Jihong Solomon Zhao

Predicting Five Dimensions of Police Officer Stress: Looking More Deeply Into Organizational Settings for Sources of Police Stress

Research on police officer stress has focused primarily on the rather atypical nature of police work and extent of adherence by law enforcement agencies across the nation to the Weberian bureaucratic form of organization and management practices. This study explores the effect of individual perceptions of work environment on male officer stress. Survey data from two large police departments in the northwestern United States are used in the analysis. The findings observed suggest that the levels of five dimensions of workplace stress are similar to adult males in the U.S. workforce and that an individuals perceptions of their work environment do have a significant impact on police officer stress.

Community policing: Did it change the basic functions of policing in the 1990s? A national follow-up study

This article examines changes in organizational priorities related to the three core functions of American policing—crime control, the maintenance of order, and the provision of services—during the era of community-oriented policing (COP). The change in priorities is analyzed using panel data from three national surveys of more than 200 municipal police departments conducted in 1993, 1996, and 2000. The primary finding is that police core-function priorities remained largely unchanged during this period. However, the systematic implementation of COP programs reflects an all-out effort to address all three core functions of policing at a higher level of achievement.

PARTICIPATION IN COMMUNITY CRIME PREVENTION: ARE VOLUNTEERS MORE OR LESS FEARFUL OF CRIME THAN OTHER CITIZENS?

ABSTRACT Fear of crime is one of many quality of life issues that community crime prevention strategies have attempted to identify and address. Little is known, however, about the perceptions of fear of criminal victimization among citizens who volunteer in community crime prevention programs. This study assesses fear of violent crime and property crime victimization among 192 police volunteers and 421 general citizens, controlling for known correlates of fear of crime in the comparison. Multivariate regression analyses show that police volunteers fear violent crime victimization substantially more than general citizens. Likewise, police volunteers fear property victimization more than general citizens, however, the effect on fear of violent crime was markedly more robust than for property crime. The findings drawn from this study lend support to Pepinskis (1989) cautions concerning community crime prevention programs. Directions for future research are discussed.

Community Policing: A Preliminary Assessment of Environmental Impact With Panel Data on Program Implementation in U.S. Cities

This article examines the environmental impact on the programmatic implementation of community-oriented policing (COP) in large municipal police agencies during the 1990s. Three waves of nationwide surveys (1993, 1996, and 2000) based on a random sample of 281 municipalities and the corresponding police agencies were used for our analysis. Based on one-way generalized least square (GLS) panel data analysis, we found that post-Crime Control Act of 1994federal funding and council-manager forms of government are significant predictors of COP implementation. To the contrary, other environmental factors such as personnel resources, city socioeconomic status, and mechanisms for citizen participation did not yield any statistically significant effects.

A Comparative Study of Youth Gangs in China and the United States: Definition, Offending, and Victimization

While the research on youth gangs in the United States has been around for generations, relatively little research on Chinese youth gangs has been published in Western journals. The purpose of this study is to examine the prevalence of the gang involvement of school-age youth in China and to explore whether or not some of the correlates associated with gang participation in the West, such as patterns of offending and victimization, are found in China. The data were collected from 7th, 8th, and 9th graders in both China and the United States using the same survey instrument, namely, the second International Self-Report Delinquency (ISRD-2). The results suggest that the U.S. sample has higher prevalence of self-nominated gang membership than the Chinese sample. In addition, the lifetime and last year participation rates in various criminal acts among the gang members in the Chinese sample were much lower than those in the U.S. sample. Last year prevalence of victimization was also examined between the gang members and nongang members in both samples. Finally, the definition of gang member identification was further explored to probe how culture, language, and social context can affect the understanding of a gang among the survey respondents.

Pursuing Gender Diversity in Police Organizations in the 1990s: A Longitudinal Analysis of Factors Associated With the Hiring of Female Officers

This article examines the relevance of a number of factors presumed to be associated with the employment of female police officers in U.S. municipal law enforcement agencies. Female officer representation is investigated with respect to three primary race/ethnic groups in mind: Caucasians, African Americans, and Hispanics. This study utilizespanel data collected during the period from 1993 to 2000 on a representative sample of police departments serving populations of 25,000+ residents distributed across the United States. A noteworthy increase in the number of female officers did occur during the decade of the 1990s, and both internal departmental and external environmental influences on the hiring of female police officers were investigated. The major finding observed is that different sets of external and internal features have an influence on the hiring of women officers in each race/ethnic group.

MARITAL STATUS AND POLICE OCCUPATIONAL STRESS

ABSTRACT Police work is widely regarded as highly stressful, characterized by a rather unique rule-driven internal organizational environment, external sources of insecurity, and high expectations about ones abilities. Over the past 30 years, scholars have attempted to identify the most important factors associated with police stress. Some suggest that an officers marital status should be a highly relevant factor. The purpose of this paper is to address a basic question in this regard: Does marital status matter with regard to job-related stress? Three distinctive groups of police officers are identified based on their marital statusBnamely, police couple, non-police couple, and other. Using data derived from a survey of over 1,000 officers in a large metropolitan police department in the east coast, our multivariate analyses suggest that marital status inserts only marginal effect on police stress. In contrast, police work environment, work-family conflict and individual coping mechanism are the most significant predictors of police stress.

Exploring the Dimensions of Public Attitudes Toward the Police

Public attitudes toward the police (PATP) have become a key area of policing research. Even a cursory review of the literature shows that few studies pay attention to the development of theoretical constructs concerning outcome variable(s)—PATP. The purpose of this study is to advance our knowledge of the psychometric properties of PATP. More specifically, drawing upon Easton’s theory of public support, we examine the discriminant validity of diffuse PATP and specific PATP and explore whether there is a neighborhood-conditioning effect in the response to items tapping into the concept of PATP. We use the two waves of telephone surveys collected in Houston, Texas in 2010 and 2012, which include responses from more than 2,500 residents. Confirmatory factor analysis is utilized to conduct the psychometric analysis, as it is an appropriate approach to testing theory-driven factor structures for the attitude-based constructs. The initial results were validated and then replicated. The results lend support for a two-factor model of PATP, where neighborhood is identified as a key moderator. Three important observations concerning measures of PATP are highlighted.

Social Attachment and Juvenile Attitudes toward the Police in China: Bridging Eastern and Western Wisdom

Objectives: The purpose of this study is to examine the correlates of juvenile attitudes toward the police in the Chinese setting. It borrows from the prevailing criminological wisdom developed in the West and Confucian philosophical doctrines to shed light on how attachment to social institutions helps explain variation in juvenile sentiments of the police. Method: The data were collected from a sample of 2,679 high school students in a southwestern Chinese city. A second-order latent variable labeled social attachment is constructed and comprised of three lower order factors representing family attachment, neighborhood attachment, and school attachment. Traditional demographic background, victimization, and contact with the police variables commonly used in U.S. studies are included in the analysis. Structural equation modeling is employed to test hypothesized relationships among explanatory variables and juvenile attitudes toward the police. Results: The findings suggest that the higher order factor social attachment is the most robust predictor of juvenile evaluations of the police in China. Other commonly used demographic, socioeconomic, and police contact factors show limited utility. Conclusion: The findings lend support to propositions derived from the Western criminological theories and the eastern philosophical doctrine to a major extent. Both confirmations of expected findings and noteworthy surprises are discussed.

Social Support and Anomie A Multilevel Analysis of Anomie in Europe and North America

On the basis of the reasoning of social support theory, the authors examine the macro effect of social support on anomie at the individual level. Data from international surveys have documented wide variation in anomie across nations, but to what extent this variation among nations can be contributed to structural characteristics has not been explored before. Using hierarchical linear modeling techniques to sort out the effects of structural context and personal characteristics on anomie across 31 European and North American nations, the authors test the hypothesis that variation in social support at the national level is inversely related to individuals’ sense of anomie. The study results support the hypothesis that structural characteristics of a nation, such as social support and population growth, influence individuals’ sense of anomie. At the individual level, the results are consistent with Merton’s predictions about anomie and the reasoning of social support theory. Policy implication is discussed within the limitations of data.