NCJ Number
212862
Journal
Criminal Justice and Behavior Volume: 33 Issue: 1 Dated: February 2006 Pages: 70-92
Date Published
February 2006
Length
23 pages
Annotation
This study explored the relationship between policing ideals and the exercise of police discretion across a set of low-level criminal incidents.
Abstract
The findings provide support for schema theory in that the findings show how officers have multiple ways of interpreting incoming information and deciding a course of action. Overall, results indicated that 66 percent of participating police officers employed two combinations of policing ideals to justify decisions to arrest: keeping the peace-procedural compliance ideals and law enforcement-procedural compliance ideals. Other results revealed that the overall arrest rate for the five vignette cases was 56 percent with only 10 percent of officers arresting in every case. A vignette methodology was employed in which 4 vignettes depicting minor criminal incidents and 1 vignette depicting disruptive but not criminal behavior were examined by 173 officers from 12 police stations in Sydney, Australia. Officers indicated whether they would make an arrest in each case and then ranked the importance of four policing ideals (law enforcement, peace maintenance, procedural compliance, and protagonist acceptance of responsibility) on their decisionmaking process. Tables, appendix, notes, references