Demeanor, Crime, and Police Behavior: A Reexamination of the Police Services Study Data

• NCJ Number: 163188
• Journal: Criminology Volume: 34 Issue: 1 Dated: (February 1996) Pages: 83-105
• Author(s): R E Worden; R L Shepard
• Date Published: 1996
• Length: 23 pages
• Publication Format: Article
• Publication Type: Research (Applied/Empirical)
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America
• Note: Earlier version of article presented at the 46th Annual Meeting of the American Society of Criminology, 1994, Miami

Annotation

Recent research has called into question the conclusion that the likelihood of arrest by the police rises when suspects display a disrespectful or hostile demeanor toward the police, and the authors reanalyze data collected in the Police Services Study (PSS) on which a substantial body of supporting evidence for this conclusion is based.

Abstract

The PSS included 24 police departments in three metropolitan areas (Rochester, New York; St. Louis, Missouri; and Tampa-St. Petersburg, Florida). Police patrol observation and other data collection focused on 60 neighborhoods which were selected with explicit reference to resident race and gender. The PSS observation protocol provided two types of data on suspect demeanor: (1) observers coded several different actions in which citizens engaged, several of which could be construed as disrespectful or hostile; and (2) observers coded their characterizations of predominant citizen demeanor at several points in time during an encounter. Suspect demeanor was assessed in situations involving domestic disturbances, disputes, and traffic stops. Findings substantiated that the likelihood of arrest increased when suspects exhibited a disrespectful or hostile demeanor toward the police. 40 references and 5 tables