Higher Education and Police Use of Deadly Force

• NCJ Number: 79811
• Journal: Journal of Criminal Justice Volume: 9 Issue: 4 Dated: (1981) Pages: 317-331
• Author(s): L W Sherman; M Blumberg
• Date Published: 1981
• Length: 15 pages
• Grant Number(s): 1 R01MH 31335-01 CD
• Sponsoring Agency: US Dept of Health, Education, and Welfare; Hindelang Criminal Justice Research Ctr
• Publication Format: Article
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America
• Note: Revised version of a paper presented to the American Society of Criminology, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, November 1979.

Annotation

This study considers the impact of higher education on police use of deadly force by comparing the educational levels of officers who did and did not shoot their weapons, who shot following differing types of citizen behavior, and who shot with and without justification from 1972 to 1978 in Kansas City, Missouri.

Abstract

A review of research on the effects of higher education on police behaviors emphasizes that results have been mixed and suffer from methodological weaknesses. Furthermore, the police officer's decision to discharge a firearm at another person is a rare and highly discretionary event, and rates of police shootings vary widely among cities. This study identified 239 police officers who fired their weapons between 1972 and 1978 in Kansas City from investigation reports and randomly selected an equal number of comparison officers who served for any length of time during the study period and did not fire their weapons. Variables examined included whether or not the shooting was ruled justifiable by the department, the conduct of the person shot at immediately before the shooting but following the officer's intervention, educational level, father's occupation, age, and length of service. The most important control variable, the variation across assignments, was determined by weighing each officer's period of service in each patrol beat with the annual average arrest rates per officer for the beat's patrol division. Analysis of this data revealed virtually no significant differences, but this could be attributed to the lack of older college graduates in the sample. It is also possible that the effects of youth and inexperience counteract any effects of education. Until more and older college graduates are available, it is difficult to see how any study of higher education and police behavior can be conclusive. Tables, 7 footnotes, and 31 references are provided.