Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2024

DOI

10.1007/s12103-024-09756-w

Publication Title

American Journal of Criminal Justice

Volume

49

Issue

3

Pages

462-484

Abstract

In the current paper, we examine departmental and court decision-making in criminal cases against police officers. The study has two objectives: 1) to examine variables that impact departmental decisions in criminal cases against police officers, and 2) to examine factors that affect case disposition/conviction decisions by the courts. To achieve these objectives, we analyzed nationally representative arrest data using multiple statistical approaches. The results obtained revealed important patterns that are critical to our understanding of how the courts and police departments decide matters relating to police criminality. For instance, victim characteristics significantly influenced decision-making by both the police agency and the court. Also, officer characteristics and crime types were important indicators of how offending officers were punished by both the courts and the agencies that employed them. Specifically, officers whose cases involved child victims and officers who were not familiar with their victims had greater odds of being convicted. The implications of our findings for policy and research in policing, especially research on police misconduct, are discussed.

Rights

This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.

ORCID

0000-0001-5859-6116 (Pryce)

Original Publication Citation

Boateng, F. D., Pryce, D. K., Dzordzormenyoh, M. K., Hsieh, M. L., & Cuff, A. (2024). Empirical examination of factors that influence official decisions in criminal cases against police officers. American Journal of Criminal Justice. 49(3),462-484 . https://doi.org/10.1007/s12103-024-09756-w

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