The Smoke of Police Misconduct vs. the Exhaust of Routine Policing

• In Event: Poster Session

Abstract

Acknowledging the shortcomings of the information on individual incidents of police misconduct, police practitioners and researchers sometimes allow as how broader patterns of misconduct may be inferred from data on complaints, uses of force, etc., as the fire of unobservable misconduct produces smoke in the forms of these documented events. However, routine police work generates exhaust in the form of complaints, uses of force, etc., even when it is properly performed, and the smoke of misconduct can be confused with the exhaust of routine policing. In this paper, we explore how the exhaust of routine policing might be distinguished empirically from the smoke of misconduct.

Authors

• Robert Worden, University at Albany, SUNY

• Christopher Harris, University of Massachusetts, Lowell