Police Patrolmen's Offense-reporting Behavior

Pepinsky, Harold E.

doi:10.1177/002242787601300104

Cited by 28 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 1 publication

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“…Officers may use the "unfounded" code as a way of avoiding paperwork or other types of work generated pursuant to officially recognizing an incident as a crime, a concept some refer to as "load shedding" (Maxfield et al, 1980;McCleary et al, 1982;Pepinsky, 1976;Rubinstein, 1973;Sung, 2002). Pepinsky (1976) notes officer recording behavior is influenced by dispatcher expectations about how calls should be handled. Maxfield et al (1980) attribute variations in recording behavior to area work load; that is, recording decreases as general work load (e.g., total calls for service) increases.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Constructing crime: Neighborhood characteristics and police recording behavior

Varano

Schafer

Cancino

et al. 2009

Journal of Criminal Justice

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a b s t r a c tIt has long been acknowledged that police officers have substantial levels of discretion in their day-to-day activities. There is a well developed body of literature that considers how this discretion is exercised across a broad array of situations including the decision to arrest, use force, and grant citizen requests for official action. Using both social disorganization and conflict theories as conceptual models, the purpose of this study was to determine if neighborhood characteristics affect police reporting behavior across a wide cross-section of reported call types. The findings indicated that reporting behavior widely varies across crime types with a greater percentage of more serious crimes translated into official crime. Neighborhood characteristics did affect reporting practices, but surprisingly only for more serious forms of disorder where discretion was perceived to be less. The findings lent support for both social disorganization and conflict theories. Theoretical implications are discussed.© 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. IntroductionQuestions about when and how police use discretion have been a pressing concern among scholars for decades. A large body of literature seeks to explain discretionary decision-making by police, particularly regarding the use of force and decision to arrest. Less empirical consideration has focused on how police use discretion when recording citizen reported calls for service into official crime, despite the broad effect this decision has on victims and communities.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Constructing crime: Neighborhood characteristics and police recording behavior

Varano

Schafer

Cancino

et al. 2009

Journal of Criminal Justice

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…These received attention in later critical studies of police documentary practices. This creative character of records is particularly evident in police organizations, where institutional demands make accounting for acts a fundamental consideration (Pepinsky, 1976).…”

Section: (Ethno)methodological Background: Studies Of Professional Rementioning

confidence: 99%

The ambivalence of detail – documenting wiretapped phone conversations by the State Security Service of the former German Democratic Republic

Galanova

2019

Discourse & Society

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The German Democratic Republic (GDR) State Security Service (Stasi) had to archive vast amounts of data about the everyday lives of GDR citizens. Simplifications and reductions are common features of record-keeping in every institution and there was considerable variation in how detailed the Stasi records of wiretapped phone conversations were. The special focus of this study is the detail that shapes phone records into powerful objects of knowledge among other documentary genres of the Stasi archive. The article describes, in the context of suspicion, how decisions were made about the level of detail in the records given the information overflow, and which communicative and institutional tasks were solved using the different levels of detail in the textualization. Records fulfilled the function of (subjective) information selection for the creation of such categories as ‘strange’, ‘dangerous’, ‘suspicious’ and ‘guilty’. Objectifying practices were necessary to legitimize the records as objective proof of suspicion. The ‘subjective–objective’ relationship turns from a dichotomy to a co-presence within one record and serves to legitimize the record as evidence.

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“…Second, they must match the incident to the legal definition of a crime, when possible. About 90% of calls reporting criminal incidents are correctly defined by the dispatcher (see also Pepinsky, 1976). Third, police officers must decide if it is relevant to record the infraction as a crime.…”

Section: Dependent Variablesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Measuring the Impact of Police Discretion on Official Crime Statistics: A Research Note

Boivin

Cordeau

2011

Police Quarterly

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This article examines the effect that collective bargaining had on official crime statistics compiled between 1998 and 2009 in Montreal, Canada. Police officers collectively decided to reduce their use of record-discretion on two occasions, to increase administrative workload and pressure their employers. Considerable increases of recorded assaults and mischief were observed, despite no apparent variation of reported infractions measured by calls for service. Recorded and reported car thefts and burglaries displayed no significant variation. Results suggest that observed variations can be explained in terms of temporary differential treatment of specific incidents rather than increases of reported criminality or proactive police activity. This research challenges the reliability of official statistics as measures of crime and demonstrates that external circumstances can influence police recording practices.

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Police Patrolmen's Offense-reporting Behavior

Cited by 28 publications

References 1 publication

Constructing crime: Neighborhood characteristics and police recording behavior

Constructing crime: Neighborhood characteristics and police recording behavior

The ambivalence of detail – documenting wiretapped phone conversations by the State Security Service of the former German Democratic Republic

Measuring the Impact of Police Discretion on Official Crime Statistics: A Research Note

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