This research used qualitative methods to investigate the police officer decision-making processes within the theoretical context of the focal concerns framework and the theory of planned behavior. This research had two primary goals. The first goal was to determine what similarities and differences exist in how ideas from the focal concerns framework manifest themselves in a policing context as compared to how they operate for judges when sentencing convicted offenders. The second goal of this research was to use ideas from the theory of planned behavior to elaborate the focal concerns framework into a functional theoretical model of police officer decision-making. While intuitively sound, the focal concerns perspective is in need of conceptual enhancements to operationalize the mechanisms through which the focal concerns identified are transformed into action. Interviews with police officers were conducted to elicit the considerations that police officers see as important to their decision-making process in order to develop a theory of police decision-making which incorporates concepts from the focal concerns framework and the theory of planned behavior. The results of this study indicate that although police officers share the same broad focal concerns as judges, the way these concerns manifest themselves in the execution of their duties is different for police officers. The results also indicate that the construct of intent from the theory of planned behavior may be a viable cognitive mechanism to connect ideas from the focal concerns framework with criminal justice outcomes, although other constructs from the theory were only found to be partially applicable. Theoretical implications of the findings and directions for future research are also discussed.

The Local Government in Scotland Act (2003) introduced Community Planning as a statutory responsibility in Scotland. The main aims of community planning are described as “making sure people and communities are genuinely engaged in the decisions made on public services which affect them; allied to a commitment from organisations to work together, not apart, in providing better public services” (Scottish Executive, 2003a). For the police, this implied the need to create ‘local solutions to locally identified concerns’ (Strathclyde Police, 2004, p2) and to adopt a holistic approach to community safety which is problem oriented rather than organisation led (Crawford, 1998, p10). The specific and often local nature of problems put forward by communities, is therefore allocated a dominant role in determining the nature of the solution (Goldstein, 1990). This thesis has explored the implementation of community planning and associated community safety policies within a case study area of the former Strathclyde Police. The processes of partnership working and community engagement were found to be central to this approach. Meta- bureaucracy has been used to describe the partnerships activities and linkage to national outcomes presented in this thesis. That is to say, partnership working in this research does not represent a clear growth of ‘autonomous’ networks and governance arrangements as set out by Rhodes (2000) but rather an extension of bureaucratic controls. State actors such as the police service remain pre-eminent within increasingly formalised systems of partnership. Issues of voice, leadership and pragmatic culture were all important findings for the implementation of community planning in practice. However, an implementation gap was identified between the rhetoric and lived experience of those entrusted to deliver these policy goals. Compared to more recent developments of a national police service, issues of professionalisation, operational autonomy and reduction of effective local accountability – all supported police focus on enforcement led policing as opposed to partnership working and community safety more broadly.

Does regulating hate promote racial equality? This dissertation proposes a method for beginning an empirical examination into the benefits and burdens of anti-hate laws. Since prohibiting hate speech necessarily invokes the penal system, a promising approach involves measuring the effects of criminalizing similar conduct, i.e., hate crimes. The effects of criminalization are particularly important given the U.S. history of racialized and colorblind justice and some evidence indicating criminalization may harm racial minorities. Chapter 2 examines whether hate crime laws have the unintended consequence of promoting racial inequality by contributing to racial disparities in arrests. It finds that while police are more likely to recognize assaults as hate crimes when the suspects are white, African Americans are nonetheless significantly overrepresented among hate crime arrestees. Chapter 3 examines how race affects victim perception of potential hate crimes, and how this, in turn, affects police response. While research suggests people tend to have a preconceived notion of the quintessential hate crime in which African Americans are victims, it also shows a negative racial bias in which people ascribe greater culpability and are more punitive towards African Americans. This study looks at how people act under the real-world stresses of crime. Findings provide clear evidence of a tendency to label African Americans as hate crime offenders and to report them to police at significantly higher rates. Further, while African American suspects experience relatively high arrest rates generally, the magnitude of this effect is significantly greater for hate crimes. Chapter 4 explores the nefarious uses of hate crime laws, examining how they may be weaponized to inoculate police and undermine movements for racial justice. Specifically, it looks at the case of “Blue Lives Matter” legislation, which extends hate crime protections to police. Findings reject the officer safety rationale: States with BLM proposals do not differ significantly from other states in terms of violence against police. However, African American arrests do predict these bills, indicating they are a continuation of past police repression. Further research is needed to fully understand how officials enforce hate regulations, and the reverberations of this enforcement on society.

Evidence-based policing (EBP) has emerged as a key strand of police innovation since Sherman’s (1998) Police Foundation lecture. However, for others EBP raises as many questions as answers. One of the most contentious areas is the role advocated for randomised controlled trials in testing practice and developing knowledge to support EBP. RCTs are controversial with some scholars who argue that policing is not comparable to medicine and that RCTs are unable to reflect the complexity of the police role and context. Even those who advocate the use of RCTs recognise that there are significant challenges in achieving the high dosage and high fidelity that a successful experiment requires. This dissertation responds to these challenges by analysing the completed randomised controlled trials in policing and using a case study, Operation Turning Point, to identify the factors that may contribute to the conduct and management of police field trials with high levels of treatment integrity. In the introduction, Chapter 1, the approach is set out, framed around grounded theory, to be developed in four, linked, chapters. Chapter 2 is focused on understanding treatment integrity in RCTs involving the police: A search for police RCTs is produced 122 Police RCTs completed and reported by 2016. The levels of treatment integrity are analysed. 78 of the 122 RCTs exceeded a 60% threshold, with 49 being above 90%. In Chapter 3, a “novice theory” is developed and tested as an explanation for levels of treatment integrity in police randomised controlled trials: Analysis of the 122 RCTs suggests that “novice theory” can provide an explanation for the general patterns of treatment integrity. Further detailed analysis suggested that there are, however, other factors which may be important in determining the treatment integrity. These are developed in Chapter 4, which centres on a case study of Operation Turning Point. Using published case studies and an analysis of juvenile justice RCTs, a potential framework of operational factors is developed that appear to be important in effective conduct and management. The Turning Point case study is used to develop and expand on those operational factors. Finally, taking the two together, the analysis concluded that, beyond the operational factors, there were some more strategic, “protective factors” that were also critical. These are developed in Chapter 5, by using the coding and analysis of interviews with a sample of key staff involved in Turning Point Our analysis suggests that novice theory needs to be understood in the context of both the operational and protective factors that we have identified. Taken together these findings indicate the potential advantages of building institutional frameworks in which the development of practitioners and researchers and the conduct and management of experimental research could be brought closer together. We conclude with ten recommendations designed to improve the treatment integrity of police RCTs.

abstract: It is hypothesized that procedural justice influences citizens' satisfaction with the police. An alternative argument holds that police performance measures, such as perceptions of crime and safety, are more salient. This study empirically investigates the predictive validity of both theoretical arguments. Using mail survey data from 563 adult residents from Monroe County, Michigan, a series of linear regression equations were estimated. The results suggest that procedural justice is a robust predictor of satisfaction with police. In contrast, several police performance measures failed to predict satisfaction with police. Overall, these findings support Tyler and Huo's (2002) contention that judgments regarding whether police exercise their authority in a procedurally-just fashion influence citizens' satisfaction with police more than fear of crime, perceptions of disorder, and the like. / Dissertation/Thesis / M.S. Criminology and Criminal Justice 2012

In practice, neighbourhood policing adopts a view of information set out by Wilmer (1970), where community intelligence is a product that is produced by the police, owned by the police, for consumption by the police, in a ‘battle for information’ that seeks criminal ‘signals’ from ‘noise’. This thesis proposes that this industrial age police centric view of intelligence is redundant in the information age and that the growth of social media provides opportunities for the police and citizens to use information from events in new ways to co-produce community safety. The work draws on the work of Granovetter (1973) who theorised that new information rests with weak ties, Shirky (2009) who argued that collaborative technologies lower the transaction cost of citizen participation to enable the flow of latent information, and Ericson & Haggerty (1997) who envisaged a role for the police as communicators of risk. Utilising a new framework of information, developed for the thesis, to describe an information market, its mixed-methodology approach incorporated qualitative methods such as focus groups and survey, quantitative methods such as secondary analysis of Twitter data. A randomised controlled trial was also used to field test the hypothesis that information about crime proactively published by the police on social media would generate more information flowing from citizens to the police than reactive policing methods. Taken together the research found that citizens were either active or passive consumers of information who expected the police to provide an information bridge with and between citizens. In doing so they expected the police to filter signals about risk from noise for citizens, and amplify that signal so that it is heard by citizens above other background noise. The results did not support the hypothesis that social media would obtain more new pieces of information than traditional approaches. Rather it was found that PCSO inquiries received more information than email requests for information or alerts posted on social media. The research also acted as a catalyst for operational change and resulted in greater use of social media by the police force and a move towards a style of tweeting that was more likely to generate engagement in neighbourhood policing.

abstract: Intelligence, consisting of critical products that facilitate law enforcement decision-making, is a crucial component and tool in the criminal justice system. However, the ways in which intelligence is gathered and used has gone largely unevaluated, particularly at the local level of law enforcement. This thesis begins to address the sparsity of literature by investigating the Intelligence Officer function in the Phoenix Police Department. More specifically, this study explores their roles; perceptions on information they are gathering, namely reliability and validity; and their effectiveness in terms of both intelligence and case successes. Different aspects of roles and perceptions are also examined in terms of their ability to predict these outcomes. Data reflect a 22-month sample of officer reports from the Phoenix Police Department Intelligence Officer Program. Descriptive analyses suggest that Intelligence Officers typically work specific cases with varied and different natures of crime. Generally, officers seem to be confident in the information they collect in terms of reliability and validity, and also appear to be relatively successful in achieving both broad intelligence successes and more tangible case successes. However, the relationships between role and perception variables and results vary in terms of both impact and significance for each type of success. Future research is required to better understand these relationships and to continue building a foundation of knowledge on Intelligence Officer effectiveness, so their impact can be optimized. / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis Criminology and Criminal Justice 2017

Recently, police legitimacy has come under attack due to ongoing allegations of police use of excessive force. In line with national efforts to modernize police services, body-worn cameras have been positioned as a promising response to reconstructing police legitimacy due to their potential to provide greater transparency and accountability (Brucato, 2015). Despite the rapid and extensive adoption of body-worn cameras by North American police services (Brucato, 2015), there is a great deal of uncertainty regarding effective policy, implementation and expected outcomes. As it stands, the current research that examines the impact of body-worn cameras on citizen complaints and police use of force presents a narrow understanding of their use. Existing research calls for future studies to examine officer perceptions of body-worn cameras in order to gain a more comprehensive understanding of their value and impact (Boyd, Mateescu & Rosenblat, 2015). As such, the primary research objective of this study is to understand how police officers perceive the use of body-worn cameras. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with police officers from the Toronto Police Service. By drawing on Orlikowski and Gash’s (1994) technological frames of reference framework, the study concludes that officers felt that both of the BWC models during the pilot project were inadequate, were skeptical about the potential of BWCs due to the belief that BWCs are a tool primarily used to “keep an eye on the police”, believed that BWCs impact officer and citizen conduct in ways that can potentially harm police-community relationships, and reported using BWCs to gain greater control over police visibility. Recommendations for training and body-worn camera program development are presented at the end of the study, along with directions for future research.

Doctor Legum - LLD / South Africa continues to experience one of the highest crime rates in the world. Crime is unevenly distributed, and the police are not trusted by the majority of citizens. The power and responsibility for policing lies with the national government, through South Africa’s negotiated constitutional framework. Only a limited form of policing under local government, severely constrained by onerous requirements, is permitted in the legislative framework. Such centralisation of policing in federal states is theorised to be necessary to avoid partisan policing and armed separatism; to prevent local capture of police by local politicians; to ensure uniformity, equity and democratic change, and to ensure equitable outcomes; and to bring efficiencies of scale to policing.

Thesis (M. A. (Criminology)) -- University of Limpopo, 2016 / The study focused on Community Policing Forums (CPFs), sector policing and visible policing which are the policing strategies that are currently used to bring police officers closer to the community in order to identify and address the root causes of crime. These strategies are also meant to improve police service delivery which will satisfy and meet the community’s expectations about police services. The study also focused on factors which affect the lack of police service delivery to the community. Quantitative research design was used to evaluate Mamotintane community’s level of satisfaction with police service delivery. Non-probability sampling was used in which purposive or judgmental sampling methodology was used to select the 120 community members from Mamotintane Village. A fixed-response questionnaire that was written in English then translated in Sepedi which is the language commonly used by the target population was used in the study. A Statistical Package for Social Science (IBM SPSS Statistics Version 22) software was then used to analyse the data which was presented in a form of graphs and tables. Summary of the empirical findings are that a large number of 33% community members disagree that CPFs are successfully established in the community where police officers have regular meetings with community members in order to discuss about crimes which are affecting the community. A large number of 43% respondents strongly agree that police corruption has a negative impact to the community.