Police Decision-Making in the Gray Zone: The Dynamics of Police–Citizen Encounters with Mentally Ill Persons

Research finds mentally ill persons have higher rates of police contacts, arrests, and criminal charges for minor offenses and noncriminal behavior. It remains unclear whether the decision-making process and factors affecting discretion reflect a procedural bias that criminalizes the mentally ill. 

Using observational data from a Canadian police service, the findings suggest higher odds for criminal charges with serious offenses, males, older citizens, a prior criminal record, being under the influence of alcohol or drugs, and being uncooperative with requests for information and compliance. The odds of a citation are higher for proactive calls, more serious offenses, older citizens, mentally ill persons, those under the influence, or with a disrespectful demeanor. 

The overall findings suggest an indirect procedural bias exists due to situational constraints, a disjuncture between policy and police culture, and limited mental health resources that lead to response strategies that contribute to criminalization of the mentally ill.

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By:  Jennifer L. Schulenberg

Jennifer L. Schulenberg, Department of Sociology and Legal Studies, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON, N2L 3G1, Canada; e-mail: jlschule@uwaterloo.ca.

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Exploring the Defensive Actions of Drug Sellers in Open-Air Markets: A Systematic Social Observation

Objectives: The current study contributes to the literature through a systematic social observation of the defensive actions of drug sellers within open-air retail markets. The study expands upon previous literature by incorporating a novel data collection and coding method.

Methods: Video footage of narcotics transactions was extracted from the closed-circuit television (CCTV) system of the Newark, NJ Police Department. Researchers transcribed and coded the footage to measure the frequency of defensive actions incorporated by drug sellers. Fisher’s exact tests measured whether the frequency of each defensive action significantly differed across geographic setting or time of day.

Results: The frequency of many defensive actions was significantly related to geographic setting and time of day. The strongest relationship was observed between the use of stash spots and setting. Overall, the findings suggest that drug sellers adopt tenets of Opportunity Theory to protect themselves from law enforcement, specifically by acting as guardians and place managers on their own behalf.

Conclusions: This study extends prior techniques and provides an additional case study on the use of CCTV footage in the study of street-level crime. This methodology can be used in concert with more traditional ethnographic techniques in the study of the drug trade and in crime-and-place research in general.

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By:  

Eric L. Piza1⇑

Victoria A. Sytsma2

¹Department of Law and Police Science, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, New York City, NY, USA

²Centre for Criminology and Sociolegal Studies, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Eric L. Piza, Department of Law and Police Science, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, New York City, NY, USA. Email: epiza@jjay.cuny.edu

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Corruption as a Propensity: Personality and Motivational Determinants among Nigerians

Psychologically oriented studies on corruption are lacking despite the fact that psychology has contributed enormously to the understanding of criminal behaviors over the past decades. Part of this problem relates to the lack of psychological tone in the definition and measurement of corruption. Taking a clue from the extensive psychological discourse on crime, which provides strong evidence for the existence of criminal tendencies, we conceptualized corruption here in terms of propensity. Possible personality and motivation determinants of this propensity were then explored. 

Results revealed that extraversion and conscientiousness positively and inversely predicted corruption tendencies, respectively. Results further showed that extrinsic motivation positively potentiates corruption tendencies, whereas intrinsic motivation was inversely related to corruption tendencies. Analysis of demographic variables revealed that males were more likely to be corrupt than their female counterparts. 

In general, findings here are consistent with the criminal behavior literature, which strongly suggests that the study of corruption is indeed amenable to psychological theories and methods and that individual differences variables constitute important explanatory variables in this regard.

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By:   Agbo AA1, Iwundu EI1.

• 1 University of Nigeria. 

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