the VTVPA, minors found selling sex or related acts were charged and prosecuted with juvenile prostitution). While this shift is promising in tackling sex trafficking, the author contends much more action is currently needed to address the issue.

Research determining the prevalence of CSEC/DMST needs to overcome barriers. The underground nature of the activities and the lack of a common national database makes data unreliable in assessing the scope of the problem, its victims, frequency, and prevalence. However, while the U.S. is seen as a profitable destination country for international sex traffickers, most data suggest that the majority of minor victims of sex exploitation in the U.S. are citizens. Unfortunately no consensus has been reached in the field regarding how to screen or identify victims in an efficient and trauma informed manner with ongoing debate around how to prevent CSEC among high-risk populations, since the presence of some risk factors, like childhood sexual abuse (CSA) only leads a small proportion of those children to experience exploitation. Policies to address these risk factors would have to be on a macrolevel with interventions addressing abuse, neglect, and poverty, and on a microlevel involving increased engagement with law enforcement, social services, and other government agencies. The author states that the stereotype of an exploitation victim is a young female tricked or coerced into the sex trade but boys and transgender youth are often exploited as well. Because females are more likely to be arrested, as well as be controlled by a third party exploiter, they tend to have a higher visibility and draw more public attention along with prevention and intervention efforts. Some victims through the exploitation and grooming experiences may settle in for the “prostitution life” and not recognized they’re being exploited. Victims of CSEC/DMST are at risk for a wide variety of physical, psychological, social problems because of their victimization.

However, a complete understanding of the issue and its victimizations are lacking because of gaps in the literature surrounding risk factors for CSEC/DMST and the evaluation of preventative strategies. Consequently, risk factors must be clearly identified in order to assure preventative efforts are effective and target the right populations.

The author gathered domestic research studies from 2010-2017 pertaining to CSEC/DMST risk factors, winnowing the search down to appropriate methodologies, and research subjects and outcomes, to arrive at an analysis of 15 studies that specifically addressed minor sexual exploitation risk factors. Studies included both qualitative and quantitative and her analysis and results show there are numerous risk factors noted in peer-reviewed studies that increase a minor’s vulnerability to exploitation.

Childhood abuse-the most commonly cited risk factor in the literature includes physical, emotional, and sexual abuse. This abuse may be motivation for youth to run away from home and lead to CSEC/DMST. Maltreatment like neglect is also common among CSEC/DMST victims and is also connected with other associated risks like running away and early onset of drug and alcohol use, while emotional abuse increases vulnerability to victimization by reducing youths’ coping skills and keeping them dependent on their exploiters. Sexual abuse may also lead youth to believe that selling sex, even if controlled by a pimp or third party exploiter, gives them control over their sexuality. Other risk factors related to sexual activity include, early sexual initiation (which pushes youths toward exploitive sexual activities) or sexual denigration; prior rape experience or adolescent sexual victimization (from outside the home or family); and survival sex (which leads youths into high risk situations and cause them to interact with individuals in a position to exploit them).

Compromised parenting and/or unstable home life, while related to maltreatment, also encompasses alcohol and drug use, emotional and mental health problems (e.g., depression, anxiety, poor anger management), arrests, relationship problems between caregivers, and family violence. Witnessing family violence or criminal activity is itself a risk factor for victimization. While research found a pre-exploitation history of witnessing family violence or criminality to be common with victims most studies did not investigate further regarding the nature, duration, or severity of what these illegal activities entailed. Other family and home factors that are linked to CSEC/DMST victimization are conflicts with parents and peer and family influences of those already linked to the sex trade or exploitation (which gives these youths the impression of normality and inhibits recognizing these transactions as exploitive), and child protection services involvement including a history of out of home placement. Running away or being thrown away by caregivers is another commonly cited risk factor for exploitation and victimization as they can fall into the hands of third party exploiters or engage in survival sex, which is also a risk factor for CSEC/DMST.

Social factors also play a role as well. Poverty or material need have been shown to be a risk factors for victimization (especially so in rural, micropolitan, and metropolitan areas) as well as subsequently prevent them from leaving the exploitation. Other factors like difficulty in school (which may be related to experiencing the other risk factors here), negative mental health/view of self/psychoticism, juvenile detention involvement or delinquency, and an early age of drug/alcohol use onset (though there is discussion of whether this is a risk for exploitation in itself or if it is employed later either as a coping mechanism for the victim or a means of control for the exploiter).

The author concludes that some of these risk factors cluster together and many are interrelated as the presence of one risk factor may lead to, or generate others, and that internalized norms around violence and sex work seem key to later victimizations, however the author, because of conflicting research, could not draw a conclusion as to whether gender, specifically female, was a risk factor. She states that implications of these findings for practice include improved and targeted provision of services and CSEC/DMST prevention programs to youth who are marginalized and potentially “high risk” in their vulnerability. The review also points to the need for advocacy and policy to improve the protections for at-risk groups of children and youth. The author states policy and prevention efforts should focus on awareness and training programs for populations that interact with CSEC/ DMST individuals or youth who may be particularly vulnerable. This includes teachers, counselors, law enforcement, and health-care workers, all of whom should know the factors that increase a minor’s vulnerability, as well as knowing how to handle CSEC/DMST disclosures and provide trauma-informed care to victims.

Examining the risk factors as Franchino-Olsen did in the sexual exploitation of children finds links to sexual violence through abuse and assault through family, strangers, and third party exploiters. As these experience mold the cognitive perceptions of these victims and how they view exploitation, Bowes, Walker, Hughes, Lewis, and Hyde explore how cognitive perceptions affect the behaviors of violence perpetrators.

The Role of Violent Thinking in Violent Behavior: It’s More About Thinking Than Drinking

Bowes, Walker, Hughes, Lewis & Hyde, Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 2020

The authors discuss the development of theories on violence and aggression, from that of frustration stemming from thwarted goals leading to aggression to that of the current perspective, which incorporates a deeper cognitive base to aggressive behaviors. The cognitive process is important both in the path toward aggression and in the interpretation and appraisal of the outcome.

The authors relate how cognition plays a part in violence and aggression through a combination of hostile thoughts and scripts. Hostile thoughts refers to aggressive thinking drawn from the memory of the individual. These thoughts, and the process of rumination, means that these thoughts more frequently and more quickly come to mind; the hostile thoughts taking preeminence,. become more readily, or chronically, accessible. Scripts are less of a conscious activity and are developed through exposure and experience, The greater level and frequency of exposure to violence, the stronger the associated scripts will become. So people with a strong focus on hostile thinking are more likely to attribute a hostile intention from an ambiguous encounter and those who have been more exposed to violence, may automatically anticipate, or “short cut” to, violence being an appropriate response. These approaches to thinking are also referred to as “hostile attribution bias”. Identifying and treating problematic cognitive processes is important for achieving effective psychological interventions and sex offending research has identified and validated many methods for identifying and assessing these within the offender population. Measuring these cognitions feeds directly into the design and evaluation of sex offender treatment programs. However while measures may examine things like anger, hostility, impulsivity, and paranoia, they tend to be oriented to antisocial or criminal thinking rather than specifically to violence. The authors note the Maudsley Violence Questionnaire (MVQ) has demonstrated a robust reliability, validity, and predictive value and they utilized it in the current study which examines two factors, Machismo and Acceptance. Machismo was defined as the embarrassment of backing down from a violent confrontation, justifying violence as a means of response, and violence as being part of a man and Acceptance related to the acceptance of violence as entertainment in sports or media and the perception that violence is acceptable behavior. The authors also recognized the link between alcohol and violence and their study also uses the valid and reliable AUDIT alcohol misuse measure to explore the roles of alcohol misuse along with violent thinking on self-reported violence in an adult (non-offender) population. They hypothesized that both violent thinking and alcohol misuse would demonstrate a positive associate with self-reported violence.

808 UK college students complete the MVQ, AUDIT, and a self-reported violence scale. Levels across the violence measure were low and were re-coded into categories of nonviolent behavior to any violent behavior. The authors logistic regression analysis showed that Acceptance was not predictive of self-reported violence and while alcohol misuse was strongly correlated with self-reported violence, it was not a significant factor. Only the Machismo factor had a significant effect on both male and female self-reported violent behavior. Machismo actually explained one third of the variation in self-reported violent behavior but in the female model it accounted for only 11 percent of the variation, and surprisingly to the authors, Acceptance was not a factor with female violence as previous research had demonstrated. This along with what the gendered nature of the term macho, signals to the authors the needs for further research to identify factors in female violence, and specifically in violent cognition measures specific for females.

While Bowes et al. found that violent cognitive processes contribute to the expression of violent behavior, helping to explain sexual violence, less is known about the sexual violence perpetrated by females. Weare and Bates examine the role aggression and violence plays in female Intimate Partner Violence perpetrators in the form of sexual violence involving forced penetration.

Sexual Violence as a Form of Abuse in Men’s Experiences of Female Perpetrated Intimate Partner Violence

Weare and Bates, Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice, 2020

The authors examined a little researched areas of intimate partner violence (IPV), where the female is the perpetrator and the male is sexually victimized. They state the vast amount of literature on male perpetrated IPV in a heterosexual relationship is important and existing research has demonstrated that men can experience significant verbal and physical aggression, and emotional or psychological abuse, as well as demonstrating how such violence affects men’s physical and mental health and their relationships with their children . What is less understood, however, is men’s experiences of sexual violence within abusive relationships where the perpetrator is a woman.

The majority of academic research studies have focused on men’s sexual victimization in a same sex relationship. In 2018, the most recent National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey indicated that in the U.S., 8.2% of men experienced ‘contact sexual violence’ (a term which includes rape, forced-to-penetrate cases, sexual coercion, and/or unwanted sexual contact) from an intimate partner during their lifetime while a 2018 crime survey in the UK found that 39% of men reported experiencing rape or assault by penetration (including attempts) from a partner or ex-partner. While in terms of academic research, the majority of studies have explored men’s sexual victimization in the context of same-sex relationships. One of the only studies to have specifically explored the experiences of men who have been subjected to sexual aggression from a female partner within an abusive relationship was a 2016 report that found over half of the 611 U.S. men in their sample had experienced some form of sexual aggression within their relationship, with 28% having experienced severe sexual aggression that involved threats or force to engage in vaginal, oral, or anal sex.

Weare and Bates conducted two UK studies, the first, a qualitative survey of 161 men centered around their experiences in female perpetrated IPV, for example, the aggression and violence experienced, the control of personal freedom and the effects on relationships with friends and family. The second, a mixed methods survey of 154 men involved their most recent experiences about being forced-to-penetrate (FTP) women including the context of the occurrence, physical and mental impacts, and the police and legal processes. The authors note the term FTP is used as the UK does not consider this type of sexual violence as rape. From these surveys, responses that indicate both FTP and IPV were pulled for further analysis and these 41 responses who experienced both types of abuse (13% of the total respondents to both surveys) were thematically analyzed for similarities and overarching themes.

Results show these men suffered a wide range of abuse beside sexual violence to include, physical violence and abuse, emotional and financial abuse, and coercive and controlling behaviors. Some occurred in isolation to one another, where physical violence wouldn’t necessarily lead to sexual violence, or coercive and controlling (e.g. belittling or monitoring) behavior occurred independently of other forms of abuse. However, they did see two areas where sexual violence was linked to other forms of abuse: in physical violence/force and coercive and controlling behaviors. Physical violence and force typically occurred preceding or during the sexual violence involving, beating, choking, and restraint, typically for refusing to comply with sexual demands. Some reported this occurred during vulnerable states like while intoxicated or while asleep.

Women’s coercive and controlling behavior was linked to this sexual violence as men saw the sexual assaults as a form of control and manipulation, similar to other controlling behavior in the relationship. Women decided the parameters of the sexual relationship, including forcing men to have unprotected sex in attempts to get pregnant, and the men were subjected to violence or emotional abuse in order to get them to comply. Some men even reported that if they were noncompliant, their partner would purposely stir up tension in the family in order to coerce her partner into compliance.

The authors hoped to challenge the stereotypes around men’s victimization (such as “women can’t force a man to have sex”) by demonstrating the range of abusive behavior experienced by men and that besides other forms of IPV that men can suffer sexual violence and victimization as well. In doing so they hoped for improving practitioners’ responses to male victims of female perpetrated domestic and sexual violence and increasing knowledge in the field of IPV. Much of the existing literature around men’s victimization has focused on women’s use of physical violence within the relationship, as well as highlighting women’s use of coercive and controlling behaviors. However, only a small amount of research has explored the range of abuse experienced by men and very little has considered the possibility of sexual violence occurring in this context. Their analysis points to relationships existing between the different forms of abuse experienced by men. It also provides evidence of other forms of abuse forming part of men’s sexual victimization, as well as being independent of this but forming part of a wider pattern of abuse within the relationship. Establishing this pattern can also provide useful in the prosecution of female perpetrated sexual assault case as evidence of physical violence and coercive and controlling behavior may help juries overcome stereotypes around male sexual victimization.

As Weare and Bates bring attention to forced penetration as part of a larger component of sexual violence, and its link to other features in intimate partner violence, Anderson, Goodman and Thimm take a deeper look in to the experiences of men victimized by forced penetration and ways to better identify and assess the occurrences.

The Assessment of Forced Penetration: A Necessary and Further Step Toward Understanding Men’s Sexual Victimization and Women’s Perpetration

Anderson, Goodman, and Thimm, Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice, 2020

The authors discuss that most sexual violence research has focused on men as perpetrators and women as victims. However, recent CDC data revealed that one in five men in the U.S. experience sexual victimization as well. Recent data on college age men suggest higher rates-28 to 50%. A unique form of sexual victimization that often goes undiscussed and, therefore, under-assessed is that of being forced to penetrate another person (i.e., forced penetration). Because forced penetration is a relatively new addition to the definition of rape, little research has been done on the subject. Sparse data does indicate that the majority of perpetrators in forced penetration cases are female. There is a lack of assessment tools available that can identify forced penetration cases and measurement strategies have varied widely. Until 2012, the FBI held a gender biased position in the definition of rape and the bias in research has also tended to frame questionnaires in a gendered manner that typically frames the male as perpetrator. Questionnaires less specific about gendered behavior like “forced you to have sex” may encompass instances of forced penetration but yet are not specific enough to examine the prevalence of those incidence. The authors state that despite some gender neutral questionnaires such as the Revised Conflict Tactics Scales and Post-Refusal Persistence Scale-Victimization, which do reveal higher rates of sexual victimization for men, they are unaware of any questionnaires that specifically address forced penetration.

The author’s goal of the study was to improve the understanding of men’s experience in this type of victimization by designing and testing new methods to assess this type of behavior. They developed new items for the Sexual Experiences Survey–Short Form Victimization (SES-SFV and Sexual Experiences Survey–Short Form Perpetrator (SES-SFP) questionnaires that more specifically addressed being forced or coerced into penetrating another person. The authors included all genders (even though some data indicated women being forced to penetrate another woman is very rare, gender was included so as to better understand any gender differences in this behavior) and a variety of racial, ethnic, and sexual orientations in the 1,456 college student and 293 American MTurk samples, The authors assessed the utility of the items by examining how many cases of sexual victimization were identified and validity of the new items by examining correlation with other SES-SFV items, hypothesizing the would find good evidence of such in the SES-SFV and SES-SFP. The authors wanted to document the rate of forced penetration victimization in two high-risk samples (college students) with the SES-SFV, administer the SES-SFP to a third sample of MTurk workers and investigate whether assessing forced penetration results in higher prevalence rates by expanding the scope of cases identified and evaluate which type of forced penetration (completed vaginal, completed anal, attempted anal) is most common.

Their results showed that in the first two samples, 22 % of men and approximately 50% of women reported some type of sexual victimization and in the third sample 12% of men and 10% of women reported some type of sexual perpetration. When they examined the prevalence of forced penetration they found the rate varied between 5 and 11 % between the two victimization samples. In the first victimization sample 7.4 percent of the total male sample and 33.8% of victimized men having experienced forced penetration, while in the second victimization sample, 13.1% of the total male sample and 58.7% of victimized males experienced forced penetration. While men were more likely than women to have experienced forced penetration in the first sample there was no significant difference between the sexes in the second sample. The new survey items did show evidence of validity and were somewhat effective in discovering unique cases of sexual victimization compared to the old questionnaires, discovering what would have been 13 undiscovered cases of victimization among the two samples; all, with the exception of one heterosexual woman, were heterosexual men. The types of forced penetration varied in prevalence between the two SES-SFV samples. In Sample 1, considering all participants, completed vaginal was the most frequent type of forced penetration reported, followed by attempted anal and completed anal forced penetration. In Sample 2, attempted anal was the most prevalent, followed by completed vaginal and completed anal (n = 24), which were both being reported at similar rates. Overall, completed vaginal was the most common type of forced penetration reported by college men whereas attempted anal was the most common type reported by college women.

The characteristics of those victimized by being forced to penetrate bore both some similarities and differences. In Sample One, of the 30 participants having experienced forced penetration 73% (n=22) were male, of which 91% were heterosexual. Men who experienced forced penetrations reported significantly higher female perpetration than those who experienced other forms of sexual victimization. In Sample Two there was no significant difference in the gender of the perpetrators for men, but for female victims they were more likely to report female perpetrators. In both samples men who were forced to engage in penetration were more likely to report romantic partner perpetrators than those men who suffered other forms of sexual victimization.

In assessing perpetration, the authors second study found that the rate of endorsing forced perpetration at 3.8% (n=11), with 10 of them being female (8 heterosexuals) and one gender queer. Most (72.72%) reported completed vaginal, with 81.8% reporting attempted vaginal along with 45.5% reporting both completed and attempted anal forced penetration. In total, one third of those who endorsed any kind of sexual victimization perpetration also reported forcing someone to penetrate them. The new items questionnaire, in comparison to the traditional SES-SFP, however only uncovered one other unique case of perpetration by a heterosexual female. While the new iteration of the SES-SFP demonstrated validity there was a greater amount of missing data regarding answers to forced penetration questions in the SES-SFP perpetrator questionnaire compared to the SES-SFV victimization questionnaire.

The authors note their studies indicate higher prevalence rates for male victims of forced penetration than evidenced by previous research and that by not identifying and assessing forced penetration, the number of men experiencing sexual victimization and violence would be underestimated. This also applies to the underestimation of female perpetrators of forced penetrations. In total, their data suggests forced penetration is a dramatically under-recognized form of sexual victimization affecting heterosexual men that is mostly perpetrated by heterosexual women, most often in the context of a romantic relationship. One third of men sexually victimized experienced being forced to penetrate someone. They state this underscores how problematic it is that currently, there are no standardized measures of sexual victimization that assess forced penetration.

In conclusion, they strongly recommend that clinical service providers inquire about forced penetration and that health and legal professionals advocate for policy change to better recognize this form of sexual victimization as both men’s sexual victimization and women’s sexual perpetration is woefully under-researched and in need of further scrutiny to reduce the public health burden of sexual violence.

While the previous research has examined the connections of sexual violence to youth risk factors, cognitive perceptions of violence, physical and mental health difficulties, intimate partner violence, and a view of women as a source of violence, Gang, Loffl, Naylor and Kirkman consider whether a restorative justice approach is appropriate in addressing sexual and family violence and the needs of the victims and perpetrators, but find more questions than answers.

A Call for Evaluation of Restorative Justice Programs

Gang, Loffl, Naylor, and Kirkman, Trauma, Violence, and Abuse, 2019

The authors consider that restorative justice as a response to sexual violence continues to be subject to significant criticism. They define “restorative justice” as a system that repairs the harm and ruptured social bonds caused by crime, specifically the relationships between crime victims, offenders, and society. This is achieved by the perpetrator explicitly, or implicitly, admitting responsibility for the crime and the process allows parties to resolve collectively how to deal with the aftermath of the offence and its implications for the future. The use of restorative justice in the context of sexual or family violence has been questioned for a number of reasons as it would potentially represent a weaker societal response to sexual assault. There are fears that adult perpetrators will vacate the traditional criminal justice settings for private ones with little accountability, and provided with opportunities to escape punishment, doubts that restorative justice will prevent re-traumatization if the process fails to address the power imbalance underpinning sexual and family violence, and concerns that if a goal of the process is to change an entrenched pattern of behavior, substantial change is unlikely after the usual single restorative justice conference. And while scholars argue for or against the use of restorative justice for sexual and family violence without nominating specifics of the program, the arguments tend to be made from a strictly academic position without the benefit of empirical evidence.

The authors sought to examine the evidence that existed regarding the evaluation of restorative justice in sexual or family violence cases by conducting a systematic review of peer-reviewed literature. On six academic journal databases, using search terms like, “restorative justice”, “victim offender mediation” and “sexual assault”, their initial title search reduced the bulk of articles down to 97 however, after an abstract review, that number dropped to six. Of those six, five were eliminated because they didn’t include the requisite focus on sexual or family violence by a sample made up of at least 75% of those cases, or they did not include a program evaluation.

The one study, which reported on a 2014 evaluation of the Arizona program Project RESTORE, was based on 22 cases. The program was found to decrease the rates of diagnosed post-traumatic stress disorder in survivor victims, most participants agreed or strongly agreed that their preparation for the conference achieved its intended goals, and all survivor victims who attended their conference were satisfied with the conference. The authors do note that these results are not generalizable, having a small sample only referred to the program by prosecutors, and an unusually high number of male survivor victims. The authors report being shocked and disappointed at the paucity of research regarding the effectiveness of restorative justice in sexual and family violence cases considering that it has been used in those situations for decades and has been argued that restorative justice for sexual and family violence may be a justice option with potential to be more responsive to the needs of survivors (and perhaps perpetrators) than the criminal justice system. The authors conclude that without critically reviewed evidence, theoretical and practical problems cannot be resolved and important questions are left unanswered, which include: Are restorative justice programs being appropriately implemented? Are their aims specified and being met? Which elements of restorative justice will create the best outcomes for victims? How and when will victims be best placed to engage in restorative justice? Which kinds of participants would derive significant benefit from restorative justice and for which offenses? Can sexual harms that are not criminalized in that jurisdiction be included? Which (if any) elements of programs are effective in or detrimental to addressing sexual and family violence?

They state that without evaluations that are available for systematic review, there is a lack of a robust body of evidence to complement other empirical research and to demonstrate whether restorative justice is an effective intervention for sexual and family violence. Thus, the use of restorative justice for sexual, family, and other gendered violence remains controversial as there is a lack of evidence to support any point of view. It is important that policy makers and program designers should be able to draw on a suite of evidence to justify funding these programs and to design them to ensure that program aims are both feasible and likely to be achieved.

Research Briefs

Tapes, Transcripts and Trials: The Routine Contamination of Police Interview Evidence

Haworth, The International Journal of Evidence & Proof, 2018

Haworth contends that the way police interviews are conducted, recorded, transcribed, and then used as evidence in court fundamentally alters the original content and meaning of the interview. This contaminated version, when used in court, is often to reinforce or contradict oral testimony based on the exact wording of the transcript. With the reliance of the prosecution on the written record, this contaminated evidence could influence jurors inappropriately or change the possible outcome of a case. Haworth’s UK study, where she compares and analyzes official police transcripts with her own transcripts, as well as a high profile case where both full audio recordings of the interview and the official transcript were made available, examines four areas common to the process of interview production that will result in errors in meaning or content; audibility, transcription, editing, and courtroom presentation.

Haworth notes that the original context of the interview can never fully be captured; the surroundings, environment, emotional content, and body language cues cannot really be articulated in an audio recording and properly portraying spoken language in a written format can be challenging. Editing for, and the actual production of, the transcript can also omit valuable information.

Audio recordings may be of overall poor quality, with some departments still using cassette recording equipment, and just through circumstances of the interview, some recorded portions may be inaudible. Haworth notes it is rare that transcripts indicate inaudible portions of the recording and references research where transcribers may just insert “what they thought they heard” in such instances, resulting in errors. Haworth also notes that some countries don’t even bother with audio recordings, relying instead on the interviewer recall in writing the interview summary, while some locations don’t provide an actual transcript but a monologue in first or third person that presents a synopsis of the interviewees’ information rather than a back and forth exchange.

The transcription process also is likely not to include the para and extralinguistic features people utilize in interpreting meaning in face to face interactions. Features like intonation, emphasis, breathiness, facial expressions, and body and head movements all provide details in face to face communication that help the viewer interpret truthfulness, emotions, and cognitive processes in the speaker but are typically lost in producing a transcription. The transcription process is also prone to “correcting” spoken word by omitting or changing speaking features like false starts, stammering, inarticulations, repetition, interruptions, and correcting sentence structure, syntax, and grammar to improve readability. However, she notes research has shown this correction is typically used for lawyers and police officers but not for witnesses and suspects. The author’s interviews with transcription clerks in her study indicate there is no transcription training and no formalization in transcribing these features, with each transcriber developing there own personal style to the transcription process. But Haworth notes that pauses convey important meaning in communication which isn’t imparted to the reader or listener. Non-response to questions were also handled differently with some transcribers, indicating everything from no indication in the transcript to transcriptions like “no comment” “no audible reply”, “no response”, “defendant remained silent”, or “defendant refused to answer” and each of the indicators present a slightly different interpretation of the suspects’ reaction following questions.

The transcription process of a police interview also involves substantial editing and typically produces a summary, (for example, just a simple text statement indicating that the suspect was informed about the charges or circumstances and not transcribing the actual interaction) with only certain parts fully transcribed to ease time and resource costs. These civilian employees of the police department were given guidance sheets on different offenses so they knew what particular points or elements of the crime, known as “points to prove”, to focus on instead of full transcription. For example, in regards to theft, points to prove would involve showing dishonesty, appropriation, property, that belonged to another, with intent to permanently deprive. However this relies upon the individual transcribers being knowledgeable enough determine what is relevant enough to be transcribed. This transcription process is also geared toward prosecution. There is no indication that transcribers were given guidance to include full transcription in areas regarding duress, legal justifications, or exculpatory admissions. In summarizing interactions, transcribers can also inadvertently introduce value judgments or interpretations based on their perspective. For example, in summarizing an interaction transcribers can indicate behavioral motivations that are just assumed but not actually stated, or fail to transcribe communication indicating the detailed information and emotional content of responses that removes the tone and attitude of an interaction.

The transcript is typical the only evidence of the interview used in court as opposed to the audio recording of the interview. This evidence presentation system is further contaminated as transcripts are not provided to the jurors but are typically presented orally by prosecutors and police witnesses, thus adding another layer of interpretation to a document that had already gone through interpretive changes. This oral presentation allows for the presenter to produce their own intonation, emotion, inflections, and pauses, and either purposely, or inadvertently, present this evidence with a bias toward producing a conviction. Even when jurors are provided with a copy they are likely to be highly influenced by the oral court presentation which may be biased toward the prosecution. Haworth noted in a particularly high-profile case, that punctuation errors in transcription can change the meaning of the words related orally and that mistakes in reading the transcript aloud or prosecutors attempts to “correctly” use the right intonation or emphasis change the meaning of the transcript presented.

To eliminate or mitigate these problems, Haworth suggests that departments move to digital audio recording as well as incorporate video recording to capture the all important context. She also suggests, for use in legal purposes, the audio recording should be preferentially referred to over the transcript. The transcription process should be standardized with transcription marks indicating emphasis, the length of a pause, and interruption notations. Standardized training in transcription and understanding spoken and written word features is also recommend as is ongoing training in regard to legal changes and how if may affect their transcription process. These recommendation will bolster the evidentiary value of transcripts for their use in legal proceedings by providing more accurate and useful evidence.

Police Use of Force and Injury: Multilevel Predictors of Physical Harm to Subjects and Officers

Hickman, Strote, Scales, Parkin, & Collins, Police Quarterly, 2020

With closer scrutiny on police use of force, the authors sought to make determinations on the factors that lead to increased likelihood of injury to subjects and officers in police/subject encounters at an individual and agency level. They recognize that the police in order to do their job must have the ability to use coercive force in order to gain compliance or effect arrests and that with the use of weapons, injury to either subject or officer, will be inevitable in some of the encounters.

The authors hypothesized that demographically, females and Blacks will have a lower likelihood of injury and that as age increased for subjects their risk of injury will increase, but as officer age increases, their risk of injury will decrease. They also hypothesized that when mental illness or drugs/alcohol were involved, the likelihood of injury to both officer and subject will be higher. Resistance and weapon use will likely increase injury to subjects but not officers but the greater numbers of officers on scene increase the risk of injury to both subjects and officers. The duration of the incident is also known to be related to injury, and they anticipate the longer force is used, the likelihood of injury to both subjects and officers will also increase. The authors also hypothesized that officer knowledge of more serious underlying offenses prior to the use of force, greater threats to officers/self/others, higher levels of subject resistance, warrants, and both attempted and actual flight, will result in higher likelihoods of injury to both subjects and officers. The authors also consider exploratory hypotheses that agency size and type may show some variation as well as the anecdotal hypotheses that agency and state variation on their training for use of force, and emphasis on different or preferred types of force, may also account for variation.

The authors used the Police Force Analysis System and Network, a regional database of law enforcement incident reports and officer narratives. It has served as a police management tool to assess trends and patterns in use of force as well as identify high-risk officers. The analysis utilized 10,564 subject-incidents drawn from 81 agencies across eight states. Most were small to medium municipal agencies serving small to medium towns. Two thirds were from Washington, a fifth from Wisconsin, as well as some from California and a few other states. Their analyses denoted both descriptive statistics as well as using multivariate logistic regression to examine the incidence and risk of injury to subjects and officers.

Across all agencies and incidents, in use of force incidents, subjects were injured 52% of the time and officers were injured 16% of the time, similar to previous research rates. The large majority of subject injuries were minor with, cuts, scrape, bruises, punctures, and Taser probes making up 79% of the injuries while gun and knife wounds and fatalities made up only .7% each of the injuries. 49% received hospital treatment and 35% were treated at the scene, while 16% refused or not offered treatment. While the race of subjects in use of force incidents involved 44% White, 27% Black and 22% Hispanic, as well as other races, the injury rate ranged from 47.5% for Blacks and 50% for Whites to 57% for Hispanics and higher than 60% for Asians and Native Americans.

Injury rates were also higher for subjects and officers if mental illness, drugs/alcohol, prior knowledge of past incidents, and warrants were involved. The severity or seriousness of the investigated offense was also positively correlated with injury rates for subject ranging from 35% to 65% while officer risk was mixed with the lowest rate for a violent offense with a weapon at 13% to the highest for disorderly conduct/drugs/trespassing at 18%. The risk of subject injury increased with severity of the threat the subject presented, ranging from verbal threat (39%) to deadly weapon (68%) but officer injury rates were also mixed with the lowest rate involving deadly weapon (11%) but the highest rate involving assault or self-harm, or less than lethal weapons (22%). The range of subject resistance to officers was also correlated with subject injury rates from 37% with no resistance to 75% to those who resist with a deadly weapon. Officer injury rates remained low in all but the top resistance categories with the highest in active physical resistance (31%) and less than lethal weapon (34%). Both attempted and actual flight from officers showed higher rates of injuries for both subjects, 49% and 59% respectively, and officers, 19% and 17% respectively

The greater the number of force sequences, or duration of the incident, also increased injury rates for both officers and subjects. Officer force factor (subject resistance level subtracted from officer force use) indicates that when resistance and officer force are equal (force factor=zero), subject injury rates were low but increased as force factor increased. Officer injuries rates decreased with higher force factors in use. However when force factors are negative, with subject resistance greater than officer force, risks of injury to both officers and subjects are increased. Weapons used is also indicated in injury risk. Two thirds of incidents were physical force only and 12% involved only a weapon. Physical force presented the lowest risk of injury for subjects while incidents that involved a weapon resulted in 75% of subjects injured. For officers, while injury rates were lowest when using a weapon only (3%) injuries rates increased to 15% when using physical force and were highest at 25% when using both physical force and a weapon. Tactics also affected injuries with subjects and officers receiving the most injuries during strikes, lateral neck restraints and wrestling. The risk of injury for subjects was high with impact weapons, like batons, being associated with a 71% injury rate and canines with a 97.5% injury rate, though officer injury rate was high with baton use and low with canines.

Injury rates for officers and subjects were both associated with agency size and jurisdiction size , with risk of injury increasing as the size increases. Rates for injuries of both subjects and officers was slightly higher in Sheriff’s Departments compared to municipal agencies. The authors, while noting the examination of regional differences was limited, found that Midwestern agencies (18, primarily Wisconsin) had lower subject and officer injury rates (20.5% and 10.5% respectively) than non-Midwestern agencies (63) rates (59 and 17 percent respectively).

The authors’ multivariate regression analyses examined both subject injury and officer injury models. The subject injury model predicted lower rates of injuries for female (compared to males) and Blacks (compared to Whites), while increasing age increases the risk of injury. While the level of threat presented was not significantly associated with risk of injury, level of resistance was, and showed an 188% odds increase in subject injury when a deadly weapon is involved, and a 132% odds increase when active physical resistance is used. Actual flight from officers also raised the odds of subject injury by 22%. Officer use of a weapon had a 342% odds risk increase for subject injury while those involving a weapon and physical force only increased the odds 181%. Each additional sequence (or length of force incident ) increased the risk of injury, so minimizing the length of incident will decrease injuries. However, they also found that officers’ increased level of force, which could end the incident more quickly, was also associated with increased subject injury. Subject injury odds were also greater in larger agencies’ but a decrease in odds if the agency is Midwestern.

For the officer injury model, demographics indicated females subjects and Asian and Native American were associated with decreased risk of officer injury, and risk of officer injury decreased with increase in subject age. While drug/trespass/disorderly crimes were significantly related to a 30 percent increase in officer injury odds, none of the threat or resistance levels were significantly related to officer injury odds. However attempted and actual flight significantly increased the odds of officer injury by 26 and 47 percent, respectively. Force incidents in which an officer only used a weapon was associated with a 78% decreased odds of officer injury as well as those involving alcohol or drugs. Duration and force factors were similar to subject injury analysis where decreased duration and higher force factors by officers were significantly associated with a decrease in odds of officer injury. Officer injuries were less likely in midsized agencies compared to small agencies and if the agency is Midwestern, the odds of officer injuries is 36% lower than in non-Midwestern agencies. The authors suggest that exploratory analysis of tactics used may contribute to additional knowledge on officer and subject injury as weapon use was not as common in Wisconsin agencies. The authors suggest that agencies could adopt more standardized training on use of force but ultimately the use of force will reflect community standards. Further research could focus on the systematic evaluation of training methods as well as other more specific incident variables that may also influence subject and officer injury outcomes.

Ambush Killings of the Police, 1970–2018: A Longitudinal Examination of the “War on Cops” Debate,

White, Police Quarterly, 2020

The author notes that a few high profile ambush attacks on the police in recent years, which have coincided with high profile deaths of minority suspects in police encounters, have led some observers to conclude there is a war on the police. He notes that although recent research shows significant declines in felonious killings of police officers since 1990, data from the FBI indicate an increasing percentage of those deaths are classified as ambush killings which the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) describes by four characteristics: “an element of surprise; concealment of the assailant, their intentions, or weapon; suddenness of the attack; and a lack of provocation”. IACP data indicates that from 1990 to 2012, the proportion of ambush killings increased by 33%. Other research also indicates increases in ambushes, for example, in 2016, ambush attacks against police reached a 10-year high. The research also indicates varied motivation for attacks on police, from revenge for a perceived transgression to attacks that are designed to avoid arrest or facilitate escape. However, the “war on cops” thesis implies a very specific motivation for an ambush: hatred of police and/or desire to seek vengeance in response to police killings of citizens. They authors, utilizing data from the Officer Down Memorial site, examined felonious killings from 1970 to 2018 (n=3,379) and analyzed 913 ambush style attacks, to determine if they’re has been any trends in these killings. In a time series analysis, they examine two types of ambush; one (pre-encounter, n=206) making up 6.1% of all officer killings, where officers had no knowledge of the suspect prior to the attack, had no opportunity to anticipate the attack, and weren’t actively engaged in “police business (such as sitting in a car eating lunch or writing a report): and the other (anticipation, n=707) making up 20.9% of all officer killings, where officers were responding to a call or other police business and had a general knowledge of the suspect but no contact with him prior to the incident (for example searching an area for a suspicious person when the officer is surprise attacked). These trends were also compared to two types of felonious non-ambush killings of officers, one where an officer is attacked in the very initial stages of contact with a suspect, which made up 22% of all officer killings (n=745), and a second which makes up 50.9% of all officer killings, where the attack comes after the initial contact stage, for example during an interview with a subject (n=1,721). The authors also examined if the rate has changed significantly since 2013 to determine if there is support for the war on cops contention. Rates were standardized to ambushes per 100,000 officers to account for changes in officer population fluctuations and the quasi-experimental time series used to points of intervention. July 2013, date of the formation of Black Lives Matter following the acquittal of George Zimmerman in the Trayvon Martin case and August 2014, the month that Michael Brown was killed in Ferguson, MO and BLM was prominent in the media. (Author’s note: Both relatively early occurrences in the current focus on police brutality and racial justice).

The authors note that in 1970, anticipation ambushes rates (12 per 100k officers) were more than three times higher than that of pre-encounter but through the ’70’s and ’80’s anticipation ambushes dropped rapidly to between 1 and 2 officers per 100K and pre-encounter ambushes dropped as well from a high of almost 3 officers per 100k, to one and sometimes less than one officer per 100k through the ’90’s and beyond. While this rate of decline was statistically significant, the authors also found two 20 year high spikes in both 2011 and 2016 for anticipation ambushes and spikes in excess of 1997 rates in 2002, 2014, and 2016 for pre-encounter ambushes. Initial entry, which in general had a lower rate than information stage attacks, and information stage attacks showed a similar trend with sharp drops through the ’70’s and ’80’s, declining 79 to 88 percent. Like ambushes, there were also spikes relative to 1997. In 2005 and 2011 there were spikes in early stage attacks and spikes in 2002, 2004, 2008 and 2017 from later stage attacks, though there was also a sharp decline in 2013. The rates of the declines were also statistically significant. Examining the time series for the two types of ambushes separately and combined, neither showed any significant increases after 2013, indicating that neither the formation of Black Lives Matter or the death of Michael Brown had any effect on police ambushes. Nor is there support for a war on cops based on an overall downward trend. However, eight of the last 20 years studied showed spikes in excessive of the overall decline shown in 1997. These spikes over the period 2009 to 2013 and 2014 toward 2018 accounted for a 25% increase in pre-encounter ambushes, a 9% increase in anticipation ambushes and a 22% increase in later stage attacks. While the downward trend doesn’t suggest a chronic problem, spikes do warrant observation as they can predict the emergence of a chronic problem.

The authors do note limitations in the study include a lack of known motivation for the attacks, such as revenge, which would inform the hypothesis of a “war on cops”. Also, since non-fatal injuries were not included in the study, changes in rates of officer killing may also be a function of advancements in emergency medical response and treatment, police training, and equipment like body armor for officers and may mask increased rates of potentially deadly attacks on officers. (Author’s note: The study also didn’t examine non-injurious attacks on officers. For example, in 2020, the number of officers in Chicago who were shot doubled compared to 2019 but the number officers shot at increased three times, which also may be masking the effect of an increase in attacks on officers).

Police Ethics and Integrity: Keeping the ‘Blue Code’ of Silence

Westmarland and Conway, International Journal of Police Science and Management, 2020

The authors examined police ethics and integrity within a UK police force with a questionnaire presenting ten hypothetical ethical dilemma scenarios. An Us vs Them mentality, the blue code” and the “code of silence” as portrayed in other research suggests that police misconduct may be promoted or go unreported as officers seek to protect their own.. Other research has examined this issue and the current study includes not only sworn police officers but police community support officers, akin to US Community Service Officers, and police support staff. The authors analyzed 1,509 responses from a large non-metropolitan police organization that had both urban and rural policing areas. The survey asked respondents what offenses they found most serious as well as how likely they were to report various types of misdemeanors, what influenced their decision to do so, and their attitudes about reporting offenses. Officers were presented with ethically problematic policing behavior in ten scenarios and, on a 5 point scale, asked to rated them in seriousness and how likely they were to report the behavior, with some scenarios querying whether the officer believed it was against departmental policy and how the officer would go about reporting the offense. Officers were also asked how they felt working with a whistle blower and the degree of confidence in the department’s anonymous messenger system.

Four of the scenarios were regarded as only minor infringements (running a side business unrelated to police work, taking reportedly legal bodybuilding supplements, addressing a disturbance at a party for police staff, and an investigating officer having a romantic relationship with a former crime victim) and were very likely to go unreported, likely because they involved off premise and off duty behavior. Two scenarios were considered major infringements, one involving an officer keeping an expensive watch that was inadvertently received by him, and the other involved an officer taking a sum of cash from a criminal during a search. In regards to the watch, while 85% felt that it was a serious or very serious infringement fewer than half of the respondents stated they would be highly likely to report it, with the authors postulating that keeping the watch may not necessarily be perceived as theft. However, when it came to a clear issue of theft in taking cash from a suspect, 97% responded it was a very serious infringements with 95% of respondents indicating they would be highly likely to report it. Some of the other scenarios also showed some disjuncture between the stated serious and likelihood of reporting. While accessing confidential police data for personal use was considered at the highest level of seriousness by 83% of respondents, only 69% reported they would be highly likely to report the infringement. This was the largest gap evidenced between seriousness levels and other scenarios had notable gaps as well. Witnessing sexual harassment among co-workers was judged as serious to very serious by 93% of respondents though 85% indicated they would be prepared to or likely to report the incident, with a number of responses wanting to gain more information about what they witnessed before reporting. However, opinions were split on the appropriateness of engaging in a romantic relationship with a crime victim by the investigating officer with 39% saying it was acceptable, 26% saying it was inacceptable, while 34% were unsure. While the average response as to whether they would report it was “not very likely”, 40% said they were unlikely to report and only 11% said they were highly likely to report the relationship. Two of the scenarios were regarded as potentially harmful by the researchers, applying extra physical force to a captured fleeing suspect and covering for an off duty officer driving drunk and accordingly, officers viewed these scenarios as very serious (83 and 88 percent respectively) as well most officers being very likely to report the incidents (74 and 77 percent respectively).

The researchers also explored officers’ attitudes about working with whistleblowers and the anonymous messaging system. In regards to the whistleblower question, respondents had the options of choosing more than one response and while some officers had reservation about not wanting to work with the officer, or feeling they couldn’t trust the officer, 42% of officers said they would be on guard around the officer. However two thirds of respondents indicated they would have no reservations working with a whistleblower resulting in some difficulty reconciling officers who both have no reservations about working with a whistle blower, yet feeling they needed to be on guard, or would be mistrustful. The authors suggest that is suggestive of officers commitment to “adhere to formal rules, regulations and ethical principles, while simultaneously recognizing the existence of normative standards which may technically qualify as an infringement”. Confidence in the anonymous messaging system was not high, with respondents’ confidence split mostly evenly between the five levels of confidence, with 17% expressing no confidence to 18% being highly confident with a number of respondents questioning how it could maintain anonymity.

The authors conclude that while research does provide indications of in-group secrecy and solidarity, other research indicates that while new recruits value teamwork and comradeship, the code of silence has been overwritten by the “code of self-protection”. As departments become more accountable to the public and risk aversive, officers fear doing the “wrong thing” more than self-isolation that might come with whistleblowing. The authors’ results indicate that there is some evidence of the blue code with the average gap between level of seriousness and likelihood of reporting at about 10 points, though one departure from this was the high level of very serious assessment of accessing police data but the lower likelihood of reporting it. The authors also note however, that the excessive force and DUI scenarios, which were used in previous research in 2005, showed an over 20% increase in the “highly likely to report” category for both scenarios, suggesting a move toward doing the “right thing” over maintaining a blue code of silence.

A Sign of the Crimes: Examining Officers’ Identification of, and Arrest for, Stalking in Domestic Violence Complaints

Brady, Reyns, & Dreke, Police Quarterly, 2020

The authors state that despite stalking as a risk factor for intimate partner homicide, little research has explored the officer decision making process in domestic violence (DV) complaints that involve stalking. Some research on domestic violence indicates that officers may minimize stalking behavior or fail to recognize stalking behavior as actual stalking. Officers have indicated the complexity of the statues, and the need to establish a pattern of behavior that elicits an emotional reaction from the victim, can make investigation and prosecution difficult. To examine the issue, the authors utilize a focal concerns perspective. Accordingly, “criminal justice actors weigh three main considerations when faced with a decision—the blameworthiness of the offender, protection of the community, and any practical constraints or consequences associated with different courses of action or inaction… theoretically, greater criminal justice action (e.g., arrest, charging, sentencing) is positively related to blameworthiness and the need to protect the community, whereas the effects of practical constraints and consequences will vary depending on the organization and how the concept is operationalized”.

The authors’ study examined five years’ worth (230 cases) of intimate partner complaints that met the legal standard of stalking where officers either did or did not identify stalking behaviors in domestic violence complaints, in order to explore legal and extralegal factors in officers’ decisions to arrest suspects for intimate partner stalking. The authors examined three research questions; to what extent are suspects arrested for stalking in DV complaints, which legal and extralegal factors figure into officers’ identification of stalking behavior in DV complaints, and which of those factors are associated with officers making an arrest versus writing an incident report.

Outcome variables included whether officers acknowledged stalking behavior that is, whether the officer indicated that stalking was an observed offense citied in the incident reports or whether the officer articulated stalking behavior but did not identify a specific charge of stalking in the incident report and whether, in the cases where stalking was cited in the incident report, an arrest was made or if only an incident report was made. For the independent variables, in order to examine the focal concerns perspective, the authors operationalized blameworthiness as whether the victim was threatened, total number of offenses articulated in the report, and whether the suspect had violated an active protection order. Community protection (as gauged on the dangerousness to community or victims) was operationalized as whether the subject had been incarcerated, whether they had committed previous physical assaults, and whether the location of the incident was private or public. Practical constraints and consequences included six variables: whether there had been prior police responses involving the parties, whether there was physical evidence, the presence of witnesses, whether the victim or someone else contacted police, whether the victim exhibited fear, and whether the victim was cooperative. The authors also examined the perceptual shorthand used by officers, the cognitive schemas of credibility, dangerousness, cooperation, and risk of recidivism that come from contact with other officers and work experiences that may be influenced by the current relationship status of the parties, age, race, and ethnicity.

Results showed that officers identified stalking behaviors in less than half of DV complaints reported to RI police departments from 2001 to 2005. Of the 94 police-identified stalking cases, however, the majority resulted in an arrest (61.7%). Of the 141 total cases that resulted in an arrest (61.3%), 41.1% were specifically for stalking and 58.9% were for a non-stalking DV-related offense, meaning stalking arrests accounted for 25.2% of all DV cases reported. Officers were significantly more likely to identify stalking behaviors if subjects had committed a greater number of offenses, if the incident occurred in public and if there had been history of prior police responses involving the parties. Officers were significantly more likely to not specifically identify stalking behavior (classifying the incident as a non-stalking DV complaint) when the victim was the complainant, was threatened, or reported prior physical assault by the subject. The logistic regression model isolated the key factors in officer decision-making. Incidents that occurred in public versus a private location were nearly 4 times more likely to be identified. Officers were also two times more likely to identify stalking behaviors if the suspect had committed multiple offense and almost three times more likely if there were prior police responses to previous complaints. Even though officers articulated stalking behavior in the report itself, officers were significantly more likely to classify incidents as a non-stalking DV-related offense when the suspect threatened the victim (OR .41) or the victim had alleged prior physical assaults by the suspect (OR .39). None of the other factors such as the suspect’s relationship to the victim, age, race, prior criminal history, victim fear, who called the police, the availability of witnesses, physical evidence, victim fear, and the presence of an active protection order significantly influenced officers’ identification of stalking. The logistic regression model also examined the significant variables affecting officers decision to arrest versus generate a report in cases they identified as involving stalking but the only factor that had a significant influence on that decision was whether the victim is deemed cooperative by submitting a written statement. No other independent or demographic variable influenced the decision to arrest.

The authors discuss that the results may explain some officer decision-making processes. In some ways, officers may treat stalking as an “add-on” offense, something to be added when multiple charges are present but not warranting a sole charge, and may be contingent on the other two factors; public incident and prior police involvement as this may signal the relentlessness of the subject which supports the need to establish a pattern of behavior, and public pursuit may provide the opportunity for more corroborating evidence like witnesses and surveillance footage. While some of the variables fall into the scope of focal concerns in identifying stalking, the authors conclude the perspective is not useful in determining the factors related to establishing an arrest in stalking cases, as the sole, and strong, factor influencing this was the victim’s willingness to cooperate by filing a written statement. This cooperation has been shown in previous criminological research to be positively correlated with arrest in other areas as well.

The authors suggest that training and standard operating procedures be developed and implemented that help officers understand the stalking statutes, and identify stalking behavior, by having them inquire specifically about stalking and the presence of fear to establish probable cause. Officers also need to know and accept the illegality of stalking, instead as just a component of the power and control dynamic present in these types of domestic relationships, thus providing better support for victims.

Attitudinal Changes Toward Body-Worn Cameras: Perceptions of Cameras, Organizational Justice, and Procedural Justice Among Volunteer and Mandated Officers

Huff, Katz, Webb, and Hedberg, Police Quarterly, 2020

The authors examine some issues involving body worn cameras (BWCs) by using a recently implemented BWC mandate in the Phoenix, AZ Police Department to determine the attitudes surrounding camera use and its effect on perceived organizational and procedural justice. They note that previous research on BWCs has yielded a variety of results. There are implications that BWCs could have a deterrent effect on officers, limiting their discretion in citizen encounters and making them more mindful of proper behavior and procedures, but that deterrent effect may not be equally found in all officers.

Many of the previous studies focused on attitudes prior to the implementation of a BWC mandate but did not demonstrate how the attitudes abut BWCs may have changed following the mandates. Some research indicated officers believed BWCs would limit their discretion, would increase adherence to departmental policies, and that it may not affect their behavior to a great degree but that it could have a positive effect on citizen behavior, and could assist in report writing and producing better evidence for prosecution.

However, results after BWC adoption have been mixed. UK officers believed that the cameras had a positive impact in a number of areas and was a means of improving officer effectiveness, but in the US, where adoption has met with more resistance, the suggestion is BWCs were to improve problematic officer behavior, with some officers believing they were necessary as the word of a police officer is not trusted in court anymore. Patrol officers versus those in special units also had differing needs and concerns surround BWCs but the findings generally suggest that officers in departments that have already deployed BWCs have a more positive perception of the technology than those where it had yet to be implemented. Studies that have examined officer attitudes toward BWCs prior to, and following, the adoption of BWCs have largely found that officers become more favorable or remain neutral toward BWCs after BWC programs are implemented. They also found officers believed, as the programs went on, that they improved officers’ ability to protect themselves against citizen complaints and that they improved citizens willingness to talk to officers. However, some studies have found evidence that after implementation officers had no change, or a negative change in attitude to BWCs, believing that they limit officer discretion, and force them to act more legalistic than informal in dealing with citizens, but sometimes these individual attitudes depended on the attitudes of officers in their social network as well.

The authors state that two areas that will be affected by BWCs and a possible deterrent effect are perceptions of organizational justice and procedural justice. Perceptions of organizational justice pertain to officers’ feeling of fairness in implementing, utilizing, and monitoring a BWC program, and the outcomes associated with them, which would be associated with officers’ job performance and commitment to the organization. Research has indicated that when officers have concerns about BWCs generating public disapproval and perceive high monitoring of BWC it can affect their emotional well-being, and when they lack organizational support for BWC officers, has also been linked to burnout. When officers felt their department was more just and fair in its monitoring of BWCs they had more positive perceptions of BWCs. Officers’ positive perceptions and support of BWCs were also linked to perceptions of a strong trust relationship with their supervisor. Research also indicated that officers were concerned about how the footage would be reviewed and used, fearing it would be used to hold officers accountable and get them in trouble over minor issues, and thus limit their proactive contacts.

The authors also suggest that BWCs can enhance procedural justice during citizen encounters. “Citizens have higher perceptions of procedural justice when they feel they were allowed to contribute to the encounter, when the officer used objective criteria to make decisions, when the citizen felt they were treated with dignity and respect, and when the citizen trusted the officers’ motives in the interaction” and when citizens perceive more procedural justice they are more likely to be compliant and cooperative. Supervisors have the opportunity to monitor or review BWCs to ensure officers are engaging in procedurally just methods. However, research results are mixed with some officers feeling BWCs made them more professional and patient, while others felt it was stifling and limited establishing rapport, while some research found no effect between establishing procedural justice and BWC usage. Associated reductions in complaints with BWC officers may stem from the appearance of more procedurally just behavior as officers narrate their decision making to the camera as well as citizens.

The authors conducted a survey of 467 officers on their attitudes about BWCs in a pre-test phase before the research entered into the BWC wearing phase. A random sample of 177 survey participants was drawn and three groups were established; a group that declined to volunteer to wear a BWC (resistors, n=96), a group that volunteered to wear the cameras (volunteers, n=47) and a third group who were mandated to wear the cameras (mandated, n=34), A random sample of 110 officers were also selected from the pre-test group that had no involvement in the BWC program to serve as a control group. After 6 months, of the 287 officers in the BWC study 237 completed the post-test survey. The survey, identical to the pre-test, contained items related to officer efficacy, officer behavior, citizen reaction, general perception, overall recommendation, and organizational and procedural justice.

Overall, the researchers “identified few statistically significant and only small substantively meaningful changes in officer perceptions of BWCs, organizational justice, and procedural justice over time.” Relative to the control group, BWC officers had more negative perceptions about officer efficacy (i.e. having a more accurate account of the case, obtaining high quality evidence, or assisting in the prosecution of cases), though the authors suggest this may stem from officers not being privy to the benefits derived in the courtroom as research has shown that BWCs were more likely to result in charging, conviction, and a more punitive sentence. Positively though, relative to the control group, volunteer officers showed small declines in their perceptions that BWCs may negatively affect police officer behavior, being less likely to believe that BWCs inhibit contacts with citizens, cause hesitation in making decisions, and feeling they had less discretion. However, both mandated and volunteer officers had lower levels of agreement than the control group of officers that BWCs would increase citizen cooperation, increase citizen respect, decrease citizen resistance, and decrease citizen aggression, mirroring prior research. The authors suggest that a lack of observable effect in this area may stem from citizens not being aware of officers’ BWCs and thus citizens may be unlikely to change their behavior which increased these officers skepticism that BWCs affect citizen behavior positively, as compared to resisters and the control group which did not vary in their views on this issue. Prior research had indicated when citizens were aware of the camera their behavior changed and the authors suggest this result might inform policy issues regarding informing citizens that a BWC is in use. Compared to the control group, mandated officers were also less likely to have positive general perceptions following their field use. These officers were less likely to agree that police and citizens benefit from BWC use, that BWCs are well received by coworkers, and that BWCs improve job satisfaction and performance, training, and officer safety. Similarly, mandated officers reported more negative overall recommendations for BWC use, being less likely to recommend BWCs to other departments or other officers in their department, however the officers mandated wearing status may have generated feelings of loss of autonomy, and affected those results, the researchers surmised.

In contrast to other research, and in contrast to the control group, resistors, mandated, and volunteer officers all held higher perceptions of organizational justice (support and fairness in implementation, monitoring, and outcomes). The authors note this interesting result in comparison to the other study results which indicate BWC wearers did not see them as having an effect on citizen behavior and were less likely to recommend implementation. The researchers suggest that BWCs represent a supervisory program and with being given the opportunity to wear a BWC, perceived a greater capacity in the department for organizational justice. In contrast, there is no significant difference among any of the groups on BWCs prompting more procedural justice behavior. The authors note that the relatively small changes in officer attitudes, regardless of exposure to BWCs, suggests that “efforts to increase officer support for BWCs should be made early in the BWC adoption process. Our results, combined with prior research, highlight the importance of a communication strategy that disseminates information about the benefits and limitations of BWCs prior to their deployment so that officers buy-in to their agency’s BWC program, rather than resist its implementation.”

Research Briefs

Does Contact with the Justice System Deter or Promote Future Delinquency? Results From a Longitudinal Study of British Adolescent Twins

Motz, Barnes, Caspi, Arseneault, Cullen, Houts, Wertz & Moffitt, Criminology, 2020

The authors note there is contradictory research in regards to the effects of the criminal justice system on those introduced to it. A labeling tradition suggests that youths introduced to the criminal justice system’s formal punishments will exhibit the opposite of the intended behavior and engage in future misbehavior, especially if considering claims of a criminogenic effect from the criminal justice system. A deterrence perspective suggests that youths will be deterred from future criminal activity by these formal punishments. In an attempt to address this issue, the authors conducted a longitudinal study of 901 British twins pairs (the use of twins can eliminate any confounding factors like genetics and parental and home differences that may influence study outcomes and allow focus on the environmental factors) to see if different forms of contact with the juvenile justice system earlier in life was associated with an increase of decrease in delinquent behavior. The outcome variable was level of delinquency at age 18, which comprised a number of delinquent acts as self-reported by the participants, with key independent variables including whether they had been in police custody, jail, or prison, whether they had a criminal record or criminal cautions (a legal warning with an admission of guilt that differs from an actual conviction for minor crimes) and whether they had been issued an Antisocial Behavior Order (ASBO). ASBOs, which were introduced in England in 1999, are defined by the Home Office as “civil orders that exist to protect the public from behavior that causes or is likely to cause harassment, alarm or distress. An order contains conditions prohibiting the offender from specific anti-social acts or entering defined areas and is effective for a minimum of two years. The orders are not criminal penalties and are not intended to punish the offender.”

While the twin design rules out many familial sources of confounding, the authors also controlled for other confounding influences that are not shared by twins, such as cognitive and behavioral differences. These included different specific measures of self-reported delinquency at age 12, externalizing problems at age 12, evidence of low self-control up to age 10, cognitive ability at age 12, educational achievement at age 16,and first born twin. The authors used regression modeling utilizing the three independent variables, and in final steps included the family fixed effects.

In analysis, spending the night in jail was shown to significantly increase delinquency at age 18, that effect remained once the covariates like education, cognitive ability and low self-control were included though they did reduce the size of the effect. Similarly, adding the family fixed variable continued to demonstrate a significant but smaller increase in delinquency after spending the night incarcerated. The authors also performed regression on the residuals of the models to ensure that the other non-locked up twin did not experience a deterrent effect from their sibling locked up but the results showed a deterrent effect wasn’t present and that the labeling perspective was supported.

Results followed a similar pattern with ASBOs and criminal record/cautions in that contact in these ways in the juvenile justice system increased delinquency at age 18 even after accounting for the family fixed effects and other criminogenic variables like low self-control, earlier delinquency and cognitive level. However, in regards to criminal records and cautions, the effect sizes were much smaller than observed in the other two models, and the effect on monozygotic (identical) twins in the full fixed effect model did not reach a level of statistical significance. Though the authors didn’t determine if there was a statistically significant difference, interestingly, the effect of increased delinquency was greater in monozygotic twins pairs than in dizygotic (fraternal) twin pairs.

The authors conclude their study supports a labeling theory perspective over a deterrent theory perspective in juvenile justice in that contact with the justice system in these ways promotes misbehavior and results in increased delinquency later in life. The authors note the study suggests future research in this debate could examine whether the “dose” of these sanctions influences level of delinquency, whether the effects are crime and offense dependent, and make attempts to dissect the criminal justice system to determine what mediating mechanisms in these contacts promote delinquency.

Motz, R. T., Barnes, J. C., Caspi, A., Arseneault, L., Cullen, F. T., Houts, R., … & Moffitt, T. E. (2020). Does contact with the justice system deter or promote future delinquency? Results from a longitudinal study of British adolescent twins. Criminology, 58(2), 307-335.

Motz, et al suggest the negative experience of criminal sanctions can generate negative outcomes in the form of increased delinquency. However, Bateson, McManus, and Johnson examine how using the negative experience of childhood trauma to predict negative outcomes in later life can be problematic.

Understanding the Use, and Misuse, of Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) in Trauma-Informed Policing

Bateson, McManus, & Johnson, The Police Journal, 2019

The authors discuss the use of Adverse Childhood Experience (ACE) scores in policing as a component of a trauma informed approach but the authors caution the scores may be misused in determining when it’s appropriate to intervene. ACE scores are determined by positive responses to 10 adverse experiences that include physical, emotional and physical abuse, physical and emotional neglect, and household dysfunction that includes parental substance abuse, mother subject to physical abuse, parental mental illness, parental incarceration, parental separation/divorce. Research has demonstrated a strong and almost linear, as well as additive, effect of ACEs on negative life course outcomes, including a host of health problems, mental and emotional issues, relationship problems including domestic abuse, and substance abuse, as well as poor educational, employment, and life satisfaction outcomes. Recent research has indicated that about 50% of the population have experienced at least one ACE and about 10-20% have experienced four or more.

The authors note this information can assist in developing and presenting a trauma informed approach, as they stated “there is potential to develop a common language and understanding about trauma informed practice across different workforces. For professionals, it encourages a shift in thinking from “what’s wrong with you?” to “what’s happened to you?” and for service users a shift from “there’s something wrong about me” to “I’m not a bad person, I’m like this because bad things happened to me”.” ACE scores can also assist in policing by identifying to law enforcement individuals who may be vulnerable to negative outcomes, and can assist in the decision in how to relate to and intervene for that individual. However, the simple process of producing an ACE score may contribute to an oversimplification in the decision of intervention. As the ACE score is a list of different kind of diverse experiences an individual has encountered, it doesn’t measure the duration, severity, or magnitude. A low score could mask the level of trauma an individual has actually experienced from the event. The authors caution ACE scores, while suggestive. cannot assess risk for committing an offense or experiencing other negative life course outcomes, nor can it be used to assess current needs, as the ACE is retrospective and should not be used in place of careful assessment of the individual. Research has shown that a number of other factors not included in the ACE score like poverty, housing, social isolation and discrimination, can significantly influence adult outcomes. While research has demonstrated that early trauma can result in negative psychological adult outcomes, and that different kinds of trauma can have different psychological effect, the exact relationship between different kinds of trauma on different physical and behavioral outcomes remains unclear. Complicating this is research that demonstrates that children can vary in their resiliency, with some being more susceptible to negatives outcomes after suffering ACEs compared to other children.

The authors believe there is a potential for misuse in using ACE scores a screening device. Practitioners should understand that individual ACEs should be weighed differently as some may have more of a negative impact than others, as well as that impact differing dependent on the developmental stage of the child. While the subscales may need to be weighed differently in different cases, determining whether ACE scores are valid and reliable means of assessing future needs is lacking evidence. One main drawback, because they rely solely on self-reports, is the possibility of faulty recollection or assessment and it may be an unreliable predictive tool of criminal justice outcomes. and while the use of data available to the police such physical abuse or parental separation and substance abuse may provide confirmatory evidence, other ACEs like emotional neglect may be more difficult to determine and may require follow-up investigation

The authors conclude that “ACEs may provide an easily understandable framework to identify vulnerable adults and children, which could help to develop trauma informed practice and responses, ultimately safeguarding children from harm. In addition, it has the potential to enable a common language and understanding across different workforces nationally and internationally. The advantages and enthusiasm around ACEs offer great opportunities to drive the prevention, early intervention and trauma-informed agendas. However, there are valid concerns about the limited research base being misunderstood and yet translated into practice…hence, use of ACEs questionnaires as a checklist, using ACE scores or thresholds in practice are not yet supported by evidence.” The authors encourage further inquiry into issues of validity and reliability, consent and information sharing of the data and appropriate training and supervision of practitioners, while holding the view that knowledge of ACEs does not need fuel a fatalistic or deterministic view because childhood adversity does not always result in negative outcomes.

Bateson, K., McManus, M., & Johnson, G. (2019). Understanding the use, and misuse, of Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) in trauma-informed policing. The Police Journal, 0032258X19841409.

Understanding the factors that signal negative life outcomes is important as the greater our knowledge of the influences that push young people and adults toward criminal behavior, the more that can be done to address it. Examining the circumstances around juvenile homicides can also lead to a better understanding of the influences of race, region, and different types of social conflict on who might perpetrate these murders.

Racial Differences Among Juvenile Homicide Offenders: An Empirical Analysis of 37 Years of U.S. Arrest Data

Heide, Michel, Cochran, & Khachaturian, Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 2017

The authors state that while initially concerning as youth murder offenders rose to prominence during a couple of periods in the twentieth century, youth and adult murder offenses are declining but interest in youthful offenders continues, especially in potential differences by offender race. However, most research on juvenile offender race had been limited to White and Black offenders as the number of Asian/Pacific Islander and American Indian/Alaskan Native offenders have been very small, For example in 2012, of Juvenile Homicide Offenders (JHOs), 98% were either White (47.2%) or Black (58.8%), numbering in the hundreds, while there were only 10 American Indians and 1 Asian JHOs. To enhance the ability to examine racial differences, the author use 37 years (1976-2012), divided into three distinct time periods including a pre and post period of an epidemic period of juvenile homicides, worth of JHO (aged 6 to 17) arrests from the UCR’s Supplemental Homicide Reports and asked three research questions: 1) Did the offender and offense characteristics of all JHOs arrested during the study period vary by race and 2) did the characteristics of victims, weapons used, crime circumstances, and offender count in incidents in which JHOs killed single victims differ across racial groups, and 3) are offender, victim, and offense characteristics predictive of racial classification?

Chi square was used in the bivariate analyses to determine significant relationships. The authors found a number of relationships that were both statistically significant and had a large enough effect size to be meaningful (only the percentages for the significant different racial categories are shown). Results demonstrated that there were significant differences, and medium effect sizes, in the race more likely to be arrested by region. Black youth (43.7%) were significantly more likely to be arrested for homicide in the South than the other racial groups. AI/AN juveniles (50.6%) were significantly more likely than White and Black youth to be arrested for murder in the West. A/PI youth (63.7%) were significantly more likely than all three other racial groups to be arrested in the West. AI/AN juveniles (2.6%) were significantly less likely than Black, White, or A/PI youth to be arrested for murder in the Northeast.

There was also a small but significant effect size on arrest location by race. In general, nearly 80% of JHOs were arrested in large cities (59.5%) or suburban areas (19.9%) while the remaining 20% were arrested in small cities (12.6%) or rural areas (8.1%). By race Black and A/PI youth (68.7% and 66.9%) were significantly more likely to be arrested in large cities than their White and AI/AN counterparts (47.8% and 25.9%). White youth (26.7%) were significantly more likely than the other three racial groups to be arrested in suburban areas. AI/AN juveniles were significantly more likely to be arrested in rural areas (42.7%) compared with White youth (12.6%), and Black and A/PI youth (4.2% and 3.4%).

Offenders varied significantly by race within the different time period within the study frame albeit to a small effect. Black youth became significantly more involved in homicide arrest during the 37-year time frame than White youth, although both increased across the three time periods. A/PI juveniles stood apart from the other three racial groups in significant way, notably, while their involvement in the pre-epidemic period (6.5%) was far lower than the three other groups, their arrests increased dramatically during the post-epidemic period compared to the other races. Nearly 64% of A/PI JHOs were arrested between 1994 and 2012, compared with less than 50% of JHOs in the three other racial groups.

There were also large significant racial differences found in comparing JHO race to the victim race. While in general, almost 97% of JHOs were arrested for killing White or Black victims, each of the four racial groups was significantly more likely to kill members from their own racial group. However, there were significant differences found for each racial group with respect to killing White victims. While 90.4% of the victims of White JHOs were also White, 48.3% of American Indian/Alaskan Natives JHOs killed White victims, while for Asian and Pacific Islanders, 32.8% of their victims were White, and for Black JHOs, 22.6% of their victims were white.

The relationship between JHOs and the offense characteristics also varied significantly, although to a small effect, in three areas, victim-offender relationship, weapon used, and circumstances of the offense. While the typical victims of JHOs in general were acquaintances (46.0%) or strangers (35.9%), the authors’ data showed White juveniles (8.1%) were significantly more likely than the other three racial groups to be arrested for killing parents while A/PI and Black JHOs were significantly more likely to be arrested for killing strangers (39.5% and 39.3%) than White and AI/AN JHOs (31.6% and 27.3%).

For JHOs, firearms (69.7%) or knives (15.9%) were most commonly used to kill their victims but the four racial groups differed significantly from each other on the use of guns with Black JHOs being most likely to use guns (76.1%) followed by A/PI JHOs (71.5%), then by White JHOs (61.5%), and finally by AI/AN (42.9%). In contrast, AI/AN (28.0%) were significantly more likely to use knives than White JHOs (21.3%), A/PI (13.6%), and Black JHOs (11.7%). AI/AN were also significantly more than twice as likely to use personal weapons (16.7%) than the other racial groups (all 7% or less).

A large majority (85%) of JHOs were arrested in crime-related (33.8%), conflict-related (35.7%), or gang-related killings (14.5%) but different races predominated in these three homicide circumstances. Black JHOs (39.7%) were significantly more likely to be involved in crime-related homicides relative to the other three racial groups. In contrast, AI/AN JHOs (45.6%) were significantly more likely to be involved in conflict-related killings than the other racial groups, while A/PI JHOs (40.6%) were significantly more likely to be arrested for gang-related killings than their White (19.9%), Black (9.6%), or AI/AN (6.0%) counterparts.

The authors put the significant variables of region, location, victim race, victim-offender relationship, weapon and homicide circumstances, from the bivariate analyses into three homicide circumstances logistic regression models. Each of the four racial groups had significant difference from the others in the different homicide variables and only those significant relationships are described below.

Whites

Regarding differences involving White offenders, JHOs who killed a White victim were 36 times more likely to be White than Black, 5% more likely to be White than Asian/Pacific Islander and 7% more likely to be White than AI/AN. JHOs who killed a family member were twice as likely to be White as Black and 39% more likely to be White compared to A/PI. White JHOs were also 33% more likely than A/PI JHOs and 62% more likely than AI/AN JHOs to be involved in a homicide in the South. White offenders were also significantly more likely (24%) than AI/AN to be involved in a homicide in a large city. White offenders were also 52% more likely to use a gun in a homicide compared to AI/AN. Gang-related juvenile homicides were almost 3.5 times as likely to involve a White offender than a Black offender and 25% more likely than an AI/AN offender. For conflict-related juvenile homicides, White offenders were about 1.5 times more likely to be involved than a Black offender and 63% more likely than A/PI offenders.

Blacks

Significant differences also existed between Blacks and other races in regard to their homicides. Juvenile homicides committed in the South were 57% more likely with Blacks than Whites, 19% more likely than Asian/Pacific Islanders, and 18% more likely than AI/AN and those committed in large cities were 67% , 65%, and 35% more likely to involve a Black offender than White, Asian/Pacific Islander, and American Indian/Native Alaskan offenders, respectively. Also statistically significant, juvenile murders involving a gun were 67% more likely to be committed by a Black offender than by a White offender and 35% more likely than an AI/AN offender. Finally crime-related juvenile homicide incidents were 30% more likely to involve a Black offender than a White offender, twice as likely to involve a Black offender than an AI/AN offender, and 35% more likely than A/PI JHOs.

Asian

White victims were 1.9 times more likely to be killed by Asian/Pacific Islander JHOs than by Black JHOs. For juvenile homicides committed in large cities, Asian/Pacific Island offenders were 21% more likely involved than American Indian/Alaskan Native JHOs. Gang-related juvenile homicides were 15% more likely to involve A/PI than American Indian/Alaskan Native offenders and they were also more likely to be involved in those homicide circumstance than White offenders (1.6x) and Black offenders (6x). Asian/PI offenders were also 1.2 times more likely than White JHOs to be involved in crime related homicides. Juvenile homicides involving guns were 1.3 times more likely to involve Asian/Pacific Islander than White JHOs and 40% more likely than with AI/AN.

American Indian

White victims of juvenile homicide offenders were 2.5 times more likely to involve American Indian/Alaskan Native juvenile offenders than to involve Black juvenile offenders and 1.3 times more likely than involvement from A/PI JHOs. In addition, juvenile homicides involving family members were 1.7 times more likely to involve American Indian/Alaskan Native offenders relative to Black offenders and 2.3 times more likely than Asian/Pacific Island JHOs . For conflict-related juvenile homicides, American Indian/Alaskan Native JHOs were 1.7 times more likely to be involved than both Black and A/PI JHOs. Crime-related juvenile homicides were more likely to involve American Indian/Alaskan Native compared with White JHOs (1.7x) and Asian/Pacific Islanders JHOs (1.4x).

The authors conclude that in some regards such as offender age and sex, number of offenders, number of victims, and age and sex of victims there were no significant differences by race of the offender however in other aspects like homicide circumstances, type of victim, weapons used, region, and location there were significant differences between the races. The authors noted this was likely the first nation-wide study on race and offending that had a significant focus on Asian and Native American offending and revealed some interesting results. Regression analysis found that American Indian/Alaskan Native and Asian/Pacific Islander juveniles involved in murder could be distinguished from White and Black JHOs. Gang-related juvenile homicides were much more likely to involve A/PIs than Blacks, Whites, or AI/ANs. Juvenile killers of White victims were also more likely to be A/PI JHOs than to be Black JHOs. In addition, gun-involved juvenile homicides were much more likely to involve A/PI JHOs than either White or AI/AN JHOs. In contrast, juvenile homicides of White victims, family members, and those arising from conflict-related circumstances were much more likely to involve American Indian/Alaskan Native JHOs than either Black or Asian JHOs. American Indian/Alaskan Natives JHOs examined in this study were significantly more likely to kill with a knife and during a conflict-related situation than JHOs in the other three racial groups The proliferation of knife and conflict-related homicides among American Indians may be attributed to frustration that stems from the structural disadvantage faced by many American Indians, as well as the strong culture of honor in Native American communities.

The authors explain that other distinctions between the races exist because of social, cultural influences and geographic locations. Southern murders tend to involve more Blacks and Whites, suggesting their historical exposure to the honor culture and subculture of violence in the south, while rural murders were more associated with AI/ANs. The authors also suggest the data can be useful for making investigative decisions in that by focusing on the homicide circumstances and locations, law enforcement may be better able to determine the race of the offender for example focusing on Black offenders if the homicide was crime related or on Asian offenders if the murder is gang related.

The authors state that future research in this area could focus on four areas: (a) multiple victim homicides committed by juveniles; (b) correlates of juvenile homicide within the individual periods that include the pre-epidemic, epidemic, and post-epidemic periods; (c) broadening the racial analyses from simply White and Black JHOs, if possible, to include Hispanic and White and Black non-Hispanic JHOs; and (d) more in-depth analysis of JHOs’ social histories, levels of functioning, motivational pathways, and their crime scene behavior.

Heide, K. M., Michel, C., Cochran, J., & Khachatryan, N. (2017). Racial differences among juvenile homicide offenders: an empirical analysis of 37 years of US arrest data. Journal of interpersonal violence, 0886260517721173.

Heide, et al find distinct differences between juvenile killers of different races in the circumstances around their homicides, including geographic region with the suggestion that Black homicide offenders prevalence in the South may be influenced by its traditional honor culture. Dogan examines a possible theoretical underpinning to honor killings in a qualitative study of Turkish offenders.

Can Honor Killings Be Explained With the Concept of Social Death? Reinterpreting Social Psychological Evidence

Doğan, Homicide Studies, 2020

Dogan explains that while often associated with Muslim countries, honor killings can occur in a society or culture that has an inordinate focus on honor and respect. Honor killings are described as homicides where typically the victim has engaged in some sort of behavior that is viewed as unacceptable and thus disrespectful in the eyes of the culture and their family. This damages the honor of the victim’s family and the way that honor is restored is by killing the person responsible for bringing dishonor on the family. Victims are typically female and the perpetrators are typically male family members. Behaviors that cause a loss of familial honor might include being accused of prostitution, being an unaccompanied female which generates rumors of immoral behavior, being suspected of engaging in an extramarital affair, or having, or claiming, a family member was raped. As Dogan explains, “the concept of honor that inspires violence has a collective aspect, shaped and constructed by a gender-specific formula. To a large extent it is shaped by the perception that a man’s honor not only depends on his own conduct but is also dependent on the proper behavior of his female relatives and the members of his family or group. In this gender-specific conceptualization, the honor of a man obliges a man to defend his honor and the honor of his family, and the honor of a woman obliges a woman to maintain and protect her purity. In other words, the collective honor of the group is dependent on the control of female sexuality, and controlling female sexuality is a prerequisite for a man’s honor. The establishment, protection, and restoration of honor are paramount in honor societies and killing the individual who brought the victim or victim’s family dishonor is seen as necessary and acceptable. Individuals in these cultures, indoctrinated into accepting that loss of honor must be answered with violence, come to accept that while criminal, killing to restore honor is the correct response.”

Dogan considers that the social psychology concept of “social death” might be applied to cases of honor killings to offer an explanation of the psychological mechanism that drives these killings. The social death concept is “generally used when a person/group has experienced extreme and profound loss, such as loss of social identity, role, networks, and connections.” Social death occurs when an individual experiences isolation, ostracization, maltreatment, and stigma This social death, and its separation from culture, society, family, and friends subjects the individual to a state of nonexistence, both in others’ eyes, and in their own. A person who has lost honor no longer exists

Dogan applied this concept by examining 39 cases of 34 male perpetrators and 5 females perpetrators. For the scope of the research article, Dogan focused on 16 interviews where they made reference to having experienced explicit or implicit pressure from the community or extended family members to restore the family honor. He describes some of the scenarios that led to the killings and examined whether indications of social death were present in the interviewees accounts. Some interviewees indicated the exclusion and pressure to act in these cases:

“But, as the villagers knew what was going on in my home, they did not visit me. Even my wife kept telling me that we did not have any right to go out and look at people’s faces.” (Interviewee 30, male, age 43)

“As he (victim) continued to sexually harass me, people started to treat me differently and they started to treat me as if I was a tart and infidel to my husband; and it was me who should be blamed for what had happened. People did not believe that I was raped. I felt as if I was excluded.”
(Interviewee 36, female, age 23)

“Ten months passed between my sisters’ elopements and the killing. During this period, many things happened to me and my family . . . People began to stop greeting me. Then, I started to go out secretly. I used to check the corner of every street whether there was anybody that I knew. What I felt most was shame. I still feel shame . . . I was having difficulty to find a permanent job as a concrete worker because of the shame brought by my sisters… If they feel that they can question your honor, or your honor is in question, they try to take advantage of this point to find support among people. They say “Look! He did not do anything to his sisters and he thinks that he is a man! No way. Go save your honor first.” (Interviewee 34, male, age 35)

“There were rumors about my mother. Everybody was telling me different things about my mother . . . Especially my cousins and half-brothers were doing that. I talked with them and said “What do you want me to do? Do you want me to kill her or kill myself?” This time they said, “No, just ask your father to divorce her.” But, then they said “Those days were in the past. You cannot find any more such brave men who kill their relatives if they behave like that.” (Interviewee 7, male, age 23).

The evidence suggests that exclusion and loss of identity play a role in the scenarios as members of the community disassociate with the dishonored and deny their existence. Dogan contends that “if a person has previously been subjected to a powerful behavior pattern and mind-set suggesting how to act in specific situations, conditions, or circumstances, he or she will act or think in accordance with this pattern in such situations without judging the propriety or justifiability of the suggestion. However, this does not necessarily mean that all individuals who are engrossed in the way of thinking that the right to claim honor requires killing, and who experience the same or similar pressure are bound to commit honor killings. As I illustrated before in detail, as long as there is a way to escape from the publicity of dishonorable conduct, there may still be an alternative to restore honor without seeking violence.”

Regarding community members’ attitudes toward the perpetrators in their community after the murder, 16 perpetrators mentioned in the interview that they experienced an affirmative attitude from the community or extended family members, and their behavior either in the form of words or actions was supported by them. Some perpetrators said that people from their hometown or the community supported them in prison by sending money and visiting them, or asking how they were. Some perpetrators said that their visitors mentioned that they had done what was required, and had cleansed their honor.

“Everybody in my village was expecting the murder; they knew that it was going to happen. After the offence, they started to write me letters and send money and visit me. Later, when I was granted permission to visit my village, even people that I do not know approached me and said, “Well done, you did right thing.” (Interviewee 7, male, age 23)

Dogan did note that in three of the cases perpetrators were told by people they did not approve of the murders and that it was not right but for many of the perpetrators (11 male and three female), there is simply no other way to deal with the issue of dishonor other than the killing suggested or designed by the community, by making reference to such social determinants by using expressions such as “I had no choice,” “it was not in my hands,” “there was no other remedy,” and “this problem could only be solved like that.” Dogan states that by using these words in their interviews, they both tried to reflect the pressure that they had experienced as well as neutralize the killing they have committed by appealing to their loyalty toward cultural norms.

“A person lives for his honor and his dignity. Honor is something that holds the family and people together. It enables people to have a decent life and you live for your honor.” (Interviewee 26, male, age 26)

“Honor is a person’s pride and praise. It means everything for a person. Without it nothing can happen, nothing has a meaning. It would be better for a person to die rather than being dishonored. Without honor death would be better than life.” (Interviewee 21, male, age 47)

This social death also generates a psychological pain on the level of physiological pain that helps drive the cognitions and behavior of those afflicted.

“In my childhood, I grew up with the idea of honor, respect and reputation. My family used to say, “if somebody tries to steal your bread, or points a finger at your honor, kill him.” I was brought up like that. Therefore, for me, suffering from a wound caused by being labeled as dishonorable is more painful than a gunshot wound.” (Interviewee 13, male, age 43)

“Honor is not something light and easy. It is like a heavy burden. It is too heavy to carry. But, it has to be carried.” (Interviewee 12, male, age 43)

Dogan does declare that it’s implausible to state that all honor killings in Turkey invoke a social death dynamic nor that all those who do experience a social death are bound to commit honor killings but the concept of honor that equates loss of honor with loss of life, and thus suggestive of violence to restore honor and life, can “endure and exist mainly in such societies or communities where the individual constantly uses the concept of honor and shame to assess his own conduct and that of his fellows, and face to face personal, as opposed to anonymous, relations are the main type of relationships among members of the society.” Dogan indicates his findings suggest that whether or not an individual seeks approval through violence is dependent on the frequency, duration, and intensity of his association with the perceived norms and discourses of honor killing. It is also dependent on whether there is a way to escape from the publicity of dishonorable conduct but the lack of an alternative course, i.e. being trapped, means violence is more likely to occur.

Dogan, R (2020). Can honor killings be explained with the concept of social death? Reinterpreting social psychological evidence. Homicide studies, 24(2), 127-150.

Dogan suggests utilizing a social concept to understand the psychological mechanism behind the murder of family members. However, psychological and criminological theories can go beyond understanding what drives human behavior in a current event to being able to assist in predicting future criminal events as Lee, et al examine the nature of hotspot offending and predictions.

A Theory-Driven Algorithm for Real-Time Crime Hot Spot Forecasting

Lee, SooHyun, & Eck, Police Quarterly, 2020

The authors claim that real time crime hotspots forecasting algorithms currently in use have some drawbacks. They note a high percentage of hotspot misidentification as well as a lack of transparency in the methodology used in constructing the algorithms because they typically contain proprietary information. They consider this can be important when stop and frisk is practiced in hotspots as recently New York City, Chicago, and Los Angeles police departments have been sued over not releasing information about the algorithms used by their predictive programs.

The authors contend that the many different forecasting models lack agreement on the spatial unit to be analyzed as well as the appropriate temporal period for use in predicting future crime events based on previous events. While new models continue to be developed to assist in both short term and long term hotspot predicting, they invariably have limitations. The authors note one such limitation is that, outside of the field of criminal justice and criminology, these forecasting models rely heavily on mathematical constraints and statistical assumptions but lack theoretical foundations. The authors state their forecasting model includes the theoretical underpinnings, common in social science, of population heterogeneity and state dependence.

In the context of criminal justice, population heterogeneity would suggest that, amongst the “population of places”, certain places, i.e. targets, have features that signal desirability and vulnerability to individual offenders, making them want to target that place. For their study, the authors explain “We classify places where the hot spot forecasting is consistently successful over several months versus places where forecasting is not successful. First, for each place in the study area, we calculate the probability of crime occurring in the target month based on the distribution of crime in prior months. The more true-positive cases over several months, the more a place is consistently experiencing crime. Thus, our algorithm selects places with high amounts of true-positives over the entire study period, and screens out places with no crime, randomly occurring crime, and low probabilities of crime.”

A state dependence perspective explain repeat victimization as experiencing a crime elevates the victim’s chance of being revictimized in the short term. In the context of place, state dependence suggests that once offenders have learned about the suitability of a place for crime they will continue to engage in crime at that location. The authors note that the two theories can work in concert to understand crime patterns and predict future offenses and utilized crime data from Portland and Cincinnati to test the model using Excel statistical software and a grid cell geograph.

The authors overlaid the cities with grid cells 500′ square and for the population heterogeneity component they calculated the Poisson probability of a crime occurring in each grid cell, in each month, based on the previous 12 month distribution of crime in that cell. If the probability is greater than a .5 threshold and the target month experiences crime, the forecast has produced a true-positive case and the distribution of true positives over the study period indicted some areas are more predictable than others.

For each grid cell, the Excel formula they utilized returned either a 1 or 0 for each month. Averaging these binary values over the entire study period, they obtained the average true-positive value for each grid cell. The closer this value is to 1, the more predictable the grid cell is. Using these average true-positive values, they sorted the grid cells from the most predictable to the least predictable, analogous to a situation where some places are more vulnerable while other places are less vulnerable to crime.

For the state dependence component of the model, the number of crimes recorded for the current month were assessed to calculate the elevated risk on the grid cell toward the forecasted month. The grid cells were sorted by their average true-positive values (from the most to the least predictable ones), then sorted by the number of crimes in the most recent month from the highest to the lowest.

In a three step process the authors explain that “Step 1 inputs average true-positive values for each grid cell based on the distributions of crime in the past 12 months. In Step 2, grid cells were sorted by their average true positive values in descending order from highly predictable ones (e.g., 100% and 90%) to less predictable ones (e.g., 10%). (In Step 2) based on the population heterogeneity, we select highly predictable grid cells ..but discard less predictable ones. Then we look at the number of crimes in the most recent month for each grid cell to apply the state dependence process in the final step. In Step 3, we reorder the preselected grid cells in Step 2 by their number of crimes in the current month.”

The authors used measures of accuracy and efficiency to test the model. To calculate the accuracy, or how well the model correctly forecasted what areas would actually become hotspots, they used the ratio of the number of forecasted hot spots that became true hot spots in the forecasted month compared to the total number of true hot spots that developed that forecasted month. For a measure of efficiency of how well the forecasting algorithm predicted the number of crimes in the forecasted hotspots they developed a Prediction Efficiency Index, (PEI) which is the ratio of the number of crimes in forecasted hot spots compared to the number of crimes in actual hot spots.

Comparing their Portland calls for service data forecasting results to the winners of the NIJ Crime Place Forecasting Challenge they found that the PEI scores for the winning model only performed slightly better than the authors’ model in the one, two and three month forecasting periods for the CFS groupings but still generated efficiency scores ranging from over 90% for all CFS, over 80% for streets crimes, around 20% for Burglary and almost 60% for auto theft in the first month, which, similar to the challenge winners, dropped to approximately 35% for the three month forecast. Accuracy ranged from over 70% for all CFSs to over 60% for Street Crime CFS but down to an average of around 15 % for Burglary across the forecasting periods. While accuracy for Auto Theft was over 40% at 1 and 2 months, accuracy dropped to slightly more than 20% at the 3 month mark.

The authors also analyzed Cincinnati incident report data and found that for all crime incidents the PEI increased from 69% to 82%, as did accuracy from 43% to 54%. PEI (41%-59%) also increased across the forecasting periods for Part One Violent Crimes but while the accuracy was approximately 40% for the one and three month forecasts, its highest accuracy (62%) was in the 2 month forecast period. Auto theft PEI and accuracy were both low but did increase with future forecasting, ranging from 7 to 21 percent, and 7 to 19 percent respectively. For Part One property crimes, PEI increased from 70 to 82% across the forecasting periods. Accuracy ranged between 53 and 58% but the lowest accuracy for auto theft was in the 2 month forecasting period. In Portland, while PEI scores decreased with more distant forecasting, for Cincinnati, the PEI tended to increase as researchers forecast further into the future

The authors found, as has past research, that property crimes are not as easy to forecast accurately as violent crime, and that further model development should be done to enhance the forecasting of specific crime types. The authors conclude that while the NIJ Challenge winner’s algorithm performed slightly better in its PEI score, their model is an improvement over other algorithms in use which are extremely poor at capturing the number of crimes relative to crimes in actual hot spots. The authors also note that compared to other forecasting models theirs involves a lower fiscal investment and is easier to utilize as it can be done as a simple formula in Microsoft Excel and provides transparency for methodology and data inquiry purposes.

Lee, Y., SooHyun, O., & Eck, J. E. (2020). A theory-driven algorithm for real-time crime hot spot forecasting. Police Quarterly, 23(2), 174-201.

Research Briefs

Factors Influencing Labeling Non-consensual Sex as Sexual Assault

Yndo & Zawacki, Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 2020

The authors’ study examined the effects of physical attractiveness and sexual interest cues on men’s sexual perceptions of women and whether increases in sexual perceptions of a woman would lead to decreases in labeling of subsequent non-consensual sex as sexual assault. The authors note that college age women are at high risk for sexual assault and that incidence of sexual assault among college aged women is high, ranging to as high as 50% in some studies, but men’s self-report perpetration averages are significantly lower than the number of self-reported sexual assaults. The authors surmise this disparity may be partly due to the gendered difference in perception of what constitutes non-consensual sex.

Research has already identified men’s over perception of sexual interest, with males typically rating females participants as more attractive and more seductive and more sexually interested than females do. There is also limited research that suggests the level of a woman’s attractiveness influences the level of men’s misperception of sexual interest, perceiving more attractive women to be more interested in them, in a sense projecting their own sexual interest in the woman and assuming the woman’s level of interest is the same. The authors considered that men’s over perception may lead to misidentifying interested females and, coupled with ambiguous social cues from women that may or may not signal sexual attraction, may produce differing perceptions of actual sexual attraction, and the definition of the sexual activity, and may lead men to not perceive nonconsensual sex as sexual assault.

The authors examined two research questions in the study; What factors in a social interaction increase a man’s sexual perceptions of a woman, and do these increases in a man’s perceptions of a woman’s sexual interest during a social interaction decrease his labeling of subsequent nonconsensual sex as sexual assault? Their study contained 233 male college students who read a vignette describing a hypothetical social interaction between a man and a woman; within the vignette, the female character’s physical attractiveness (attractive vs. less attractive) and the degree to which the female character behaved interested in the male character (uninterested vs. ambiguous) were manipulated. The vignette ends with the male character physically forcing sexual intercourse with the female character. After reading the vignette, participants’ labeling of the nonconsensual sex as sexual assault was addressed. Participants’ perceptions of the female character’s sexual interest in the male character prior to the nonconsensual sex was assessed as a dependent variable during stopping points in the vignette, prior to sexual assault. The authors hypothesized that ambiguous cues (compared to non-interested) and more attractive female characters will result in the participants giving higher ratings of the female characters’ sexual interest in the males, as well as there being an interaction between level of female attractiveness and ambiguous cues, in that only with the ambiguous cues condition will female attractiveness work together to influence perceptions of sexual interest. The authors ultimately hypothesize that increased rating of the female character’s interest will lead to decreased labeling of the non-consensual sex in the vignette as sexual assault.

Utilizing multiple regression, their results indicated that separately, both ambiguous cues of interest and greater physical attractiveness had a significant effect on perceptions of the females character’s interest in the male character, though the interaction effect between the two variables was not significant. Consistent with previous research their results also indicated that despite level of attractiveness, a lack of ambiguous cues and the presence of uninterested cues indicated the participants perceived a lower level of sexual interest from the female character, supporting that males can more easily distinguish sexual interest in the presence of clear cues and that cue ambiguity leaves more room for physical cues to influence perceptions. The second model also found that the level of perceived sexual interest had a significant effect on participants not labeling the non-consensual sex in the vignette as sexual assault.

While the effects are small, they are significant and having an understanding of the social factors that influence perceptions are important. The authors state that understanding the influence of social factors, such as physical attractiveness and interest cues, provides researchers with knowledge that can be incorporated into prevention programs targeted toward reducing sexual assault. For example, prevention programs should educate men that ambiguous sexual interest cues do not equate to consent. Furthermore, programs can increase awareness that perceptions of sexual interest may be inaccurate while highlighting the importance of gaining sexual consent, in turn encouraging unambiguous sexual consent between partners.

Yndo, M. C., & Zawacki, T. (2020). Factors influencing labeling nonconsensual sex as sexual assault. Journal of interpersonal violence, 35(7-8), 1803-1827.

While perceptions can affect whether non-consensual sex is viewed as a sexual assault, in instances where a sexual assault or domestic violence might be identified as such and witnessed, perception of the incidental factors, including the type of victim and type of assault, can influence whether bystanders intervene as Weitzman and colleagues discuss below.

Bystander Intervention on Behalf of Sexual Assault and Intimate Partner Violence Victims

Weitzman, Cowan, & Walsh, Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 2020

The authors utilized secondary data (data gathered in previous research) from a survey of individuals 15 years and older about bystander intervention and sexual assault and intimate partner violence (IPV). The authors note that while sexual assault and IPV can co-occur–sexual assault can be a form of IPV and many victims experience both-from the vantage point of interveners, the two types of violence may be perceived quite differently. For instance, the authors note, the general public perceives the typical rape to be perpetrated by a stranger but often fails to perceive forced sex as rape if it occurs in the context of a romantic relationship. Even victims themselves often do not identify forced sex as rape if there is a romantic relationship between them and the perpetrator. Given that, definitionally, sexual assault and IPV are overlapping but distinct, and perceptions of these forms of violence are quite different, bystanders’ willingness to intervene and their strategies of intervention may differ. If these strategies do indeed differ by demographic background or violence type, then policies aimed at increasing bystander intervention would need to anticipate and accommodate these differences in order to be effective.

The authors had previously encountered limited research examining bystander intervention, finding that in the U.S. population at large, and among college students and military personnel specifically, men are more reluctant than women to intervene in instances of sexual assault. Among college students, men’s (but not women’s) willingness to intervene depends on their perceptions of the victim’s situation (e.g., whether they believe a victim increased his or her own risk of victimization) and research also suggests that Black college students are more likely to report intervening in sexual assault than Whites. Bystanders are also more likely to intervene in sexual assault and IPV if they perceive that victims face significant danger than if they don’t. Among college students, existing research finds a greater willingness to intervene on behalf of personally known sexual assault victims than on behalf of strangers, suggesting that this may be because knowing a victim encourages one to feel more responsible to act. College students also report a greater willingness to intervene on behalf of sexual assault victims when they feel supported by their peers, believe they know how to help, and are not in danger themselves. Thus, norms about intervention and education helping individuals to identify instances of sexual assault and IPV may also be critical to the decision to intervene.

The authors explain that once a person decides to intervene, a wide variety of strategies may be employed. These may include preventing violence by changing attitudes and beliefs that lead to assault or intervening in a potentially threatening situation before violence has begun; stopping violence mid-incident (which requires witnessing an event); or providing emotional or physical support after violence has occurred. All three types of interventions (before, during, and after) are theorized to reduce an individual’s subsequent risk of violence.

The dominant bystander intervention model, as stated by the authors, identifies five steps to the intervention process – noticing the situation (step 1), identifying it as an emergency (step 2), taking responsibility to act (step 3), deciding what specifically to do (step 4), and choosing to do it (step 5). According to the only nationally representative study of bystander interventions in IPV, only half of individuals who have known a victim have ever intervened and the authors conclude there are likely many barriers to intervening, at least in IPV, and these barriers may exist at every step.

For the current study, they examined three factors related to previous bystander experiences: whether the respondent has ever known a victim of sexual assault or IPV (separately); if yes, what the relationship was between the respondent and the victim and whether the respondent intervened; and if yes to the latter question, how the respondent intervened, including the relationship of the victim to bystander, type of intervention used, as well as possible barriers to a hypothetical IPV intervention with someone they knew. Demographics include race, age, gender, education, employment status, urban or non-urban status, and geographic region.

Significant differences lie in some demographics variables in the likelihood of knowing a victim of sexual assault and/or IPV as compared to not knowing one, with females more likely to know a victim, and more likely to know an IPV victim, specifically, than males, and Blacks being more likely than Whites to know a sexual assault victim. Significant differences were also found in the odds of knowing an IPV victim for those with some college, those who were students, retired individuals, and being an urban resident.

The authors state their findings show that part of the bystander intervention model (deciding what to do and choosing to do it) depends in part on the type of violence in question and gender. They found significant difference in the types of intervention used in sexual assault compared to IPV, with offering safe haven (47% compared to 60%) and telling the offender to stop (28% compared to 50%) used less frequently in sexual assault compared to IPV while telling the authorities or telling an adult were employed more frequently in IPV than in sexual assault. They also found significant differences in gender with regard to IPV, women are less likely to physically intervene than men, less likely to tell the abuser to stop, and more likely to tell an adult.

The main barriers to intervention in IPV in the current study were found to be that over 40% of respondents were concerned about being injured, while approximately 15% each, expressed concerns of it being a private matter, or being wrong for intervening. Other barriers, to a lesser degree, included losing friendship, being called a liar, and being bullied. This varied by demographic which showed age was a factor in concerns of being bullied and losing a friendship, while for females, risk injury was a greater concern than for men, however women were less likely than men to be concerned about it being a private matter or bullied which the authors surmise might occur because of their greater likelihood of knowing a victim of IPV. In regards to race, Blacks were more concerned about injury compared to Whites. For other demographics, those with post-secondary education were more likely to be concerned about being bullied over the intervention than those with less than a high school education. Full time workers were less likely to be concerned over the incident being a private matter whereas urban residents were more likely to be concerned with it being a private matter than rural residents, Retired people were more likely to be inhibited with the possibility of being called a liar, and along with students, are more likely to have concerns about being wrong in intervening.

However, many of the respondents reported having intervening for victims of IPV (59%) and for sexual assault victims (29%). The authors analyzed whether the relationship in these instances influences whether an intervention occurs. Logistic regression analysis suggests that the odds of intervening in instances of sexual assault do not vary with relationship to the victim (e.g. whether they are a friend, family member, acquaintance etc.); however, they do differ with demographic background. Hispanic have 159% higher odds of intervening than White respondents (which the authors claim is a suggestion that certain cultural norms promote group welfare among Hispanic individuals). Self-employed respondents have 192% higher odds of intervening than non-employed respondents. However, in IPV, respondents have 70% lower odds of intervening on behalf of an acquaintance than on behalf of a family member. The author note that this finding coincides with previous research among college students, which suggests that individuals are more likely to intervene for friends than for strangers.

The authors conclude that the study indicates there are differences in the approaches individuals take when responding to sexual assault and IPV. They are more likely to involve legal authorities when responding to sexual assault, but more likely to tell the abuser to stop when responding to IPV. They state this finding indicates that some people may believe that sexual assault is a crime typically perpetrated by strangers that should be dealt with by legal authorities, whereas IPV is not a crime but a family issue best addressed by those close to or within the family. The authors believe to dispel these myths, public awareness campaigns should highlight that sexual assault more frequently occurs among individuals who know each other than among strangers, and should further provide specific suggestions for intervention strategies that do not put bystanders in immediate danger.

Weitzman, A., Cowan, S., & Walsh, K. (2020). Bystander interventions on behalf of sexual assault and intimate partner violence victims. Journal of interpersonal violence, 35(7-8), 1694-1718.

Reactions to, and treatment of, sexual assault and domestic violence victims will vary depending on the perceptions that both citizens and law enforcement have of these victims. Reactions to, and the treatment of, police officers are also subject to citizen perceptions, especially in regards to their perceptions of police legitimacy. However, Clark, et al explore whether these perceptions may vary by setting as they discuss in the following.

Differences in Citizen Perceptions of Interactions with Police Officers

Clark, Werling, Chintakrindi, & Randol, The Police Journal, 2019

The authors note the importance of police legitimacy in establishing trust with communities but recognize that a number of factors could affect the perception of legitimacy including race, age, income level, employment status, and education level as well as crime rates, nature and characteristics of an individual’s encounter with the police, media coverage of police activity, and police performance issues like excessive force, bias, and misconduct.

Because perceptions of the police are subjective, the authors looked at psychological perspectives that explain why or why not people defer to authority and find it legitimate. The authors state that two psychological models were found to influence whether a person defers to authorities and whether they see authorities as legitimate: an identity-based relational model, which had the biggest impact on views of legitimacy, and the resource-based instrumental model, which was found to play a smaller but still significant role in forming views on legitimacy. The relational model shows that people willingly defer to authorities, such as the police, and find them legitimate if people believe they are respected and valued by the authorities, are being treated in a neutral way, and can trust the motives behind how the authorities act; which are the same as the basis for the procedural justice concepts discussed at length by criminologist Tyler.

They note another psychological perspective that can help explain trust in the police is a Durkheimian perspective in that the most influential determinants of confidence and trust in the police were a sense of social cohesion and order in the community of the respondent. In a 2001 study, respondents also indicated they trust the police more when they perceive them as protecting moral structures in the community, not necessarily when they are protecting the community from crime. Likewise, fear of crime and signs of physical and social disorder did not have major impacts on citizens’ trust and confidence in the police, especially when controlling for social cohesion.

The authors state that most studies of police legitimacy involve large cities and little research has been done on midsize cities and conducted a survey in a central valley mid-sized California city and obtained 307 respondents. They stratified the sample from the different neighborhoods by police beat. The survey contained questions about how the city Police Department interacts with the community, the top three crimes respondents are concerned about, whether they feel safe in their neighborhood and how they perceive various aspects about the police officers in the city. They also asked a series of questions about the respondent’s contact with the police in the last 12 months and their satisfaction with those interactions. The authors sought to determine the perceptions of the respondents of their interactions with city police officers, utilizing police legitimacy outcome variables of fairness of police officers, trust of police officers, responsiveness to community concerns by police officers, and respectfulness of police officers. The authors utilized predictor variable that were likely to influence the outcome variables; race, household income level, education level, employment status, and crime rate.

In bivariate analyses, few of the predictor variables were correlated with the outcome variables measuring police legitimacy. There were no statistically significant differences between respondents’ perceptions of police respectfulness, and police responsiveness to the community based on race , household income level, education level, employment status, and crime rate. For the outcome variable of perceptions of police fairness, Blacks and American Indians held statistically significant lower views than other races but no other variable demonstrated any significant difference. For perceptions of trust of the police, the only significant difference was in employment status with unemployed respondents having a significantly higher trust in the police than employed respondents. The authors also used logistic regression models of the four outcome variables but the only statistically significant differences were in the perceptions of police fairness with White respondents being 2.18 times more likely to rate their interactions with police as being fair ‘A lot or to a great extent’ compared to Non-White respondents.

The author’s hypothesis that higher crime rates would negatively affect views of police legitimacy was not supported and there was only partial support that sociodemographic variables would show differences in views of police legitimacy. While their results differed from other research, the authors suggest the study might be more generalizable to medium sized cities, with more predominantly White populations rather than large cities. They conclude their results indicate “differences in people’s perceptions of interactions with the police are not something inherent within the people themselves or the crime in the areas they live, but something else. The most likely source in these differences in perceptions is something that the city police are doing, or potentially not doing, related to their face-to-face community interactions and training policies around communicating with local residents”. While noting some limitations to the study it suggests that future research can focus on small and medium sized cities, examine polices related to officer communication with the public, as well as explore other potential areas like media presentation that might affect views of police legitimacy.

Clark, N., Werling, R., Chintakrindi, S., & Randol, B. (2019). Differences in citizen perceptions of interactions with police officers. The Police Journal, 0032258X19826855.

Clark and colleagues examined how citizens perceived police officers’ trustworthiness, but how does the average citizen perceive the believability of a suspect’s alibi? Portnoy, et al state that innocent suspects who fail to provide a convincing alibi when interviewed by the police may subsequently be tried in court, where their alibi may be evaluated again by jurors. However, they question, are lay members of the public familiar with factors that may lead to an innocent suspect providing an inaccurate, incomplete or otherwise unconvincing alibi?

Beliefs about Suspect Alibis: A Survey of Lay People in the United Kingdom, Israel, and Sweden

Portnoy, Hope, Vrij, Ask, & Landström, The International Journal of Evidence & Proof, 2020.

The authors state that in general during an interrogation or interview, suspects will try to provide an alibi establishing their innocence, first through the recollection of the event and in a second more detailed phase designed to validate their story. However innocent suspects despite being motivated to provide an accurate and convincing alibi may provide inaccurate information. This may result from impaired memory processes, a result of a loss of details of an event over time, or memory conjunction errors, where suspects confuse aspects of two separate occurrences. However, the authors also consider that producing a convincing alibi may be hampered by a presumption of guilt from the interviewer. While the authors conceded that research to date hasn’t supported that presumptive guilt affects suspect’s willingness to deny or confess or that it affects the accuracy of the statements, they contend that presumptive guilt can lead to more aggressive interviewing, with research showing that it increases the probability of believing the suspect’s guilt despite their statements.

In evaluating suspects’ alibis for believability, police interviewers may not attribute inaccurate information to memory errors but rather to deception, and thus guilt. If a belief in their guilt is established, the suspect’s alibi may then be analyzed in court, by jurors, who will be unaware of factors that may have led to the suspect’s alibi as not believable and thus subject to prosecution. However without this understanding of the determinates of believability, jurors cannot make an informed decision.

The authors surveyed 332 people from the UK, Sweden, and Israel who had never provided an alibi in a police investigation to determine the degree in which lay people understood factors that affect believability. Participants were first asked to indicate their belief about the extent to which six types of details are provided in alibis of truthful versus lying suspects. Research has shown that alibis of liars and truth-tellers differ with respect to their tendency to provide these details and they wanted to examine how participants’ knowledge would align with these research findings. To gain additional data on participants’ beliefs about the differences between truthful and deceptive alibis, participants were then asked to describe what strategies they believed truthful and lying suspects typically use to make their alibi seem convincing to the interviewer.

They also asked participants what they believed the relation between the amount of details provided in an alibi and the truthfulness of the alibi to be, and to explain their answer. Since research has demonstrated that statements of truthful suspects are more detailed than those of lying suspects they were interested in the participants’ belief about the relation between alibis’ level of detail and their truthfulness.

Additionally, participants were also asked to indicate their belief regarding the extent to which truthful alibis might contain incorrect details to see whether or not participants would mention the factor of (impaired) memory processes. Participants who indicated that truthful alibis may contain incorrect details were asked to explain their answer in order to see if, and to what extent, they would acknowledge the factor of memory constraints as a reason for mistakes during the provision of alibis by truthful suspects.

The authors also examined the issue of presumption of guilt and first asked participants to indicate when they believed was the point in the course of an investigative interview in which interviewers begin to form their opinion regarding the suspect’s truthfulness. This question was used to examine whether or not participants would consider it likely that interviewers may conduct suspect interviews with a presumption of guilt toward the interviewee. This was followed by asking participants to indicate their belief regarding the extent to which a presumption of guilt held by interviewers at the beginning of suspect interviews might affect the interviewers’ behavior, and to indicate the likelihood that suspects provide more details and confess to committing the crime (regardless of their actual guilt) in response to a guilt-presumptive interviewer.

T-test analyses indicated that, on average, participants believed that most types of details are provided significantly more often in truthful than in deceptive alibis. In response to common strategies, as two of the three most commonly reported strategies were reported for both truthful and lying suspects (i.e., providing detailed alibis and expressing confidence), they examined whether the proportion to which participants reported each of these two strategies differed for truthful and lying suspects. Analysis showed that participants believed that a detailed alibi occurs more often with respect to lying suspects (39.0%) than truthful suspects (26.6%). .In contrast, participants believed that expressing confidence occurs more often among truthful (30.0%) than lying suspects (16.6%).

Most participants who believed that a detailed alibi is less likely to be truthful explained that liars may believe that a detailed alibi is perceived as truthful and convincing. With respect to participants who believed that a detailed alibi is more likely to be truthful, most of them explained their belief by reporting that the truth is easy to keep track of and thus being informative is not difficult. Finally, most participants who believed that the amount of details provided in an alibi is not related to its truthfulness reported that the truthfulness of an alibi depends on different factors, such as the verifiability of the details provided, the extent to which the details provided are central to the main event, and the suspect’s personal strategy to appear truthful (which may or may not be to provide a detailed alibi).

In other areas of exploration, the study found, on average, participants rated the likelihood that a truthful alibi might contain incorrect details as relatively low. However, most participants who indicated they believed that truthful alibis may contain incorrect details explained that this may be due to impaired memory processes. Analyses also indicated that participants tended to believe significantly more often that interviewers usually begin to form their opinion of the guilt or innocence of suspects prior to hearing their alibi for the first time or while suspects are providing their alibi for the first time.

The study also found that, on average, participants believed that interviewers’ presumption of guilt can affect what interviewers say and how they behave during an interview. The most common explanation provided by participants who strongly believed this to be true was that presumptions of guilt make interviewers conduct harsher interviews, ask leading questions, and pressure the suspect to confess.,Finally, on average, participants believed that when suspects get the impression that the interviewer thinks they are guilty, they will provide more details in their alibi, and provide details even if they are uncertain of their accuracy.

The authors state the most noteworthy finding concerning participants’ beliefs about the qualities of suspect alibis was that participants believed that while truth-tellers are more informative with respect to specific types of details, liars more often try to appear generally informative. Specifically, participants tended to believe that, on average, setting, temporal, object, and person-description details are provided only slightly more often in alibis of truthful suspects than lying suspects. This belief aligns with existing research findings. However, when participants freely reported that suspects provide a generally detailed alibi to appear convincing, this was reported more often with respect to lying suspects than truthful suspects. Most participants also believed that the more details provided in an alibi, the less likely the alibi is to be truthful. Previous survey research has demonstrated similar beliefs of lay people about the relation between the amount of details provided by suspects during police interviews and suspects’ veracity. Liars may succeed in providing a rich, detailed statement by describing an actual experience that occurred on a different time than that of the crime, with details concerning the crime nevertheless being denied or omitted. However, this belief of participants that a detailed alibi is less likely to be truthful contrasts findings in which statements of truthful suspects are usually more detailed than those of lying suspects.

The authors noted, however, impaired memory processes may prevent liars from remembering what information they have already provided (and to whom). In order not to struggle with remembering a detailed lie, liars are likely to provide a relatively short statement. Indeed, innocent, truthful suspects tend more than guilty, lying ones to employ an alibi-provision strategy of providing a detailed statement. Turning to the issue of impaired memory processes in the context of innocent suspects’ alibis, participants’ responses indicated that they were reluctant to acknowledge that truthful alibis may unintentionally include incorrect details. This finding embodies another demonstration of lay people’s lack of understanding of issues concerning psychology and law and is consistent with previous findings that demonstrated this poor knowledge by lay people.

However, when examining the explanations of participants as to why they believed that truthful alibis may contain incorrect details, the authors state a more encouraging picture emerges. Participants acknowledged that impaired memory processes may prevent innocent suspects from reporting accurately from memory. For example, participants correctly acknowledged that innocent suspects may not encode relevant event details because of not realizing the importance of remembering the event for a later reporting. Participants also correctly mentioned that event details may be forgotten over time. Participants mentioned the factor of forgetting by truthful suspects also when explaining why they believed a detailed alibi may indicate that the suspect is lying (that is, because impaired memory processes may prevent innocent suspects from providing a detailed alibi).

The authors conclude that altogether, findings from the first part of the questionnaire suggest that participants hold some mistaken beliefs about suspect alibis. Nevertheless, participants did demonstrate an understanding that innocent suspects may provide incorrect details due to impaired memory processes. Results also suggest that lay people are aware of the fact that interviewers might approach suspect interviews while already presuming guilt and that this presumption of guilt might affect how interviewers conduct interviews. The findings also suggest that lay people believe that suspects’ verbal behavior is likely to be negatively affected by a guilt-presumptive interviewer.

The authors suggest future research might compare the beliefs of police interviewers with those of members of the general public about the topics of memory limitations and presumption of guilt in the context of suspect alibis. Specifically, jurors may benefit from being informed that innocent suspects may provide incorrect details due to memory constraints despite being motivated to be accurate. Jurors may also need to be explicitly informed that suspects sometimes provide their alibi to a guilt-presumptive interviewer; this should be done especially when suspects complain that their interviewer treated them as if they had already decided that they were guilty. These findings can also inform the development of interviewing techniques. For example, assuming that participants’ beliefs about the behavior of suspects reflect how they would behave as suspects during police interviews (as was also suggested by some responses), the finding that they believed that a more detailed statement is less likely to be truthful suggests that, as truth-tellers during police interviews, they would not try to provide a detailed statement. Accordingly, when interviewing suspects and instructing them to provide a detailed statement, it may be crucial to also explain to them the importance of being informative, for example, for the course of the investigation and the possibility of exonerating them as suspects by having more details to verify.

Portnoy, S., Hope, L., Vrij, A., Ask, K., & Landström, S. (2020). Beliefs about suspect alibis: A survey of lay people in the United Kingdom, Israel, and Sweden. The International Journal of Evidence & Proof, 24(1), 59-74.

Evidence Concerning the Regulation of Firearms Design, Sale, and Carrying on Fatal Mass Shootings in the United States

Webster, McCourt, Crifasi, Booty, & Stuart, Criminology and Public Policy, 2020

The authors (one affiliated with the Bloomberg Center for Gun Policy and Research) suggest that based on past research, the occurrence of mass shootings may be influenced by prohibited individuals, particularly domestic violence perpetrators (which they assert are disproportionately involved in mass shootings) and that while already prohibited from purchasing or possessing a firearm, prohibited individuals may purchase a firearm from someone other than a federally licensed dealer. The authors suggest that Comprehensive Background Checks (CBC), entailing a federal firearms background check on private transfers as well, may prevent some of these prohibited individuals from obtaining a firearm. They also suggest that purchaser licensing where states can tailor background checks, require gun safety courses, and give law enforcement officials discretion over whether a license is issued can be used to limit access to firearms, however the authors concede that there is no research to support that either CBC or purchasing licenses would reduce mass shootings. Indeed, in regards to other variables like assault weapon and large capacity magazine bans and their effect on mass shootings, other research has produced mixed results and contained methodological issues.

The authors used data from the FBI’s Supplemental Homicide Reports and other publicly available databases to calculate state-level annual incidence of 604 fatal mass shootings that had four or more victims between 1984–2017. The authors did note that the SHR did not contain some prominent mass shootings such as the Aurora, CO theater , Sandy Hook elementary school, and the church in Southerland Springs, TX. The also note that because the SHR limits the number of victims to 11, the Virginia Tech shooting in their data is counted as three incidents. To remedy these and other omissions, they compared the SHR data with data on mass shootings collected by Stanford University (Stanford Mass Shootings in America) for the years 1984–2017 and the Gun Violence Archive for the years 2014–2017 and added any missing incidents to their data set.

Data on gun laws were collected and coded and included a number of state-level statutes: concealed carry laws, handgun purchaser licensing laws that require either in-person application or fingerprinting, laws requiring point-of-sale background checks only, firearm prohibitions for subjects of domestic violence restraining orders that include ex parte orders, firearm prohibitions for subjects of domestic violence restraining orders that include dating partners in the definition of domestic violence, firearm prohibitions for subjects of domestic violence restraining order that do not include ex parte orders or dating partners, laws requiring surrender of all firearms by subjects of domestic violence restraining orders, firearm prohibitions for violent misdemeanants, assault weapons bans and large capacity magazine bans.

Negative binomial regression models were used to estimate the associations between changes in key gun laws and fatal mass shootings. Analyzed at the state-year level, they conducted a time series analysis of three dependent variables; domestic violence linked mass shootings, which the authors (with the authors defining domestic relationship broadly to include any offender-victim family relationship, boyfriend/girlfriend, or ex-spouse), non-domestic violence linked mass shootings (however the SHR defines the offender-victim relationship based on the first homicide in the incident) and all mass shootings.

Analyses of the statistical models indicated that some of the variables had an effect on the outcomes measures. For total number of mass shootings incidents only two law variables had a statistically significant effect; states that had handgun purchaser licensing laws requiring in-person application with law enforcement or fingerprinting were associated with incidents of fatal mass shootings 56% lower than that of other states and LCM bans indicated a 48% lower risk of fatal mass shootings associated with the policy. They found no evidence that concealed carry laws, assault weapons bans, prohibitions for domestic abusers and violent misdemeanants, or point-of-sale CBC laws were associated with the incidence of fatal mass shootings. In models in which the number of mass shooting victim fatalities was the outcome, statistically significant protective effect variables included handgun purchaser licensing (66% reduction) as well as LCM bans (70% reduction) which, however, also demonstrated a wide confidence interval that calls into question its true effect.

For models examining non-domestic violence related incidents, purchaser licensing was shown to have a significant negative effect on both the number of incidents (62% reduction) and in the number of victims (65% reduction) in these incidents compared to other states. For models examining domestic violence incidents (28% of the sample) only LCM ban laws had a significant reduction effect on the number of incidents (61%) and the number of victims (75%) but states with required comprehensive background checks were associated with a large significant increase (222%) in victim deaths in these incidents.

The authors concede that the findings of this study suggest that the most common policy prescriptions and criticisms offered by gun control advocates-comprehensive background checks, assault weapons bans and “Right to Carry” laws which reduce restrictions on civilian concealed carry-do not seem to be associated with the incidence of fatal mass shootings. Despite the authors attempting to tie domestic violence to mass shootings, with 28% of the shootings in this study having some connection to domestic violence, they found no evidence that laws designed to keep firearms from perpetrators of domestic violence have affected mass shootings connected to domestic violence. They state this is surprising given that prior research demonstrating that laws prohibiting persons under domestic violence restraining orders from possessing firearms or with prior convictions for violent misdemeanors were associated with reduced intimate partner homicides. The authors conclude their findings suggest that laws requiring firearm purchasers to be licensed through a background check process supported by fingerprints and laws banning LCMs are the most effective gun policies for reducing fatal mass shootings.

Webster, D. W., McCourt, A. D., Crifasi, C. K., Booty, M. D., & Stuart, E. A. (2020). Evidence concerning the regulation of firearms design, sale, and carrying on fatal mass shootings in the United States. Criminology & Public Policy, 19(1), 171-212.

As noted above, different databases may define mass violence offenses differently and that beside the common feature of having multiple victims there is no universal definition of these events, which can make researching these events more challenging. Without clear definitions of mass violence, research and its implications and conclusions can be unclear or forward incomplete or inaccurate policy recommendations. Corzine and Corzine and explore the differences in definitions and subtypes, issues in research, and recommendations for future research.

The Devil’s In the Details: Measuring Mass Violence

Corzine and Corzine, Criminology and Public Policy, 2020

The authors note that within mass violence incidents, as measured by different sources and databases, major characteristic differences exist. For example the definition of an occurrence as a mass violence event may vary on the minimum number of victim (either 3 or 4 killed, sometimes including the wounded), location (some require a public location while others include residential and private locations), timing (some require them to have occurred within a 24 hour period), and whether a firearm was used. Defining other general characteristics of these events, and research into them, is made more difficult by specific variations in the incidents. For example, age of the typical victim can vary depending on the type of target, an event occurring at a school will have on average younger aged victims than a church. Events may occur based more on the location, rather than on specific individualized targets, and the offender-victim relationships may vary widely or be unknown, just as the motives may vary widely or be unknown.

The authors consider the FBI’s definition of two types of mass violence; a Classic type and a Family type. A killing of at least three family members is defined as a mass murder, or if involving a perpetrator suicide, a mass murder /suicide. If the perpetrator lives and kills four or more family members it’s described as a Family Killing, rather than a mass murder. A Classic type involves a single perpetrator (usually a mentally disordered male) who kills four or more victims in a public place with no cooldown period. These events can also be defined as mass violence victimization, in that while the two previously described types of mass killings will typically vary by location (public or private) victim type, motive, and even weapon use, both with result in physical injury, death, and emotional and psychological trauma for survivors.

However, the authors recognize that events described as public mass murders or mass shootings typically have garnered the most media and research attention with data collections efforts from various official government entities, although with some variation. The Office of Crime Victims (OCV) which has a focus on the toll on crime victims, utilizes data collected from the Mother Jones news organization. The OCV defines mass violence as an intentional violent criminal act, for which a formal investigation has been opened by the FBI or other law enforcement agency, that results in physical, emotional, or psychological injury to a sufficiently large number of people to significantly increase the burden of victim assistance and compensation for the responding jurisdiction. OCV provides general information to program news, training for providers and community leaders, through grants and funding, and in links to numerous fact sheets and articles on victimization.

The FBI’s definition of mass murder consists of four or more victim deaths (not counting the offender) in one or more locations in a close proximity by the offender, is the definition typically adhered to by other official organizations, though the number of qualifying victims was later reduced to three in 2013 by presidential mandate. In contrast, the Congressional Research Service (CRS) focuses on gun-related mass violence of all types, defining “mass shooting” as a “multiple homicide incident in which four or more victims are murdered with firearms, within one event, and in one or more locations in close proximity”. Mass shootings were broken down by type rather than exclusively by number, and categorized mass murders with firearms as either mass public shootings, familicides, and other mass shootings. These categories demonstrate a shift from analysis based solely on numbers of murdered or injured to one examining the type of event, which the authors contend holds promise for future research in not just describing the events but understanding them.

There are also a number of publicly available and unofficial data sources. These include the Gun Violence Archive, collecting data since 2012, which defined mass violence as four or more shot or killed (this expands the definition to included wounded) in one location, over a short time frame. It obtains its data from the media, law enforcement, and government sources, and their data is also used by the Guardian news organization for their reporting and data collection on mass shootings. Mother Jones’ data, the primary data source for the OCV, started in 1982 collecting data on mass shootings that followed the FBI’s definition of four victims (later three) of “indiscriminate rampages” in public places. Gang violence, armed robbery, and other felony-related events that generated several gun-related deaths are excluded from the data set. The Washington Post in 1966 began collecting data on mass violence, with a focus on firearms used to kill or injure four or more victims, through its own researchers making it a good resource for examining trends in mass violence. Since 2013, Mass Shooting Tracker relies on what they call a “crowd-sourced database.” Volunteers from around the United States report into the main hub where the shootings are recorded. A “mass shooting” is defined as a single “outburst” of violence in which four or more people are killed and/or injured. There is at least one link to a news article from the city where the shooting took place.

From this it can seen that there is variation amongst the most common measures of mass violence including how they are measure, varying between three and four victims and some including only deaths while some include injuries and deaths, with most of the publicly available source focus on incidents involving firearms versus other weapons.

The authors also notes the availability of datasets that are related to but not directly measuring mass violence like the FBI’s and the NYPD’s respective active shooter database tracking incidents of active shooters, primarily for developing evidence based responses to active shooter incidents. Some organizations track all firearm related deaths and injuries in support of laws that restrict gun ownership like Everytown for Gun safety, which primarily utilizes CDC data and sets a threshold of four or more fatalities (excluding the perpetrator) for mass murder or the Brady Campaign and Center, an organization that got its start in the mid 70’s as a gun control group. It collect’s data on firearm injuries and deaths and has developed a comprehensive plan of strict gun regulation.

Other more detailed sources of data exist in the form of the Supplemental Homicide Reports (SHR) from the FBI, which adds another layer of details to the UCR’s homicide data. While information is provided about victim and offender numbers and demographics, their relationship, the circumstances, and weapons used however it doesn’t denote the location and other additional circumstances around the incident. The National Incident Based Report System (NIBRS) is a much more detailed crime reporting system than the UCR (and SHR), which it was set to replace in 2021, however less than half of law enforcement agencies are participating. Corzine and Corzine state that overall NIBRS will offer significant improvements over the UCR. All of the crimes people are arrested for will be in NIBRS rather than the one most serious crime a suspect is charged with, as is currently recorded in the UCR. NIBRS collects more detailed information on 52 crimes plus ten offenses for which only arrest data are known. By covering all of the crimes that a person committed during an incident of mass violence or with which he or she is being charged, much more is known about the event than can be found using the SHR.

The large number of incident variables which include things like location codes, time of day, and whether the incident as cleared by arrest provides much more detailed data, which is more conducive to statistical analysis research on mass violence incidents. The authors note that none of the official definitions of mass violence or its subtypes to date focus on family mass murders, but state there needs to be more attention given to the private or family type of mass violence, and this data set will allow for the study of 2 or more victims in public and private settings. Even using the more restrictive definition of four fatalities, these comprise approximately half of the mass murder events in the parts of the United States covered by NIBRS.

As the authors illustrated, differences in data sources of mass violence can provide different descriptive results, depending on if a mass shooting is defined by, and it number of victims derived from, different sources as some data include both dead and wounded in victim totals, while some only count the deceased, with starting points that could vary between three and four victims depending on the year the data was obtained. The availability of particular aspects of mass violence is also dependent on the source as some data sets lack important information like victim-offender relationship and location or setting and while public mass shootings have garnered a lot of attention, private setting or family mass murders provide another important avenue of research into mass violence. In particular the authors outline some implications and challenges for future research:

• One of the first things that must be done is to separate the various types of mass violence, so we can examine the uniqueness of each one.

• We need to study mass murder that occurs in public places and private places.

• We need to study the foiled cases.

• We need to understand how the role of mental health, or the lack thereof, is associated with mass killing.

• We need to explore who offenders choose as their targets and how they do so.

• We need to explore the influence that the hatred of certain groups has on the choice of who and where to target victims.

• We need to understand the role that loss plays in motivation, including the loss of a job, the loss of a loved one through divorce or death, and the loss of being viewed with respect.

The authors state that from a measurement standpoint, the data set that would best satisfy researchers’ needs will include the following:

• Two or more victims per private/family event who have been killed

• Three or more victims per public mass violence event who have been killed

• Any three or four injured persons occurring during the same incident

• Any history of an offender’s mental illness, a criminal record, or domestic violence

• All weapon(s) used to injure and/or kill victims

Having this information will generate more detailed, nuanced data that will allow law enforcement and researchers a better understanding of the circumstance around these events, distinguishing between subtypes of these events, how they might be prevented more often.

Huff‐Corzine, L., & Corzine, J. (2020). The devil’s in the details: Measuring mass violence. Criminology & Public Policy, 19(1), 317-333.

Research Briefs

Race, Place, and Police-Caused Homicide in U.S. Municipalities

Holmes, Painter II & Smith, Justice Quarterly, 2019

The authors consider that approaches to studying police caused homicides (PCH) have focused typically on two theories, the Minority Threat hypothesis, which borrows from Conflict Theory which suggests that the amount of crime control is directly proportional to the size of the population that threatens the powerful’s interests. Framed as Minority Threat, the theory suggests the level of police caused homicide is in direct relation to the relative size of the Black population. Large populations of Black people are associated with serious criminality and urban violence and are seen as a threat. When increased crime control on the population is enacted, it will thus result in an increase in PCH. In contrast to this linear relationship model, a Power Threat hypothesis suggests a curve, where increases in crime control continues until the minority population reaches enough positions of power, to where their influence decreases the level of crime control on minority populations. The alternative theoretical perspective is the Community Violence hypothesis, which postulates that violent offending will result in more police caused homicides of suspects. Disadvantaged urban black populations have relatively high rates of violence so that Black over-representation in police caused homicides is actually a reflection of the very real threats that officers face in dealing with these greater levels of violence in these communities. Officers use deadly force when it is necessary in the face of danger and the level of violence in these communities increases the likelihood officers will be put in those situations.

The authors suggest another theoretical approach. The Place hypothesis maintains that the residential segregation of minority populations into areas of concentrated socioeconomic disadvantage increases the likelihood of police officers employing violence against minority citizens. Police patrolling in these disadvantaged places may see minority citizens as particularly threatening, though this is a more subjective threat based on place, rather than the objective threat involved in the Community Violence hypothesis. In this theory the level of threat by minorities is based on the segregation of the population into what are viewed as dangerous areas, and because minorities are associated with violent crime, they may be automatically viewed as a threat by being segregated in these places. However, research testing Place hypotheses about PCH has produced mixed findings but the authors suggest there may be a non-linear relationship between racial segregation into the disadvantaged areas and PCH.

The authors also considered that the relationship between Hispanics and PCH may need additional exploration. While percentage Hispanic has not typically been found to be a factor in incidence of PCH, the authors consider that group specific models (minority compared to White) may reveal disparities not evident in total incidence analysis, as well as examining the segregation aspect between White and Hispanic populations.

It should be clarified that when the authors are using structural theories like Minority Threat and Place, it is to examine whether these community structures are related to PCH but these theories operate under the unproven assumption that if there is a relationship between community structure and PCH, then that relationship exists because of biases held by police officers against minorities. These theories, in attempting to make that connection, do not actually examine if the biases exist, nor do they take into account situational factors like suspect demeanor and behavior, the race of officers in these encounters, and attitudes in the community toward police which may either drive that statistical relationship or even negate the relationship between structural conditions and PCH.

Using data from 230 cities with over 100K population who filed Supplemental Homicide Reports with the UCR between 2008 and 2013, their outcome variable was the incidence of felon killed by police officer for the study time period (Range 0-96, Avg. 5.71, S.D. 12.92). The authors noted the small sample size but recognized that other databases include small cities and may have incomplete data, limited methodological documentation, and a lack of verification procedures. Other variables included city population, population density and geographical region as control variables as well as percent Black and Hispanic to represent the Minority Threat hypothesis, and average violent crime rate, arrest rate per 1,000, and total number of police officers killed in the line of duty during the study period to represent the Community Violence hypothesis. To test Place hypothesis they used two variables, Black and Hispanic dissimilarity taken from the 2010 Discover America in a New Century website, which indicates the degree of separation from Whites across all neighborhoods of a city.

Using negative binomial regression because the data was a count variable, they examined total incidences, finding a larger city population was significantly related to a greater number of PCH, while the Northeast and Midwest regions were negatively associated with PCH. In total incidence, the authors did not find support for the Minority Threat hypothesis; Black percentage was significantly negatively associated with PCH (but ceased to be significant in the group specific analysis) and there was no significant association between Hispanic percentage and PCH. Finding partial support, analysis of Place showed a large significant effect in Black separation but a negligible effect with Hispanic separation. In examining the Power Threat hypothesis there was a curve-linear relationship with the most segregated cites having more incidence of PCH than less segregated cities. In support of the Community Violence hypothesis, the violent crime rate had a large statistically positive relationship with PCH (while both the overall index crime rate and property crime rate were not) as did higher arrest rates. Police officers killed in the line of duty also had a small but significant positive relationship with PCH as well. In addition the researchers also examined but failed to find a relationship between the ratio of Black and Hispanic officers to Black and Hispanic citizen population with PCH, however female officers were significantly positively associated with PCH.

In group specific analysis of Black PCH there were four predictors—black–white segregation, violent crime rate, police officers killed, and percent female officers—with statistically significant, positive relationships to PCH of Blacks. They also saw a similar non-linear effect with Black-White separation with more PCH incidence in areas of greater separation. For Hispanics, the percentage Hispanic, Hispanic-White separation, as well as the Southwest region all had statistically significant positive effects on PCH. However for Hispanics, and in accordance with the Power Threat theory there was a positive relationship with Hispanic population and incidence of PCH until Hispanics reach about 60 % of the population and the relationship reverses with PCH decreasing as Hispanic population increases and they found no non-linear relationship between Hispanic separation and PCH.

The discuss how they found support for both Community Violence and Place hypotheses and some support for all three hypothesis in group specific analyses, noting their study highlighted the importance of using both structural and event based data and variable and group specific analyses. They also note future research could examine officer race in relation to PCH as well as more detailed city and neighborhood analysis of PCH.

Holmes, M. D., Painter, M. A., & Smith, B. W. (2019). Race, place, and police-caused homicide in US municipalities. Justice Quarterly, 36(5), 751-786.

Holmes Painter, II and Smith used variables like population, and arrest rate, to examine the disparity in minority PCH but Tregle, Nix and Alpert remind us that disparity doesn’t equal bias and caution against using imperfect variables like these in examining officer involved shootings (OIS)

Disparity Does Not Mean Bias: Making Sense of Observed Racial Disparities in Fatal Officer-Involved Shootings with Multiple Benchmarks

Tregle, Nix & Alpert, Journal of Crime and Justice, 2019

Following well publicized officer involved shootings incidents starting in2014, Officer Involved Shootings (OIS) started being viewed as not isolated incidents but as a national problem involving bias on the part of the police in their interactions with minorities. However, recent agency level studies show that Blacks are not more likely to be shot by the police than Whites. Unfortunately, the government has failed as to adequately compile data related to OIS to examine this issue on a larger scale. However, in 2015, the Washington Post started compiling data related to fatal OIS, indicating that officers shoot and kill just under 1,000 people a year and 25% are black and 48% are white. While UCR data showed that Blacks made up approximately 37% of violent crime arrests, the Washington Post data revealed that in 2015 more than 80% of fatal OIS invoked a suspect with a weapon (with the UCR showing Blacks accounting for 40-44% of weapon possession arrests).

However, the authors note this data cannot show whether Blacks are more likely to be shot by the police than Whites. Simply because Blacks are over-represented in fatal shootings, relative to their population in general, does not mean there is bias toward Blacks by the police. The authors explain that using population as a measure in this way is flawed. Because, as in medical disease models, the entirety of the population do not all face the same risk of disease, nor do all members of a population face the same risk of coming into contact with the police. For example examining racial disparity in traffic stops based on racial population is inappropriate without determining what portion of the population is actually driving and thus at risk of being stopped. Another issue to contend with is that within that driving population, which groups, because of their driving behavior or vehicle condition (young people, low income citizens), might be more likely to be pulled over.

The authors examine seven variables including, population data, police-citizen interaction data (from the Bureau of Justice Statistics’ Police Public Contact Survey (PPCS), a supplement to the National Crime Victimization Survey carried out triennial) and UCR arrest data from 2015-2017 to report the odds of Black citizens being shot, relative to White citizens. They note that many studies examining OIS showed Blacks were less likely to be shot or killed by the police compared to Whites, however some studies demonstrated opposite findings, but comparing these studies are difficult because of the use of different benchmarks. To examine whether there were any disparities between race in OIS, the authors utilized seven benchmarks to examine the issue-population, police citizen interactions (police-initiated contacts, traffic stops, and street stops), arrests (total arrests, violent crime arrests, and weapon offense arrests).

Analyzing the odds ratios of Blacks and Whites shot against the benchmarks, the authors first note that fatal OIS are a rare occurrence. For example, although police fatally shot 259 Black citizens in 2015, they did not use lethal force in 140,543 arrests of Black citizens for violent crimes. Similarly, while police fatally shot 497 White citizens in 2015, they did not fatally shoot suspects during 63,967 arrests of White citizens for weapons offenses. The also note that population is a flawed benchmark, that while it indicates that Blacks are over 3.5 times more likely to be shot by the police than Whites, the problem is that the majority of either population are not exposed to the risk of being fatally shot by the police. Other benchmarks provide mixed and varying results. For clarification, note that odds ratios over 1 indicate Blacks were more likely than Whites to be shot while odds ratios less than one indicate Blacks are less likely than Whites to be shot and the horizontal line represents the confidence interval (the high likelihood that the data point lies within that range). (See Table 1)

Table 1. Black Citizen Odds Ratios of Fatal Officer Involved Shootings Benchmarks

The authors note that the popular perception that blacks are disproportionately shot by the police is based on the flawed benchmark of population, which doesn’t consider the races’ different exposure rates to the police. They suggest that arrest rates are a more appropriate measure since it represents the subset of the population that had interactions with the police that could turn deadly, working under these assumptions: (1) OIS occur in response to perceived imminently dangerous citizen behaviors, (2) Criminal behavior is a reasonable proxy for imminently dangerous behavior, and (3) Arrests are a reasonable proxy for criminal behavior. Based on total arrests, Blacks are 1.23 to 1.37 more likely to be fatally shot that Whites in that three-year period but when examining arrests that pose a greater threat to officers like those of weapons offenses or violent crimes, Blacks were slightly less likely to be fatally shot than Whites. However the authors also note that UCR data is not a complete accounting of all police departments, with small departments being underrepresented, and that arrests are only a subset of police-citizens interactions that could escalate into lethal force incidents like traffic stops, domestics, and mentally ill and suspicious person calls. The authors state that a better benchmark might be police-citizen interactions, however the National Crime Victimization survey also has its limitations regarding who is sampled and that in regards to the risk of being shot, there are a vast number of police-citizen encounters that do not require a level of force, let alone lethal force.

An even better benchmark would be scenarios where officers drew their weapons but did not shoot, comparing shoot-no shoot would exclude interaction where it is improbable that citizens would be shot. However, this benchmark may be more appropriate at a city or agency level, as reporting standards for drawing a firearm vary widely and it may be difficult to compile national data. The authors also note that in examining OIS that the Washington Post database does not include non-fatal OIS. Data from larger cities show that non-fatal OIS range from 20-45%, and fatality may be dependent on other factors like immediacy of medical care. They also note that individual circumstances are not accounted for including suspects’ level of resistance and threatening behavior which will prompt the use of force, and level of force, which may explain some of the racial disparity. In addition, another noteworthy limitation of the study is the inability to benchmark fatal shootings of citizens who posed no imminent threat (i.e., unarmed and not aggressing).

In this case, the research question would be: In order to answer the question of whether Black citizens who pose no imminent threat are more likely to be fatally shot by police than White citizens who pose no imminent threat, given each group’s exposure to police contact, benchmarks would be needed that indicated how often officers interact with unarmed and non-aggressing citizens of each racial group. The authors conclude that the federal government should be compiling data on all OIS to better understand and analyze the conditions under which they occur and that while databases like the Washington Post’s can provide valuable information, the benchmarks used to analyze OIS have assumptions and limitations that must be acknowledged.

Tregle, B., Nix, J., & Alpert, G. P. (2019). Disparity does not mean bias: Making sense of observed racial disparities in fatal officer-involved shootings with multiple benchmarks. Journal of crime and justice, 42(1), 18-31.

While it is apparent that in order to examine any racial disparities in officer involved shooting that appropriate benchmarks be used, we also know that not all OIS are appropriate and that the police do make errors in the application of force. Taylor examined OIS and constructed a typology of police shooting errors, with suggestions on how those errors may addressed.

Beyond False Positives: A Typology of Police Shooting Errors

Taylor, Criminology and Public Policy, 2019

Taylor quotes David Kahneman saying that “There are distinctive patterns in the errors people make. Systemic errors are known as biases, and they recur predictably in particular circumstances. …The availability of diagnostic labels for [these] biases make [them] easier to anticipate, recognize, and understand”. Taylor explains that behavior tends to be systematically connected to the features of peoples’ tools, tasks, previous experiences, training, and environments and that the research findings on human error have consistently demonstrated that situations, behaviors, and decision processes that result in error tend to result in repeated errors across time and people. The examination of errors can be applied to criminal justice research, and more specifically, to police use of deadly force, and a typology of police shooting errors can be constructed.

Error should be defined as, absent any chance outside influence, when a sequence of thoughts or behaviors do not lead to their intended outcome. An officer shooting an unarmed man intentionally is not an error. It may be a violation, but it is not an error because the intent met the outcome. Systemic errors occur when people rely on pattern recognition, developed from repeated exposure to similar patterns and experiences, and automaticity, which is the development of implicit shortcuts in our cognition which speed up our decision making process with a high degree of reliability but can also lead to errors.

In the context of police shooting, errors are typically viewed as either a False Positive error, where a person is presumed to be dangerous by the officer, but is in fact not dangerous, and shot by the officer, or a False Negative, where a police officer or citizen is killed when an officer fails to shoot a dangerous individual. However the authors believe this simple typology can be expanded to cover a wider variety of scenarios, which include misses of the intended target and hits on unintended targets such as citizens and other officers

Table 1. A New Typology of Police Shooting Errors

	TARGET HIT
FIREARM DISCHARGED	Intended	Unintended
Intended	Misdiagnosis Errors	Misses
Unintended	Misapplication Errors	Unintentional Discharge

The authors explain misdiagnosis errors, similar to false-positive errors, as when the officer intended to shoot his firearm, and hit the intended target, but the outcome was unintended, i.e., a non-dangerous person was shot. In these situations, a non-dangerous person was shot in error, sometimes referred to as cell-phone shootings, mistake-of-fact shootings, and perception-only shootings. They note statistics from Los Angeles and Philadelphia that between 2013 and 2017, 14% and 10% respectively, of police shootings involved this type of error. They suggest that while more research is needed, that these errors may stem from pattern recognition. The classic and current police literature notes that through experience officers are attuned to cues of danger and impropriety and these cues prompt the reliance on pattern recognition, where these frequently experienced cues prompt the recognition of, and priming for, a dangerous situation. This leads to decision making shortcuts that prompt officers to go on alert, draw their gun and fire. However these shortcuts can lead to errors when the officer has been primed for a dangerous scenario (such as a dispatch call about a man with a gun), attends to the wrong information , or ignores or misinterprets the right information.

Misapplication errors involved the unintended firing of the firearm but a hit on the intended target. These are referred to in the literature as weapon confusion or Taser confusion shootings , where the officer intended to Taser a person but instead accidentally drew his firearm and shot. This type of error is well documented in the medical and aviation fields, where switching over to a new tool (like a Taser) or procedure has been introduced and a preoccupation or distraction is present, thus causing the misapplication and the unintended outcome. In these cases, training just to sufficiency may be insufficient as newer learned skills tended to be the first to disappear under pressure and replaced by those practiced for a longer period of time. The authors note the typical difference in training time with firearms compared to Tasers, and while it requires more research, this may be a factor in this error.

Misses are an error where the officer intends to fire his firearm but doesn’t hit the intended target, either completely missing or hitting an unintended target. Much of the research on police shooting accuracy indicates a low hit rate, typically less than 50 %, and despite changes in training methods, hasn’t improved over the past 50 years. Between 2013 and 2017, Philadelphia officer hit rates averaged 18% while in that same time period LA officer hit rates averaged 27%, varying between 18% to 42%. This means that the error is a much more common outcome than the correct one and the authors note there is not a comparative type error in other fields and suggest much more research be conducted to determining and addressing the causes of this type of error.

Unintended discharges are errors which occur when an officer did not intend to fire his weapon, had no intention of hitting a target, but the round in fact struck a target. They are typically referred to as accidental or negligent discharges. Between 2013 and 2017, 17 % of reported LA shooting incidents involved this type of error while between 2006 and 2016, the NYPD reported 19% of their shooting incidents were unintended discharges. Research indicates that unconscious touching of the trigger may be common and when combined with some exertion activity, a co-muscle activation response exerted enough pressure to discharge the weapon. A high number of accidental discharges occurred during routine weapons activity,(storing, cleaning, loading, unloading). Automaticity, where officers have done a task so many times it becomes automatic, allows them to change attentional focus and with a loss of focus on the other task, an error in unintended discharge can occur.

The authors conclude that simply trying to lump all police error shootings into a large sample and look for causal correlation is misguided as the causal mechanics vary between the types of errors but neither is it appropriate to simply look at each case as an isolated incident as causal connections to similar shooting incidents might also be missed. Utilizing this typology will more accurately discriminate between the different types of shooting errors and improve research on police shootings, and, based on the type of error, appropriate means can be employed to reduce those types of errors through policy, training or practice.

Taylor, P. L. (2019). Beyond false positives: A typology of police shooting errors. Criminology & Public Policy, 18(4), 807-822.

Eliminating errors in the use of lethal force is just one way of improving police performance, which can foster and build police legitimacy with the public. James, James, Davis, and Dotson suggest that rather than looking at outcomes to study police-citizen contacts, a more in-depth analysis of police performance that examines officer behavior while accounting for influencing factors, can not only enhance our understanding of officer decision making and behavior but also improve police performance in their contact with citizens.

Using Interval-Level Metrics to Investigate Situational-, Suspect-, and Officer-Level Predictors of Police Performance During Encounters with the Public

James, James, Davis and Dotson, Police Quarterly, 2019

The authors look at factors that may influence how police officers behave during encounters with the public, noting previous research has examined whether suspect race influences officer involved shootings or whether officers use greater force depending on suspect demeanor, or whether neighborhoods predict police-citizen outcomes. However, this research typically focuses on the outcome of the encounter, not the performance of the officer in the encounter. For example, an officer may exhibit fairness and do everything right but still generate a citizen complaint, while another officer may do everything wrong and get away with it if the citizen doesn’t bother to file a complaint. The authors examined a wide variety of 667 incident reports from a large urban department (1500 sworn officers) to examine situational, suspect, and officer level predictors on how officers perform in their interactions with the public. Utilizing a recently established and rigorously developed police encounter performance metric, the authors used interval level metrics to score officer performance across the range of these encounters which include Use of Force, Tactical Social Interaction (officer performance in routine citizen encounters), and Crisis Intervention, which involved officer performance in crisis encounter or encounter with people with mental illness.

Within these three metrics are a wide variety of performance measurements. For example, under Use of Force there are 48 performance variables within the categories of Preplan (expecting to be involved in a deadly force situation, waiting for backup) Observe/assess (correctly identifies threats, identifies pre-assault indicators, aware of what is going on in the periphery, selecting reasonable force options), Officer Behavior (paying attention to details, drawing the weapon, able to use communication skills to defuse, used appropriate level of assertiveness), Tactics (had necessary equipment, prioritizing citizen safety, prioritizing other officer safety, using cover, effectively engaging multiple opponents) and Adapt (correctly responds to a threat, recognizes need to transition to different force option, uses or compensates for environmental conditions). Tactical and Social Interaction and Crisis Intervention also utilized extensive performance variables under similar categories, including Resources, Interaction, and Closing the Encounter.

Each of these variables carried a score indicating that behavior’s impact on performance. The incident reports were than analyzed and coded if the officer took the action, or whether the officer could have taken the action but did not. Not all performance metrics were suitable for every encounter and so were not included in the scoring and analysis. The performance scores of officers are expressed as a percentage, the proportion of all behaviors that were possible in the encounters, as measured by the metrics. In addition to this, the authors also coded situational (nighttime, children present, cultural or language barrier, more than one civilian present), suspect (age, sex, race, non-compliant, armed, hostile, homeless, emotionally disturbed, substance impaired, self-harming behavior), and officer (sex) level variables and analyzed them for their effect on officer performance.

Overall, across all incidents the average performance score was 80.5%. Officers scored highest in crisis encounters (83.6%), aggravated assaults (83.4%), and domestic violence incidents (82.4%) but scored lower in traffic collisions (74.8%), harassment calls (76.9%) and investigation of suspicious circumstances (76.7%). See Table 1 below with average officer performance scores and their error bars at a 95% confidence interval.

Table 1. Citizen Interaction Specific Police Officer Performance Scores

To investigate this average 20% performance deficit, the authors examined specific categories and found officers scored highly in Observe/assess (96%) and Closing (93.6%) but less proficient with Preplanning (80.5%), Adapting Tactics (83.8), and use of Tactics (84.4). They also note officers performed far better in crisis encounters (94.5%) than in routine (non-crisis) police/citizen interactions (76.9%).

When the authors examined situational factor influence on officer performance, they found similar performance irrespective of night or day, the presence of children, or the presence of cultural barriers with a slightly better performance in the presence of language barriers (84.2%) than without (81.8%) and statistically significantly better performance with more than one civilian present (81.5%) as compared to only one civilian present (78.6%). In analyzing suspect factors, performance was very similar with teens, young adults, and older adults, and slightly higher performance scores with men as opposed to women (84.7% vs 82.1 %). Officers also performed slightly better (mid 80’s percentiles) with substance impaired citizens, the homeless, self-harming individuals, hostile citizens, and armed suspects than with the opposite counterparts to these factors. Officers also had significantly better performance scores in dealing with emotionally disturbed individuals (84.8%), non-compliant citizens (86.3%) and Blacks (85.8%) compared to Whites (83.2%) or Hispanics (83.8%). While officer gender was the only officer related factor that could be analyzed in this study based on incident reports, there was no statistical difference in performance scores based on gender.

The authors suggest that the results indicate that officers perform better in crisis or “high stakes scenarios as evidenced by their higher performance in crisis incidents like domestics and aggravated assault. This may occur as officers are calling upon tasks that they excel at like vigilant situational assessment, the use of tactics, and adapting those tactics, with officers scoring high in Observe/assess. The large difference between crisis and routine encounters suggests that while measurements show that officers performed very well with performance items like clearly explaining actions, showing empathy, and demonstrating concern for the citizen but perhaps felt the need to demonstrate this more in crisis situations than in routine encounters. The finding that officers performed better with Blacks than non-blacks might be difficult to interpret. The largest differences between Blacks and non-Blacks were in the Observe/assess category, 99% compared to 95%. It could be suggested that officers have a heightened awareness because of implicit bias, unconsciously associating Blacks with weapons or danger, in line with the Minority Threat hypothesis. Alternately, officers may be paying more attention in encounters with Blacks due to a desire to perform well in these encounters and avoid being labeled as biased, with the authors noting that the department had received implicit bias training in the past year. Officers’ better performance with emotionally disturbed and non-compliant individuals suggests that while officers logically would use humanizing and de-escalation techniques in these situations, across the range of performance behaviors, indications seem to be that officers try harder during situations they perceive as more challenging.

Implications from the study suggest using performance metrics are a better way to assess officer behavior than simply analyzing outcomes, such as whether force was used or the presence of citizens complaints as they may provide a distorted picture of actual officer performance. The authors also urge the use of body worn cameras to aid in the assessment of officer performance. They also recognize that outcomes speak to fair enforcement and building public trust to enhance police legitimacy but rather than the sole measure of police encounters, both performance and outcomes can be analyzed to determine how probabilistic outcomes like use of force, or arrest, are, and how much they are dictated by good or bad officer performance. As well as being used to assess training effectiveness like Crisis Intervention Training, officers can be trained to incorporate de-escalation techniques in a broader range of scenarios where there is a likelihood of escalation, including in routine citizen encounters where techniques like empathizing, reducing the police citizen power differential, and being respectful may foster the perception of police legitimacy as well as reduce the 20% officer performance deficit.

James, L., James, S., Davis, R., & Dotson, E. (2019). Using Interval-Level Metrics to Investigate Situational-, Suspect-, and Officer-Level Predictors of Police Performance During Encounters With the Public. Police Quarterly, 22(4), 452-480.

Research Briefs

Under the Microscope: Legal Challenges to Fingerprints and DNA as Methods of Forensic Identification

Wise, International Review of Law, Computers, & Technology, 2004

Wise discusses the advent of both fingerprint and DNA technology, and addresses the legal challenges they’ve faced as well as how the determination of legal validity will affect emerging biometric identification means. He notes that Galton, a 19^th century scientist, proclaimed that fingerprints were unique to each individual and permanent, as well as developing a system to identify the unique characteristics of a fingerprint (called Galton points). Sir Edward Henry, a contemporary of Galton took an interest in fingerprints, and with consultation from Galton, developed the Henry Classification System to catalog fingerprint data, thus ushering in the modern era of fingerprint science The classification system is still used today and has enjoyed worldwide acceptance and use.

Challenges to the admissibility of latent prints are based on established standards of evidence admissibility. The 1923 case, Frye vs the United States, originally set a standard for expert testimony (in this case, in the admissibility of lie detector results), in that experts should only testify if their testimony is based on “general acceptance” in the scientific community. This standard was widely utilized until the 1993 case, Daubert vs Merrel Dow Pharmaceuticals. This case set out new, comprehensive criteria which included, whether the scientific theory has been tested, whether it has been subject to peer review and publication, whether it has a known error rate, whether it has widespread acceptance, and whether there are operating standards. It was from the establishment of the Daubert standard that questions about the admissibility of latent prints arose.

In 1999, the case United States vs Byron Mitchell, was the first to challenge the admissibility of fingerprint evidence, and while the judge dismissed the challenge, the issue came up again in 2002, with United States vs Carlos Ivan Llera Plaza. The judge ruled that while the analyst may testify to some components of the analysis such as the methodology and the number of matching points between the latent print evidence and the defendant, he would not be allowed to testify as to whether the evidence matched the print of the defendant. The judge ruled latent print analysis did not meet the Daubert standard, because of a lack of known error rate and differing standards on how many Galton points signifies a match. However, the judge later reversed his ruling after reviewing US and UK data, concluding that there was a clearly established standard of analysis in the scientific community to satisfy the Daubert standard. Since the Mitchell case there have been 40 challenges to the admissibility of latent print evidence but in all the cases, fingerprint evidence was allowed.

In 1984, Dr. Alec Jeffreys, a researcher studying gene structures determined that DNA sequences are unique to individuals and two years later was helping law enforcement utilize DNA to identify a serial killer in the UK., which both exonerated an innocent man and was able to match DNA from a suspect to the evidence. Jeffreys’ RFLP method has been refined since then to an STR technique where only a small amount of DNA is required for analysis, as well as developing the use of mitochondrial DNA testing that utilizes a different methodology that works especially well on degraded DNA evidence, and in cases requiring the identification of family members.

The first challenge to RFLP DNA evidence occurred in the late 80’s in the case of United States vs Bonds. The District Court ruled that the DNA evidence was admissible based on the “general acceptance” standard of Frye, however the US Court of Appeals ruled in 1993 that the DNA evidence was admissible under the Daubert standard, despite the laboratory not conducting external blind proficiency tests or referencing a known error rate. The judge determined that if the scientific community was accepting of the technology, it must also then be accepting of the error rate as well. RFLP DNA analysis was also challenged in the NY case of the People vs Castro. In this case, the court used a three prong Frye test to determine if the theory, and its techniques and experiments, could produce reliable results that were generally accepted by the scientific community, and whether the laboratory performed the accepted scientific techniques in analyzing the sample in the particular case. The court ruled the first two prongs were met,, in that the science was sound, but that the laboratory failed to the meet the accepted scientific testing standards.

STR DNA analysis was also challenged in many courts. For example in State vs Traylor, although Traylor argued the validity of commercial DNA tests are unknown because of the use of proprietary regents used in the analysis, the MN Supreme Court, in 2003, ruled that the DNA Advisory Board and its established guidelines developed by the FBI, met the admissibility criteria and validated the science. While challenges to mtDNA are relatively new to the courts, recent challenges have established that mtDNA analysis constitutes a “scientific knowledge based on reliable methods and principles”.

Newer DNA analysis technology, like Low Copy Number (LCN), while accepted, may face challenges as well. LCN DNA techniques can utilize very small samples of DNA and produce 17 billion copies to allow for analysis. However the concern is that as the original sample gets smaller in this process, any contamination in the sample will have a larger effect on the results of the analysis. Other concerns are the transfer of LCN DNA from casual contact and the lack of scientific evidence available as to how long this casual contact DNA could remain. While “shedder indexes” are being investigated to determine the rate at which an individual donates potential DNA material (i.e. skin cells, hair, sweat), researchers have reported that DNA can be detected after transfer to an object for nearly three months in some cases and in one case for 2 years. Even more importantly, with such a small sample size of LCN DNA, there typically is no material left over after testing for an outside source to run its own analysis and produce data. The FBI, with the exception of the limited application in human remains identification, remains skeptical of LCN DNA. Their official position is that any profiles obtained from LCN DNA should not be entered into the Combined DNA Index\System (CODIS) database of offenders and suspects. They also issued a caution against a rush to re-examine old cases on the hopes that LCN DNA would offer better analysis or change a verdict, mainly because of the risk of evidence contamination from repeated handling.

While fingerprints, and now DNA, are classic biometric measures, new measures of identification are being developed like ear prints, facial and voice recognition, iris, retina, and vein patterns, and hand geometry. The newer technologies will likely face challenges as they are introduced into the courtroom. Part of what drove the acceptance of latent print admissibility is that the scientific standard had been developed over a 100 years of use. Newer technologies will need to demonstrate that they can meet the Frye or Daubert standards and this also puts a burden on the judiciary, highlighting the situation created by Daubert,which requires judges, who are often not trained in the sciences, to act as gatekeepers of evidence admissibility. Even if these new technologies become “generally accepted”, criminal defense attorneys can still criticize the application of the method by the individual laboratory, and if the laboratory demonstrates they meet the scientific standards, the training or performance of the individual analyst can still be called into question.

Wise, J. (2004). Under the microscope: Legal challenges to fingerprints and DNA as methods of forensic identification. International Review of Law, Computers & Technology, 18(3), 425-434.

Recognizing the challenges faced in determining admissibility is important for defense attorneys as well as prosecutors, criminalists, and detectives. Being able to present solid, scientific based identifying evidence is crucial for prosecutions, as is producing accurate evidence data from other sources at the crime scene. Knock and Davison developed a methodology that they believe will produced more detailed, accurate information on the source of blood stain evidence.

Predicting the Position of the Source of Blood Stains for Angled Impacts

Knock & Davison, Journal of Forensic Sciences, 2007

The authors note that in the field determining the source of blood splatter evidence typically involves the “stringing method. As the authors explain “This technique uses the fact that the width to length ratio of a blood stain is approximately related to its impact angle. Using the calculated angle of impact, a straight line is drawn back from the stain along the line of the impact angle. Where the lines from several stains intersect is assumed to be the source of the stain.” They also note though that the effect of gravity on the flight path of blood droplets isn’t taken into account in making this determination. Knock and Davison experimented by dropping blood droplets of varying sizes at different height and angles against a hard surface. From this data, they produced one equation relating stain size to drop size and velocity for all impact angles, and a second equation, relating the number of spines (blood fingers extending from the center of the drop caused by impact) to drop size, velocity, and surface slope for all impact angles. The authors demonstrated that by combining these two equations, impact velocity can be accurately calculated and thus the true position of the blood stain’s source.

Knock, C., & Davison, M. (2007). Predicting the position of the source of blood stains for angled impacts. Journal of forensic sciences, 52(5), 1044-1049.

Revising and refining scientific methodology can improve the forensic investigative ability of detectives and criminalists but its also necessary to re-evaluate perceptions we hold about certain criminal activity and the perpetrators. Ferguson, et al reminds us that conventional wisdom is not always correct and that the analysis of data is necessary for the proper assessment of contributing and causal behavior in determining who might be at risk for perpetrating a school shooting.

Psychological Profiles of School Shooters: Positive Directions and One Big Wrong Turn

Ferguson, Coulson, & Barnett, Journal of Police Crisis Negotiations, 2011

The authors contend that the stereotype presented by the media and typologies produced both by the American Psychiatric Association and the FBI are simply inaccurate, or too overly broad and vague, to be of use. While conceding that first hand data from shooters who often die in the incident is hard to come by, a more evidence based typology can be utilized.

School shooters are typically portrayed as loners, involved in the Goth subculture or other out-groups, who enjoy violent video games, were bullied, and had disruptive or negligent home lives. When school shootings increased in the’90’s the public, academics, politicians, and activists demanded answers, despite their relative rarity and the overall general decline of youth violence.

In 1999, the FBI provided a threat assessment profile for school shooters cautioning against its use other than in assessing the credibility of a threat already made by an individual. Some criteria seem reasonable like “injustice collector, dehumanizes others, and lacks empathy” while others were vague in definition like an “unreasonable interest in sensational violence” and overly broad like “a failed love relationship, a sense of superiority, exaggerated need for attention, externalizes blame, closed social group, a fascination with violence filled entertainment”.

As of 2010 the APA maintained a warning signs list for serious youth violence including obvious signs like “enjoying hurting animals, detailed plans to commit acts of violence, and announcing threats or plans for hurting others” but like the FBI’s threat assessment, others are vague in definition like “frequent physical fighting” while others could apply to great numbers of mentally-well juveniles like, “feeling rejected or alone, poor school performance, and access to or a fascination with weapons, especially firearms”.as well as including ideas that have been discredited by research like “violence is a learned behavior” and linking violent media, like video games, with violent behavior.

These attempts at recognizing school shooters will result in over-identification and misidentification and while empirical evidence on characteristics of school shooters is scant, a 2002 report from the Secret Service and Dept. of Education does provide a more data derived (albeit descriptive) picture of school shooters. The reported analyzed 37 attacks, involving 41 perpetrators from 1974 to 2000 and utilized school and court records, mental health and legal documents as well as interviews with the ten surviving perpetrators. The report made clear that with the wide difference among perpetrators that no profile for school shooters existed, though there were some features that tended to be more widespread. The report also demonstrated that the stereotypical school shooter image is inaccurate. The SS/DOE report found that video game playing was relatively low, only 15% expressed “some interest in violent video games” and just 59% expressed “some interest in violent media in other forms”, with the authors noting these figures are lower than those found for non-shooter males in other studies. However, 37% were exposed to media violence through their own poems, essays, and journals.

Social isolation was not found to be common with school shooters. Most had friends, 41% belonged to a mainstream social groups, (27% were part of fringe groups but also had friends). In categories that were not mutually exclusive, only 12% had no friends and 34% were described as loners. School and family background also did not figure prominently into school shooters’ behaviors. However mental health issues were a factor. 98% of perpetrators experienced some kind of major loss right before the incident, 78% had a history of suicide attempts or ideation, 71% percent of then perceived themselves as wronged, bullied, or persecuted by others, and 61% had a documented history of significant depression. However very few of the perpetrators had received any mental health care in the past, suggesting a failure of our mental health system that has contributed to these incidents, Two prominent warning signs noted in the SS/DOE report were that 81% of perpetrators warned an uninvolved person prior to the attack and that 93% had already engaged in behaviors that alarmed peers, teachers, parents, or mental health professionals.

These factors have been identified in research on adult perpetrators of mass homicide as well as figuring into youth violence in general. Ferguson noted his upcoming study revealed that violent media was not a factor in youth violence, however current levels of depressive symptoms coupled with antisocial personality traits, were highly predictive of youth violence. The authors suggest that reducing school shootings should focus on preventative measures however, reform in addressing mental health needs is long overdue, and funding for adequate at-risk youth and adults services will be slow in coming. They also note that because of the likelihood that perpetrators may signal their violent intent before the action, that prevention can take the form of peers acting upon what they hear or see and informing law enforcement or school officials.

Ferguson, C. J., Coulson, M., & Barnett, J. (2011). Psychological profiles of school shooters: Positive directions and one big wrong turn. Journal of Police Crisis Negotiations, 11(2), 141-158.

Officers are often called upon to confront resistant and/or violent individuals and by necessity have a choice of non-lethal options they can employ in these encounters. One technique that has caused controversy over its application and the potential for harm to suspects is the chokehold, both historically and as recently as last year. Below, Dr. Koiwai examines factors that may be contributing to deaths in the application of choke holds.

Deaths Allegedly Caused by the Use of “Choke Holds” (Shime-Waza)

Koiwai, Journal of Forensic Sciences, 1987

Author Koiwai, MD, stated that the chokehold technique used by police officers is the same chokehold (Shime-Waze) used in Judo. Yet while officers have been involved in the deaths of suspects following application of the hold, Koiwai notes that since the sport of Judo was established in 1882, there have been no fatalities associated with the use of the hold in Judo.

Koiwai briefly discusses the control techniques used by the police which are similar to Judo chokeholds, including the carotid control hold (fig. 1) the locked carotid control hold (fig 2), as well as the bar arm control hold, where the left hand is placed on the back of the subject’s head forcing it down. All of these holds are finished by using the hold to take the subject down to a seated position and applying the hold until the subject becomes unconscious or ceases resisting.

Koiwai examined the autopsy reports of 13 cases between 1975-1985 which involved a law enforcement chokehold being applied. The decedents were males, Black and White, between the ages of 19 and 58, though the majority were under 40, and their weight ranged from 120-220 pounds, though in only one case did the decedent weigh over 170 pounds. While in all but one case the decedents were violently resisting arrest, which necessitated the use of the chokehold, the case narratives indicate that in six of the cases, the decedents were very violent and combative. In three of the 13 cases, acute intoxication from alcohol or drugs was involved, two other cases involved decedents suffering from psychosis, as well as the findings that in three other cases, pre-existing heart conditions contributed to the death. In almost all the cases medical attention was provided in a timely matter, though in all the cases, asphyxiation was a primary factor, including in some cases, aspiration of vomit, and brain death from oxygen deprivation.

In all 13 cases, the author noted evidence of injuries to the structures of the neck ranging from bruises, lacerations, hemorrhages, and vascular compression, as well as fractures of the cartilage of the neck in five cases, and intervertebral discs in one case. Submucosal or mucosae injuries are noted in the larynx in five cases. All these findings indicate that tremendous force was exerted on the necks of the decedents. Koiwai noted that only a relatively small amount of pressure is necessary to close off the carotid arteries and that unconsciousness should occur in only 10-20 seconds, with regaining consciousness occurring in about the same time length. Koiwai stated that the force applied to collapse the airway, as occurred in these cases, is 6 times greater than necessary to effectively apply a chokehold, which resulted in the injuries seen in the autopsy reports. Properly applied the chokehold puts pressure on the superior carotid triangle, closing off the carotid artery but leaving the vertebral artery unobstructed. (fig 5) Completely obstructing the blood flow to the brain or asphyxia by closure of the trachea can lead to irreversible damage or death.

Koiwai suggests that police department training manuals should emphasize that control holds should be used only when necessary to stop a suspect’s resistance and not necessarily to cause unconsciousness. If police officers are to use the choke holds to subdue violent suspects as a last resort, they should be properly trained and supervised by trained, certified judo instructors to ensure that there will be less misuse or abuse of the technique which when used improperly results in fatalities. These fatalities could be reduced if (1) choke holds are taught by trained and certified instructors (2) if officers become familiar with the anatomical structures of the neck and where the pressure is to be applied (carotid triangle), (3) if they understand the physiology of choking, in that only a small amount of pressure is needed to cause unconsciousness; (4) if officers are taught to recognize immediately the state of unconsciousness and to release the pressure immediately, (5) learn proper resuscitation methods if unconsciousness is prolonged; and to prevent the aspiration of vomit and not to place the restrained suspect face down, (6) and keep the subject under constant observation. (7) Additionally, police training manuals should be revised to emphasize the above procedures and principles, all of which will prevent deaths from chokeholds.

Koiwai, E. K. (1987). Deaths allegedly caused by the use of “choke holds”(shime-waza). Journal of Forensic Science, 32(2), 419-432.

Police officers face challenges in recognizing when to apply force and the level of force itself. Proper training in different techniques makes for better, more professional officers, as well as decreased injuries and fatalities for suspects. However, having a means to assess officer performance when they face potentially violent encounters is crucial to understanding their behavior and decision making in those encounters. Those observations can then be used to improve officer performance and public safety as well. Vickers and Lewinski examine the differences between elite and rookie police officers in their preparation for use of a firearm in a violent confrontation.

Performing under pressure: Gaze control, decision making and shooting performance of elite and rookie police officers

Vickers & Lewinski, Human Movement Science, 2011

The authors discuss that currently most firearms training programs teach officers to focus their gaze on two locations, first on the sights of their gun, and secondly on the target before pulling the trigger. This gaze strategy works very well in training with rookies achieving high accuracy scores in initial firearms training, but once on the street and faced with a violent firearms encounter they shoot poorly, averaging between 10 and 60% accuracy. The high pressure states that shooters face tend to cause more visual fixations of a shorter duration and reduced ability to detect peripheral information.

When elite shooting athletes were studied they found that they tended to fixate on the target, and kept that sight gaze as they aligned their firearm sights with the target, rather than switching gaze from sights to target; this allowed for a longer final fixation on the target leading to greater accuracy, and the reduction of pressure, anxiety and psychological stress. The authors tested 11 elite Emergency Response Team members and 13 rookie officers nearing the end of their training period, with gaze tracking software, putting them in a role-playing scenario where they are informed a threat may appear in the area they are monitoring. An upset male enters the location and becomes increasing agitated with an individual playing the role of a receptionist. In the final two seconds of the encounter, the male quickly pivots and draws on the officer who is seven yards behind him, drawing either a gun or a cellphone. Officers were assessed on their gaze duration, gaze location, amount of gaze shifting, speed, accuracy and locations of shots fired, time involved in the unholstering, draw, aim, and fire phases, and the rate that they inhibited firing in the cellphone scenario.

Following data analysis, statistically significant differences were revealed.

	Elite Officers	Rookie Officers
Hit on assailant	74.5 %	53.9 %
Decision making (fired on cellphone)	12.3 %	61.5 %
Fired before assailant	92.5 %	42.2%
High Performance (meeting all above criteria)	75.0 %	52.9 %
Fixated on more locations where gun could be concealed	50.3 %	30.6 %
Fixated on locations where gun couldn’t be concealed	42.1 %	51.1 %
Fixated on areas off the assailant	7.6 %	18.1 %
Unholstered weapon after assailant entered	1.77 sec. avg	6.28 sec. avg.

Statistically significant differences were also found in the final phases of the scenario between the onset times of the different phases based on officer status.

Onset	Elite	Rookie
Draw	4.63 sec.	6.04 sec.
Hold	4.81 sec.	6.26 sec.
Aim	5.83 sec.	6.36 sec.
Fire	6.87 sec.	6.93 sec.

There were also statistically significant differences between elite and rookie officers in their visual fixations during the final two seconds of the scenario.

Fixations	Elite	Rookie
Increased visual fixation on assailant weapon	From 18 % to 71 %	From 18 % to 34 %
Decreased fixation on non-weapon locations	From 78 % to 7 %	From 62 % to 16 %
Increased fixation on officer’s weapon to	20 %	39 %
Fixations off assailant	4 %	13 %
Final fixation on officer weapon not assailant	32%	84 %
Final fixation time on assailant before firing	.32 sec.	.27 sec
Final fixation time on ofcr. weapon before firing	.12 sec	.24 sec

In reacting to the threat, rookie officers performed the final phase actions in the last second of the scenario versus elite officers who performed the actions in the last 2.5 seconds, starting the process earlier, taking more time to focus on the assailant and less time focusing on their own weapon. The elite officers’ earlier draw was also preceded by more time spent focusing on assailant weapon locations than rookies. Elite officers maintained more visual focus, drew sooner than rookies in anticipation of the threat, and thus gave themselves more time in the final aim and fire phases for increased fixation focus, which accounted for their better hit and discrimination rates. The authors stated that their results suggest that firearms training should change from a process that inadvertently teaches rookies to fixate on the sights of their own weapon first and the target second, to a type of training that establishes the line of gaze on the target from the outset, followed by alignment of the sights of the weapon to the line of gaze. This change in gaze control would lead to a longer final visual fixation duration on the target prior to pulling the trigger and should contribute to better decision making and performance. If these changes in firearm’s training were implemented, then the gaze control of novice officers should be similar to that of elite athletes and elite officers from the first day of training, which should decrease errors in decision making and improve shooting accuracy.

Vickers, J. N., & Lewinski, W. (2012). Performing under pressure: Gaze control, decision making and shooting performance of elite and rookie police officers. Human movement science, 31(1), 101-117.

Research Briefs

Robbing banks: Crime does pay–but not very much.,

Reilly, Rickman, & Witt, Significance, (2012)

While pop media and culture portrays bank robbery as exciting and lucrative, the authors conducted an examination of the actual economic profits and costs of bank robbery in the UK, both to the robber and the bank. The authors were given access to confidential information on the amount of cash lost in bank robberies as well as other data in a cost/benefit analysis of bank robbery. They report that in 2007, there were 80,000 robberies reported to police, 7500 occurred at businesses, but with over 10,500 bank locations in the UK, only 106 bank robberies were attempted, accounting for only .13 % of robberies. Compared to the 2006 data for the US over the 4440,00 robberies reported, 12,000 occurred at banks (2.7%), indicating that in even in the US, bank robbery only makes up a small proportion of robberies.

The authors examined some factors that may influence whether a bank was targeted like size of municipality (defined by distance from a police station), size of the bank based on number of employees and, how busy the bank was based on the number of customers, but none of these factors had a significant effect. Of the robbery attempts in the study, very few were repeat location attempts and the amount stolen also wasn’t related to the size of the bank. Without clear indicators as to which bank branches may be targeted, improvements in bank security must be borne by the whole branch system, the costs of which are often ultimately borne by the customers.

The profitability for the robber was also considered. Using UK data from 2005-2008, of the 364 attempted bank robberies examined, the average loss was £20,330 (five times as much as their US counterparts), however 1/3 of the attempts were unsuccessful with no money stolen, so the average haul for successful robberies was £30,000 pounds. The authors note that with approximately 20% of bank robberies solved, and some of the haul recovered, this does reduce the financial gain for robbers.

The authors constructed an equation using economic constructs to help identify the robbers’ input into the robbery balanced against expected gains and losses from the attempt. Robbers’ input include labor costs (number in the gang), whether a firearm was displayed (capital costs) and a difficulty vector accounting for size of branch, number of customers, and branch security measures. The output (value of money stolen) is a function of all these factors, however the output may also be influenced by robber apprehension and incarceration. The difficulty vector had little significant influence on the take; average travel distance from a police station was 4.5 minutes, the average number of customers was two, and alarms were activated 85% of the time

While the average number of robbers were 1.6 (60% were lone robbers) increasing the number in the gang had a significant effect on increasing the amount stolen. For each additional robber employed, the expected value of the haul increased by over £9,000 pounds (with all other factors being equal). Working in teams indicates more professionalism (including planning and surveillance) and task division and while additional gang members increase the total take, it also reduces the take of each individual gang member.

A firearm was displayed in 36% of the robberies. The display and inherent threat of firearm use was also a significant factor in the size of the haul; with all other factors being equal, displaying a weapon increased the average take by £10,000. However, the use of a firearm in some cases may ultimately affect output as the incarceration costs are higher for armed robbery if they are apprehended.

One factor reduced the profit output. Being more common in the UK, as compared to the US, 12% of bank branches utilized fast-rise security screens. Their use reduced the expected value of robbery haul by over £24,000, all other factors being equal. In a regression model to determine whether the screens foil robberies or just reduce the take, on average, and all other factors being equal, using fast-rise screens reduced the probability of a successful robbery attempt by 32% compared to other security systems. Two thirds of the reduced output effect was from a reduced probability of robbery success when using the screens, while the other third was attributable to the screens reducing the financial value of the robbery haul.

As discussed in the criminological Rational Choice theory as well as in economic models, cost/benefit analysis should be a factor in the commission of the act. If the costs outweigh the benefits, a rational choice would be to not engage in the act. The authors constructed a mathematical formula, utilizing the probability of success, the probability of apprehension, the average take for one robber, and a monetary calculation of the cost of imprisonment in terms of lost income, to determine the tipping point where the costs outweigh the benefits. The formula demonstrated the monetary cost should be in excess of £33,000, which is roughly equivalent to three years’ income from a full-time minimum-wage job. Thus a three year incarceration would represent that monetary cost, as well as have a deterrent effect, however it should be noted that the average sentence for a convicted bank robber in England is a little less than three years.

As a means of income, bank robbery may not be very lucrative though the actual work to income ratio is large. The average annual full-time employment income is £26,000 and at an average of £12,706 per robber per robbery, one bank robbery can support a modest life style for six months. However, with only an 80% success rate, after three robberies (a year and half average income) the likelihood of a success is roughly 50/50 and each subsequent robbery will typically increase the odds of apprehension and incarceration. This overall smaller take may be influencing the overall decrease in UK bank robberies but also may explain an increase in their armored truck/security van robberies as a competing criminal opportunity that provides more returns. The low take in robbery also affects the implementation of security measures. While the authors noted the effectiveness of fast-rise security screens in foiling robberies or reducing their costs, suggesting widespread use could cut successful bank robberies in half, the cost of £4,500 per teller window would suggest the cost of the robbery is a smaller financial cost itself when compared to the security measure.

Reilly, B., Rickman, N., & Witt, R. (2012). Robbing banks: Crime does pay–but not very much. Significance, 9(3), 17-21.

Professionals or amateurs? Revisiting the notion of professional crime in the context of cannabis cultivation.

Bouchard and Nguyen, World Wide Weed, 2016

The authors discuss how historical literature (like Edwin Sutherland’s The Professional Thief) recognizes the level of a professional criminal but more current research hasn’t explored the concept as to its validity or applicability to any great degree. The authors explore defining professionalism by constructing a four classification matrix ranging from amateurs to professionals and applying that to marijuana cultivators in Canada.

There are certain elements that constitute professionalism in all fields; skill and knowledge in the craft or occupation as well as a commitment to the craft or occupation including its function as full-time or significant employment and immersion in its social milieu. Skills would include, good growing skills like feeding, watering, breeding, cloning, trimming, and light management. Skills also involve grow operation construction, management, and security and these skills could be operationalized as outcome measures such as plant (or lamp) yield, attrition rate (proportion of plants harvested), and criminal earnings. The social milieu in this case would be association and connectedness to other growers and laborer/service providers within the industry and subculture, receiving and offering mentorship, and an appreciation for, and dedication to growing, marijuana The matrix classifies commitment and skill level as either being low or high, resulting in four categories; Amateurs (low skills, low commitment) Average Career Criminals/Growers (low skills, high commitment), Pro-Ams (high skills, low commitment), and Professionals (high skills, high commitment).

The authors apply this matrix to a series of interviews conducted with 13 marijuana cultivators in Montreal, Quebec, and Vancouver. The Montreal and Quebec growers were all white males, and the 4 growers from Vancouver were of Vietnamese descent (“the Vietnamese population has been identified as key players in Vancouver’s cultivation industry”) and two were female.

Of the 13 growers, their classification defined three Professionals, five Pro-Ams, three Amateurs, and two Average Career Growers. The authors didn’t feature all the interviews but examined two case studies as descriptive of the classifications of professional and average career grower. In defining the categories, the authors note that the professionals had been involved in growing for 7 years or more and owned or managed operations larger than 100 plants. However, also linked to professionals was a social opportunity structure. For their professional case study of a grower with 12 years’ experience, this entailed having early or intimate introduction to the social milieu through family and friends, early growing experience, and social and technical mentorship by more experienced growers. An early introduction and mentorship allowed the development of growing skills. This commitment and skill level led to more trust, responsibility, and contacts, which led to involvement in larger growing operations, which allowed for involvement and gaining experience in different industry areas and tasks. As this professional became involved in areas of hash production, clipping at large sites, cuttings production, helping manage a large site (2,000 plants), and finally moving on to managing a large site, legitimate employment tapered off, replaced by illegal income.

Their other case study involved a Vietnamese average career grower of 5 years. Different then the professional, this grower entered the industry mainly as a way to make money and had no initial indoctrination into the milieu. She did not receive any mentoring and began to learn the skills only as she became employed in an existing grow operation. While aspiring to reach a professional level, this grower was unsuccessful as she lacked good growing skills with a lot of trial and error experiences and had difficulty in the management of a grow operation. She eventually left the industry after not achieving her desired level of income. In the context of the cannabis cultivation industry, these average career growers are attracted to the potential to make money but never realized that cultivation would be so much work or would require a learning curve.

The authors didn’t discuss Pro-Am growers in much detail but they note “A review of the past typologies of growers found a similarly high prevalence of growers who were sometimes highly skilled but never transformed those skills into a full-time occupation”. The Pro-Am classification accommodates these types of growers as “labeling them as either professionals or amateurs would be unsatisfactory.” The authors consider that “Pro-ams are interested in the intangible rewards from cultivation; they are passionate and knowledgeable about the plant, its appearance, its taste, and its physiological effects. They are not amateurs but connoisseurs; not professionals but aficionados. Even if cultivation can be time consuming for pro-ams, it is not a full-time occupation, and never a means of living. Many of these participants are accomplished growers but opt to grow smaller amounts for personal consumption rather than profit.

The authors conclude that this classification system provides a useful discrimination tool that can be applied not just to growers. The classification system could be used to explore and research the professionalism of all types of criminal activity and that professionalism in criminals careers can be defined both by the skills of the offender and the degree that the offender is committed to a particular offense or type of offending. This commitment can be gauged by the characteristics noted by the authors; early introduction to, and involvement with, the milieu, an active mentoring process, and increased labor and involvement in larger activities or operations.

Bouchard, M., & Nguyen, H. (2016). Professionals or amateurs? Revisiting the notion of professional crime in the context of cannabis cultivation. In World Wide Weed (pp. 129-146). Routledge.

Differentiating contract killers: A narrative‐based approach.

Yaneva, Ioannou, Hammond, & Synnott, The Howard Journal of Crime and Justice, 2018.

The authors desired to construct a psychological-based typology framework that will assist in the analysis and understanding of contract murders. Previous attempts at typologies have utilized professional, semi-pro and amateur categories, solicitor or contractor designations, or more behavior-based categories of aggressive behaviors, inept behaviors, and criminally sophisticated behaviors. However the authors consider a psychologically based framework will also serve as a n investigative tool in profiling contract killers through the crime scene indications of offender characteristics. They utilized the Narrative Action System that suggests that for the full range of human action, four different fundamental narrative action modes are utilized: Professional’s adaptive adventure, Revenger’s conservative tragedy, Victim’s integrative irony, and Hero’s expressive quest. These typologies represent behavioral styles, attitudes, outlooks, and behavior motivations. “In psychological terms, criminal and deviant behaviors form a distinct subset of this general set of human actions, distinguished from other behavior by the absence of legal or moral code.” The themes have been utilized on other studies of different types of criminal behavior and the authors attempted to see if it can be utilized with contract killers. The characteristics of these typologies are discussed below in the context of contract killer behaviors.

Using media accounts as a source for data, 75 cases from nine different countries were subjected to content analysis. A total of 83 individual variables were derived from the analysis, 65 behavioral variables (crime scene behaviors) which included things like location and types of wounds delivered, body position, how the victim was controlled, and how the victim was isolated. For example they found the most frequently engaged in crime scene behaviors were: weapon brought to crime scene (88%), victim was ambushed (84%), victim’s body left at crime scene (83%), murder happened as planned (83%), victim was found as fell (80%), victim was shot (68%), victim had head wounds (58%) and offender used a vehicle for transportation (53%). They incorporated 56 of these variables into multidimensional scaling to explore subsets of behavior. The remaining 18 variables (victim, instigator, and offender characteristics) like gender, age, instigator motive, victim-instigator relationship, instigator-offender relationship, and offender’s previous convictions were used for descriptive purposes. For example, instigators were 51% female, financial gain was the instigator’s primary motive (43%), and only 44% of offenders were strangers to the instigators.

The authors used Smallest Space analysis which “is a non-metric multidimensional scaling procedure in which the relationships between variables are represented as distances in space and the resulting spatial configuration is examined to determine whether meaningful regions can be identified”. The most common features to all contract killings, as noted above, form the core of behavior typical to all the offenders while the other behavioral variables in the periphery reflect the different aspects of the contract killer. This core behavior demonstrates these murders are typically very instrumental and centered on monetary gain and not the victim or the murder itself.

The authors’ analysis of the data describes the characteristics of different contract killer typologies linking their psychological and behavioral components as shown below.

The Professional’s adaptive adventure-View themselves as professionals and display methodical and criminally sophisticated behavior. They view each job as an adventure, seek to master the environment, and take pride in a job well done. Offenders tend to be masked and forensically cognizant, and use firearms at close distance.

The Revenger’s conservative tragedy-Sets out to right a wrong or address a problem, has a selfish or ambivalent nature, and rationalizes the crime as necessary or the right thing to do. Their extreme violence is not expressive but instrumental, often to send a message from the instigator. The offender and victim may be acquainted and are often abducted or lured. This typology is usually found in organized crime.

The Victim’s integrative irony-Generally inexperienced, and dispassionate, they hold a pessimistic world view and lack a moral code. There is evidence of incompetence at the crime scene and they may commit the murder for drugs/drug money or some other support. This typology is associated with mistakes in the job, and kills in the home and while the victims were sleeping, typically slashing their throats. There may be expressive behaviors at the crime scene that aren’t readily apparent.

The Hero’s expressive quest-A mix of instrumental and expressive behaviors; characterized by excessive, extreme violence that demonstrates their power and demands respect but instrumental in their preparedness. They may depersonalize the victim and use available weapons at the scene that includes vehicles, stabbing, and bludgeoning.

The characteristics for each typology as derived from the analysis are shown in the authors’ figure below.

The authors conclude that this typology can be used as a basis for examining the individual type of contract killers so as to examine the connection between the psychological construct and behaviors, as well as an investigative tool to link possibly similar offenses together, and as a basis for therapeutic treatment approaches.

Yaneva, M., Ioannou, M., Hammond, L., & Synnott, J. (2018). Differentiating contract killers: A narrative‐based approach. The Howard Journal of Crime and Justice, 57(1), 107-123.

Research Briefs

The New Detective: Rethinking Criminal Investigations

Eck and Rossmo, Criminological and Public Policy, 2019

Eck and Rossmo discuss developing a new role for law enforcement detectives. Research on the role of detectives has demonstrated that they solve only a small portion of cases, with witness and victim statements, and initial efforts by patrol officers, contributing more to case clearance than detectives and their work. Most innovations and reforms in policing have been focused on patrol officers and how they conduct their work and interact with the public (like problem-oriented policing, community-oriented policing, intelligence-led policing) but little attention in that regard has been made toward investigations. But the authors also consider that a traditional method of measuring detective effectiveness by the number of closed cases or clearance rate is a poor measure and does nothing to address improving detective performance.

Clearance rates have been in decline since the 60’s despite improvements in investigative technology and while law enforcement believes this is related to higher crime, less time, and lack of cooperation from the public, and charge reluctance by prosecutors, the authors contend the amount of crime is not the issue as crime has been on a downward trend since the ‘90’s. Eck and Rossmo believe that the wealth of information detectives have on crime and criminals is not being used effectively when detectives are being tasked with solving individual cases. Rather than working specific cases, detectives should be focusing on crime patterns, which may actually have an effect on reducing crime and improving clearance rates.

The authors suggest three areas that investigative management and detectives can improve on and orient themselves to; focus on quality and the reduction of errors, better organize detectives to address repeat problems and patters, involve detectives directly in crime prevention. Detectives can improve their investigations by understanding and utilizing inductive, deductive, and abductive reasoning better, thus reducing wrongful arrests. Referencing a 2014 study, the authors state that of three factors affecting “criminal (case) failures” to identify offenders and arrest them (organizational, environmental, and personal), the personal factor, like a rush to judgement and confirmation bias, was the most common cause. Utilizing the acronym SRIP, detectives should evaluate the quality of evidence for significance (strength of the evidence as it points to guilt, exoneration, or other explanations) reliability (assessed before significance, how likely is the evidence to be true), independence (independently, does the evidence make a unique contribution, or is it merely derivative) , and patterns (how does the evidence fit in the overall information pattern of the case, evidence should not be cherry picked).

When too much focus is put on solving individual cases, detectives aren’t recognizing and understanding patterns and developing resources. Victims and witnesses provide much of the information needed to solve cases and detectives, and these participants, as well as offenders can deliver more information to detectives and help them recognize potential patterns. Knowing that crime patterns can be offender or situational based, this information can help link persons and places to crime patterns and disrupt these factors which lead to patterns. Detectives understand crime, criminals, and crime opportunities but that knowledge largely goes unused when detectives are only focusing on individual cases instead of taking a broader problem-solving approach.

The authors suggest there are four way detectives can better utilize their investigative knowledge and work toward crime prevention:

Routine debriefings of victims and offenders. Not just focusing on interviews and interrogations in a specific case to gather evidence and solve it, but utilizing after the fact interviews which can help detectives in determining patterns and conditions which can assist in future investigations and crime prevention.

Repeat victims and offenses. Detectives may not need to be assigned to a specific case but instead to victims or places, also to recognize and assess criminogenic factors and situations.

Place based investigation. Utilizing a problem solving approach they can eliminate or reduce offending when the precipitating factors are identified.

Detective involvement in problem solving. Utilizing their knowledge, detectives can be folded into more problem solving efforts, taking the lead or coordinating with other units to bring more of their specialized knowledge to bear in addressing and solving larger problems.

The authors contend that while detectives are being under (or incorrectly) utilized, trying to improve detective performance and utility by making marginal organizational changes, while still having detectives doing their job the same as they have for decades, will be insufficient. Departments need to re-think and re-organize their detectives toward a larger, crime prevention mandate.

Eck, J. E., & Rossmo, D. K. (2019). The new detective: Rethinking criminal investigations. Criminology & Public Policy, 18(3), 601-622

While Eck and Rossmo see clearance rates as a faulty measure of detective effectiveness, many departments, and the public, see this as an indication the police are doing their jobs. But clearance rates can vary on a number of factors between various crimes based on evidence, available information, and investigative effort. Authors Cook, Braga, Turchan, and Barao examine these issues in the differences between gun homicide and gun assault clearance rates.

Why do gun murders have a higher clearance rate than gunshot assaults?

Cook, Braga, Turchan, & Barao, Criminological and Public Policy, 2019

To explore the title issue, Cook and colleagues examined Boston shootings data from 2010-2014, comparing 204 homicides and 231 non-fatal shootings investigations with a quasi-experimental design using case narratives, data, and detective interviews. The authors mention that research from the ‘70’s indicated that investigative work had little effect on solving cases, indicating the importance of patrol officer work, and witness and victim statements. However, research in the ‘90’s revealed some investigative factors that were associated with arrest including what the first responding officer did at the scene, how soon the detective arrived, how many detectives were assigned, and how the scene was documented. However this previous research was more descriptive and couldn’t demonstrate a definitive causal relationship.

Initial comparison of gun homicides and gun assaults showed no statistical difference in the situational circumstances between the types of shootings with the exception that indoor shootings were more lethal. It also showed that gun homicide clearance by arrest was twice as high as gun assaults (43% vs 19%) and that clearance rates in both types were higher in personal disputes or domestic violence situations as opposed to gang and drug related disputes. The on-scene arrest rates for both types were 6% and arrest rates during the two days immediately following the shooting were the same for fatal and non-fatal cases, 11%. The difference in arrest rates arose later and the authors consider that the early matching rates are reflective of the “easy” cases in both types of crime. Easy cases are solved quickly and without the need for the extra resources deployed in homicide investigations; those resources being a possible source of overall higher clearance rates. Eyewitness testimony and the effort in gathering direct evidence were also prominently factored into the differences in the two types.

The prevalence of investigative success that comes from cooperating witnesses was the same in both types of cases, but the lower clearance rates for non-fatal shootings suggest less cooperative witnesses in these shootings. However, the data also indicates that witness cooperation is not always immediate and spontaneous, and that efforts may be necessary to locate and gain the cooperation of witness. Data also indicated that the likelihood of a surviving victim being cooperative was greater in homicide cases than assault cases. This may stem from a recognition of the more serious nature of a death, as well as assault survivors’ attempts to hamper witnesses from speaking out.

Another important factor in case clearance was the greater amount of forensic evidence gathered in fatal cases versus non-fatal and since the situational circumstances between the two types of crimes are very similar, it speaks to the greater amount of effort and resources put into fatal cases compared to non-fatal. The statistical analyses bears out that a significantly greater amount of evidence is collected in fatal shootings versus non-fatal, including latent prints, DNA, ballistics, electronic data analysis, and post-scene witness interviews, which may be a function of the finding that a greater number of officers were providing information in fatal cases versus non-fatal.

The authors summarize by referencing the 1976 RAND study that carried a lot of weight in presenting the view that detectives have little effect on clearance rates, whereas on-scene arrests and eyewitness testimony matter more. While these were also determining factors in clearance rates in the current study, the authors disagree that detectives are of little value . Their findings show that 30% of homicide arrests where an eyewitness was a key factor occurred 6 months or more after the incident, and that this comes from the detectives’ effort and skill at locating witnesses and gaining their cooperation. The authors contend that clearance rates for gun assaults could be improved if additional resources and efforts were employed, even if not at the same level employed in homicide investigations.

Cook, P. J., Braga, A. A., Turchan, B. S., & Barao, L. M. (2019). Why do gun murders have a higher clearance rate than gunshot assaults?. Criminology & Public Policy, 18(3), 525-551.

Cook et al. mention the difficulty that investigators may have in gaining witness cooperation in non-fatal cases, as they may be viewed as less serious crimes that don’t as heavily prompt cooperation, as well as witness suppression efforts by victims or other witnesses. Brunson and Wade explore this lack of desire to cooperate with the police in gun violence incidents.

Oh Hell No, We Don’t Talk to the Police

Brunson and Wade, Criminological and Public Policy, 2019

The authors interviewed 50 young, black males from high-crime neighborhoods in Brooklyn and the Bronx who were high risk of violence individuals (active and former gang members, and others who had prior associations with illegal guns, and gun violence), endorsed retaliatory violence and anti-snitching, and who had knowledge about illegal gun markets, and the associated violence, in an attempt to understand the lack of witness cooperation in urban, low SES neighborhoods. Prior research has already pointed to factors that influence this lack of cooperation. Perceptions of both over and under policing can reinforce Blacks’ collective belief that policing is racially biased, harming police legitimacy, which can foster more community violence as Black residents feel the need to engage in retaliation and protection strategies that don’t involve the police. Individuals involved in violent crime can also take advantage of this perceived lack of legitimacy and non-reliance on the police to discourage witnesses from coming forward. These efforts help foster the impression with the police that anti-snitching attitudes are prevalent in urban communities. Though not often mentioned in police/race discussions, most Blacks are law abiding and support the role of the police in the community. While there should be opportunities for positive, mutually beneficial community partnerships between the Black community and police, these opportunities are undermined when Blacks engage in civil unrest following a publicized police action. This presents the image of wholesale denunciation of the police by Blacks, suggesting to law enforcement that Blacks are tolerant of crime and view the police as an intrusion.

The authors, while recognizing a no-snitching policy has long been part of minority urban culture (a la E. Anderson’s code of the streets), also noted recent literature has shown inconsistencies in what offenders think constitutes snitching. While perceiving the police as illegitimate may provide an excuse for not cooperating with the police, it doesn’t fully explain the reticence of law abiding citizens from coming forward with information. This suggests that victim or witness intimidation, either actual or feared, may factor into whether there is cooperation with the police. High crime rates in neighborhoods and mistrust of the police can lead these residents to perceive they are being under-policed, while aggressive policing tactics prompts the belief in a racially biased police force and a feeling of being over policed. Residents question whether the police are concerned with reducing crime or are just interested in cracking down on minor offenses. This in turns raises questions of police illegitimacy and generates legal cynicism, not just with the police but the criminal justice system as well. This legal cynicism is directly related to the support of retaliatory violence, which leads to higher level of community violence, and can prompt conditions of over-policing as law enforcement struggles to deal with increasing levels of violence.

In the study interviews, several participants explained their dislike of the police because of negative, aggressive personal interactions but many (54%) also referenced widely publicized media accounts of police misconduct and the fatal shootings of unarmed Black men as reasoning for their dislike and mistrust of the police. 90% stated they wouldn’t call the police if a loved one was threatened with gun violence. Some participants also complained that the police were too focused on drug offenses, and were not concerned about addressing violence in the neighborhoods with 76% of participants offering up very negative comments about the justice system as a whole, believing it to be oppressive and not dedicated to justice in minority communities. Participants also indicated that most of the gun violence pertained to “beefs”, trivial conflicts involving disrespect, arguments, and misunderstandings. These beefs generate hard feelings between individuals and prompt them to carry guns for protection against “the people [that] don’t like you”. Many who were shot at claimed they didn’t know who (74%) or the reason (48%) and many feared being in the wrong place at the wrong time in a random shooting, though the prevalence of beefs with individuals on a block or in a neighborhood was a common occurrence in their narratives.

With so many of the participants holding views of police illegitimacy and legal cynicism, they preferred retaliatory violence (92%) as opposed to contacting the police after a shooting. As one participant put it, “If I go and tell the [cops and] this nigga fuck around and beat the case…this nigga still out here smoking blunts, doing everything while my [friend] dead, you feel me…that’s why I don’t understand that snitching to the cops shit…this nigga shot my [friend]…a real nigga would just go out and kill that nigga.” They viewed the police as ineffective because they would not be able to stop or prevent threats of violence against them and held mistrust of police motives, especially after feeling mistreated by the police when interviewed in previous incidents. As one participant said, “I got shot up here [on Wabada] and the cops [said] If I don’t cooperate, then [they] gonna take me to jail, take me to jail for what? I didn’t do anything to nobody, just because you stereotyping me and feel that I know who did it, now I’m in trouble?… You don’t gotta drag people and belittle them and make them feel lesser than who they are to get stuff out them….That’s why…I won’t go to cops for nothing, if imma die, imma die…I ain’t going to cops for nothing, I’ll go to the ambulance before the cops.”

Many of the participants embraced a no snitching stance, saying it just went against their culture and referenced the code of the street. Those who retaliated were revered but those who went to the police were viewed with contempt, however some of them considered there were acceptable exceptions; with female family members, intimates, and boys. It was also noted that beside their adherence to the edict, they used intimidation of community members to ensure their compliance as well.

Fear over repeat victimization prompted the participants to carry a gun. The participants were willing to face arrest for gun possession in order to ensure their safety on the street, feeling that the police are ineffective at finding and stopping known shooters, and won’t be around to save them when confronted over a beef. As one participant said, “I was just thinking about my safety….I don’t wanna say that I was clueless to the consequences, I just didn’t care about them…because it was like, once you get shot, the only thing you care about is, [not] getting shot again, because it really, really hurt[s]…so I’m just like, I don’t want this to happen again.”

Brunson and Wade consider three goals to be achieved; reducing gun violence so high risk people can live in safety, launch grassroots campaigns countering pro-violence and anti-snitching, and improving police-minority relations. However with the prevalence and necessity of carrying defensive firearms in high-violence neighborhoods, disarming individuals will be difficult. However, allocating more resources to gun assaults may improve perceived police legitimacy as well as improve clearance rates, helping to reduce fear. Focused deterrence programs have also been shown to be effective in reducing gun violence.as well as using community intermediaries to help quell violence.

Brunson, R. K., & Wade, B. A. (2019). “Oh hell no, we don’t talk to police” Insights on the lack of cooperation in police investigations of urban gun violence. Criminology & Public Policy, 18(3), 623-648.

While the suggestion of allocating more resources toward investigations may improve clearance rates, as well as perceptions of police legitimacy, citizen perceptions can vary of police actions especially when accompanied by a difference in policing style. Deuchar, Miller, and Densley examine this variance in perception in stop and search efforts in Scotland. The article also reminds us that procedural justice and police legitimacy are not just in the purview of minority-police relations but rather the issues pertain to those who are targeted; young, lower income males.

The Lived Experience of Stop & Search in Scotland: There Are Two Sides to Every Story.

Ross Deuchar, Johanne Miller, and James Densley, Police Quarterly, 2019

The authors consider there has been little interconnected research between procedural justice and stop and search practices but research has shown that the disproportionate use of stop and search in ethnic minority communities fosters a perception that the police are biased and lack legitimacy. Similar to “stop and frisk” in the U.S., in Scotland, police have the power to stop and search, without arrest or charge, if they have “reasonable grounds to suspect” that an individual is in possession of a weapon, drugs, or that an offense has or is about to be committed. This requirement was applicable even if the person gave consent (though voluntary searches are typically not legally challenged).

When the policy had a widespread rollout in 2012, there were concerns that it would have a negative effect on perceptions of procedural justice and hamper building positive relations between the police and the public. To address youth crime in high crime areas, Force Flexible Policing Units were assigned to areas of juvenile crime hot spots with highly visible patrol and stop and searches. Glasgow and some surrounding areas in the west of Scotland used a predominantly aggressive approach toward policing while areas in the east including the capital of Edinburgh used a “softer”, more negotiated, order maintenance style. Populations in both areas were approximately 88% White.

The authors utilized a participant observer approach shadowing officers and observing 55 incidents, 30 in the west and 25 in the east that primarily involved white, male teenagers. They also conducted 23 interviews with officers on the reasoning behind stop and search, why they are conducted in the neighborhoods they are, and whether they are achieving goals, as well as commenting on young peoples’ perception of the police and how stop and search may influence this. 46 young people (8 from Edinburgh in the east and 38 from Paisley and Glasgow in the west) who had recent stop and search activity with police were also interviewed about their views of the police, their experiences with stop and search, the perceived influence the experience had on views of the police, as well as their views on improving police/public relations.

Officer views on stop and search found it to be an effective tool at crime prevention, locating knives and thus preventing and deterring violence as well as addressing drugs on the street. One officer said, “I think it’s a very valid tactic, personally . . . it’s helped to take a lot of knives and other offensive weapons off the street, and drugs too . . . it’s not just necessarily getting that small bag of a drug, or that weapon, you know, it can lead to vast quantities of drugs being recovered . . . if it’s used and done properly it can lead to better and bigger things.” However the youth participants did not view it as a deterrent to carrying weapons or contraband, but the researchers, and a number of youths, noted that they seemed to be targeted for stop and searches based on their demeanor or style of dress

The difference in policing style in carrying out stop and search did generate different attitudes. Youth in the west of Scotland felt resentment toward the police, feeling they were being treated like criminals during the stops. The different approach used in Edinburgh (East) generated different reaction from youths. Stop and search was conducted in a more unobtrusive and procedurally just manner, with officers speaking politely and respectfully to those stopped. As one sergeant from the east side said, “It’s no’ nice to be stopped by police and to be searched, and it’s quite embarrassing and things. So, I suppose it’s about getting that, that rapport, and getting a bit of a relationship wi’ this person, even if it’s a two or three minute interaction, just quickly trying to put them at ease a wee bit, and just saying “listen, you know, I’m no’ saying you’re a horrible, bad person, but this is why we’re here and actually your behavior has just, just caught our eye, and it was a bit strange. And, you know, there might be a perfectly logical explanation for it.” During the interviews, many of these youths perceived that the officers were doing their jobs fairly and believed that stop and search was effective in addressing youth crime issues. While youths in Edinburgh believed that the officers were professional, responsive, honest, and fair, the youths in the west of Scotland more often experienced aggressive, confrontational stops that in turn made them determined to avoid contact with the police as well as being confrontational during stops. As one youth stated “Most of the time I havnae done nothin’, and most of the time if they didnae stop us we wouldnae have committed the crime we done which is police assault or resisting arrest”.

Part of the difference in approaches stemmed from the basis for the stops. Besides statutory searches (requiring reasonable grounds to suspect) up until the Spring of 2017 Scottish Police could stop and search non-statutory, commonly referred to as voluntary or consent searches. Voluntary search numbers were high in west Scotland and many youths complained they gave consent even when they didn’t want to because of the belief that if they refused, it would make matters worse as it would turn into a statutory search. If they refused, officers would then claim they’re being stopped under the relevant statute and the majority believed the police would just make up a reason for it be statutory. Officers also had an obligation to tell individuals that they had a right to refuse a consensual searches but often this was not done. However, officers in the east typically employed the statutory standard and implied informed consent on searches.

Political, public, and media concerns over the high number of consensual stops led to reforms in 2014 that defined stop criteria, would end a presumption of consensual searching, and in such cases, requires informed consent, and reinforced the need for procedural justice. This change negatively affected the morale of officers in both east and west Scotland. Officers in the west felt anxiety that these reforms took away a valuable tool at deterring violent crime and instilled a “rights culture” among people that prompted them to be obstructive. Officers in the east didn’t experience much concern over the reforms and the ending of consensual searches because they typically used statutory searches, engaged positively with youth, and appropriately documented their searches. However their morale suffered as they felt their integrity was being questioned. Regarding the reform, youth in the west felt little would change in regards to the procedural justice they experienced as policing as typically more aggressive there, but youth in the east, because of law enforcement’s already existing low key approach, had more feelings of trust and legitimacy about the police. The authors concluded the study shows the connection between procedural justice and police legitimacy, and that procedural justice tenets should be safeguarded in police practices that may be construed as intrusive or confrontational. The positive examples shown in Edinburgh could be used as a training model to help support officers in redefining a policing style more synonymous with procedural justice. They also consider that “procedural justice is only one part of a broader narrative around police legitimacy” that should include an examination of whether the style of enforcement expresses the shared values of the community as well as examining the legality of some police activities.

Deuchar, R., Miller, J., & Densley, J. (2019). The Lived Experience of Stop and Search in Scotland: There Are Two Sides to Every Story. Police Quarterly, 1098611119849646.

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