Over three hundred police officers from the District of Columbia were surveyed as they waited for court appearances. Although police officers were satisfied with their jobs, morale was low. Background and situational variables did not adequately predict satisfaction levels. Satisfaction levels...

Measures the impact of armed US Coast Guard boardings on those aboard boarded vessels. A sample of fifty subjects (half members of a graduate class on “Maritime Crime and its Prevention”, half others), completed questionnaires after experiencing a (pre‐arranged but undisclosed)...

Police work is an occupation replete with psychological stress and trauma, danger, and availability of firearms. Under such conditions, one might expect an increased risk of suicide, and police suicide rates have appeared to increase over the past decade. In this article, we discuss...

The effects of ethnicity on the career paths of advanced and specialized law enformcement officers are examined. Analyses focus on two measures of possible perceived or actual employment discrimination by ethnicity. Ethnicity is found to be a minor indicator of rank compared to experience and...

Policing has never been an easy task in a society where the basic rights of individuals take precedence over accusation of criminality and enforcement of the law. The police are faced with countless situations which evoke confrontation and promote disagreement. Often these situations deteriorate...

This article presents the findings of a process evaluation of training for Chicago’s Alternative Policing Strategy (CAPS), which is the city’s version of community policing. The study’s approach and instrumentation were adopted from the field of adult education and involved observation and...

The preparation of police officers for work in a multicultural society has become a major concern for police departments, local governments, and the general community. This article provides a critique of the methods used in cultural diversity training and suggests a number of principles and...

Considers the dilemma of the incompatibility between the role of the police and democratic values, Develops Bittner’s thesis, that Western values continue to move away from legitimate use of force toward coercive intervention, with reference to the Waco siege and the Los Angeles riots.

Selection criteria for individuals seeking to become police officers continues to receive attention from practitioners and academicians. However, an area of equal, if not greater importance, selection criteria for police chiefs, continues to receive minimal attention. After examining the...

Evaluations of criminal justice policy increasingly employ randomized experiements, especially in studies of policing. These experiments, however, raise important ethical, legal and practical issues. This paper explores some of these issues as viewed by police officers. It focuses on the...