Criminology and Public Policy 8(4)

GANG DATABASES

Gang databases : To be or not to be
Irving Spergel

Gangs and public policy : Constructing and deconstructing gang databases
Julie Barrows, C. Ronald Huff

Attention to gang issues has dramatically increased in the last several decades, both in the scholarly literature and in law enforcement. Despite widespread attention to the gang problem, researchers, police officers, and lawmakers have yet to agree on definitions used to characterize and understand the problem. This article summarizes the existing literature concerning the importance of accurately defining and classifying gang members, documents and analyzes state and federal gang legislation in the United States, and provides a detailed analysis of one state's system that might serve as a useful model for other states.
Serious risks to public safety and civil liberties are associated with Type 1 and Type 2 classification errors regarding gang membership. The wide variation in state statutory definitions of "gang member" and in the construction and administration of gang databases presents major challenges for policymakers and academic researchers. This article addresses these challenges and argues that a more rigorous and unified system, based on one state's existing model, might be possible and could offer significant advantages in our efforts to address the delinquent and criminal behavior of gangs throughout the United States.

Gang databases : Context and questions
James B. Jacobs

Gangs and public policy : Constructing and deconstructing gang databases
David M. Kennedy

Street gang databases : A view from the gang capitol of the United States
Malcolm W. Klein

Gangs, law enforcement, and the academy
James F. Short Jr.

POLICE MISCONDUCT

Conceptual, methodological, and policy considerations in the study of police misconduct
James Frank

Bad cops : A study of career-ending misconduct among New York City police officers
Robert J. Kane, Michael D. White

Police scholars and public policymakers throughout generations have sought to identify reliable correlates of police misconduct. Despite these efforts, general statements as to the etiology and epidemiology of police misconduct remain inconclusive, in part because of the inconsistent definitions of misconduct and the difficulty of obtaining the data required to make such statements. This research attempts to fill these gaps through a comparison of the personal and career histories of all 1,543 officers who were involuntarily separated from the New York City Police Department (NYPD) for cause during 1975–1996 with a randomly selected sample of their police academy classmates who served honorably. The study uses confidential NYPD files as its major data sources, which include extensive biographical and career information. The study finds that career-ending misconduct rarely occurs in the NYPD and that the types of misconduct do not match well with existing definitions. Several factors emerge as significant predictors of misconduct, including officer race, minimal education, records of prior criminality and prior poor employment, failure to advance in the NYPD, and histories of citizen complaints.
This study shows that existing definitions of police misconduct are difficult to apply to actual cases of police malpractice, which leads the authors to create a new eight-category classification scheme. The rarity of misconduct, especially on-duty abuse, confirms prior research indicating that most police officers do their jobs without engaging in serious malpractice. These findings suggest that the NYPD has become better behaved as it has become more diverse along race and gender dimensions and that the link between black officers and misconduct might be explained by persistent "tokenism." The findings related to race have important implications for continued efforts to build racially representative police departments. Personal history findings highlight the importance of conducting background investigations that disqualify candidates with arrest records and employment disciplinary histories, whereas the inverse relationship between college education and misconduct provides strong support for continued emphasis on pre- and post-employment educational requirements.

Police officer misconduct as normal accidents : An organizational perspective
William R. King

Rotten apples, rotten branches, and rotten orchards : A cautionary tale of police misconduct
Sanja Kutnjak Ivkovic

Bad cops
Peter K. Manning

DETERRENCE AND EXECUTIONS

The impact of the death penalty on murder
John J. Donohue III

Does the death penalty save lives? : New evidence from state panel data, 1977 to 2006
Tomislav V. Kovandzic, Lynne M. Vieraitis, Denise Paquette Boots

Economists have recently reexamined the "capital punishment deters homicide" thesis using modern econometric methods, with most studies reporting robust deterrent effects. The current study revisits this controversial question using annual state panel data from 1977 to 2006. Employing well-known econometric procedures for panel data analysis, our results provide no empirical support for the argument that the existence or application of the death penalty deters prospective offenders from committing homicide.
Although policymakers and the public can continue to base support for use of the death penalty on retribution, religion, or other justifications, defending its use based solely on its deterrent effect is contrary to the evidence presented here. At a minimum, policymakers should refrain from justifying its use by claiming that it is a deterrent to homicide and should consider less costly, more effective ways of addressing crime.

Can't tell : Comments on "Does the death penalty save lives?"
Richard Berk

Don't scrap the death penalty
Paul H. Rubin

TASERS IN THE MEDIA

Conducted energy devices and criminal justice policy
Steven Chermak

Examining fatal and nonfatal incidents involving the TASER : Identifying predictors of suspect death reported in the media
Michael D. White, Justin Ready

According to TASER International, nearly 10,000 police departments in the United States have deployed the TASER as a less lethal force alternative in some capacity. Despite the TASER's increasing popularity, serious questions have been raised about the device's physiological side effects; in particular, Amnesty International has reported that more than 300 people have died after being subjected to the TASER. Although a growing body of research has examined the physiological effects of the TASER on animals and healthy human volunteers in laboratory settings, there has been virtually no empirical analysis of "real-world" fatal and nonfatal TASER cases simultaneously. This article examines all media reports of TASER incidents from 2002 to 2006 through a comprehensive review of LexisNexis and New York Times archives. We compare TASER incidents in which a fatality occurred to TASER incidents in which a fatality did not occur and then employ multivariate analyses to identify the incident and suspect characteristics that are predictive of articles describing TASER-proximate deaths.
Several suspect factors were significantly associated with the reporting of a fatal TASER incident, including drug use (but not alcohol), mental illness, and continued resistance. Multiple deployments of the TASER against a suspect was also associated with the likelihood of the article describing a fatality—especially if the suspect was emotionally disturbed—which raises the possibility that the risk of multiple shocks might not be uniform for all suspects. More research is needed to explore the relationship between mental illness, drug use (illicit or therapeutic), continued resistance, and increased risk of death. In the meantime, police departments should develop specific policies and training governing the use of multiple TASER shocks against individuals who could be in these vulnerable physiological and psychological states.

Should police departments develop specific training and policies governing use of multiple TASER shocks against individuals who might be in vulnerable physiological states?
Robert J. Bunker

Research on conducted energy devices : Findings, methods, and a possible alternative
Robert J. Kaminski

Conducted energy weapons : Learning from operational discretion and encounter outcomes
Gregory B. Morrison

Criminology and Public Policy, November 2009: Volume 8, Issue 4