Police Enforcement of Domestic Violence Laws: Supervisory Control or Officer Prerogatives?

Abstract

Police officers are afforded a high degree of discretion in the exercise of their authority, and the control of this discretion is an important issue. While it is assumed that individual officer attitudes and preferences shape their discretionary activity, these officers are also members of a paramilitary organization with leaders over them. The present study explored the influence of both officer attitudes and management influences to explain variation in officer domestic violence arrest rates. Hierarchical linear modeling was used with a sample of 311 patrol officers and 61 supervisors from 23 municipal police agencies across multiple states. Unlike much of the previous literature, the results revealed that officer occupational attitudes had no effect on this particular officer work behavior. Management influences (such as rewards and written policies) significantly influenced officers’ domestic violence arrest behavior. The findings emphasize the complexity involved in the control of officer discretion.

Keywords:

• police attitudes
• police behavior
• police supervision
• police management
• domestic violence
• behavioral economics
• organizational psychology

Notes

¹ The small number of female participants was not removed from the analysis for a number of reasons. First, officer sex was not a primary variable of interest, only a control variable included in most previous studies. Second, as law enforcement officers in the US continue to be overwhelmingly male (89% according to Reaves, 2011), almost all studies of police officers have very small percentages of female respondents. Third, the focus of this study involved police management issues. Even if important sex differences were revealed, they would have little influence on police management policies as males and females cannot legally be managed differently.

² Recalling that the psychological literature suggested the work environment shaped the attitude–behavior link (Glasman & Albarracín, 2006; Kim & Hunter, 2006; Randall & Wolff, 2011), we also explored a possible cross-level interaction effect between a mandatory arrest policy and officer attitudes toward domestic violence enforcement. Because this literature shows that people are prone to display attitude–behavior congruence in the work environment that supports their attitudes, and stifle their personal attitudes to conform when the environment is not supportive, we decided to explore if the influence of officer attitudes on the dependent variable varied by the agency’s mandatory arrest policy. Specifically, we created an interaction term by multiplying the officer personal preference for enforcement by whether or not the officer’s agency had a mandatory arrest policy, and then estimated the interaction model at three levels. However, results showed that the interaction effect variable was not statistically significant at the .05 level, offering no evidence that when the officer’s attitudes matched the environment, the influence of the attitude would be significantly greater. Noting that our interaction analysis was limited to a small sample of departments (N = 23), we suggest future research continue exploring this possible interaction effect.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Richard R. Johnson

Richard R. Johnson is an associate professor of criminal justice at the University of Toledo. He earned his doctorate in criminal justice from the University of Cincinnati. His research interests include issues of police supervision and management, and the policing of domestic violence. He has also published in Crime & Delinquency, Criminal Justice and Behavior, Journal of Criminal Justice, and Police Quarterly.

Mengyan Dai

Mengyan Dai is an assistant professor of criminal justice at Old Dominion University. He earned his doctorate in criminal justice at the University of Cincinnati. His research interests include citizen attitudes toward the police and international aspects of policing. He has also published journals in Journal of Criminal Justice, Crime Law and Social Change, Policing, and the Asian Journal of Criminology.