Group-Based Trajectory Modeling of Police Misconduct: Toward Finding Needles in a Haystack

• In Event: Police Misconduct, Control, and Accountability

Abstract

The use of early intervention (EI) systems for police is widely regarded as a best administrative practice. The identification of officers who exhibit performance problems turns first – and in some agencies, only – on metrics that are ambiguous indicators of misconduct patterns, a procedure that can yield a large number of false positives. We conduct group-based trajectory modeling of longitudinal patterns of individual officers’ performance in several agencies that operate EI systems. We compare the trajectory groups against the set of officers in each agency who exceeded EI thresholds, and the subset of those officers who, upon further review, were subject to intervention.

Authors

• Christopher Harris, University of Massachusetts Lowell

• Robert E. Worden, University at Albany, SUNY

• Sarah J. McLean, The John F. Finn Institute for Public Safety, Inc.