Beyond the continuum: understanding police use of lower-than-expected force

• In Event: Police Use of Force

Abstract

Police use of force has been understood for a long time as the interaction between subject resistance and police attempt to gain or maintain control over a situation. This is consistent with the force continuum, a model in which the level of force is expected to increase with the level of resistance, with little consideration to other factors -even if there is substantial evidence that individual, situational and contextual factors may influence police use of force. Several researchers have investigated cases of excessive force, in which the level of force that was used exceeded the level of resistance. In this presentation, we explore the opposite scenario: interventions where less force was used despite the level of resistance. The analysis is based on more than 200 interventions that occurred in a large Canadian city between 2007 and 2010. Multinomial logistic regression is used to identify how these cases differ from others on several characteristics. Police use of lower-than-expected levels of force has important practical implications given that it is desirable not only that the police use force as rarely as possible, but also that it uses effective force with less severe consequences.

Author

• Remi Boivin, Université de Montréal