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Representation And Recruitment: A Three-Part Analysis Of The Police Hiring Process Within New York State, Michelle Comeau

Theses

This thesis consists of three separate analyses, each of which examines the representation of women, African Americans, and Latinos in the police organization in some form. The initial study compares department representation to that of the community in regards to race or ethnicity and gender. This is followed by the second study, which looks at the hiring process of one department within a mid-sized city (Rochester, NY) in detail, noting attrition by majority/minority status at each hurdle applicants' face. The study portion of this thesis concludes by utilizing data from the second study to create a model of attrition for …

Alaska Justice Forum ; Vol. 28, No. 1 (Spring 2011), Brad A. Myrstol, N/A Uaa Justice Center

Vols 21-30 (2004-2014)

The Spring 2011 issue of the Alaska Justice Forum features articles on Anchorage residents' perceptions of Anchorage Police Department, Internet crime in the U.S. and Alaska, and Internet crimes against children.

Communities As Allies, Joseph Schafer, Sean P. Varano, Nicholas Libby

Justice Studies Faculty Publications

A popular axiom attributed to British policing is the police are the public and the public are the police. Inherent in this term is a blurring of the distinction between the police and the public they serve; the police are cast as being little different from the citizenry and citizens are cast into a role of responsibility for the safety and well-being of the community. In effect, communities are framed as allies in the fight to ensure safe and secure neighborhoods. Across space and time this idea has held uneven sway within American policing ideologies. This essay considers the relationship …

Armed Off-Duty Police : Benefit Or Burden?, Theresa C. Tobin

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

This study examines the NYPD's Carry Policy; a policy allowing officers to be armed while off duty and informally in place for over 100 years and officially sanctioned since the 1940s. It was altered for the first time in 1981 and this research has analyzed ten sources of data during two recent decades (1990-1994 and 2000-2004). This

Pretrial Incentives, Post-Conviction Review, And Sorting Criminal Prosecutions By Guilt Or Innocence, Samuel R. Gross

Articles

The fundamental problem with false convictions is that they are unobserved, and in general, unobservable. We don't spot them when they happen-if we did, they wouldn't happen-and in most cases we can't identify them after the fact. We have no general reliable test for innocence or guilt; if we did, we'd use it at trial. As result, we often say that we don't know for sure whether a convicted criminal defendant is innocent or guilty, or even that we can't know for sure. But this isn't exactly true-or rather, its truth depends on who we mean by "we."

A Case Study In Tanzania: Police Round-Ups And Detention Of Street Children As A Substitute For Care And Protection, Sheryl L. Buske

South Carolina Journal of International Law and Business

No abstract provided.

Exploring Justice For Crime Victims: Characteristics And Contexts Of Crime Victims' Experiences With The Criminal Justice System, Phillip James Stevenson

Dissertations

During the last three decades, crime victims have increasingly been recognized by the criminal justice system as more than just witnesses for the prosecution. For example, in all 50 states crime victims are afforded specific statutory rights ranging from being treated with dignity and respect to having the opportunity to participate in the justice process, the latter most commonly seen during the sentencing phase where victims address the court and their offenders and describes how the crime has impacted their lives. Additionally, an increase in the number and type of programs based on the philosophy of restorative justice in recent …

Cooperative Federalism And Police Reform: Using Congressional Spending Power To Promote Police Accountability, Kami Chavis Simmons

Faculty Publications

Police misconduct and corruption persist in our nation's local police departments. Recognizing the organizational roots of police misconduct, Congress granted the U.S. Department of Justice (the "DOJ") the authority to seek injunctive relief to implement institutional reforms within local law enforcement agencies. While the federal government's current strategy represents a promising model for reform, the DOJ's efforts cannot reach many local police departments that require intervention. Furthermore, the local primacy of criminal-justice issues, particularly issues related to police practices, implicates important federalism concerns. Although federal intervention is appropriate to address persistent patterns of misconduct, states and local entities must play …

Community Down: The Loss Of Sergeant Joe Bergeron, John Edward Helcl Ii

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

What local government officials, administrators, and staff can expect and how to can help in the aftermath of a peace officer’s line-of-duty death within their community.

Prosecuting The Informant Culture, Andrew E. Taslitz

Michigan Law Review

Alexandra Natapoff, in her outstanding new book, Snitching: Criminal Informants and the Erosion of American Justice, makes a compelling case for reform of the system by which we regulate police use of criminal informants. Indeed, as other writers have discussed, law enforcement's overreliance on such informants has led to a "snitching culture" in which informant snitching replaces other forms of law enforcement investigation (pp. 12, 31, 88-89). Yet snitches, especially jailhouse snitches, are notoriously unreliable.

Disentangling Administrative Searches, Eve Brensike Primus

Articles

Everyone who has been screened at an international border, scanned by an airport metal detector, or drug tested for public employment has been subjected to an administrative search. Since September 11th, the government has increasingly invoked the administrative search exception to justify more checkpoints, unprecedented subway searches, and extensive wiretaps. As science and technology advance, the frequency and scope of administrative searches will only expand. Formulating the boundaries and requirements of administrative search doctrine is therefore a matter of great importance. Yet the rules governing administrative searches are notoriously unclear. This Article seeks to refocus attention on administrative searches and …

Growing Up Policed In The Age Of Aggressive Policing Policies, Brett G. Stoudt, Michelle Fine, Madeline Fox

Publications and Research

Spray-painted atop an old tenement building in the East Village of Manhattan is a large fossilized graffiti image of a tyrannosaurus rex that reads: “NYC EATS ITS YOUNG.” With its ribs exposed and mouth open, this image represents symbolically what many young people in the neighborhood already know intimately and have experienced: New York City (NYC) is not an easy place to grow up. Their social safety nets are being dismantled and the public institutions they rely on every day often fail them. In NYC, public school budgets are being slashed each year even though the high school dropout/push-out rates …

Alaska Justice Forum ; Vol. 27, No. 3 (Fall 2010) , Brad A. Myrstol, Marny Rivera, Deborah Periman

Vols 21-30 (2004-2014)

The Fall 2010 issue of the Alaska Justice Forum features articles on school resource officers (SROs); methamphetamine prevention efforts; and a recent 9th Circuit ruling on felon disenfranchisement.

Don't Answer The Door: Montejo V. Louisiana Relaxes Police Restrictions For Questioning Non-Custodial Defendants, Emily Bretz

Michigan Law Review

In 2009, the Supreme Court held in Montejo v. Louisiana that a defendant may validly waive his Sixth Amendment right to counsel during police interrogation, even if police initiate interrogation after the defendant's invocation of the right at the first formal proceeding. This Note asserts that Montejo significantly altered the Sixth Amendment protections available to represented defendants. By increasing defendants' exposure to law enforcement, the decision allows police to try to elicit incriminating statements and waivers of the right to counsel after the defendant has expressed a desire for counsel. In order to protect the defendant's constitutional guarantee of a …

A Case Study: The Lafayette Police Department Utilization Of Learning Organization Culture And Its Impact On The Investigations Division Recruit Officer Training Module, Scott D. Galloway

Purdue Polytechnic Directed Projects

ABSTRACT The Lafayette Police Field Training Program utilizes knowledge sharing, knowledge sourcing, and emphasizes organizational assimilation by cycling patrol recruits through a detective division training section as a competency model to help train patrol recruit officers. Emergent themes from this research study revealed that the current design of the detective training module is effective for employee networking and organizational assimilation. The qualitative case study analysis indicated that improvements need to be made to the detective training module by committing to a training needs analysis, adjusting the detective training officer recruit assignment process, and to include patrol training officers in a …

The Effect Of Residency Requirements On Police As Capable Guardians, David Pritchard

Theses and Dissertations

The debate over police residency requirements dates to the advent of the modern police force in the early 19th Century. Many reasons have been put forth regarding these requirements, from effectiveness to availability to economic impact. On the other hand, opponents have argued that quality of life, employee retention, and applicant pool should be considered in the decision to have residency mandates. This study seeks to determine the effectiveness of resident police officers within the context of the Routine Activities Theory. In particular, it considered whether police officers are more capable guardians when they live in the jurisdictions where they …

International Police Education For The Rule Of Law: Obstacles, Facilitators, Curricula, Pedagogy, And Delivery, Gordon A. Crews, Angela West Crews

Criminal Justice Faculty Research

The points discussed in the session are related to United Nations peacekeeping in the twenty-first century and the international police education for the rule of law. It is noted that 100 countries contribute police officers to the United Nations, and that 49 of those countries contribute 25 or fewer officers. There is a gender imbalance, with only 7.75 % of forces being made up of women. In the past, UN policing priorities were: monitoring to verify police performance and impartiality, observing to ascertain police strengths and weaknesses and reporting to document police infractions. The UN Peacekeeping Mission Statement aims to …

Taking Money: The Politics Of Asset Forfeiture In The State Of Minnesota, Chad Hedman

Political Science Theses and Capstones

Is there a reason why a particular county might use asset forfeiture more than others? Asset forfeiture, in short, is law enforcement confiscating any items used in the act of committing a crime. As many governments face more budget crunches and deficits all means of revenue will become more vital to everyday operations. Everything gets reported back to the Minnesota State Auditor, where I was able to get complete data on every county. For variables such as education, race and others I drew from numerous government websites. I wanted to see if certain variables correlated with higher incidence of forfeiture. …

School Resource Officers: Public Perspectives And Perceptions, Brad A. Myrstol

Presentations

This Powerpoint slide presentation presents an overview of school resource officer (SRO) programs, which place police officers in schools, and provides results of a preliminary analysis of perceptions of the SRO program in Anchorage School District. Currently 16 officers plus two supervisors of Anchorage Police Department are assigned to the Anchorage SRO program, which was established in 2003.

Killings Of Police In U.S. Cities Since 1980: An Examination Of Environmental And Political Explanations, Stephanie L. Kent

Sociology & Criminology Faculty Publications

Most research on killings of police in urban areas attempted to link lethal violence against officers to the violence and disorder in the communities they work.Yet support for this relationship is inconsistent. Fewer studies considered whether local political arrangements affect killings of police. This study attempts to remedy this gap by using recent data to investigate the relationship between the political conditions of large U.S. cities and the number of homicides of police officers in the line of duty in the years 1980, 1990, and 2000. Negative binomial regression analyses suggest that racial income inequality and the size of the …

"You Crossed The Fog Line!"—Kansas, Pretext, And The Fourth Amendment, Melanie D. Wilson

Scholarly Articles

In Whren, the United States Supreme Court sanctioned pretextual traffic stops. In practice the holding of Whren condones police investigations that target certain suspect classes of people, like Hispanics, for increased police scrutiny. In permitting pretextual stops, the Court ignored the risk that such practices will encourage police to distort the truth, overlooked the cost of under-enforcement of the laws, and ignored the consequences to the criminal justice system of race and ethnicity based discrimination.

Kansas law exacerbates these risks by making fog-line stops a model for protecting ulterior motives from a sifting judicial inquiry. In Kansas, it makes …

Erie And Federal Criminal Courts, Wayne A. Logan

Scholarly Publications

Today, low-level state and local criminal laws figure critically in federal prosecutions, serving as the initial bases for police seizures that yield evidence leading to more serious federal charges (usually involving drugs or firearms). While police resort to such laws as pretexts to stop and arrest individuals has been frequently addressed, this article provides the first analysis of how federal courts actually interpret and apply the laws. In doing so, the article reveals a surprising reality, long dismissed as a doctrinal impossibility: federal judicial use of the analytic framework of Erie v. Tompkins to resolve criminal cases.

As the article …

Improbable Cause: A Case For Judging Police By A More Majestic Standard, Melanie Wilson

Scholarly Works

This article presents findings from an empirical study of judicial orders in one Midwestern federal district court over a twenty-four month period. The study analyzes trial court decisions to determine whether, as scholars often contend, judges consistently side with the prosecution when a defendant claims that the police lied during the criminal investigation of her case. The study also looks at the frequency with which defendants make such arguments, the types of case in which defendants claim police lies, and the strength or weakness of the evidence in cases that do and do not persuade trial judges that the police …

An Exclusionary Rule For Police Lies, Melanie Wilson

Scholarly Works

Although the Supreme Court has often said that truth is an imperative to justice, we now know that police officers, the key investigative component in our criminal justice system, lie. How often do the police lie? No one knows for sure. But credible reports of police lies are common.

Because our legal system treats the police as if they were impartial fact gatherers, trained and motivated to gather facts both for and against guilt, rather than biased advocates attempting to disprove innocence, which is the reality, the criminal justice system lacks the appropriate structure to expose and effectively deal with …

Killings Of Police In U.S. Cities Since 1980: An Examination Of Environmental Andpolitical Explanations, Stephanie L. Kent

Sociology & Criminology Faculty Publications

Most research on killings of police in urban areas attempted to link lethal violence against officers to the violence and disorder in the communities they work. Yet support for this relationship is inconsistent. Fewer studies considered whether local political arrangements affect killings of police. This study attempts to remedy this gap by using recent data to investigate the relationship between the political conditions of large U.S. cities and the number of homicides of police officers in the line of duty in the years 1980, 1990, and 2000. Negative binomial regression analyses suggest that racial income inequality and the size of …

Regionalization Of Selected Police Services Through A Law Enforcement Council : Is It Worth The Cost?, Julie Schnobrich-Davis

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

This research study presents results from an evaluation and cost effectiveness analysis of a regionalization of selected police services into a Law Enforcement Council approach, as practiced by the Metropolitan Law Enforcement Council (Metro-LEC). The Metro-LEC is a non-profit organization comprising forty three law enforcement agencies in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. The results from wave two surveys administered to officers in the organization as well as a survey distributed to the Chief Executive Officers of the participating law enforcement agencies illustrate the overall effectiveness of the organization. Additionally, a cost effectiveness analysis presents data from the costs of operating regionalized …

Moving Targets: Placing The Good Faith Doctrine In The Context Of Fragmented Policing, Hadar Aviram, Jeremy Seymour, Richard A. Leo

Fordham Urban Law Journal

The debate sparked by Herring v. United States is a microcosm of the quintessential debate about the scope of the Fourth Amendment’s exclusionary rule and ultimately the appropriate breadth of police authority and constitutional review by courts. Offering a new reading of the decision, this article argues that Herring reflects a healthy dosage of real politic and an acknowledgment that American policing is characterized by a fragmented, localized structure with little overview and control, and much reliance on local agencies. Part I presents the authors’ interpretation of Herring as a case hinging upon the question “who made the mistake?” as …

Policing: A Sociologist’S Response To An Anthropological Account, Peter Moskos

Publications and Research

Social science writing should not ape quantitative science in format, structure, or style. If we can’t explain ourselves to others in a style both illuminating and interesting, we won’t and don’t deserve to be taken seriously. Too many in the Ivory Tower cling to the belief that research and academic writing must conform to a “scientific” format. Quality writing is more art than science. To be relevant, writing need not be – indeed should not be – rooted in a limited model of “hypothesis, replicable experiment, findings, discussion.” The more jargon and sociobabble we anthropologists, sociologists, and ethnographers spew out, …

Introduction: Challenging The School-To-Prison Pipeline, Deborah N. Archer

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.

New Governance And The "New Paradigm" Of Police Accountability: A Democratic Approach To Police Reform, Kami Chavis Simmons

Faculty Publications

This Article proposes that policymakers should draw from the emerging New Governance theoretical framework--particularly democratic experimentalism--in order to develop strategies to successfully reform law-enforcement agencies. Modem police departments function like administrative agencies, and as such, they are susceptible to the same deficiencies that traditional agencies experience in other administrative contexts. Given the traditionally insular nature of law-enforcement agencies, the need for political legitimacy in the reform process is amplified in the policing context. Therefore, in order to eliminate patterns of police misconduct and corruption, reform measures should embody characteristics that promote stakeholder participation and local experimentation.

This abstract has been …