University of Macau / Faculty of Social Sciences. / Department of Sociology

Thesis (M.P.A.)--University of Hong Kong, 1994. / Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.P.A.)--University of Hong Kong, 1994. / Includes bibliographical references. Also available in print.

Crime in the United States has risen at an alarming rate in the last few years and along with it, juvenile crime and delinquency. Society has had a difficult task trying to deal with this increased juvenile crime. Whereas the destructive, antisocial adult can be placed in prison or jail away from society, we are generally reluctant to institutionalize youth in such a manner. Rather, the feeling is that there is still hope for teenagers who commit crimes, that the community rather than institutions can and should be primarily responsible for trying to prevent and/or rehabilitate delinquents. In the fall of 1975, ten school districts in Portland initiated classes designed to teach students about the legal system and the basic concepts related to it such as laws, justice, civil rights, etc. The explicit goal of this project, as stated by its director, is “to improve the citizenship, skills and attitudes of American young people by providing them with an understanding of the law, the legal process and the legal system.”

The current climate surrounding the police in the United States could be described as strenuous. This is large in part due to certain shifts in technology and news disbursement; citizens now have the ability to record and share police-citizen encounters. Certain controversial events have been captured and undoubtedly have contributed to a growing mistrust towards the police, evident by the development of movements for police reform. Within the field of criminology, perception of police legitimacy has been a long studied concept. Research has shown that when the police are viewed as legitimate, the public is more likely to cooperate and comply. Thus, the possible decrease in the public's legitimacy perceptions of the police is deeply concerning. In this study, a randomized experiment was employed to measure the influence of video footage of police-citizen interactions on individual's legitimacy perceptions. Participants were randomly selected to watch videos that showed the police acting in ways that were either positive, negative, or neutral. Legitimacy perceptions were measured before and after exposure to the videos. Analysis of the pre-test and post-test scores showed the videos did influence perceptions: negative videos had the largest influence and significantly decreased perceptions, whereas, positive and neutral videos both significantly increased legitimacy perceptions. The results of this study holds implications for both the police and the public.

There is growing demand for reforms to the U.S. criminal justice system. Nevertheless, there are significant questions and relatively few answers. This dissertation studies multiple U.S. criminal justice system issues using detailed administrative data from Cook County, Illinois: Does policing the police increase crime? Does the composition of a police officer's academy cohort influence their future outcomes? Is pretrial electronic monitoring an attractive alternative to pretrial release and detention? To answer these questions, I use administrative data from Chicago and Cook County, Illinois, on the Chicago Police Department, Cook County Jail, and Circuit Court of Cook County, and a range of econometric methods. In Chapter 1, I study the effect of pretrial electronic monitoring (EM) as an alternative to pretrial release and pretrial detention (jail) in Cook County, Illinois. EM often involves a defendant wearing an electronic ankle bracelet that tracks their movement and aims to deter pretrial misconduct. Using the quasi-random assignment of bond court judges, I estimate the effect of EM versus release and EM versus detention on pretrial misconduct, case outcomes, and future recidivism. I develop a novel method for the semiparametric estimation of marginal treatment effects in ordered choice environments, with which I construct relevant treatment effects. Relative to release, EM increases new cases pretrial due to bond violations while reducing new cases for low-level crimes and failures to appear in court. Relative to detention, EM increases low-level pretrial misconduct but improves defendant case outcomes and reduces cost-weighted future recidivism. Finally, I bound EM's pretrial crime reduction effect. I find that EM is likely an adequate substitute for pretrial detention. However, it is unclear that EM prevents enough high-cost crime to justify its use relative to release, particularly for defendants who are more likely to be released. Chapter 3, joint with Bocar Ba, studies and differentiates between the effects of oversight and outrage on policing. Previous studies estimating the impact of police oversight on crime rely on major policing scandals as shocks to examine the impact of oversight on crime. We argue that the simultaneous effect of public outrage on officer behavior and crime contaminates these results, and we provide a conceptual framework that distinguishes between oversight and outrage. We identify two events relating to unexpected court rulings in Chicago that increased oversight and caused a decline in reported misconduct but had virtually no public reaction. Despite the decrease in reported misconduct, crime and officer activity were unaffected. We contrast this with a major policing scandal, after which we find both a rise in crime rates without an equivalent increase in arrests and a decline in officer stops and use of force. Our results suggest that police oversight can reduce misconduct without increasing crime.