Basics of qualitative research: Grounded theory procedures and techniques

This study explores two issues about police legitimacy. The first issue is the relative importance of police legitimacy in shaping public support of the police and policing activities, compared to the importance of instrumental judgments about (1) the risk that people will be caught and sanctioned for wrongdoing, (2) the performance of the police in fighting crime, and/or (3) the fairness of the distribution of police services. Three aspects of public support for the police are examined: public compliance with the law, public cooperation with the police, and public willingness to support policies that empower the police. The second issue is which judgments about police activity determine people’s views about the legitimacy of the police. This study compares the influence of people’s judgments about the procedural justice of the manner in which the police exercise their authority to the influence of three instrumental judgments: risk, performance, and distributive fairness. Findings of two surveys of New Yorkers show that, first, legitimacy has a strong influence on the public’s reactions to the police, and second, the key antecedent of legitimacy is the fairness of the procedures used by the police. This model applies to both white and minority group residents.

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The Role of Procedural Justice and Legitimacy in Shaping Public Support for Policing

The primary purpose of this paper is to review recent research examining the beneficial effects of optimism on psychological and physical well-being. The review focuses on research that is longitudinal or prospective in design. Potential mechanisms are also identified whereby the beneficial effects of optimism are produced, focusing in particular on how optimism may lead a person to cope more adaptively with stress. The paper closes with a brief consideration of the similarities and differences between our own theoretical approach and several related approaches that have been taken by others.

Effects of optimism on psychological and physical well-being: Theoretical overview and empirical update

Monitoring (tracking and surveillance) of children's behavior is considered an essential parenting skill. Numerous studies show that well-monitored youths are less involved in delinquency and other normbreaking behaviors, and scholars conclude that parents should track their children more carefully. This study questions that conclusion. We point out that monitoring measures typically assess parents' knowledge but not its source, and parents could get knowledge from their children's free disclosure of information as well as their own active surveillance efforts. In our study of 703 14-year-olds in central Sweden and their parents, parental knowledge came mainly from child disclosure, and child disclosure was the source of knowledge that was most closely linked to broad and narrow measures of delinquency (normbreaking and police contact). These results held for both children's and parents' reports, for both sexes, and were independent of whether the children were exhibiting problem behavior or not. We conclude that tracking and surveillance is not the best prescription for parental behavior and that a new prescription must rest on an understanding of the factors that determine child disclosure.

Parental monitoring: a reinterpretation.

Parental monitoring has been conceptualized as tracking and surveillance but operationalized as knowledge of daily activities. This study tested the tracking and surveillance explanation of why parental knowledge is linked to better adolescent adjustment. Participants were 1,186 14-year-olds in central Sweden and their parents. The results supported and extended a reinterpretation of parental monitoring (H. Stattin & M. Kerr, in press). Across sex and informant, high parental knowledge was linked to multiple measures of good adjustment. But children's spontaneous disclosure of information explained more of these relations than parents' tracking and surveillance efforts did. Parents' control efforts were related to good adjustment only after the child's feelings of being controlled, which were linked to poor adjustment, were partialed out. The findings suggest that parents' tracking and surveillance efforts are not as effective as previously thought.

What parents know, how they know it, and several forms of adolescent adjustment: further support for a reinterpretation of monitoring.

This study examines the influence of racial, demographic and situational variables on types of police suspicion and the ancillary decision to stop and question suspects. Data were drawn from an observational study of police decision making in Savannah, Georgia. Based on the literature, we hypothesized that minority suspects will be more likely to be viewed suspiciously by the police for nonbehavioral reasons. We also hypothesize that minority status will play a significant role in the decision to stop and question suspicious persons. The findings from this study provide partial support for these hypotheses. The results indicate that minority status does influence an officer's decision to form nonbehavioral as opposed to behavioral suspicion, but that minority status does not influence the decision to stop and question suspects. We discuss the implications of these findings for understanding race and its role in police decision making.

http://www2.law.columbia.edu/fagan/courses/law_socialscience/documents/Spring_2006/Class%2021-Racial%20Profiling/Alpert_Criminology.pdf

Police suspicion and discretionary decision making during citizen stops

Critical Issues in Policing: Contemporary Readings

Whenever police officers come into contact with citizens there is a chance that the encounter will digress to one in which force is used on a suspect. Fortunately, most police activities do not involve the use of force. But those that do reflect important patterns of interaction between the officer and the citizen. This book examines those patterns. It begins with a brief survey of prior research, and then goes on to present data and findings. Among the data are the force factor applied - that is, the level of force used relative to suspect resistance - and data on the sequential order of incidents of force. The authors also examine police use of force from the suspect's perspective. In analyzing this data they put forward a conceptual framework, the Authority Maintenance Theory, for examining and assessing police use of force.

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Understanding Police Use of Force: Officers, Suspects, and Reciprocity

This study examines the relationship between family characteristics and adolescent deviant behaviors such as major and minor delinquency, and alcohol, cigarette, and drug use, while controlling for gender and race/ethnicity. The intervening factor of the socialization of law-abiding belief was also examined. Data represent a subsample from Wave 1 of the South Florida Youth Development Project involving middle school students in Dade County public schools. A significant direct relationship was found between family attachment and each of the deviant behaviors; however, family structure was not significantly related to any of the deviant behaviors. No significant interactions were found between gender or race with family structure and family attachment regarding any of the deviant behaviors. Family attachment had a direct effect on law-abiding belief, which also had a significant effect on the deviant behaviors.

Family structure versus parental attachment in controlling adolescent deviant behavior: a social control model.

There are prevalent in society two general conceptions of the duties of the police officer. Middle class people feel that he should enforce the law without fear or favor. Cornerville people and many of the officers themselves believe that the policeman should have the confidence of the people in his area so that he can settle many difficulties in a personal manner without making arrests. These two conceptions are in a large measure contradictory.'

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Roger G. Dunham

Papers

Police suspicion and discretionary decision making during citizen stops

Critical Issues in Policing: Contemporary Readings

Understanding Police Use of Force: Officers, Suspects, and Reciprocity

Family structure versus parental attachment in controlling adolescent deviant behavior: a social control model.

Neighborhood Differences in Attitudes Toward Policing: Evidence For a Mixed-Strategy Model of Policing in a Multi-Ethnic Setting