Representative Bureaucracy

Abstract

The domination of policing by White males has long been considered a threat to the legitimacy of the profession, as police agencies have struggled with attracting, retaining, and promoting women and minorities within their agencies for decades. Female and minority representation are hardly stable across agencies with some agencies employing no women or people of color, while others are more representative of the communities they serve. Using a national sample of 1,478 police jurisdictions, this study further explores the correlates of diversity of women and racial minorities using a framework informed by representative bureaucracy theory. Findings suggest that the same factors are not predictive of representation of women and racial minorities.

Police diversity and crime clearance for Black and Hispanic victims

“…Until evidence for it emerges, this belief should not lead policy makers to discourage agency diversification or reduce this goal's salience (Ferrandino, 2014). Given police diversification's significance for the broader project of representative democracy and the legitimacy of key societal institutions (Morabito & Shelley, 2015), the absence of an association with crime clearance should not hinder continuing reform.…”

“…This process should eventually improve White officers’ attitudes toward minorities and their style of policing minority communities (Hong, 2016; Legewie & Fagan, 2016; Smith, 2003). The theory of bureaucratic representation also posits that greater demographic representation in police agencies enables minority police officers to actively advocate for their own groups’ interests in the community they serve, improving the agency's overall treatment of minority citizens (Choi & Hong, 2021; Morabito & Shelley, 2015; Sierra‐Arévalo, 2019; Wilkins & Williams, 2008). A setting that permits the exercise of job‐related discretion is a prerequisite for this transformation of passive (demographic) into active representation, and such discretion is a fundamental part of police work (Morabito & Shelley, 2015; Wilkins & Williams, 2008).…”

Officer diversity may reduce Black Americans’ fear of the police

“…Unfortunately, after a period of growth in the 1980s and 1990s, both groups’ trajectory of representation in policing has stalled at approximately 12 percent. Still, agencies can and should be more intentional about recruiting qualified minority and female candidates (Donohue, 2021; Morabito & Shelley, 2015). The national 30 × 30 Initiative, for example, aims to increase the representation of women in policing from 12 percent to 30 percent by 2030.…”

Crossing the Threshold: Organizational and Community Correlates of Female and Minority Representation Among U.S. Law Enforcement Agencies

“…For example, it has been suggested that union agreements are more likely to represent the interests of the White-male majority in police unions (Walker, 1985). More recent research, however, exploring collective bargaining participation and its impact on female and minority officers has produced mixed results (Matusiak & Matusiak, 2018; Morabito & Shelley, 2015; Schuck, 2014). Taken together, internal barriers to representation may be built into an organization’s structure and carried out through its practices, limiting the potential benefits of representative bureaucracy.…”