NCJ Number
82529
Journal
Journal of Police Science and Administration Volume: 10 Issue: 1 Dated: (March 1982) Pages: 93-100
Date Published
1982
Length
8 pages
Annotation
Police attitudes toward violence are analyzed with a view toward improved recruitment practices and inservice training.
Abstract
A total of 123 subjects, 116 males and 7 females, were included in the study sample, with all subjects selected from those enrolled at the Police Training Institute at the University of Illinois. Most of the subjects were young adults, with 44.7 percent having less than 12 months of police service. The questionnaire was developed and pilot tested at the Police Training Institute. Selected questions used in the Brown (1973) study of attitudes toward violence and the Gamson and McEvoy (1970) study of attitudes toward supporting police violence were included in the questionnaire. The mean score of the subjects (75.3) indicated they were more accepting of violence than psychologists and social workers, college students, doctors and lawyers, and mental patients, and less accepting of violence than army prisoners, army personnel, college contact sports athletes, high school students, and foremen. The more accepting a subject's attitude toward violence, the more likely the subject to have had physical discipline by parents during his/her childhood and the more likely the subject to have participated in contact sports. Through multiple-regression techniques, it appears that a prediction equation can be obtained that would indicate how measures of some independent variables could be weighted and summed to obtain the best prediction of attitudes toward violence by officers. It is recommended that additional studies of other groups of police be conducted using the same and related variables as in this study. Twelve references are listed.