Suchergebnisse

Even while off duty, American police are ex pected to be armed and to actively intervene in situations threatening to life, property, or order. This article considers the assumptions upon which that expectation is based and suggests that they may be ill-founded. Research to determine whether armed off-duty police actually increase community violence levels is recommended as a prerequisite to an in formed reconsideration of the appropriate role for off-duty police officers.

Even while off duty, US police are expected to be armed & to actively intervene in situations threatening to life, property, or order. The assumptions underlying this expectation are considered & the suggestion is made that they may be ill-founded. Research to determine whether armed off-duty police actually increase community violence levels is recommended for an informed reconsideration of their appropriate role. 2 Tables. Modified HA.

In this article, the authors address empirically the relationship between the racial composition of areas patrolled by police and the use of police dogs to apprehend suspects. The authors find that even after controlling forfactors that police claim determine the allocation of canine patrols, dogs are disproportionately employed in areas with higher proportions of minority residents. Moreover, when more dogs are deployed, there are citizens bitten, often severely.

Recent studies of police response to violence in which men attack women with whom they have a history of shared intimacy have not addressed the issue that inspired research in the first place: the "leniency thesis" that police treat men who beat their spouses less punitively than other violent offenders. In addition, research examining the deterrent effects of various police treatments of misdemeanor domestic violence is not responsive to complaints that abused women are denied protection of law when they have been victims of serious, felony‐grade, abuse by their spouses. This research analyzes the response of the Chester, Pennsylvania, police to 392 consecutively reported felony‐grade assaults by persons whose identities were known to victims and police. Results confirm the leniency thesis. Tabular analysis demonstrates that arrests occurred in 13% of male‐on‐female spousal assaults and 28% of other assaults. Logit analysis indicates that this difference in police response is not attributable to other variables that might be expected to result in differential treatment. We conclude that the practices and results reported by research conducted in progressive police jurisdictions that volunteer to participate in studies of police response to violence against women may not be generalizable to the great majority of U.S. police agencies that have not welcomed such study.

A substantial amount of research has established that truancy is a consistent at-risk indicator of future criminality. This article studies the experiences of 178 juveniles targeted by the Truant Recovery Program, a collaborative and nonpunitive school-law enforcement effort, and considers questions regarding its impact through examination of juvenile justice and school information in the years before and after the truancy sweep. In particular, the article suggests that intensive cooperative efforts between school and police may be effective in identifying troubled youth and raises questions about appropriate school and justice system responses for children who demonstrate at-risk behavior.