Type:	Journal Article
Title:	Engagement of policing ideals and their relationship to the exercise of discretionary powers
Other Titles:	Criminal Justice and Behavior
Authors:	Mendias, Claudia James, Kehoe E
Keywords:	Criminal justice responses;Policing
Year:	2006
Publisher:	Sage Publications
Citation:	33 (1), February 2006
Notes:	General overview: This journal article outlines research conducted with police from Sydney, Australia. It explores the values that police officers rely on in making decisions about responding to domestic violence. Objective: When exploring the relationship between the attitudes of police officers and their decision to arrest, possible approaches include the “operational styles” approach and the interactionist approach. The operational styles approach assumes that an individual officer has a particular style and will respond consistently based on this style. Interactionist theory suggests that each officer has acquired several schemas that can be used to analyse information. Methods: 173 police officers were asked to read five vignettes concerning common assault between two men, malicious damage by a neighbour, shoplifting, a domestic dispute and disruptive behaviour at a football game. They were asked to indicate if they would arrest or not and to rank four propositions with regard to the importance of each of them in making the decision. The propositions were “strictly enforce the law regulating this type of incident”, “follow appropriate procedures for this type of incident”, “resolve the dispute and maintain the peace”, and “verify whether suspects accept responsibility for their actions” (labelled “law”, “procedure”, “peace” and “responsibility”). In four of the vignettes, an arrest could be justified, while the fifth (a non-criminal incident) was included as a control. Results: There was considerable variability in the choice of actions by the officers. For example, only 10% indicated that they would arrest in all four vignettes and only 16% ranked the same proposition first for all four vignettes. The results did not support the operational style theory, as individual officers did not tend to take the same actions in each case or use the same justifications. The most commonly used propositions were “law”, and “procedure”. “Peace” was also ranked highly, while “responsibility” was not. Ranking “law” and “procedure” highly was associated with a decision to arrest, while “peace” was more likely to be ranked highly when there was a decision not to arrest.
URI:	https://anrows.intersearch.com.au/anrowsjspui/handle/1/14564
ISSN:	0093-8548
Appears in Collections:	Journal Articles

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