Police Decision of Arrest and Place: A Combination of Spatial Approach with Multilevel Analysis

• In Event: Spatial Analysis of Racial Disparity in Stops, Arrest, and Crime in Big Cities

Abstract

Concerns about racial profiling in police decision making have drawn the attention of public in recent years. While race has been criticized as one of the determining factors of policing, the place of the occurrence of the incident and the police decision of arrest, however, is scarcely examined. Using the traffic stops data of 2010 collected by Houston Police Department, the current study first analyzes the spatial distribution of police arrests. Hot spots of police arrests of traffic stops are identified. Next, the impact of individual factors including race/ethnicity, gender, and situational variables, and social contextual factors of the neighborhood on police decision of arrest is examined. Finally, the relationship between spatial patterns of police arrests and determining factors of police decision of arrest are analyzed. Changes of spatial patterns of police arrests after controlling for the determining factors are presented.

Author

• Yan Zhang, Sam Houston State University