The Attitude Test as a Risk Factor: Suspects’ Demeanor toward Police and Patterns of Offending

• In Event: Police-Citizen Encounters

Abstract

Citizens fail the attitude test by exhibiting disrespect to police. The application of the attitude test is widely seen as a means of maintaining police authority, punishing those who do not defer to police, and a substantial body of evidence bears on the hypothesis that a suspect’s demeanor affects officers’ use of authority. The attitude test can also serve, from an officer’s perspective, to predict whether a suspected offender will be deterred only by formal action, or an informal disposition will suffice to ensure future compliance. With observational data on suspects’ and officers’ behavior in police-citizen encounters and data on the same suspects’ subsequent offending, we test the hypothesis that disrespectful suspects are more likely to offend in the future.

Authors

• Hannah Cochran, The John F. Finn Institute / University at Albany

• Robert E. Worden, University at Albany / John F. Finn Institute