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Full-Text Articles in Law
Unpacking The Untapped Potential Of First-Line Supervisors : Sergeants' Role In Managing Police Discretion, Danielle Leigh Reynolds
Unpacking The Untapped Potential Of First-Line Supervisors : Sergeants' Role In Managing Police Discretion, Danielle Leigh Reynolds
Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)
The operational uncertainties for police work—e.g. isolation, ambiguity, contextually contingent decision-making—force police departments to push discretion down to its lowest level employees. Consequently, officers are expected to exercise independent thought and judgment in response to the challenges confronted. Yet public criticism of police often breeds from officers’ “poor” decisions and the inordinate amount of discretion they are granted. Police organizations rarely experience crises for failing to control crime, rather it is failure to control police discretion that most often threatens a department’s legitimacy. Consequently, police departments rely on supervision to limit, constrain or shape officers’ discretion so that it mirrors …
Beliefs About Police Error Leading To Wrongful Convictions And Attitudes On Police Legitimacy, Julia Melfi
Beliefs About Police Error Leading To Wrongful Convictions And Attitudes On Police Legitimacy, Julia Melfi
Criminal Justice
This study investigates the relations between citizens’ perceptions of how police misconduct as a factor contributing to wrongful convictions is connected to attitudes towards police legitimacy. I hypothesized that there would be a negative correlation between the two variables such that the more individuals believe police error contributes to wrongful convictions, the less legitimate they perceive the police to be. I also examined how citizens’ race affects these perceptions and attitudes, too, and hypothesized that Black citizens are more likely than White citizens to believe police error leads to wrongful conviction and mistrust the police. To test the hypotheses data …