Stephen D. Mastrofski

Examining Police Effectiveness as a Precursor to Legitimacy and Cooperation with Police

Numerous studies by Tyler and colleagues, as well as other scholars, support a normative, process model to account for variation in the public’s cooperation with police in the USA and other developed nations. However, a recent study in Ghana suggests that in developing countries fraught with high levels of violent crime and corruption, cooperation may instead be accounted for by a utilitarian, rational-choice model. Our study examines whether public cooperation with police in the developing nation of Trinidad and Tobago is associated with the process model or rational-choice model. Using in-person structured interviews with residents, we examined whether victims’ decisions to report to police were related to individuals’ perceptions about police effectiveness or police legitimacy. We found support for the process model. We discuss possible explanations for the divergence with Tankebe’s research in Ghana and suggest avenues for future research.

Measuring Procedural Justice in Police-Citizen Encounters

Procedural justice has dominated recent discussions of police interactions with the public. It has mostly been measured from the perspective of citizens (using surveys or interviews), but several important questions about predictors and outcomes of fair police treatment are best answered using direct observations of police-citizen interactions. Building on prior observational studies, we develop and validate an instrument for measuring procedural justice as it is exercised by the police in the natural setting of their encounters with the public. In doing so, we adopt a “formative” rather than the common “reflective” approach, based on the assumption that specific behaviors that make up procedural justice do not reflect a single underlying construct but rather form one. We justify this approach and validate our instrument accordingly. We also discuss the implications of our measurement for future research on procedural justice in police behavior.

COMPSTAT AND BUREAUCRACY: A CASE STUDY OF CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES FOR CHANGE*

COMPSTAT has been heralded as an innovative and rational crime control program, but our research shows that its implementation presents police departments with a set of opportunities and challenges. Using Webers theory of bureaucracy, we present a case study demonstrating how COMPSTATs key elements are shaped by extant organizational arrangements. In renewing an emphasis on the crime-fighting goal and the command hierarchy of the Lowell Police Department, the study site, COMPSTAT presented an opportunity to reinforce certain traditional features of police bureaucracy. However, by strengthening control through its accountability mechanism, COMPSTAT interfered with its own operation. Furthermore, the persistence of other bureaucratic features—functional specialization, formalization, routine, uniformity, and secrecy—limited organizational change. Our case suggests that the most significant challenge for any department is picking the compromise between existing bureaucratic features and COMPSTATs core elements that most suits its needs and those of its constituencies.

Police Organization Continuity and Change: Into the Twenty‐first Century

American policing demonstrates both continuity and change. A high degree of decentralization persists, as do bureaucratic structures of larger police agencies. The structures and practices of the nation’s numerous small agencies remain underexamined. The potential growth of professional structures inside and outside the police organization is largely unexplored. The core police patrol technology has remained essentially unchanged for decades, and early police adaptations to information technology have not yet profoundly altered policing structures and processes in easily observable ways. The demography and education levels of police workers are changing, but the consequences are not obvious. Police culture has long been under siege. Current reforms attempt to reduce the occupation’s isolation from the communities it serves and the scientific community that presumably serves it. Mechanisms and styles for governing police retain considerable variation, but the growing role of grassroots community groups and police professional associations remains underexplored. The complexity of the dynamics of change manifests itself in the reaction of American police organizations to two consequential reform movements: community policing and terrorist‐oriented policing. American police agencies have shown a remarkable capacity to absorb these reforms while buffering core structures and practices from change.

Systematic Social Observation in Criminology

Systematic social observation (SSO) came to criminology at the hand of Albert J. Reiss, Jr., who, in the 1960s, encouraged social scientists to shed some “nonsensical” views about the limits and benefits of different forms of observing social phenomena (Reiss 1968, 1971b). Reiss objected to the notion that direct observation of social phenomena in their natural setting was work for solo researchers using qualitative methods, while survey research was suitable as a group enterprise with many researchers using a systematized protocol to gather quantified data. Reiss argued that both direct social observation and survey research were in fact forms of observation that must confront the same set of challenges to produce interpretable information, that both were amenable to either solo or group practice, and that both could be used effectively for discovery or validation of propositions about social phenomena. Beyond these insights, Reiss’s important contribution to criminology was the development and practice of the techniques of SSO. Acknowledging that others before him had associated social field observation with the sorts of systematic protocols that had become popular in survey research, Reiss demonstrated how SSO could be used to answer important questions about what influences police–citizen interactions, with implications for theories about police–citizen relationships and for public policies concerning justice, race relations, and crime control. Since Reiss, criminologists have expanded the application of SSO more broadly, but it is still used relatively infrequently.

Predicting Procedural Justice in Police–Citizen Encounters:

Police exercise great discretion in their dealings with the public, but most research on police discretion focuses on coercive decisions. Despite the demonstrated importance of procedural justice (PJ) for police legitimacy and overall satisfaction, the predictors of police-provided PJ in police–citizen encounters have rarely been examined. We propose a framework for assessing the choice of police officers to engage in PJ and test it using data collected in direct observations of police interactions with the public. We find significant effects for the moral “worthiness” of the citizen as reflected in his or her role in the situation; for situational challenges of engaging in PJ, including large audience and officer mental/emotional fatigue; and for popular scripts for handling traffic-related encounters and serving in a backup role. We interpret and discuss the implications of our findings and suggest avenues for advancing understanding of the factors underlying procedurally just police treatment.

Police Innovation: Critic Changing everything so that everything can remain the same: Compstat and American policing

Compstat has come to be seen as a major innovation in American policing. It has received national awards from Harvard University and former Vice President Gore, and has been featured prominently along with William Bratton (the police administrator who created the program) in the national news media. Its originators and proponents have given Compstat credit for impressive reductions in crime and improvements in neighborhood quality of life in a number of cities that have adopted the program (Silverman 1996; Remnick 1997; Gurwitt 1998; Bratton 1999). And while introduced only in 1994 in New York City, police departments around the country have begun to adopt Compstat or variations of it (Law Enforcement News 1997; Maas 1998; McDonald 1998; Weisburd, Mastrofski, McNally et al . 2003). Indeed, a Police Foundation survey suggests that Compstat had literally burst onto the American police scene. Only six years after Compstat emerged in New York City, more than a third of American police agencies with 100 or more sworn officers claimed to have implemented a Compstat-like program (Weisburd, Mastrofski, McNally, and Greenspan 2001). Drawing from a series of studies we conducted at the Police Foundation (Weisburd et al . 2001; Greenspan, Mastrofski, and Weisburd 2003; Weisburd et al . 2003; Willis, Mastrofski, Weisburd, and Greenspan 2004; Willis, Mastrofski, and Weisburd 2004a, 2004b), we will argue in this chapter that there is a wide gap between the promise of Compstat and its implementation in American policing.

Improving policing by integrating craft and science: what can patrol officers teach us about good police work?

ABSTRACT Evidence-based policing is one of the latest attempts to change what the police do and how they do it. Within this context the craft of policing is acknowledged but generally undervalued. Neglecting what craft can contribute to science is an overlooked opportunity. This paper examines the insights that officers’ experiences can offer into the kinds of reforms that are both pressing and possible. To do so, we conducted in-depth interviews with 38 patrol officers in a US police department and asked, ‘What are the features of the contemporary police craft that should be taken into account to make science more meaningful and useful for the improvement of actual police practices?’ Our results suggested meaningful reform may require the following: (1) a greater focus on testing a wide array of police responses and the interaction effects between theoretically relevant characteristics of the police officer and the tactic or strategy being tested; (2) using science to help establish performance criteria for measuring work quality; (3) paying more attention to understanding the processes of police interactions, not just outcomes; (4) applying research to improving officers’ communication skills; and (5) discovering ways to use science to advance understanding about the values guiding police discretion.

Understanding the culture of craft: lessons from two police agencies

Abstract When it comes to changing American policing, the police culture is invariably a target for reform. However, characterizations of traditional police attitudes and beliefs as suspicious of outsiders, authoritative, and at odds with the law, often overlook what police officers themselves value about the work they do, that is what constitutes its quality. Using survey data from two police departments, this paper seeks to understand the contours of the police craft culture. Our findings suggest a more textured assessment of police culture is warranted than the ‘warrior’ outlook implies. While some of the views of our respondents were consistent with features of the traditional police culture, officers did not display the kind of cynicism about the public, rush to judgment, preoccupation with coercive tactics, indifference to rules and regulations, and deep skepticism about science consistent with this portrayal of the police. We then consider how these insights might be used by those seeking to improve street-level police work.

The effects of body-worn cameras on police organisation and practice: a theory-based analysis

ABSTRACT This study applies the technical/rational model of organisations to help explain the effects of body-worn cameras on police organisation and practice in a single police agency in the United States. Consistent with the technical/rational model, cameras had enhanced those people-processing and environment-changing features of the police organisation which had tangible goals and well understood means for their accomplishment. In comparison, body-worn cameras were less successful in changing supervision and training, which were not well developed technically. We posit that improvements in these people-changing aspects of police work will likely require public pressure for higher levels of police professionalism, rigorous evidence on how these cameras can make training and supervision more effective, and police agencies willing to experiment with their strategic implementation.