Deadly force research typically does not distinguish between shootings by on-duty and off-duty police. This article uses Philadelphia police shooting data from two time periods (1970-1978 and 1987-1992) and a unique quasi-experimental design to examine the comparative effects upon on- and off-duty police shootings of an administrative policy that limited police shooting discretion but that did ...

Although numerous studies have attempted to understand the causes of various forms of police misconduct, there is still no clear theoretical explanation of police misbehavior. Akers’ social learning theory posits that peer associations, attitudes, reinforcement, and modeling are predictors of delinquency and crime in general. With this article, we seek to determine if the theory can account for...

This study compares the demographic and clinical characteristics of police referrals with referrals from other sources to the psychiatric emergency department of a university hospital and the demographic and clinical characteristics of police referrals who were involuntary hospitalized with police referrals who were discharged from the emergency department (ED). In our study, 182 cases were see...

OBJECTIVE Injured drivers with blood alcohol concentration (BAC) above the legal limit are rarely convicted of impaired driving. One explanation is that police may have difficulty recognizing alcohol intoxication in injured drivers. In this study, we compare police documentation of alcohol involvement with BAC measured on arrival at a hospital. Our objectives were to determine how often police ...

Third party policing’ describes police efforts to persuade or coerce third parties, such as landlords, parents, local governments and other regulators, and business owners, to take some responsibility for preventing crime or reducing crime problems. In third party policing, the police create crime control guardians in locations or situations where crime control guardianship was previously absen...

A geographically-resolved, multi-level Bayesian model is used to analyze the data presented in the U.S. Police-Shooting Database (USPSD) in order to investigate the extent of racial bias in the shooting of American civilians by police officers in recent years. In contrast to previous work that relied on the FBI's Supplemental Homicide Reports that were constructed from self-reported cases of po...

This paper describes the construction of two scales to measure police attitudes towards the selective enforcement of the law. The Service-Legalistic (S-L) scale measures police discretion along a flexible-inflexible continuum. Service-oriented police advocate the use of discretion to help solve social problems; legalistic police oppose discretion because it interferes with their duty to enforce...

BACKGROUND The aim of study was to assess differences in reporting of violence and deliberate self harm (DSH) related injuries to police and emergency department (ED) in an urban town of Pakistan. METHODS/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS Study setting was Rawalpindi city of 1.6 million inhabitants. Incidences of violence and DSH related injuries and deaths were estimated from record linkage of police and E...

Background for this study is the increased complexity in policing that has become more knowledge-based and more professional in the last decade. Aim of this paper is to present empirical results from a study of attitudes of police managers to different leadership roles in their jobs in two police districts in Norway. A questionnaire was developed and administered among police managers in two po...

Since the 1980s, successive UK governments have sought to increase efficiency in, and effectiveness of, policing through what has been described as “cycles of reform” (Reiner, 2000, p. 204). The reforms typically involved exerting greater central control over regional police forces. Many of the early initiatives met with resistance from within the police and, as a result, were not fully impleme...