Affirmative Action in Times of Fiscal Stress and Changing Value Priorities: The Case of Women in Policing

1989 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 291-309 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rebecca L. Warner ◽  
Brent S. Steel
Keyword(s):  
Affirmative Action ◽  
Fiscal Stress ◽  
Police Departments ◽  
Municipal Governments ◽  
Fiscal Constraints ◽  
Economic Trends ◽  
Municipal Police ◽  
Employment Of Women ◽  
Using Data ◽  
American Cities

Public sector affirmative action programs must contend with recent political and economic trends. Given the conservative political environment which de-emphasizes affirmative action, and given the advent of serious fiscal constraints facing many cities, is it reasonable to expect progress in employment of women in nontraditional roles within municipal governments? This article investigates this question using data gathered from reported surveys of over 280 municipal police departments in major American cities over the period 1978 to 1987. Findings suggest that women may have a long and difficult road ahead for improving their representation in municipal policing.

Administrative Values and Cutback Politics in American Local Government

1988 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 207-222 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan P. West ◽  
Charles Davis
Keyword(s):  
Local Governments ◽  
Fiscal Stress ◽  
Public Employees ◽  
Institutional Response ◽  
Fiscal Constraints ◽  
Administrative Efficiency ◽  
Cutback Management ◽  
Limited Applicability ◽  
Using Data ◽  
The Impact

Fiscal constraints facing local governments and citizen resistance to tax increases have given impetus to cutback management. Some analysts have focused attention on the causes or consequences of reduced expenditures for programs and personnel while others have focused on strategies designed to buffer the impact of fiscal stress on public employees and the delivery of governmental services. A recent study by Klingner and Nalbandian indicates that cutback management can be viewed as an institutional response to conflict among the four basic values underlying public sector human resource management—political responsiveness, social equity, individual rights, and administrative efficiency. The authors test this model using data from a national survey of urban personnel managers. They conclude that the administrative values framework has limited applicability to the analysis of local cutback management and suggest that theory testing is inhibited by structural aspects of urban fiscal problems.

scholarly journals The Effect of Court-Ordered Hiring Quotas on the Composition and Quality of Police

2007 ◽  
Vol 97 (1) ◽  
pp. 318-353 ◽  
Author(s):  
Justin McCrary
Keyword(s):  
Affirmative Action ◽  
Police Department ◽  
Work Force ◽  
The United States ◽  
Police Departments ◽  
White Test ◽  
Municipal Police ◽  
Municipal Police Departments ◽  
Newly Hired

Arguably the most aggressive affirmative action program ever implemented in the United States was a series of court-ordered racial hiring quotas imposed on municipal police departments. My best estimate of the effect of court-ordered affirmative action on work-force composition is a 14-percentage-point gain in the fraction African American among newly hired officers. Evidence on police performance is mixed. Despite substantial black-white test score differences on police department entrance examinations, city crime rates appear unaffected by litigation. However, litigation lowers slightly both arrests per crime and the fraction black among serious arrestees. (JEL H76, J15, J78, K31)

scholarly journals The Network Structure of Police Misconduct

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
pp. 237802311987979 ◽  
Author(s):  
George Wood ◽  
Daria Roithmayr ◽  
Andrew V. Papachristos
Keyword(s):  
Social Networks ◽  
Network Structure ◽  
Police Officers ◽  
Police Misconduct ◽  
Police Departments ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Network Ties ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Factors Associated ◽  
Using Data

Conventional explanations of police misconduct generally adopt a microlevel focus on deviant officers or a macrolevel focus on the top-down organization of police departments. Between these levels are social networks of misconduct. This study recreates these networks using data on 16,503 complaints and 15,811 police officers over a six-year period in Chicago. We examine individual-level factors associated with receiving a complaint, the basic properties of these misconduct networks, and factors related to officer co-naming in complaints. We find that the incidence of police misconduct is associated with attributes including race, age, and tenure and that almost half of police officers are connected in misconduct ties in broader networks of misconduct. We also find that certain dyadic factors, especially seniority and race, strongly predict network ties and the incidence of group misconduct. Our results provide actionable information regarding possible ways to leverage the co-complaint network structure to reduce misconduct.

The Public Sector Mediation Process

1978 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 209-240 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas A. Kochan ◽  
Todd Jick
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Public Sector ◽  
Personal Characteristics ◽  
Mediation Process ◽  
Municipal Governments ◽  
The Public ◽  
Situational Characteristics ◽  
Alternative Sources ◽  
Using Data ◽  
The Impact

This paper develops and tests a model of the labor mediation process using data from a sample of negotiations involving municipal governments and police and firefighter unions in the State of New York. The test of the model also incorporates an estimate of the impact of a change in the statutory impasse procedures governing these groups. The model examines the impact of (1) alternative sources of impasse, (2) situational characteristics, (3) strategies of the mediators, and (4) personal characteristics of the mediators on the probability of settlement, percentage of issues resolved in mediation, movement or compromising behavior, and the tendency to hold back concessions in mediation. The results indicate that the change in the impasse procedure had a marginal affect on the probability of settlement in the small to medium cities in the sample but little or no effect on the larger cities. Furthermore, a number of other measures of the sources of impasse and mediator strategies and characteristics had a stronger impact on the effectiveness of the mediation process than the nature of the impasse procedure.

Using Web 2.0 as a Community Policing Strategy

2012 ◽  
pp. 139-152
Author(s):  
Matthew A. Jones ◽  
Melchor C. de Guzman ◽  
Korni Swaroop Kumar
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Web 2.0 ◽  
Community Policing ◽  
Police Departments ◽  
Policy And Practice ◽  
Policing Strategy ◽  
Municipal Police ◽  
Community Livability ◽  
Media Applications ◽  
Municipal Police Departments

Community policing is intended to empower citizens who are plagued by crime and disorder. Scholars have considered community policing as a proactive measure that addresses issues of disorder to prevent the occurrence of more serious crimes (Goldstein, 1986; Wilson & Kelling, 1982). In a digital age, people are increasingly interacting socially via web platforms. This digital interaction includes governments, which can interact with the citizens in their society to co-produce effective responses to criminal activity. Social media applications such as Facebook, Twitter, blogs, iPhone applications, and Nixle provide new media for citizens and police interactions. Using a sample of 163 municipal police departments, this chapter examines the level and type of participation among municipal police departments using these resources. It is argued that Web 2.0 social media applications allow for a more fluent and dialogic relationship between citizens and police to work together to reduce crime and increase community livability. Policy and practice recommendations related to participating in and enhancing social media presence for police are also provided.

When Law Enforcement Pays: Costs and Benefits for Elected Versus Appointed Administrators Engaged in Asset Forfeiture

2019 ◽  
Vol 50 (3) ◽  
pp. 297-314 ◽  
Author(s):  
Siân Mughan ◽  
Danyao Li ◽  
Sean Nicholson-Crotty
Keyword(s):  
Law Enforcement ◽  
State Level ◽  
Public Administrators ◽  
Police Departments ◽  
Level Data ◽  
Municipal Police ◽  
Institutional Variation ◽  
Asset Forfeiture ◽  
Appointed Administrators ◽  
Municipal Police Departments

The billions of dollars in assets seized by law enforcement each year represent a crucial source of revenue for these organizations, but also raise important constitutional questions and can create significant tensions within the jurisdictions they administer. Research on asset forfeiture to date has focused heavily on municipal police, largely neglecting forfeiture activities by sheriffs. Thus, it has missed an important opportunity to build theory about the differences between appointed and elected administrators and neglected an important source of institutional variation that may help to explain this particular administrative activity. To develop expectations about the relative levels of asset forfeiture and the response to intergovernmental incentives related to forfeiture, we draw on and extend scholarship comparing the behavior of elected versus appointed administrators in other settings. We test those expectations in analyses of more than 1,200 sheriff’s offices and over 2,200 municipal police departments between 1993 and 2007. Results suggest that sheriffs receive less forfeiture revenue than municipal police and are less responsive to state-level policies that change the financial rewards of asset forfeiture for agencies. These results hold whether we examine forfeitures made through the federal Equitable Sharing Program, where civil and criminal forfeiture cases can be distinguished, or jurisdictional level data on forfeiture, where civil and criminal forfeitures are combined. We conclude with a discussion of implications for both the research on asset forfeiture and on elected versus appointed public administrators more generally.

Police Workforce Structures

2012 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 283-307 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeremy M. Wilson ◽  
Justin A. Heinonen
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Personnel Decisions ◽  
Police Organizations ◽  
Police Agencies ◽  
Military Healthcare ◽  
Municipal Police ◽  
Using Data ◽  
Advance Theory ◽  
The Military

Research has long focused on the size of police agencies, giving little attention to the composition of the workforce itself. Literature in fields such as the military, healthcare, organizational psychology, and business, highlights the importance of workforce structures in meeting both organizational and staff needs. Using data from a national survey, we examine personnel cohorts (i.e., distribution of junior, midlevel, and senior sworn staff) as an element of workforce structure in the largest, U.S. municipal police organizations. We describe the importance of cohort structures for enhancing performance (meeting both organizational and individual needs) and assess variation in cohort structures. We discuss the cohorts in light of their effects on personnel management, and highlight the importance of existing cohort structures when considering major personnel decisions such as hiring freezes, furloughs, layoffs, and buyouts. We summarize future research that could advance theory and policy regarding workforce structures in police and other criminal justice organizations.

Race, Place, and Context: The Persistence of Race Effects in Traffic Stop Outcomes in the Face of Situational, Demographic, and Political Controls

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 481-508
Author(s):  
Kelsey Shoub ◽  
Derek A. Epp ◽  
Frank R. Baumgartner ◽  
Leah Christiani ◽  
Kevin Roach
Keyword(s):  
Police Department ◽  
People Of Color ◽  
Police Chief ◽  
Police Departments ◽  
Traffic Stops ◽  
Race Effects ◽  
The Face ◽  
Municipal Police ◽  
Municipal Police Departments ◽  
Unique Dataset

AbstractEvidence that racial minorities are targeted for searches during police traffic stops is widespread, but observed differences in outcomes following a traffic stop between white drivers and people of color could potentially be due to factors correlated with driver race. Using a unique dataset recording over 5 million traffic stops from 90 municipal police departments, we control for and evaluate alternative explanations for why a driver may be searched. These include: (1) the context of the stop itself, (2) the characteristics of the police department including the race of the police chief, and (3) demographic and racial composition of the municipality within which the stop occurs. We find that the driver's race remains a robust predictor: black male drivers are consistently subjected to more intensive police scrutiny than white drivers. Additionally, we find that all drivers are less likely to be subject to highly discretionary searches if the police chief is black. Together, these findings indicate that race matters in multiple and varied ways for policing outcomes.

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