Criminal Justice

, on the 79th year of our society, we will revisit some of the very issues that the founders of SSS struggled with in the South: poverty, social policy and the role of the sociologist. In an era not that different from the early years of SSS, we are experiencing some of the highest poverty rates in our history and a profound intensification in economic, social and political inequality. What is our role as sociologists in addressing this issue? We have a long, solid tradition of excellent poverty scholarship: we have shifted our gaze from cultural explanations to structural explanations, and recently brought culture back in. We have examined the fallout of bad poverty policy, examined the lived experiences of poverty, social isolation, social exclusion, diminishing opportunity structure, and limited human, cultural and social capitals. Yet there still remains an arena that as sociologists we are particularly weak, and this relates to policy and praxis. Our conference program focuses on two interrelated areas: the first, and perhaps the greatest, is the unresolved problem with the poverty measurement itself. Look for an excellent plenary panel of social scientists at the forefront of recasting and reshaping poverty measurement. The second is on praxis and the role of sociology in shaping and advancing policy and economic development projects to alleviate poverty in the South. As someone who works on the ground, at the local level, it is becoming increasingly clear that targeting state and local policy and working with state and local governments is vital. We will hear from sociologists who are tackling these issues. Look for a great workshop by ASA staff that provides hands-on instructions on writing for policy makers. Lastly, who are the sociologists working on anti-poverty projects and policy in the south and what can we learn from their experiences? The founders of SSS exemplified this kind of scholarly engagement as they worked to address Southern poverty. Look for these sessions that highlight and celebrate this tradition and the work that is currently being done in the South. Look, too, for the carrot icon throughout the program! We have an incredible mini-conference on food that should not be missed, including sessions on urban and rural agriculture, access to food and food insecurity, and economic development through local food movements. This mini-conference pulls together critical, interrelated themes on poverty and food justice. Southern Sociologists gathered for the first time in 1936 in Atlanta to address the pressing issues in the South. Their program focused on southern poverty, policy and their role as social scientists. We have an excellent program that focuses on these very issues put together by a dedicated Program Committee Chair, Daniel Buffington (UNCW) and an excellent group of sociologists on the Program Committee, and of course, committed SSS members like you. There is so much labor and love in our society; I am constantly astounded and in awe of the spirit of this organization. We have an Executive Office that works tirelessly on keeping SSS running (David Brunsma, EO and Slade Lellock Assistant to the EO-both at Virginia Tech), a Local Arrangements Committee that has worked hard to ensure you enjoy the Queen City of Charlotte (Lisa Walker UNCC) and an Executive Committee that gives easily of their time to support the work of our organization. Enjoy the incredible program we have crafted this year! Thank you SSS members for all you do for our society!

Arguments for and against measures intended to raise the educational levels of police officers turn partly on the hypothesized relationships between college education and officers' attitudes and behavior. The purpose of this analysis is to provide additional empirical evidence concerning these hypotheses. The results suggest that college education is weakly related to some attitudes and unrelated to others. The results also show that officers' performance in police-citizen encounters, measured in terms of citizens' evaluations, is largely unrelated to officers' educational backgrounds.

Police executives have increasingly assumed-or they have been compelled to accept-responsibility for managing the risk of misconduct by their officers through the implementation of early intervention (EI) systems, even though social science has provided very little evidence on their effectiveness, or on their unintended effects. We examine the effects of one police agency's EI system intervention, the Officer-Civilian Interaction (OCI) School, on indicators of risk-related outcomespersonnel complaints, citizen complaints, use of force, and secondary arrests-and on productivity-arrests, and proactive arrests-for 118 graduates and 118 matched controls. We found that the changes in risk-related outcomes were very similar for both treatment and control groups, and that OCI trainees made fewer proactive arrests and fewer arrests overall than the controls after the training. The implications for managing the risk of misconduct are discussed.

When people have contacts with the police, the fairness with which police are perceived to act affects citizens’ trust and confidence in the police and their sense that the police deserve to be obeyed – that is, the procedural justice that citizens subjectively experience affects the legitimacy of the police.  Translating this body of research into police practice is not straightforward, however.  The procedural justice with which officers act is typically not measured in police agencies, nor is it an outcome for which police managers are held accountable.  Conducting research in the Schenectady and Syracuse Police Departments, we addressed these questions:
• Does performance on these outcomes – procedural justice and citizen satisfaction – improve when information on these outcomes is incorporated into departments’ systems of performance measurement and accountability?
• What do police managers do with this information, and how (if at all) are field supervisors and patrol officers affected by it?
• Are survey-based measures of citizens’ subjective experiences valid measures of police performance, that is, do they reflect the procedural justice with which police act?
The findings from Schenectady rest on a broader foundation of data, so we begin with them and then consider the respects in which those findings are corroborated by the those from Syracuse.  In Schenectady, we observed in officers’ behavior moderate levels of procedural justice and low levels of procedural injustice. Officers’ patterns of procedural justice and procedural injustice are shaped in important ways by elements of the situations in which officers become involved and the behavior of citizens with whom officers interact.  Procedural justice was greater in incidents that involved violent crime or interpersonal conflict, greater when the citizen was Black, lower when the citizen was a suspect or third party rather than a victim or complainant, and lower when the citizen resisted the officer’s authority.  Procedural injustice was greater when the citizen was male, a suspect, intoxicated, resisted police authority, or disrespected police; injustice was lower when the citizen was Black. 
However, citizens’ subjective experiences are rather weakly related to the forms of officers’ overt behavior that comprise procedural justice.  Officers’ procedural justice and injustice together explained about 10 percent of the variation in citizens’ subjective experience in Schenectady.  Procedural injustice had the greater effect on subjective experience, by far, such that we found asymmetry in the effects of justice and injustice that parallel previous findings based only on survey data.  However, the Schenectady data suggest that this asymmetry stems not from the relatively strong effects of negative experiences but rather from citizens’ tendency to overestimate the procedural justice with which police act in their encounters.  Citizens tend to be fairly positive in their ratings of police performance, even when the procedural justice that we observed was fairly low, a pattern that may reflect the impact of citizens’ more general attitudes toward the police on their perceptions of police actions in individual encounters with police.
Citizens’ judgments about procedural justice are also affected by whether (if not so much how) officers exercise forms of police authority: conducting searches or using physical force.  Searches of citizens have strong effects on their assessments of procedural justice, unless citizens accede to them, while the use of physical force has a notable effect as well.  We did not make a distinction between legal and illegal searches, nor did we make a distinction between reasonable and unreasonable force, but extant evidence suggests that citizens’ judgments about the propriety of police action turns on their perceptions of procedural justice and not on the legality of officers’ behavior, per se.
Neither indicator of police performance – a survey-based indicator or an observation-based indicator – revealed consistent changes that ensued from the survey-based measurement of performance.  Overall, the month-to-month changes in measures of citizens’ subjective experience were by and large within a range of sampling fluctuation, and with no change that could be attributed to the introduction of performance measures to monthly Compstat meetings.  Given the weak connections between what officers do (and do not do) and what citizens later think about it, we might well see little or no change in survey-based measures of performance with good faith – even herculean – efforts by platoon commanders to manage their officers’ behavior in police-citizen encounters.  But neither did we see consistent changes in the observation-based measures of officers’ procedural justice.
Platoon commanders and first-line supervisors approached the management of this police outcome in different ways, which we characterized as forming a continuum.  Some gave regular attention during line-ups to the quality of police-citizen interaction, and in that context shared survey results that had been delivered at the monthly Compstat meeting.  They explained both what procedural justice means and why it is important.  On one platoon, this appeared to affect officers’ performance.  On others, however, commanders and supervisors either attended to the issue only intermittently, alluding to what it means for officers’ conduct but not its rationale, or were skeptical or even dismissive of the importance of “customer service.”
This continuum reflects a process of “sensemaking” on the parts of Schenectady’s lieutenants and sergeants – that is, the interpretation of what customer service or procedural justice represents and the appropriate emphasis to be placed on the quality of police-citizen interactions in the context of the demands of street-level police work.  Based on their interpretations, some were receptive to the administration’s emphasis on “customer service,” finding it quite appropriate, while others were more guarded in their willingness to embrace the ideas, or flatly opposed to it.  This same process of sensemaking played out among patrol officers.
In Syracuse we found patterns very similar to those in Schenectady on every score that we were able to measure.  Citizens’ subjective experiences were of a generally comparable nature, and they tended to bear the same relationships to other factors, including legitimacy, even though legitimacy was somewhat higher in Syracuse than Schenectady.  We also found similar patterns of variation in the management of procedural justice, and similarly mixed receptivity to a customer service emphasis among patrol officers and supervisors.

Academics and practitioners recognize that research partnerships can benefit both research and practice. Many such partnerships, of varying scope and duration, have been formed over the past 20 years. However, while we have learned some lessons about such partnerships, we have much yet to learn about how research partnerships can be sustained and put to their greatest use. In this paper, we describe the functions that comprise the research partner role, and we draw from our experience as a research partner in one city -Syracuse, NYto illustrate the performance of those functions and to reflexively distill from that experience some lessons for the development and maintenance of research partnerships. We discuss the factors that we believe shaped the success with which the partnership has operated, and the challenges that we confronted.

The procedural justice that citizens subjectively experience with the police affects police legitimacy. The procedural justice of policing is typically not measured in police agencies, nor is it an outcome for which managers are held accountable. We examine whether and how the measurement of procedural justice would affect its management. Survey-based measures of subjective procedural justice in police contacts were reported to two departments' command staffs on a monthly basis in Compstat meetings. The impacts of thusly measuring performance were estimated. We also analyzed an indicator of procedural justice that was based on systematic observation through video and audio recording of police-citizen encounters, and we interviewed patrol officers and supervisors about supervisors' efforts to manage procedural justice. Neither indicator of police performance revealed consistent changes. However, a modest improvement on one platoon was detected. We discuss the implications for enhancing police legitimacy.

In the U.S., the exercise of police authority—and the public’s trust that police authority is used properly—is a recurring concern. Contemporary prescriptions for police reform hold that the public would better trust the police and feel a greater obligation to comply and cooperate if police-citizen interactions were marked by higher levels of procedural justice by police.

In this book, authors Robert E. Worden and Sarah J. McLean argue that the procedural justice model of reform is a mirage. From a distance, procedural justice seemingly offers a relief from strained police-community relations. But a closer look at police organizations and police-citizen interactions shows that the relief offered by such reform actually proves illusory.