Punitive Culture and Civilian Mortality in Police Shooting Incidents: A Multi-Level Exploration

• In Event: When Do Police Kill in Metropolitan America?

Abstract

Punitive culture refers to the collection of norms, values, and practices that seek to enhance public safety through the close monitoring of at-risk individuals, the harsh punishment of convicted offenders, and the neutralization of criminal threats. Violence from formal authorities are routinely legitimized and aggression against outgroups is easily accepted in communities that are culturally punitive. Therefore, we hypothesize that all else equal, police shootings that occur in culturally punitive jurisdictions are more likely to result in civilian deaths. Data coded from newspaper reports pertaining to police shooting incidents in communities with a population of 100,000 or more inhabitants in 2015 will be used to test this hypothesis. Punitive culture will be operationalized as state-level rates of incarceration and judicial executions. Known situational correlates of civilian deaths in police shooting will be held constant in the multivariate models. Study results will reveal whether regional cultures impose constraints on regulatory reforms and training improvements implemented at the police department level and limit their impact.

Authors

• Magdalena Jablonowska, John Jay College of Criminal Justice

• Hung-En Sung, John Jay College of Criminal Justice

• Amanda L. Thomas, John Jay College of Criminal Justice