NCJ Number
153212
Journal
Police Studies Volume: 17 Issue: 2 Dated: (Summer 1994) Pages: 1-27
Date Published
1994
Length
27 pages
Annotation
This article identifies and explains structural-level factors predicted to influence situational variables connected to the type, amount, and security of police violence in the future.
Abstract
The study used a combination of trend extrapolation and conceptual modeling. Trend extrapolation was based on a review of the literature, emphasizing factors that traditionally have influenced police violence and have been presented in the future- of-police literature. Modeling, for the purpose of this study, consisted of describing the causal sequence of variables and the prediction of their interactions. The model explains rates of police violence by connecting the situational to the structural (i.e., community or societal) level. The independent variable in the model is proactive or reactive violent police-citizen interactions (PORVPCI). Three interrelated primary factors are hypothesized to affect PORVPCI (independent variables): government environment, police performance, and social context. Government environment consists of four principal subcomponents: police expenditures, ratio of officers to citizens, changes in criminal laws, and new external controls on police officers. Police performance is affected by seven secondary facts from least to most important in terms of how they affect police use of violence: effectiveness of crime prevention, unionization/association activity, police organizational change and policy implementation, police leadership abilities, special assignments of officers, new coercive police technologies and techniques, and internal controls on police. Social context is a summary measure for three interrelated secondary variables: demographic shifts, inequality, and rate and level of violent crime. Three tertiary factors contribute to demographic shifts: the age composition of populations, family structure, and immigration patterns. Guidance for empirically testing this model is also provided in the article. 1 figure, 17 notes, 64 references, and appended definitions of variables