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Worldwide views on police discretion: A scoping review regarding police decision-making
Thu, September 12, 5:30 to 6:45pm, Faculty of Law, University of Bucharest, Floor: Ground floor, Petre Antonescu Room (1.30)Abstract
Since the acknowledgement of police discretion in the 1960s, numerous studies have been initiated to grasp police decision-making. Considering the multitude of studies on this topic, creating a comprehensive overview of this research is useful. To provide such an overview, a scoping review has been conducted to map the available literature on this topic and explore the characteristics of these studies. This scoping review explicitly aimed to summarise the empirical research on this topic and to explore whether and how certain factors affect police decisions.
In total, 15,193 titles were assessed, resulting in a shortlist of 526 publications that were included in the analyses. Among others, it was found that the number of empirical studies has increased substantially since 1964, that a large proportion of the studies have been conducted in North America (68%) and that 70% of the available literature is based on quantitative research. Throughout the scoping review, different groups of factors relevant to police decision-making were identified: police officer characteristics, civilian characteristics, organisational characteristics, situational characteristics and neighbourhood characteristics. In total, 376 studies (72%) included at least one situational factor. Civilian characteristics were also common, being included in 351 of the studies (67%). Police officer characteristics and organisational characteristics were included in less than half of the studies: police officer characteristics were identified in 232 studies (44%), organisational characteristics in 218 studies (41%). Furthermore, 14% of the studies identified through the scoping review included factors on neighbourhood level.
During the presentation, the characteristics of the literature and the multitude of factors found through the scoping review will be discussed, as well as recommendations for future research.