What were they thinking? Factors influencing police recruits’ decisions about force

Hine, Kelly A.; Porter, Louise; Westera, Nina; Alpert, Geoffrey P.; Allen, Andrea

doi:10.1080/10439463.2018.1432612

Cited by 25 publications

(21 citation statements)

References 39 publications

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“…officers are more likely to record additional details of the incident and the individuals involvedfor example, details about mental health status, citizen conduct, weapon possession, and drug intoxicationin instances where Taser was fired, as they perceive its use to need additional justification. This points to the need for qualitative and mixed methods research to further explore issues around police decision making (Hine et al 2018b), as well as to explore the processes that officers use to translate complex real-life events into binary data categories. Despite these limitations, there are points of methodological, practical and theoretical interest emerging from this analysis.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

‘Taser, Taser’! Exploring factors associated with police use of Taser in England and Wales

Dymond

2018

Policing and Society

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Police use of Taser in England and Wales has received little academic attention, despite being the topic of much public controversy. Much of our knowledge comes from the United States of America, but these findings are based on a small number of data sets and little testing has been done to see whether such findings apply internationally. This article uses a novel dataset from a police agency in England and Wales, and pilots new covariates, to conduct a multivariate analysis of factors associated with Taser use: the first time such analysis has been conducted outside of North America. This analysis also provides an ideal opportunity to test long-standing theoretical debates about whether police use of force is affected by 'who the citizen is', as the conflict approach would predict, or 'what the citizen does', in keeping with the consensus tradition. Variables from both the former (namely gender and mental health issues) and the latter category (including presence or use of a weapon) were found to be statistically significant after the inclusion of controls. The results highlight limitations to the application of the American based literature internationally and demonstrate stronger support for consensus than conflict theories. They also highlight that, under certain conditions, it may be appropriate for officers to take civilian characteristics into account when making use of force decisions.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

‘Taser, Taser’! Exploring factors associated with police use of Taser in England and Wales

Dymond

2018

Policing and Society

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“…Consideration of 'Naturalist Decision Making', and 'Heuristics/Biases' approach (Launder and Perry 2014;Wilson et al 2011;Akinci and Sadler-Smith 2020), 'experience', 'bias' and 'accountability' was present across all services Perona et al 2019;Launder and Perry 2014;Marusich et al 2016;van den Heuvel et al 2014;Gunnarsson and Warrén Stomberg 2009;Bakken and Gilljam 2003;Banks et al 2020;Nja and Rake 2009;Verhage et al 2018;Vickers and Lewinksi 2012). The theory of Recognition Primed Decision making was also cited repeatedly through the texts and across service streams Klein et al 2010;Bonner 2018;Hine et al 2019).…”

Section: Enquiry Line Two: Languagementioning

confidence: 99%

Threat assessment, sense making, and critical decision-making in police, military, ambulance, and fire services

Penney

Launder²,

Cuthbertson

et al. 2022

Cogn Tech Work

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Military and emergency response remain inherently dangerous occupations that require the ability to accurately assess threats and make critical decisions under significant time pressures. The cognitive processes associated with these abilities are complex and have been the subject of several significant, albeit service specific studies. Here, we present an attempt at finding the commonalities in threat assessment, sense making, and critical decision-making for emergency response across police, military, ambulance, and fire services. Relevant research is identified and critically appraised through a systematic literature review of English-language studies published from January 2000 through July 2020 on threat assessment and critical decision-making theory in dynamic emergency service and military environments. A total of 10,084 titles and abstracts were reviewed, with 94 identified as suitable for inclusion in the study. We then present our findings focused on six lines of enquiry: Bibliometrics, Language, Situation Awareness, Critical Decision Making, Actions, and Evaluation. We then thematically analyse these findings to reveal the commonalities between the four services. Despite existing single or dual service studies in the field, this research is significant in that it is the first examine decision making and threat assessment theory across all four contexts of military, police, fire and ambulance services, but it is also the first to assess the state of knowledge and explore the extent that commonality exists and models or practices can be applied across each discipline. The results demonstrate all military and emergency services personnel apply both intuitive and formal decision-making processes, depending on multiple situational and individual factors. Institutional restriction of decision-making to a single process at the expense of the consideration of others, or the inappropriate training and application of otherwise appropriate decision-making processes in certain circumstances is likely to increase the potential for adverse outcomes, or at the very least restrict peak performance being achieved. The applications of the findings of the study not only extend to facilitating improved practice in each of the individual services examined, but provide a basis to assist future research, and contribute to the literature exploring threat assessment and decision making in dynamic contexts.

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“…She found threat/safety, justification, and situational factors all influenced recruits’ decisions to shoot. Most recently, Hine et al (2018) found recruits were considering suspect and situation factors when making decisions about force and, moreover, were using these factors to assess threat and suitability of force type. These findings indicate that a variety of factors about the person and the situation might affect an officer’s decisions and actions; what remains unclear is how officers are making these force decisions.…”

Section: Factors Influencing Police Decisionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In response, major law enforcement groups have recently produced policing guidelines that stress the importance of de-escalation in police–citizen encounters, to avoid or reduce violent behavior (see International Association of Chiefs of Police, 2017; Police Executive Research Forum [PERF], 2016), and PERF (2016) offers a critical decision-making model to assist officers in such situations. Previous use of force literature has focused on factors associated with force, and the outcomes of force, while paying little attention to how officers make force decisions (Hine, Porter, Westera, Alpert, & Allen, 2018). This study examines the process police officers use to make decisions about force in a training scenario.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Exploring Police Use of Force Decision-Making Processes and Impairments Using a Naturalistic Decision-Making Approach

Hine

Porter

Westera

et al. 2018

Criminal Justice and Behavior

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As part of their duties, police regularly engage with citizens, which can result in the use of force. While we know how often and under what circumstances officers use force, little is known about officers' decision-making processes that lead to force. The study took a naturalistic decision-making approach to analyze debrief sessions between 91 recruits and their trainers after partaking in a use-of-force assessment scenario. Results show recruit's decision making was more aligned with an intuitive style rather than an analytical style. Recruits reported experiencing perceptual, cognitive, and physiological impairments that influenced the way they assessed the situation and affected their ability to successfully execute force techniques. The findings provide valuable insights into the theoretical knowledge around police decision making and how officers are making use-offorce decisions in the field. This has real-world implications for training/education and could help reduce the effects of decision-making impairments.

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What were they thinking? Factors influencing police recruits’ decisions about force

Cited by 25 publications

References 39 publications

‘Taser, Taser’! Exploring factors associated with police use of Taser in England and Wales

‘Taser, Taser’! Exploring factors associated with police use of Taser in England and Wales

Threat assessment, sense making, and critical decision-making in police, military, ambulance, and fire services

Exploring Police Use of Force Decision-Making Processes and Impairments Using a Naturalistic Decision-Making Approach

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