A growing body of research on problem-solving in policing has built a robust empirical base for how and why problem-solving works to affect crime and disorder on the street. However, less is known about problem-solving at the organizational level where leaders navigate organizational change decisions. Through qualitative interviews, this study explores the views of U.S. law enforcement executives as problem-solvers for organizational change and how law enforcement executives confront challenges and adapt organizational policy and practice. Findings reveal three themes that law enforcement executives consider: two-way communication, transparency and accountability, and organizational structure. In addition, a model for decision-making is proposed that cycles through steps of assessing the need for change, collecting data and feedback, analysis, weighing available options, making and communicating a decision, and evaluating and revising their approaches. The results suggest a pathway to begin standardizing and institutionalizing decision-making approaches for law enforcement executives.
Recent Supreme Court doctrine rejects a narrow “moment of threat” lens in favor of evaluating police use-of-force under the totality of the circumstances. Whether expanding the temporal frame changes how reasonableness and culpability are assigned remains unclear. We test this question using a nationally stratified experiment fielded the day Barnes v. Felix was decided (N = 2,401). Participants were randomly assigned to view one of three temporally distinct dashcam clips from the Barnes incident: a four-second final frame, a thirteen-second partial-context clip, or an approximately two-minute totality-of-circumstances clip. Respondents then evaluated officer reasonableness, responsibility, criminal liability, and internal discipline. Expansion beyond the final frame reduced perceived reasonableness and increased punitiveness. However, effects were non-linear: limited additional context produced the strongest condemnation, while full context tempered reactions. Temporal framing shapes public evaluations of police use-of-force, with the direction and magnitude of effects dependent on what the selected temporal frame reveals.
Few studies focus on stress, support and psychological health of police leaders. Data was collected from mid-level police leaders ( n = 538) and frontline police ( n = 1,003) employed in a large Australian state police agency. While mid-level leaders experience similar levels of psychological distress as the frontline, the frontline is more burned out. Organizational and operational stress significantly predicted burnout and psychological distress. Supervisor and peer support were both associated with less burnout and supervisor support was associated with less distress. Greater perceptions of psychological safety climate (PSC) were a protective factor for psychological distress. Job resources and PSC can be useful in attenuating psychological distress of police leaders. If we expect mid-level police leaders to build healthy workplaces, we must take the necessary actions to mitigate organizational and operational factors that contribute to stress among police leadership cohorts. More attention must be given to safeguarding the wellbeing of those leading the frontline.
This study investigates officer-involved shootings (OIS) in Australia between 1970 and 2020, focusing on the effects of routine firearm carriage policies introduced in New South Wales (1991) and Victoria (1993). Owing to the lack of uniform national reporting of non-fatal shootings, a two-phase data collection strategy was adopted: initial identification through online media archives, followed by validation using gray literature and official reports. This process resulted in a dataset of 581 OIS incidents, including fatal and non-fatal cases. Using this dataset, we employed Bayesian structural time series modeling, and a segmented regression analysis within an Interrupted Time Series analysis to assess the impact of routine carriage policies. Both methods consistently showed that routine carriage policies did not increase OIS rates. These findings provide empirical evidence countering assumptions that increased firearm availability among police necessarily leads to higher OIS rates. The results suggest that under certain conditions, routine firearm carriage can be introduced without exacerbating OIS rates. While identifying the mechanism was outside the scope of this paper, the pattern is consistent with the view that organizational, tactical, and cultural settings, and not firearm availability alone, shape OIS outcomes. Jurisdictions considering the routine arming of police officers should treat it as a multi-component policy change, and pair any changes to firearm policy with context-specific tactical training, professionalization initiatives, and de-escalation protocols. Careful attention to these factors may mitigate risks associated with routine carriage and promote safer outcomes for both officers and the public.
When a police officer commits a criminal offense, they not only violate the very laws they are legally entrusted to uphold, but in doing so, they also violate the public’s trust. In Canada, the importance of public trust is recognized through the criminal offense of “breach of trust by a public officer,” and as an aggravating factor in sentencing. As there is a significant dearth of research on police criminality and on the sentencing of police officers in Canada, we present an empirically grounded examination of 93 sentencing decisions between 1990 and 2024, involving over 100 police officers convicted for breaches of trust. The study sheds light on the nature of police-perpetrated breaches of trust, and on the ways in which courts sentence police-offenders in Canada. Our study underscores that although sentencing is an important element of police accountability, it does little to address the systemic aspects of police criminality.
Considering the increased responsibility placed on law enforcement for handling crisis encounters, many departments have implemented crisis intervention training to reduce use of force through de-escalation and increase diversion/referral to community services. Despite the wellintentioned nature of such programming, evidence to date has been both elusive and inconclusive. The purpose of the current study is to investigate the effectiveness of the Seattle Police Department's crisis intervention program in meeting these intended goals. Utilizing a covariate matching approach, the research questions compare confirmed crisis event responses with and without a crisis-certified officer to assess potential differences in crisis event response profiles, police use of force during crisis encounters, and dispositional outcomes resulting from crisis encounters. The results highlight differences in crisis response likelihood, use of force, and dispositional outcomes between CIT-certified and noncertified officers. Implications for future research, practice, and policy are discussed.
Depolicing refers to a perceived decline in police engagement, particularly in proactive enforcement. Although widely invoked in political and media debates, the concept remains theoretically and empirically contested. Existing research suggests that overall police activity remains relatively stable and that only a minority of officers report reducing their own interventions, raising questions about the origins of disengagement narratives. Drawing on an organizational justice framework, this study analyzes 59 in-depth interviews with Quebec police officers to examine how officers construct accounts of disengagement through lived experiences of oversight. We identify three interrelated dynamics associated with radical disengagement: employer-initiated internal investigations that constrain blame externalization and disrupt occupational solidarity; precautionary administrative measures that produce stigmatization and isolation; and disciplinary responses to morally framed proactive practices, often interpreted as noble cause corruption. We argue that radical depolicing is rooted less in external scrutiny than in perceived organizational injustice.
Research shows variation in police officers' views of the police role; some are mainly crime control oriented, while others hold a broader role extending to order maintenance and service. Though the origins and nature of role orientations are not well understood, training and socialization are presumed to play key roles. Some conjecture holds that officers subscribe to a "warrior" mindset, and training fosters this orientation. A shift to a "guardian" mentality, prizing community partnership, is prescribed. We analyze two waves of panel survey data from four classes of New York State Police recruits to examine the content and structure of recruits' role orientations and the direction and degree of change during basic training. We find that recruits enter training as both warriors and guardians, these "mindsets" are not incompatible with one another, and that academy training amplifies and strengthens attitudinal coherence for both sets of outlooks.
This study investigates career-ending police misconduct that occurs with little or no prior warning. Using administrative data from a large policing agency in the United Kingdom, we examine the predictive value of unsubstantiated complaints and related career characteristics for career ending misconduct. While unsubstantiated complaints were correlated with minor complaint types and overall complaint volume, they showed no clear relationship with career ending misconduct. Among officers with unsubstantiated complaints, however, significant predictors included duty type, frequency of transfers, and, most notably, the presence of secondary employment. A separate analysis of officers who committed "spontaneous" career ending misconduct-without any history of prior complaints-revealed no consistent demographic or career predictors. These findings challenge the utility of traditional early warning indicators among officers without complaint histories. We conclude that early intervention approaches must be refined to reflect multiple misconduct trajectories.
Police vehicle pursuits emphasize a central tension between law enforcement imperatives and public safety. While modern policies emphasize balancing apprehension needs against risks of continuation, little is known about whether public intuitions mirror this framework. We address this gap using a nationally representative conjoint experiment (N = 3,334) that varied eleven contextual factors across randomized pursuit scenarios. Respondents rated perceived risk, indicated whether pursuits should be terminated, and made forced-choice tradeoffs. Across all outcomes, high-risk situational factors (e.g., high speeds, adverse weather, heavy traffic, urban settings, etc.) increased perceived danger and termination support, while more serious underlying offenses, particularly violent felonies, reduced it. These patterns align with the proportional balancing logic embedded in contemporary policy and training. Findings suggest restrictive, risk-sensitive pursuit policies are broadly consistent with public expectations, though tolerance for risk in violent felony cases may limit support for outright prohibitions.
This study applies risk management strategies from commercial aviation to better understand when it is safe to send unarmed responders to 911/999 calls. By analyzing three years of community-generated call data from Seattle, Washington (727,423 calls across 356 types), this research assesses risk, or the "credible worst-case scenario" for each call type. Findings reveal nearly half (48.9%) of all call types could be safely addressed by diversified, non-police responders rather than the traditional "all-hazards" police approach. Observations that the all-hazards responder is often necessary to identify such opportunities, or what we term "Ratcliffe's Paradox," are confirmed. This study indicates a systematic approach to risk management could enable such a diversified responses, potentially freeing up to 26% of police resources currently allocated to non-police calls. A Risk Managed Demand (RMD) could improve public safety outcomes, reduce the collateral harms of armed responses, and operationalize Alternative First Responder programs resulting in an optimal allocation of resources.
Objectives: This study assesses the effectiveness of hotspots policing in a novel context – moving hotspots. We examine the impact of preventative police presence on high-crime-harm bus routes, known as ‘Hot Bus Corridors’. Methods: A pretest-post-test parallel groups randomised controlled trial (RCT) was conducted in London, UK, involving 556 ‘Hot Bus Corridors’ that were randomly assigned to receive either targeted visibility presence on buses or standard police presence, which served as the control group. Generalised linear models were used to estimate the treatment effect on crime levels, measured in terms of both crime counts and the Cambridge Crime Harm Index (CCHI). Results: We observed a significant reduction in both crime counts and crime harm in the treatment bus corridors compared to the control corridors, with a more pronounced reduction during morning hours. Conclusion: This study extends the applicability of hotspots policing to mobile environments, demonstrating its potential to enhance public safety. High-visibility police patrols in moving hotspots can increase deterrence and, consequently, effectively reduce crime within the public transportation network.
Persons with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) are disproportionately affected by both violent crime and police misuse of force. Despite this, there is limited organizational knowledge around policing policies relating to this community. The current study employs data from the 2020 Law Enforcement Management and Administrative Statistics survey (n = 2063) to examine whether organizational characteristics such as size, number of specialized units, and the extent to which the organization solicits community input on policing issues are associated with odds of possessing a formal written policy relating to persons with IDD. Findings suggest that factors relating to community policing and the formulation of policies for other specialized subpopulations were associated with odds of organizations maintaining such policies. There is a need to develop more nuanced policies which reflect the diversity of this community while also ensuring that stakeholders from the disability community are involved as co-producers of policies.
Courts regularly rely on scientific expert testimony in police use-of-force cases, and the Force Science Institute (FSI)-a private, for-profit entity-has emerged as an important source of purportedly scientific principles shaping police training, policies, and legal outcomes. Its "peer-reviewed" corpus is presented as scientifically authoritative and feeds into "Force Science Analyst" certification and expert consulting. Employing bibliometric analysis and three validated measures of scientific reliability, we assess a recent volume (Force Science) representing FSI's claimed knowledge for scientific reliability. Contrary to FSI's assertions, our findings show its published materials fail to meet the scientific rigor demanded by the Daubert standard, which governs the admissibility of scientific evidence in U.S. courts. These results highlight the need for caution and critical scrutiny of such evidence, and suggest that reliance on Force Science in legal proceedings, training programs, and policing policies risks introducing unverified concepts into high-stakes decision-making contexts.
Little is known about the decision-making processes used when police encounter suspects who have never previously been stopped or about how police decide who to question in the first place. Literature suggests suspect race plays a role, but findings are contradictory, perhaps due to the confounding effects of prior records. We therefore focus here on a suspect’s first police stop. Drawing on three theoretical accounts—focal concerns, benign neglect, and de-policing—we identify plausible explanations for racial differences in self-reported police contact and arrest outcomes. We use Add Health data and matched logistic regression to examine race effects. We find that black respondents were less likely than white respondents to be stopped, but there was no disparity in arrest. Although suspect race was associated with the decision to stop a suspect, the association’s direction did not align with that of the traditional focal concerns perspective.
The consequences of poor mental health are far reaching for police officers, organizations, and the community. The occupational culture in place to collectively buffer the strains of the job can also serve as a barrier to seeking mental health help. The precise manner in which this operates is currently unknown. Utilizing survey data from a large urban police department, the current study examines the impact of several internal and external features of the cultural work environment on officers' perceptions of mental health seeking help. Results from multivariate analyses illuminate the importance of top management support, expansive role orientations, and job satisfaction in seeking mental health assistance. Conversely, higher perceptions of danger and stress were negatively associated with willingness to seek help for mental health issues. A second analysis, based on grouping of open-ended survey responses, reports a number of occupational fears in coming forward with mental health concerns.
Research indicating the impact of police academy training on officer safety outcomes post-graduation is limited, creating a significant gap in policing literature. To address this, this study combines data from police academies across the United States using the 2018 Census of Law Enforcement Training Academies (CLETA) (n = 761) along with agency-level injury data (n = 25,345) from the FBI's Law Enforcement Officers Killed and Assaulted (LEOKA) and Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) databases from 2018 to 2022. Data cleaning and linking techniques successfully matched 322 academies to officer injury data in their corresponding agencies and jurisdictions. Preliminary analyses revealed significant differences in safety outcomes and force-based teaching emphasis based on institutions (e.g., traditional, college, other) overseeing police academies. Negative binomial regression models were used to assess the relationships between academy structures and instruction to officer incident and injury outcomes. The results indicated that academy structures-college-affiliated academies associating with lower injury rates, and those using scenario-based training showing higher incident counts-are significant correlates of officer safety. As for elements of academy instruction, higher numbers of sworn instructors were associated with better safety outcomes. These findings highlight the complex, context-dependent influence academy characteristics have on officer safety and provide valuable insights for evidence-based academy reform. Nevertheless, limitations such as the use of fuzzy matching, the cross-sectional nature of the data, and the exclusion of unmatched academies must be considered. Future research should expand on these findings to better understand the relationship between police academy training and safety outcomes after graduation.
As the representation of women in law enforcement increases, researchers are more frequently examining whether male and female officers respond differently to policing situations. This study uses the "sameness versus difference" framework to explore gendered behavior, with officer sex (male vs. female) as the measurable indicator in arrest decisions during responses to family assault calls. Using five years of data from a large Southern U.S. sheriff's office and accounting for officer- and incident-level variation with multilevel modeling, the analysis finds no significant difference between male and female officers in the likelihood of making an arrest. Instead, situational factors like victim injury and time of day, along with individual characteristics of officers, victims, and offenders, play a more influential role in arrest decisions. Neighborhood characteristics have minimal impact. These findings support the perspective of sameness and emphasize the importance of proper statistical modeling to prevent misleading conclusions.
