Category: My Research
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Force and Fallout: Experimental Evidence from a National Test of the Community Expectations Standard
A persistent “reasonableness divide” exists between the legal standards governing police use of force and the public’s expectations, producing “lawful but awful” uses of force. This study empirically tests the “Community Expectations Standard” (CES), a model that identifies five criteria the public uses to evaluate force: underlying governmental interest, avoidability, officer motivation, subject resistance, and…
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Assessing the Effect of Gender and Diversity on the Traditional Police Culture
Abstract: Women remain underrepresented in policing, and their effect on the traditional police culture remains understudied. The current study combines survey data from the Law Enforcement Management and Administrative Statistics (LEMAS) and National Police Platform to examine differences between the cultural attitudes of women and men, and whether larger proportions of women within law enforcement…
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The Color of Confinement: Racial Bias and Jail Populations Across America
This study builds on the body of research examining whether racial disparities in criminal justice can be attributed to bias. The purpose of the current study was to examine whether there is a relationship between aggregate levels of bias and race-specific incarceration rates in U.S. counties. With data from the Vera Institute of Justice, the…
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Police Use-of-Force Self-efficacy: An Antidote to the Ferguson Effect?
Abstract Research has consistently shown that officers’ perceptions of deteriorated relationships with the public are associated with physical and emotional disengagement with their work. Anecdotal evidence suggests that this “Ferguson Effect” has also contributed to reluctance to use necessary physical force in the course of their duties, leading to compromises for officer safety and public…
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Justifiability and culpability in lethal self-defense: Police officers vs. civilians
Purpose Some critics argue that legal standards, even when and where equivalent, are differentially applied to officers and civilians. This study examined evaluations of justifiability and culpability for police officers versus civilians, as well as White shooters versus Black shooters, in a 2✕2 factorial experiment. It also explored how personal attitudes and characteristics correspond to…
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Racial Threat and Punitive Police Attitudes
Racial Threat Theory posits that punitive attitudes are produced when Whites are alarmed by large or growing Black populations. While research has identified a relationship between Black composition and support from community members for more punitive criminal justice policy, no research has examined whether racial composition influences punitive attitudes among criminal justice personnel—even though they…
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High-speed Mobile Networks and Police Repression during the COVID-19 Pandemic: The Case of Nigeria
Purpose: Government repression against civilians while enforcing restrictive policies related to COVID-19 was widely reported in Africa. At the same time, many have claimed that high-speed mobile data and social media provide an accountability mechanism that may constrain police abuses. This study focused on Nigeria to examine (1) the effect of COVID-19 lockdowns on police…
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Ethnic diversity, Ethnic Polarization, and Incarceration Rates: A Cross-national Study
Recent political rhetoric both in the U.S. and abroad has drawn renewed attention to racial and ethnic conflict, state power, and punishment. The salience of minority group conflict on incarceration is well established in theory and research in the U.S. This study explores whether racial/ethnic composition explains incarceration rates throughout the world, rather than being…
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Worried Sick: Perceptions of Low Public Support, Stress, and Somatic Health Problems in Law Enforcement
Recent surveys suggest that confidence in police reached its lowest level on record in the wake of controversial police custody deaths and associated protests in recent years. Meanwhile, research has found links between perceptions of low public support for police and a variety of negative outcomes among police officers, including stress and withdrawal. The consequences…
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The Impact of Suspect Race and Precipitating Incident on Community Members’ Assessments of Deadly Force Reasonableness
The contrast between many community members’ views about the extent to which force used by police is excessive and the criminal justice system’s determination of same suggests a “reasonableness divide.” Using survey data from 3600 nationally representative adults, this study assessed one possible reason for this divide—that community members evaluate the reasonableness of deadly force…