scholarly journals Racial disparity in police killings : an analysis of 2014 United States lethal force data

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Michael Laughlin
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Decision Making ◽  
Law Enforcement ◽  
Police Officers ◽  
Racial Disparity ◽  
Lethal Force ◽  
Police Data ◽  
Micro Level ◽  
Force Data ◽  
The U.S

The main purpose of this research is to create a reliable database concerning law enforcement use of lethal force and employ this database to evaluate whether evidence exists that the decision to use lethal force is impacted by micro-level (officer) race-based considerations. A new database of all lethal force incidents in the U.S. in 2014 was created using 2014: Killed by Police Data and several other websites: 2014: Intentional Lethal Force Data (Menifield and Laughlin, 2018). African American victims were overrepresented and Caucasian victims were underrepresented in police officers' use of lethal force. However, this database and analysis provide no evidence of micro-level discriminatory decision making in the deployment of lethal force by law enforcement. Further, findings do not support the argument that the decision to use lethal force by law enforcement in the U.S. is influenced by race. This research calls into question a number of prevoiusly held assumptions when exploring racially disparate outcomes in lethal force; i.e. these data show greater support for factors external to law enforcement (as opposed to internal) as contributors to disparate outcomes, and questions whether population proportion should be the comparison point for law enforcement use of lethal force.

Challenging the Ordinality of Police Use-of-Force Policy

2021 ◽  
pp. 088740342110383
Author(s):  
Scott M. Mourtgos ◽  
Ian T. Adams ◽  
Samuel R. Baty
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Use Of Force ◽  
Police Department ◽  
The United States ◽  
Physical Force ◽  
Police Use Of Force ◽  
Lethal Force ◽  
Police Agencies ◽  
Municipal Police ◽  
Force Data

Most use-of-force policies utilized by U.S. police agencies make fundamental ordinal assumptions about officers’ force responses to subject resistance. These policies consist of varying levels of force and resistance along an ordinally ranked continuum of severity. We empirically tested the ordinal assumptions that are ubiquitous to police use-of-force continua within the United States using 1 year’s use-of-force data from a municipal police department. Applying a quantitative technique known as categorical regression with optimal scaling, we found the assumptions of ordinality within the studied department’s use-of-force continuum (which is similar to many police use-of-force continua within the United States) are not met. Specifying physical force as a “lower” force option than less-lethal tools is associated with increased officer injury and decreased subject injury. Our findings call into question use-of-force continua featuring ordinal rankings for varying categories of less-lethal force.

Politics, Safety, and Officer-Involved Intimate Partner Violence

2019 ◽  
pp. 227-245
Author(s):  
Leigh Goodmark
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Intimate Partner Violence ◽  
Law Enforcement ◽  
Police Officers ◽  
Partner Violence ◽  
The United States ◽  
Intimate Partner ◽  
Three Dimensions ◽  
Political Decision ◽  
Political Decisions

The United States relies heavily on law enforcement to protect people subjected to intimate partner violence. The decision to prioritize law enforcement intervention may seem natural, but it is, in fact a political decision, with consequences along three dimensions. First, prioritizing the law enforcement response has precluded the development of other policies to address intimate partner violence. Second, channeling money into law enforcement helped to facilitate the growth of a hypermasculine, militarized environment where violence against women flourishes. Third, the decision to rely on law enforcement ignores research establishing that police officers are more likely than other groups to commit intimate partner violence. These political decisions have profound consequences for all people subjected to abuse, particularly the partners of police officers.

scholarly journals Anatomy of the Italian occupational structure: concentrated power and distributed knowledge

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Armanda Cetrulo ◽  
Dario Guarascio ◽  
Maria Enrica Virgillito
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Division Of Labor ◽  
Empirical Investigation ◽  
Hierarchical Structures ◽  
Knowledge Generation ◽  
Occupational Structure ◽  
Distributed Knowledge ◽  
Level Of Aggregation ◽  
Micro Level ◽  
The U.S

Abstract Which type of work do Italians perform? In this contribution, we aim at detecting the anatomy of the Italian occupational structure by taking stock of a micro-level dataset registering the task content, the execution of procedures, the knowledge embedded in the work itself, called ICP (Indagine Campionaria sulle Professioni), the latter being comparable to the U.S. O*NET dataset. We perform an extensive empirical investigation moving from the micro to the macro level of aggregation. Our results show that the Italian occupational structure is strongly hierarchical, with the locus of power distinct by the locus of knowledge generation. It is also weak in terms of collaborative and worker involvement practices, and possibility to be creative. Our analysis allows to pinpoint the role exerted by hierarchical structures, decision-making autonomy, and knowledge as the most relevant attributes characterizing the division of labor.

scholarly journals Law enforcement duties and sudden cardiac death among police officers in United States: case distribution study

BMJ ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 349 (nov18 2) ◽  
pp. g6534-g6534 ◽  
Author(s):  
V. Varvarigou ◽  
A. Farioli ◽  
M. Korre ◽  
S. Sato ◽  
I. J. Dahabreh ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Law Enforcement ◽  
Sudden Cardiac Death ◽  
Police Officers ◽  
Cardiac Death ◽  
Distribution Study ◽  
Case Distribution

Struggle for the Turf

1985 ◽  
Vol 37 (3) ◽  
pp. 403-415
Author(s):  
Henry Trofimenko
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Decision Making ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Policy Process ◽  
American Foreign Policy ◽  
The United States ◽  
Political Decision ◽  
Political Decision Making ◽  
Insight Into ◽  
The U.S

For anyone whose job is to study the United States, the memoirs of its statesmen provide more than merely entertaining reading. They not only give you a closer insight into the “kitchen” of statesmanship and political decision making; they also provide an opportunity to check the assumptions and paradigms that were constructed earlier to analyze the policy of any particular administration. The memoirs confirm that in spite of hundreds of books and thousands of articles in the U.S. press that discuss specific policies, as well as daily debates in Congress and its committees, press conferences, and official statements, the policy process is not as open as it might seem at first glance. Rather, American foreign policy is made within a very restricted circle of the “initiated”—official and unofficial presidential advisers, including selected members of the Cabinet.

Detecting Healthcare Fraud and Abuse in the United States

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Jesilow ◽  
Bryan Burton
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Law Enforcement ◽  
White Collar Crime ◽  
The United States ◽  
Insurance Companies ◽  
Corporate Behavior ◽  
Illegal Activities ◽  
The Government ◽  
Almost All ◽  
The U.S

Healthcare fraud involves wide-ranging illegal behaviors. It includes such activities as individual physicians who bill insurance companies or the government for services that were never provided, as well as corporate behavior, such as pharmaceutical companies that falsify clinical tests in order to get unsafe drugs approved for use. Thousands die each year in the United States due to these behaviors, including deaths from incorrectly prescribed medications or from tainted drugs that were approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration based upon fraudulent testing and reporting. Thousands of additional patients likely are injured and killed by unnecessary surgeries performed by physicians who want to maximize their reimbursements. The illegal activities also add billions of dollars each year to the total healthcare cost in the U.S. Despite these costs, there is relatively little outrage as a result of the behaviors, largely because they remain hidden from public view. Healthcare fraud, as with almost all white-collar crime, is rarely detected and that prevents the frauds from becoming known to victims, law enforcement, and policy makers, which in turn prevents analysts from compiling a complete picture of the behaviors and prevents policymakers and law enforcement from developing efficient enforcement strategies. Moreover, the lack of detection assures perpetrators that they will get away with their crimes and limits the potential preventative effects of punishment. Lack of detection and reporting has been a particularly strong problem for those trying to control healthcare fraud and abuse in the United States and elsewhere. The enforcement mechanisms that have evolved have been strongly influenced by the difficulties of detecting the illegal behaviors.

“Engineering Resilience” Into Split-Second Shoot/No Shoot Decisions: The Effect of Muzzle-Position

2020 ◽  
pp. 109861112096068 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul L. Taylor
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Law Enforcement ◽  
Response Time ◽  
Police Officers ◽  
Law Enforcement Officers ◽  
Deadly Force ◽  
Training Simulator ◽  
Randomized Controlled ◽  
Decision Environment ◽  
Randomized Controlled Experiment

The purpose of this study was to explore the feasibility of engineering resilience into the split-second decision environment police officers face during potential deadly force encounters. Using a randomized controlled experiment that incorporated a police firearms training simulator and 313 active law enforcement officers, this study examined the effects of muzzle-position – where an officer points their weapon – on both officer response time to legitimate threats and the likelihood for misdiagnosis shooting errors when no threat was present. The results demonstrate that officers can significantly improve shoot/no-shoot decision-making without sacrificing a significant amount of time by taking a lower muzzle-position when they are dealing with an ambiguously armed person – a person whose hands are not visible.

An Empathetic Psychological Perspective of Police Deadly Force Training

2011 ◽  
Vol 42 (2) ◽  
pp. 137-156 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rodger E. Broomé
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Law Enforcement ◽  
Police Officers ◽  
Law Enforcement Officers ◽  
Deadly Force ◽  
Psychological Perspective ◽  
The Real ◽  
Policies And Procedures ◽  
Psychological Structure

Abstract Police officers must be able to make an accurate appraisal of a lethal encounter and respond with appropriate force to mitigate the threat to their own lives and to the lives of others. Contemporary police deadly force training places the cadet in mock lethal encounters, which are designed to simulate those occurring in the real lives of law enforcement officers. This Reality Base Training (RBT) is designed to provide cadets with experiences that require their reactions to be within the law, policies and procedures, and ethics while undergoing a very stressful, emotional, and physically dynamic situation (Artwohl & Christensen, 1997; Blum, 2000; Grossman, 1996; Miller, 2008; Murray, 2006). Three police cadets provided written accounts of their deadly force training experiences in the RBT format. The descriptive phenomenological psychological method was used to analyze the data and to synthesize a general psychological structure of their experiences. The results reveal the perceptions, thoughts, feelings and behaviors reflecting the role of consciousness and psychological subjectivity in the participants’ understandings and decision-making in the simulated situations.

U.S. Space Dominance

2020 ◽  
pp. 123-150
Author(s):  
Joan Johnson-Freese ◽  
Kenneth Smith
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Decision Making ◽  
Common Good ◽  
Ethical Decision ◽  
Ethical Decision Making ◽  
Applied Ethics ◽  
The United States ◽  
Ethical Implications ◽  
Self Interest ◽  
The U.S

This chapter considers the ethical implications of the United States trying to achieve “space dominance” as part of an increasingly muscular U.S. “space warfare is inevitable” outlook. The methodology used in the analysis is drawn from Santa Clara University’s Markkula Center for Applied Ethics, using utilitarian, rights, fairness, common good, virtue, and technology considerations as ethical decision-making lenses. Additionally, the chapter examines space dominance as a function of time and contractarianism. It concludes that the U.S. pursuit of space dominance appears to stem mostly from fear and self-interest, and that a better approach would be to shift more closely to honor and self-interest by pursuing more balance between military readiness and assiduous diplomacy. There is, however, no evidence that the latter approach is being considered.

Party Responsibility in Britain and the United States

1967 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 233-256
Author(s):  
Jorgen S. Rasmussen
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Decision Making ◽  
Political Parties ◽  
The United States ◽  
Decision Making Process ◽  
Popular Participation ◽  
Institutional Differences ◽  
British Experience ◽  
The Many ◽  
The U.S

Political parties in representative democracies have, as two of their most significant functions, to facilitate popular participation in the decision-making process and to implement, through control of governmental organs, those policies which are popularly favoured. Judged by these criteria, American parties are dysfunctional—so one critical school argues. American parties, they charge, are responsible neither to their members nor voters and are so organized and operated that they fail to govern effectively. When, in the early 1950s, this case against American parties had its greatest acceptance in the discipline, a number of critics contrasted American parties unfavourably with British parties. As an earlier generation of political scientists had urged Americans to adopt British institutions of government, so the critics of American parties favoured reforms which they thought were characteristic of British parties. If American parties became more like British parties, they argued, those parties would be more responsible and effective. Defenders of American parties refuted the critics' diagnosis and prescription by emphasizing the many environmental and institutional differences between Britain and the United States. British experience simply was not applicable in the U.S., they maintained. As study of British parties progressed an even more devastating rejoinder to critics of American parties emerged. Various findings began to suggest that although British parties obviously were much more cohesive in the legislature than were American parties, they were not nearly as responsible as the critics had assumed.

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