Cultural Considerations

Read about Sir Robert Peel’s position on the attached documents.

Imagine you are writing a letter to Sir Robert Peel on whether or not his nine principles could be used to organize police department today.

Write a 1,400- to 1,750-word letter to Sir Robert Peel to explain why his principles could, or could not, be used today.

Consider the following questions to help you build your argument.

How do the cultural concerns and influences affect justice and security administration and practice?

What contemporary methods are used in societies of mixed cultures?

How do these influences and considerations relate to and affect nondiscrimination practices within the criminal justice system?

Format your letter consistent with APA guidelines.

The Demographic Implications of the Prison Boom

Becky Pettit

University of Washington

Bryan Sykes

University of Washington

January

1Please direct correspondence to Becky Pettit, Department of Sociology, Uni-
versity of Washington,

Condon Hall, Box 3

0, Seattle, WA

8195-
3340,bpettit@u.washington.edu.

Overview

The growth of the prison system over the last three decades represents a

critical institutional intervention in the lives of American families. It is quite

striking, though increasingly clear, that the massive buildup in the size of

the penal population has not been due to large scale changes in crime or

criminality. Instead, a host of changes at the local, state, and federal lev-

els with respect to law enforcement and penal policy are implicated in the

expansion of the prison system. Law enforcement agencies have stepped up

policing, prosecutors have more actively pursued convictions, and there have

been myriad changes in sentencing policy that now mandate jail or prison

time.

Such a dramatic change in criminal justice policy – and rapid growth in

the prison system – raises questions about its demographic effects. How have

changes in exposure to the criminal justice system affected fertility patterns?

Does the expansion of the prison system help to explain increases in non-

marital fertility (or declines in teenage fertility)? How does spending time in

prison affect morbidity and mortality? How does the prison system and the

enumeration of prisoners influence our understanding of internal migration

streams and population shifts?

Raising these issues is important for several reasons. First, it is unclear

whether (or to what extent) legislators or criminologists anticipated the far-

reaching demographic effects of changes in sentencing policies when they were

debated. It is important to consider the implications of shifts in criminal

justice policy and practice – not only with respect to criminal involvement

– but on other, arguably distant, demographic processes. There is growing

recognition that shifts in sentencing policy have had important implications

well beyond the usual purview of the criminal justice system and that effects

of spending time in prison reach well beyond those individuals who have had

contact with the criminal justice system.

A second important consideration is that gender, race, and class inequal-

ities in exposure to the prison system compel attention to the importance

of the criminal justice system in accounts of demographic inequalities. The

massive growth of the penal system is notable not only for its size, but also

for its disproportionate effects on minority and low-skill men. There has

been considerable attention paid to how inequalities in involvement in the

criminal justice system affect accounts of social, economic, and political in-

equality. However, little attention has been paid to the role of the criminal

justice system for understanding gender, race, and educational inequalities

in key demographic processes.

A third motivation to consider the influence of the prison system on de-

mographic trends is its undeniable political significance. Understanding the

consequences of the prison boom for American demography is a critical po-

litical issue that has significance for how we conduct social surveys, how we

enumerate the U.S. population, and how we design social policy. Many social

surveys explicitly don’t include the incarcerated population while others use a

sampling mechanism that systematically – though perhaps not categorically

– undersamples inmates and former inmates. As the prison population has

grown, and to the extent that it is disproportionately male, African Ameri-

can, and low-educated, we may not only be misrepresenting key social and

demographic processes at the aggregate level, but we may also be misunder-

standing the explanations for demographic behavior as our analyses suffer

from an increasingly acute sample bias.

In summary, a careful assessment of the implications of the prison system

for accounts of the demographic condition of the population is critical for

sound design of social policy and allocation of public resources.

Prison growth and its demographic implications

The massive increase in the penal population is now well-documented and

demographic inequalities in exposure to the prison system are increasingly

clear. Men represent over 90 percent of all inmates, although women repre-

sent one of the fastest growing subgroups of the penal population. African

Americans are 7 times more likely than whites to spend time in prison. Men

who have dropped out of high school are upwards of ten times more likely to

spend time in prison than men who have finished high school.

The massive growth in the prison population has resulted in enduring,

and in some ways growing, racial and educational disproportionality in ex-

posure to prison. The aggregate changes in the composition of the penal

population result from the accumulation of many specific changes to local,

state, and federal criminal justice policy and practice. Growing demographic

inequality in exposure to the criminal justice system has critical implications

for demographic outcomes in three broad areas: marriage and fertility (and

especially non-marital fertility), health and mortality, and internal migration

or population shifts.

Fertility

There are two somewhat opposing, yet key, shifts in American fertility that

may be related to the expansion of the prison system: widespread increases in

non-marital fertility and declines in teenage fertility. It is commonly observed

that almost a third (27 percent in 2000) of children in the U.S. live in single

parent families. But, vastly more black children live in single parent families

(Ellwood and Jencks 2004). By the end of the 1990s over

0 percent of black

children were living with only one parent. And, while separation and divorce

remain the modal reason for single parenthood among white children, never

married motherhood is the primary source of living with a single parent for

black children (as it has been since about 1983).

The reasons for racial differences in single parenthood between blacks and

non-blacks are controversial and not well-understood (Ellwood and Jencks

2004). Earning power, sex ratios, gender roles, attitudes and social norms

have all been used to explain fertility and marriage decisions. However,

research has not paid enough attention to the generalized decoupling of mar-

riage and fertility, research has generally not considered how fertility decisions

may be jointly determined by partners in a relationship, nor has research been

particularly effective in explaining trends in non-marital fertility or over-time

differences by race.

The expansion of the criminal justice system is a likely culprit for the

growth in non-marital fertility and racial inequality in non-marital fertility.

Although the data sources are few, a growing body of evidence supports this

claim. For example, research by Western and colleagues shows that fathers

who have been incarcerated are much less likely to be cohabiting or married a

year after their babies birth (Western, Lopoo, and McLanahan 2004). Other

research links incarceration to multipartnered fertility. That is, women who

have children with men who have been incarcerated are more likely to have

other children with other men (Carlson and Furstenberg 2006). Incarceration

is likely to affect marriage both directly through its incapacitative effect

and indirectly through its implications on economic opportunities and social

stigma (see, for example, Edin and Kefalas 2005).

Curiously, however, while non-marital fertility has increased, teenage fer-

tility has declined. Teenage fertility reached its zenith in the early 1990s, but

through the 1990s there was a fairly dramatic decline in teenage fertility. The

overall teen birthrate was 62 per

00 in 1991, but the teen birthrate fell con-

sistently through the 1990s to reach 49 per 1000 in 1999 (Hamilton, Sutton,

and Ventura 2005). While the teen fertility rate among blacks is absolutely

higher than among whites, the decline in teenage fertility and teenage non-

marital fertility over the last

years has been more acute among blacks

than among whites (Ventura et al. 2005).

Explanations for declines in teenage fertility (and non-marital fertility

among teens) have been widely debated. Labor market prospects, educa-

tional investments, improvements in contraceptive use, and shifts in welfare

policy have all been associated with declines in teenage fertility. However,

research has not come to any definitive conclusions – findings are mixed by

most accounts – nor has research been particularly effective in explaining

race differences in either the level or the trend in teenage fertility.

Some recent scholarship has suggested the prison system may have critical

impacts on black teenage fertility (Mecholulan 2006). Direct tests of shifts in

penal policy – and changes in the prison population – on teenage fertility are

rare. But, recent research has investigated links between the size of the incar-

cerated population specifically and teen fertility among young black women.

Mecholulan (2006) argues that increases in incarceration among young black

men in particular, have led young black women to defer fertility, choosing

instead to make educational and labor market investments.

Effects

Although the behavioral implications of spending time in prison on non-

marital and teenage fertility are not horribly well understood, it is clear that

the criminal justice system has wide-ranging implications for family structure

and its reach extends well beyond those directly involved with the criminal

justice system. On any given day, estimates suggest that upwards of 1.5

million children have a parent in prison or jail. Recent estimates suggest

that close to 6 percent of American children have had a parent in prison.

Furthermore, given racial and educational homophily in mating (and mar-

riage) racial and educational inequalities in exposure to the criminal justice

system among adults are transmitted to their children. Recent estimates

by Wildeman (2007) suggest that 1 in 5 black children has had a parent in

prison (compared to 1 in 40 white children) and just as exposure the criminal

justice system is stratified by education, children of high school dropouts are

much more likely than children of those with more education to have either

a mother or father in prison.

The figures alone suggest that the criminal justice system must be con-

sidered in accounts of non-marital fertility, and the implications of spending

time in prison must be weighed in the formulation of public supports for

children in single-parent households. In addition, however, the implications

of the prison boom on trends in non-marital fertility, teenage fertility, and

race and class inequalities in fertility deserve much greater empirical and

theoretical attention. Assessments of the impact of the prison system on

non-marital and teenage fertility must pay closer attention to partnering

patterns and within-group inequalities. Without more careful attention to

race (and class) distinctions in partnering and fertility we may focus on av-

erage improvements (in teenage fertility, for example) and overlook growing

inequality and deepening disadvantage.

Mortality and morbidity

While in general the health of the American population has improved over

the past few decades, not all Americans have benefited equally. Racial in-

equalities in health and mortality in the U.S. are persistent and it is com-

monly observed that blacks have worse health outcomes and higher mortality

at younger ages than whites. Some racial and ethnic groups have not only

not experienced advances in health outcomes, but some socio-demographic

groups have recently witnessed the introduction or re-introduction of illnesses

and disease which may have critical implications for racial inequalities in

health and mortality over the life course.

Explanations for enduring racial disparities in health are many yet there

is clear recognition that our understanding of race and class inequalities in

health and mortality are incomplete. Research has paid relatively little atten-

tion to how patterns of institutionalization affect health and how differential

levels of incarceration may exacerbate inequalities in health and mortality.

There is reason to believe that incarceration has important effects on de-

scriptive accounts of health and mortality and or our theoretical understand-

ings of them. Research has probably made the most advances in thinking

about how incarceration (and racial inequalities in incarceration) relates to

racial inequalities in communicable disease. Inmates and former inmates ex-

hibit extraordinarily high rates of tuberculosis, hepatitis C, and HIV/AIDS.

Although the research is limited, the available estimates are quite startling.

Recent estimates place the TB infection rate among prisoners close to 25%

(compared with less than .01 percent in the general population). Hepatitis

C infection rates range from 20-40% in the penal population (compared to

close to 2% of the general population). And, estimates place the HIV/AIDS

infection rate of prisoners 10 times higher than that of non-prisoners (Res-

tum 2005).

Effects

Imprisonment may have direct implications for health outcomes through

infections acquired in prison or jail (especially communicable diseases such as

TB, hepatitis C, and HIV/AIDS), but also have indirect implications by set-

ting men (and women) on a “trajectory of cumulative disadvantage”(London

and Meyers 2006). Evidence suggests that a range of different types of con-

tact with the criminal justice system may impact health-related behavior and

outcomes. Even short term stints in jail have implications for TB exposure,

and probation/parole may influence individuals’ use of public health initia-

tives like needle exchanges (e.g., not use facilities and then inject in unsafe

ways).

Again the reach of the prison system extends well beyond those who

spend time in prison. For example, given high rates of racial and economic

residential segregation, high rates of TB within the incarcerated population

has important implications for TB exposure among other members of the

population. Despite substantial declines in the overall risk of TB in the U.S.,

blacks are 8 times more likely to have TB than whites and even black children

have an extraordinarily high prevalence of TB.

At the same time racial (and class) homophily in sexual partnerships

means that racial and class inequalities in the prevalence of HIV/AIDS and

hepatitis C in the incarcerated population is mirrored in the non-incarcerated

population. Research suggests that blacks are more likely than whites to have

hepatitis C (CID 2000). And while HIV/AIDS ranks as the 5th leading cause

of death nationwide among women and men 25-44, HIV/AIDS infection was

the leading cause of death for African American men aged 35-44 and the

leading cause of death for African American women aged 25-34 by 2004.

Among African American women, the primary transmission mechanism was

high risk heterosexual sex (CDC 2005).

Striking racial inequalities in health and mortality necessitate further con-

sideration of the criminal justice system in accounts of inequality in health

and mortality. The implications of spending time in prison must be weighed

in the formulation of public health programs for prisoners, their partners,

their children, and other community members. This will require attention to

the mechanisms of disease transmission, but also must be situated in relation

to our understanding of social inequalities and power dynamics within part-

nerships, households, and communities. In any case, the implications of the

prison boom on race and class inequalities in health and mortality deserve

greater attention.

Migration and enumeration

Incarceration also may have important effects on accounts of and theories

about migration and population distribution. Students of the U.S. Census

have recognized small, but growing, communities of color in suburban and

rural locations across the country. Even careful scholars may need reminding

that some of these population shifts may not reflect voluntary migration, but

instead are increasingly likely to result from the growth of the prison system,

racial inequality in imprisonment, and the observation that prisoners are

commonly relocated outside of their home communities. A growing fraction

of communities of color in rural and suburban locations represent the reloca-

tion of disproportionately poor and black urban residents into suburban and

rural prisons.

Clearly these types of population shifts are inconsistent with existing the-

ories of internal migration. Yet there is relatively little attention – at least

within the demographic literature – to the explanations for or implications

of these types of population shifts. There are on-going debates about the

census enumeration of prisoners and exactly how and where they count can

have immense implications for not only how we understand population dis-

tribution but also for accounts of racial and economic residential segregation.

Effects

Population redistribution generated by incarceration may not only af-

fect our accounts of population distribution and trends in racial residential

segregation. Moreover, as other research has shown even more minor con-

tacts with the criminal justice system can trigger fairly dramatic restrictions

on individuals’ geographic mobility. It is increasingly recognized that the

movement of prisoners outside of their home communities disrupts family re-

lationships, social networks, and economic contacts. Furthermore, locational

restrictions on probationers or parolees can also have profoundly disruptive

effects – not only for potential criminal contacts – but also for connections

to other individuals and organizations vital to maintain families, health, and

employment.

How prison inmates are statistically enumerated in the Census and other

surveys, and where they are counted, can have implications for political rep-

resentation (and resource allocation). There are on-going debates on this

issue and no clear resolution in view. A careful articulation of the size and

scope of the issue – for both research and practice – may be a profitable

avenue to pursue.

General points

We have attempted to illustrate a few key demographic implications of the

prison boom, and highlight how growth of the prison system and racial (and

class) inequalities within it might help us understand race (and class) in-

equalities in fertility, health and mortality, and population mobility. While

the evidence is mounting that the criminal justice system has fundamentally

altered racial inequalities in fertility, health and mortality, and population

dynamics, there is reason to believe that contemporary understandings of

demographic inequalities are underestimated. Inmates and former inmates

are systematically (and sometimes categorically) under represented in the

data we use to construct most demographic accounts of inequality.

For example, the Current Population Survey, a key source of data for the

economic well-being of the population does not include incarcerated individ-

uals. The Current Population Survey is also a key source of data for trends

in fertility and family formation. Other important surveys used to under-

stand fertility and family life (like the National Survey of Households and

Families) don’t collect information on incarceration histories and are likely

to systematically under sample individuals with contact with the criminal

justice system. Surely some surveys – like the Fragile Families and Child

Well-being Study – have gone to great lengths to collect data on contact

with the criminal justice system and interview women and men who have

been in prison or jail. Yet that represents the exception rather than the rule

and there are a number of questions about the extent to which those data

allow us to generalize to a wider population.

In addition, there is a dearth of health-related information about prisoners

and ex-offenders. The sampling frames for the major health tracking studies

including the National Health Interview Survey and the National Health and

Nutrition Examination Survey exclude the incarcerated. Other important

surveys used to document the health and well-being of the population identify

participants through their attachment to households. As a consequence,

current prisoners are not included in key reports on the health of the nation

– including efforts to estimate health disparities and the contributions of

factors thought to cause them (London and Myers 2006).

Finally it is critical to understand that two peculiarities of the census have

important implications for how we understand the incarcerated population

and their spatial distribution in the population. First, the census enumerates

prisoners using prison as the usual residence. While this is a source of much

debate in the political arena and there is great controversy over how else

prisoners may be enumerated (and how much it will cost), as the prison

population grows it is an increasingly important problem.

Second, the census relies on the household as the primary location to

enumerate individuals. Given what we know about ex-inmates’ fragile ties

to households, families, and sometimes communities there is reason to sus-

pect that ex-inmates are overrepresented in the census undercount. While

there has been much consideration of the census undercount there has been

relatively little attention to the specific concerns of ex-inmates within the

undercount.

The underrepresentation of inmates and ex-inmates in surveys and the

census not only has implications for descriptive accounts of inequality gen-

erated by these data. If inmates and ex-inmates differ from survey samples

– not only on observable characteristics, but also with respect to behav-

ioral processes – omitting them from survey populations leads to increas-

ingly acute sample selection bias. Not only are our descriptive accounts of

inequality likely underestimated, but there is good reason to believe that our

explanations for racial (and class) inequality in key demographic (and other)

outcomes may not reflect the underlying processes in the population.

Conclusion

In conclusion it is critical to recognize that the demographic implications

of the prison boom are increasingly important and reach well beyond the

lives of inmates and former inmates. It is increasingly clear that the rise

of the penal population – and racial and class inequality within it – affect

our descriptive accounts and theoretical understandings of important racial

differences in fertility, mortality, and migration and population distribution.

In short, the massive prison boom must encourage us to rethink how we

count people, how we design social survey research, and how we understand

the most fundamental population processes.

Works Cited

Carlson, Marcia and Frank Furstenberg. 2006. “The Prevalence and Corre-

lates of Multipartnered Fertility Among Urban U.S. Parents.” Journal

of Marriage and the Family 68: 718-732.

Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). 2006. “Cases of HIV

Infection and AIDS in the United States, by Race/Ethnicity, 2000-204.”

HIV/AIDS Surveillance Supplemental Report 12(1): 1–36. Available

at:

www.cdc.gov/hiv/topics/surveillance/resources/reports/index.htm.

Committee on Infectious Diseases (CID). 2000. “Hepatitis C.” Pp. 302–306

in LK Pickering et al. (eds.). 2000 Red Book: Report of the Committee

on Infectious Diseases. 25th edition. Elk Grove, IL: American Academy

of Pediatrics.

Edin, Kathryn and Maria Kefalas. 2005. Promises I Can Keep: Why Poor

Women Put Motherhood Before Marriage. Berkeley: University of Cal-

ifornia Press.

Ellwood, David and Christopher Jencks. 2004. “The Spread of Single-Parent

Families in the United States Since 1960.” Pp. 25-65 in Daniel Moyni-

han, Timothy Smeeding and Lee Rainwater (eds) The Future of the

Family. New York: The Russell

Sage Foundation.

Hamilton BE, PD Sutton, and Stephanie Ventura. 2005. “Revised birth

and fertility rates for the 1990s and new rates for the Hispanic popula-

tions, 2000 and 2001: United States.” National Vital Statistics Reports

51(12):1–96. Available at:

www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr51/nvsr51 12 .

London, Andrew and Nancy Myers. 2006. “Race, Incarceration, and Health:

A Life Course Approach.” Research on Aging 28(3): 409-422.

Mecholulan, Stephane. 2006. “The Impact of Black Male Incarceration on

Black Females’ Fertility, Schooling, and Employment in the U.S., 1979-

2000.” Unpublished manuscript.

Ventura, Stephanie, Joyce Abma, William Mosher, and Stanley Henshaw.

2005. “Recent Trends in Teenage Pregnancy in the United States,

1990-2002.” National Center for Health Statistics. Available at:

www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/pubs/pubd/hestats/teenpreg1990-2002/teenpreg1990-

2002.htm.

Restum, Zulficar Gregory. 2005. “Public Health Implications of Substandard

Correctional Health Care.” American Journal of Public Health 95(10):

1689-1691.

Western, Bruce, Leonard Lopoo, and Sara McLanahan. 2004. “Incarceration

and the Bond Between Parents in Fragile Families.” Pp. 21-45 in

Mary Pattillo, David Weiman, and Bruce Western (eds.) Imprisoning

America: The Social Effects of Mass Incarceration. New York: Russell

Sage Foundation.

Wildeman, Christopher. 2007. “Parental Imprisonment, the Prison Boom,

and the Concentration of Childhood Disadvantage.” Paper presented

at the Annual Meeting of the Population Association of America.

Policing a
liberal society

Blackwell Publishing Ltd

P O L I C I N G A L I B E R A L
S O C I E T Y

John Blundell

Better policing can only come by devolving accountability and responsibility.

This, combined with decentralisation and privatisation where possible, will

create an environment where innovation flourishes and good practice is

copied. There are many lessons from the USA which could usefully be adopted

by the UK.

Introduction

• ‘The average PC now spends 75 per cent of each
shift engaged in nonsense which has little to do
with catching criminals or helping victims,’
says an anonymous police officer who writes a
blog critical of the amount of time police waste
on red tape.

• Only one in 58 police officers is out on patrol at
any one time in some police force areas – that’s
about four per town of 90,000 people – yet
England and Wales has a record 143,000
officers.

• Only one in 40 in some forces is available

respond to 999 calls.

• In 2004/05, the Metropolitan Police spent
£104.4 million on investigating robberies and
house burglaries and almost as much – £101.9
million – on non-incident-related paperwork.

• A man cautioned for being ‘in possession of an
egg with intent to throw’ and two children
arrested for being in possession of a toy pistol
are among trivial offences police officers have
pursued in a bid to meet government targets
for crime detection.

• London is now more dangerous than New
York. In the British capital 32% say they have
been victims of crime. In New York the figure is
23%. London is Europe’s most crime-ridden
city.

This grim snapshot of law and disorder in Britain in
2007 leads to the inescapable conclusion that the
police do not and cannot solve crime while they are
bound up in centrally imposed procedures that
remove them from the public they are employed to
protect. The approach of trying to improve policing
by imposing targets simply encourages the police to
aim for soft touches. Any new approach needs to be
based on the principles of responsibility and
accountability. Hand-wringing will get us nowhere;

we urgently need to identify and implement the best
methods for maintaining law and order in a free
society.

The growth of crime

Crime in the UK is growing. From time to time there
are downturns, but looking back over the past 50
years both crime and the fear of crime have
rocketed. Any reduction in crime or the fear of crime
in the last few decades has proven to be a short-term
cycle within a long-term worsening trend, not a
reversal of the trend itself. The undermining of
individual responsibility by the welfare and
education systems plays a part, but much of the
blame rests squarely with the police’s approach to
tackling wrongdoing. Law-breakers know there is a
good chance of getting away with it. The public
knows it too and has little confidence in the police.

So far, so depressing. But there are American
models for improving crime rates that could inspire
police policy in the UK and hope in its public. Key to
these innovations is the fact that American forces
are freer to try out new ideas, while the UK, in
common with many other countries, operates
national strategies that deny experimentation.

The control of the state over law enforcement is
a relatively recent development. The London
Metropolitan Police, the first modern force, was
created in 1829, and the development of organised,
publicly funded police forces was much slower in
other countries (Davies, 2002, pp. 152 –153). As in
many areas of public policy in Britain, there is still
little clear consensus on how best to police a free
society, or on the number of police we need. In the
meantime, crime figures and opinion polls speak
volumes. The most recent annual Home Office
figures showed a 3% rise in crime based on
interviews with members of the public and nearly
two-thirds of people thought that crime had
increased. Police-recorded crime, on the other hand,

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e c o n o m i c a f f a i r s d e c e m b e r 2 0 0 7 5

registered a 2% drop, making it clear that people do
not always go to the police when they have been a
victim of crime.

In a 2005 poll less than one in five
British people rated the police positively on
preventing or solving crime compared with nearly
half of Americans.

The public’s fears are well-founded. In 2004 the
number of violent crimes in this country topped a
million for the first time

and they continue to
rise – in 2006/07 they were 5% up on the previous
year.

Robberies of personal or business property in
England and Wales rocketed from 53,000 in 1992 to
121,000 by 2001/02. Of these robberies, 5,500 were
committed using weapons (Dennis

et al.

, 2003), and
five years later the number of armed burglaries had
reached record levels.

The total number of crimes
reported in 2002 was 5.8 million, compared with
1.7 million 30 years previously. All these figures
challenge the Home Office’s assertion that the
chance of being a crime victim is historically low.

Better policing

How do we best address citizens’ fears, bring crime
down, restore confidence in the police and work
towards a safer society consistent with liberal
principles?

Across the Atlantic, where big-city police chiefs
have more freedom, a number of highly effective
police chiefs have emerged over the past 15 years.
They have two things in common. Firstly, they are
willing to question received ideas and expose myths
about policing. Secondly, they are able to focus their
entire effort on preventing crime rather than
attempting to solve it long after the villains have
taken off. And their results show that it is not
necessary to recruit more officers in order to reduce
crime.

These ideas are not new. They echo London
Metropolitan Police founder Sir Robert Peel’s vision
for police conduct, outlined in his famous Nine
Principles of Policing. Peel believed that the police’s
primary goal should be to ‘prevent crime and
disorder’ and that the ‘test of police efficiency is the
absence of crime and disorder, not the visible
evidence of police action in dealing with it’.

It is
also easy to manipulate police success rates.
Reported crimes are a fraction of the actual total:
this means that the denominator of the clear-up rate
is artificially deflated. A 2004 survey showed that
38% of people do not report crimes, half of them
because they believe the police will do nothing,

and
a recent analysis of crime statistics suggested that
3 million crimes were omitted from official figures
because of a cap on offences against the same
person by the same perpetrator. For violent crimes,
this figure goes up to 83%.

But, in any case,
figures detailing crimes solved are no guide to
effectiveness – rather the opposite, as the basis of a
clear-up is failure to prevent a crime. The recent

trend for police to make arrests for trivial offences
in order to meet detection targets also distorts our
view of police prowess.

Exploding myths

Here are a number of key policing concepts that US
big-city police chiefs have shown to be deeply
flawed.

Myth 1: 999 policing is the best way to
fight crime

This is perhaps the most surprising myth of all. The
speedy response of emergency services to 999 calls
can work well for road accidents or fires when
firefighters or ambulance crews need to arrive
quickly. In the case of the police its usefulness is
questionable.

It’s easy to see why 999 became so attractive:
when it was introduced, it used modern technology
– radios and fast cars – in a bid to ‘keep up’ with
criminals. The message to the public is that the
police can be virtually omnipresent. The reality is
that officers race from scene to scene, while the
public feel frustrated at the lack of immediate results
and their necessarily rushed dealings with officers.
The average target response time is 12 minutes, so
any wrongdoers are usually long gone.

When every
local criminal knows the response times – and that
more than half the time the police do not meet that
target

– you might as well not bother.
Emergency-response policing does nothing to

allay fear of crime.

One study reveals that less than
3% of reports of serious crime lead to arrest resulting
from emergency response (Kelling and Coles, 1997).
It is perhaps the worst modern example of reactive,
‘warrior’ approach policing that fails to prevent
crime. Emergency response is crucial, but basing a
force’s whole strategy on it, as now, is not a viable
approach to law enforcement. It means officers have
already lost the battle; all they are doing is picking
up the pieces after a crime has taken place.

Another drawback is the overuse of 999. In
2004, 70% of all 999 calls were not emergencies.
To respond to this, the Home Office is piloting a
non-emergency hotline number – 101 – to alleviate
the strain on their resources.

It helps the public get
in touch with police or their local council over
non-urgent community safety issues, such as
vandalism, noise nuisance or anti-social behaviour.
Scottish forces have adopted a prioritisation system
for 999 calls in an attempt to improve their response
time to real emergencies.

Myth 2: private burglar alarms save
police time

In fact, responding to false private sector alarms is
an enormous waste of police time. Once an alarm is

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6 p o l i c i n g a l i b e r a l s o c i e t y

activated the call goes to a distant call centre. An
operator there then phones the household and, if
nobody responds with the correct password, officers
are immediately called. Usually, the alarm will cause
any burglars to flee before police arrive. Thus, the
burglar alarm has done its job and the police time
devoted to responding to the alarm is wasted.

Figures from Los Angeles provide a lesson in just
how many police man-hours burglar alarms actually
waste. As much as 15% of police patrol time is lost
responding to false call-outs to alarms, and the
chances of apprehending anyone are estimated at
close to zero. The Los Angeles Police Department
(LAPD) responds to about 136,000 alarms a year
and 90% of them are false.

To correct this, the
force decided to ignore most private residential and
business burglar alarms unless a third party – for
example, a homeowner or neighbour – could verify
that the alarm was valid.

Thames Valley officers have adopted a similar
policy, based on guidelines drawn up by the
Association of Chief Police Officers. If the force
receives three false alarms from the same source in a
year, it will not respond to further calls until the
system is upgraded. It now also refuses to send out
officers to investigate house alarms unless someone
is on the scene to indicate that a crime is being
committed.

Myth 3: police cars on random patrol are a
valuable deterrent

Urban areas are often sprawling, and for years police
authorities have argued that cars are the best way to
cover the most ground, make arrests and provide a
viable, visible deterrent. A US experiment, however,
proves the opposite. As far back as 1972, the Kansas
City, Missouri, police department gave one area of
the city the standard amount of car presence, and
doubled – sometimes even tripled – it in another,
while the third had almost none. The results sent
shock waves through police and criminological
circles: the crime levels in the three areas remained
almost identical (see Sparrow

et al.

, 1990). Random
police patrols do nothing to make the streets safer,
reassure the public, gather information or improve
trust between community and the authorities.
Rather, cars are cocoons – they prevent the police
from interacting with the public.

Myth 4: hiring more police reduces crime

Most people accept in good faith that hiring more
officers results in a safer public environment. If
there were no police, then crime would go up. Above
a certain number, however, the overall impact on
crime is negligible (Skolnick and Bayley, 1986). As
Skolnick and Bayley explain, ‘Variations in crime
and clearance rates are best predicted by social
conditions such as income, unemployment,

population, income distribution, and social
heterogeneity. We have learned that you can’t
simply throw money at law enforcement and expect
proportionate results’.

Alcohol consumption also
plays a part: the five countries to top the table for
the highest levels of crime in Europe – Ireland,
Britain, Estonia, Holland and Denmark – all have a
hard-drinking culture.

Yet hiring more and more
police officers has become the enduring quick fix of
law enforcement. Politicians endorse it to court
public favour; they are seen to be committed to the
‘war on crime’. In turn, senior police and their
officers can be guaranteed to line up behind any
demands for extra resources. The need, however,
is for better strategies for approaching crime
(Sparrow

et al.

, 1990, p. 14).

Myth 5: the police fight crime

Both the police and the public cherish this
assumption. Thanks to popular culture from

Dick
Tracy

Dirty Harry

NYPD Blue

, police forces
enjoy a public perception that is as far from reality
as Clint Eastwood is from PC Plod. Few police
officers have the chance to make high-profile arrests
or get into shoot-outs. Officers rarely encounter
directly the crimes that scare us most, notably
murder and rape (Skolnick and Bayley, 1986, p. 4).
Most importantly, arrest is rarely the result of
Sherlock Holmes-style deduction, with policemen
working forward from a set of clues to a suspect, the
identity of whom is always a surprise. In 99% of
cases police make an arrest when a friend or relative
tells them who committed the crime.

They then
work backwards, usually to a known villain. Most
police work is routine or involves administering
emergency assistance.

The idea that police are engaged in a war against
criminals allows the public somehow to relieve itself
of its own duty in preventing criminal activity. It
also enables police officers to adopt an ‘us versus the
bad guys’ approach to their job which in turn sees
the ordinary citizen as removed from the process,
or even as slowing them down.

This attitude can be traced back to O. W.
Wilson, the pre-eminent police theorist of the
twentieth century. Wilson and his peers believed
that policing should shift its focus from prevention
to criminal apprehension. They were responsible
for moving policing away from its earlier,
community-driven vision, adopting a more
militaristic approach. A consequence of this
so-called ‘reform’ model was that police officers had
less and less contact with the public and forces
became more bureaucratic (Kelling and Coles, 1997).

Wilson’s ‘scientific’ approach to police work
gained popularity all over the world. Rapid response
became more and more important until it was the
standard practice. Clear divisions of rank and
command became the norm. Street officers were

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seen as being similar to line workers in a factory.
They were trusted with the simple, residual work,
and could be changed or moved around to another
part of the ‘factory’ whenever it suited command.

Parallels can be drawn with the work of Frederick
Taylor and his scientific models of management in
industry. Just as many in industry have turned their
backs on Taylor in recent decades, so we shall see
below that the more successful police forces are now
turning away from Wilson.

Successful ways of preventing crime

Despite the long-standing influence of Wilson’s
ideas, and some criminologists’ assertion that crime
is a social problem and therefore unassailable by
officers, there has been real and practical progress
made in policing in recent years in the USA. Chiefs
and commissioners have dramatically reduced crime
rates and, as a result, reinvigorated cities and rebuilt
the public’s trust in their officers. Not surprisingly,
their methods owed little to ‘scientific’ policing or
criminological trends.

Getting out and about

Ed Davis achieved a 70% drop in crime in the late
1990s as head of the Lowell, Massachusetts, Police
Department thanks to three major initiatives.

Firstly, he decentralised his police force, opening
small and highly visible police shops on city main
streets, rather than having one massive and
imposing police building. Secondly, he gave his
officers control over their own ‘turf ’: officers were
regularly assigned to the same areas and were
expected to take responsibility for them. This is in
stark contrast to many British police forces that
rotate officers from area to area, depriving them of
any chance of building rapport with local citizens or
even understanding the layout of the streets. Davis
took officers out of their cars and put them on the
streets on foot and on cycles – solo. He reports that
the amount of low-grade but vital intelligence
coming into his department exploded. Finally, he
committed his officers to being preventive rather
than reactive. Lowell’s officers were taught not only
to see crime but also the conditions that allow it to
flourish.

He explains:

‘Problem solving is the process we teach line-level
police officers to engage in when adopting the
community policing policy. It teaches them to be
observant of crime but also to look for those
conditions that lead to criminal activity. Disorder is
their main focus. Graffiti, obstreperous youth,
abandoned cars, family dysfunction all fall into this
category. We teach our officers to employ the SARA
method that is familiar to many professions,
especially social service agencies. Scanning, Analysis,

Responding and Assessing the response are the
methods that our police use in determining the best
way to deal with the issues that confront them. It is a
very powerful model that gets the officers out of the
mindset of arrest and prosecution. Prevention is key
to this process. It also empowers officers to use city
services, for instance, giving them official blessing to
go across boundaries that existed before.’

Devil in the detail

William Bratton is head of the Los Angeles Police
Department. He previously came to international
renown as the commissioner of the New York Police
Department (NYPD), where, during his 27-month
tenure, felony went down by almost 40% and
murder by 50%. Bratton, along with former mayor
Rudolph Giuliani, is largely credited with restoring
New York’s reputation as a top-class world city.
Bratton taught his officers to home-in on the little
things, from ‘squeegee merchants’ to fare evasion,
from vandalism to graffiti, believing that it was these
petty, so-called victimless crimes which encouraged
larger crime in the long run. This radical policy was
variously known as ‘Broken Windows’, ‘Zero
Tolerance’ and ‘Community Policing’. Bratton also
dismantled the old-boys’-club approach to
promotion and instead rewarded hard work, talent
and creativity (Bratton with Knobler, 1998).

His CompStat system was an equally famous
innovation. Bratton held twice-weekly meetings
with precinct commanders and other key staff built
around computer-collected crime statistics. These
meetings became instrumental in New York’s
transformation. Many high-ranking officials had
never previously been called on to discuss or defend
in public their records and their tactics. The flip side
was that these same commanders and their officers
were being allowed to follow their own discretion
and professional instincts. Police commanders were
being trusted with more and more responsibility for
their areas, and they were expected to produce
results – both in terms of crime prevention on the
streets and strategies that could be shared with
peers (ibid., pp. 223 – 229). This management
model, which also included the assignment of
permanent turfs or beats, is similar in concept to
giving property rights in the private sector and then
expecting a return.

No nonsense

The first black police chief in Charleston, South
Carolina, Reuben M. Greenberg, became a media
regular thanks to his straightforward, down-to-earth
approach to crime and punishment. Greenberg
relied on simple principles such as consistent police
presence, respect for the community, and a
preventive approach to criminal activity. His tactics
helped turn around the city.

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8 p o l i c i n g a l i b e r a l s o c i e t y

Greenberg did not believe that arrest is the key
to lowering crime rates. For example, by simply
reducing motorcycle parking and cleaning up a
diner favoured by bikers in Charleston, he was able
to remove the threat of a Hell’s Angels gang moving
in. Greenberg succeeded in defusing a potential
criminal situation without verbal confrontation or
physical violence (Greenberg, 1989, pp. 106 –107).

Graduate opportunities

When, 15 years ago, Chief T. Bowman of Arlington,
Texas, announced that every officer had to have a
full four-year university degree, critics told him that
women and ethnic minorities would be hard hit.
Interestingly, Chief Bowman is black and has a PhD.
He stuck to his guns, even encouraging Master’s
degrees. Now, with women making up more than
17% of its officers, Arlington is above the national
average of 12% of female officers. The police
department’s sworn staff is more than 30% ethnic-
minority, making it one of the most integrated
departments in the USA.

Hand-in-hand with this went an emphasis on
moving decision-making downwards and giving
officers effective decentralised ‘property rights’.
Bowman broke his department into four separate
geographical areas, giving teams 24-hours-a-day,
365-days-a-year responsibility for their allocated
area. Lower-ranked but highly qualified officers are
making decisions normally made higher up, and he
is attracting a calibre of young graduates who would
be unlikely to join a department with lower
educational standards. Indeed, national agencies
regularly raid his department for staff. While crime
fell in Arlington (by 4% in 2002), it rose in
neighbouring Dallas (up 1% in 2002) and soared in
Fort Worth (increasing 11% in the same year).

Applying these lessons to the UK

These four examples have a number of common
characteristics:

1. They show leaders who trusted the
professionalism of their officers, giving them
more and more discretion as to how they
handled crime in their area.

2. The officers were expected to foster better
relations with the community and move away
from the idea that they were the ones tackling
crime and that citizens were merely potential
victims.

3. Crucially, all these forces, not just Bratton’s,
were committed to ‘zero-tolerance’ policing.
Police were trained to prevent and address all
crime in their areas, not merely serious
offences. This is the opposite of, say, the
London approach to policing, where major
crime is the focus and smaller crime is expected

to sort itself out (Dennis

et al.

, 2003, pp. 7, 16).
The US experience teaches that ‘sweating the
small stuff ’ seriously impacts on the big issues.

What these officers and their men accomplished is
not a distant pipe-dream. Our own police, both in
the capital and elsewhere, can learn from and take
advantage of their successes, and they can begin
now by introducing the following simple measures.

Increase the police presence sensed by
the public

This does not have to mean hiring more officers. It
could just as easily mean relying less on squad cars
and putting officers in regular contact with the
people, either on foot or on bikes. Officers should be
given the chance to work in areas for longer periods
of time, establishing a solid rapport with the local
community. This type of police presence is far more
immediate, personal and helpful. It is also a far
greater deterrent to crime than anything else.

The author’s own experience in Westminster
shows how detached many Metropolitan Police
officers are from the areas they patrol. When one
day he asked two policemen on his local beat
whether there were any demonstrations planned
around Parliament that day, one of them replied:
‘Dunno, mate, we’re from Catford.’

Foot patrols raise officer morale (Skolnick and
Bayley, 1986, p. 216). Davis in particular recognised
the importance of this and, early in his command,
made the Chief of Patrol his official number two,
sending a signal to his whole force that patrol is a
route to the top and not some chore you do for three
years before moving on to more prestigious work.
Indeed, many officers prefer the beat to being in a
squad car or inside, saying it allows them to feel
better about their jobs while feeling closer to the
community.

Officers must patrol alone wherever possible

A US study has proved that solo car patrols are no
more dangerous than working in pairs, possibly
because police are more inclined to take risks when
partnered. Police departments that have adopted
this measure have improved their response time to
officers who need assistance (ibid., p. 101). In many
areas in the UK, however, dangers to police are
negligible, even if there is anti-social and low-grade
criminal behaviour.

Foot and bike officers can be sent on solo patrols
too. The immediate benefit is that these officers,
without the temptation of a fellow officer to talk to,
now talk to the public. In central London officers are
often seen walking in pairs, or standing in groups
deep in conversation. This gives rise to three
problems: they are looking at each other, not at their
surroundings; they are not interacting with the

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public; and the effective police presence is halved
(at best). In London, concerned local residents, who
have seen crime rocket in their areas, have turned
to private security guards who work alone and
interact with the public.

34, 35

Solo patrols establish communication and trust,
and the public not only feels more comfortable with
a consistent and visible police presence, but also is
more inclined to share information and tips that can
lead to crime prevention and arrests.

Eliminate as much paperwork and court time
as possible

Home Office figures show that officers spend only
about 14% of their time on the street and since 2004
police have had to fill in a foot-long, 40-question
form every time they stop and question someone.

If all we did was double that 14% and put officers
who now patrol in pairs out on the streets solo,
we would achieve an instant a four-fold increase in
police presence. But who would do the paperwork?
Why not civilians? This is a solution attempted by
some US police departments. It is controversial
because many officers fear that volunteer or lower-
paid civilian assistance may eventually lead to lower
police salaries. But it has proven extremely effective.
In Houston, Texas, civilians help with police admin
work by taking on smaller tasks such as traffic
accident follow-up reports, freeing up officers’ time.
Also key to this idea’s success is that many of these
civilians are insiders in their community, and can
be valuable sources of information and liaison
(ibid., pp. 217 – 220). Many police report a higher
level of job satisfaction since they can focus on the
parts of the job they thought they were signing up
to do. This policy allows officers to be officers –
an idea surely behind the recent recruitment drive
for special/volunteer constables in the Metropolitan
Police. Indeed, such has been the success of Sir
Ian Blair’s initiative that, after proper checks and
training, some 500 volunteers reopened 17
previously closed London police stations. And
this quickly growing phenomenon of volunteer
civilians helping carry the load is not limited to
London or to manning desks. Volunteer
accountants have also reportedly been recruited
to help the Fraud Squad.

Open one-stop cop shops

Police and retailers are keen to set up short-term
jails in shopping centres and sporting venues to deal
with thieves, anti-social behaviour or football
hooligans. Discussions are already under way on
building a mini-prison inside Selfridges department
store in London’s Oxford Street. These units would
be manned by police and used to process those
suspected of high-volume crimes such as shoplifting
without having to travel to a police station. They

would enable officers to get back on the streets more
quickly after making an arrest.

Such a move shows
a refreshing commitment to police decentralisation
and re-establishing a visible police presence.

Admit failure

Police officers in Britain have to acknowledge fully
the failure of their past crime-reduction strategies.
Dealing with serious crime in the fragile hope that
smaller crime would drop naturally has not worked
(Dennis

et al.

, 2003, pp. 7 – 8). Conversely, the
results of so-called zero-tolerance policing speak for
themselves. Aggressive begging, graffiti and verbal
abuse are not serious crimes but they upset the
public and have been proven to lead to higher levels
of overall crime. When people see the little things
being allowed to slide, it is a natural progression
to more serious and violent wrongdoing. It
undermines trust in the social structure that
maintains order (Wilson and Kelling, 1983).

Adopting true zero tolerance will require more than
mere lip-service to ideas of ‘community policing’.

Conclusion: major institutional
change

Crime may be inevitable but it can be dramatically
reduced. Altering the approach of the British police
and their political masters is a long-term
commitment, but the precedent is there. In London
the Metropolitan Police has taken some positive
steps and the appointment of Paul F. Evans, former
Chief of the Boston Police Department, to head the
Home Office’s Police Standards Unit was a good
sign.

His strategies in Boston helped cut violent
crime by 34%, murder by 68% and burglary
by 40%.

Heads of police authorities must stop pushing
the more-money-and-more-officers agenda. Britain
can be a much safer place to live with the resources
available to its police now. What works is insightful
leadership, a willingness to trust the officer on the
street while holding commanders accountable, and
a commitment to involving the community in
preventing and detecting crime. It is all about
incentives, property rights and personal
accountability.

Change will come about only sporadically unless
there is major institutional change. Policing may
always take place in a ‘second-best’ environment as
far as liberal economists are concerned. So to
develop effective policing strategies we have to
develop the structures that, as far as possible, use
market-type incentives. Most liberal economists
share the view that services that have to be provided
by the state should be provided by the lowest level of
public authority possible. In the case of policing that
should be district or city councils or unitary
authorities under our current local government

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10 p o l i c i n g a l i b e r a l s o c i e t y

structures. If structures that provide even smaller
areas of meaningful local government can be
developed, so much the better.

Local authorities should have responsibility for
raising their own finance for the police, for setting
the pay and conditions of their police service
(including pension benefits) and for developing
their own policing strategies. In such an
environment innovation will be copied more
effectively and the local electorate will understand
exactly who is responsible for policing and cast their
votes accordingly. Parish councils could have the
option of levying supplementary policing charges in
return for extra policing – or have the option of
providing their own additional arrangements. There
will be straightforward competitive comparison of
crime reduction strategies, costs and success rates
between similar and adjacent areas. Of course, there
may be some forms of crime for which regional and
national police forces are necessary – for example,
kidnapping and terrorism. Just as there are
hypermarkets and corner shops, we need different
kinds of police forces to deal with different kinds of
crime. There should also be co-operation between
neighbouring forces – in a competitive environment,
where failure is punished and success rewarded,
co-operation pays.

Private policing should be a major part of the
solution too. Private firms are already providing a
significant proportion of security services. The
benefits of policing can often be confined within
the boundaries of particular estates or areas that
are privately owned or controlled by housing
associations. Gated communities could negotiate
with local authorities to provide some or all of their
own policing, in return for a reduction in local taxes.
Indeed, at the end of 2004, the Royal Institute of
Chartered Surveyors reported a ‘mushrooming’ in
the use of private security firms to police everything
from wealthy areas and gated communities to
council and social housing.

And in June 2005,
the private security industry estimated that 50
neighbourhoods in London and the South-East were
employing private patrols and that the number was
growing.

Alternatively, local authorities could provide
grants to housing associations or private estate
owners who provide their own policing (see
Johnston, 2004). And better development of
property rights would enable yet-to-be-envisaged
private solutions to policing. Governments will need
to rid themselves of the conceit that they can impose
the best methods of doing things.

Governments will have to accept ‘postcode
policing’. Policing methods will be better in some
areas than in others. But constructive innovation
and competitive pressure will ensure that the best
ideas prevail and those that fail will be consigned to
the dustbin, a far cry from the current situation.
Only radical reform of policing will ensure that the

police return to their proper role – that of effectively
preventing crime.

1. ‘A Policeman’s Lot is a Waste of Time’,

Daily Telegraph

,
20 July 2007.

2. ‘Just One in 58 Police is Patrolling the Streets’,

Sunday
Telegraph

, 17 March 2007.
3. ‘Only One in 40 Officers Free to Answer Calls’,

Daily
Telegraph

, 30 March 2007.
4. Ben Leapman,

Daily Telegraph

, 22 January 2006, at
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/
news/2006/01/22/npolice22.xml.

5. ‘Police “Pressured to Make Silly Arrests just to Meet
Targets” ’,

The Times

, 15 May 2007.
6. ‘Britain Near the Top of European Crime League, UN

Study Says’,

The Times

, 6 February 2007.
7. http://www.ft.com/cms/s/31bfef8c-361a-11dc-ad42-

0000779fd2ac.html.
8. http://www.harrisinteractive.com/harris_poll/

index.asp?PID=605.
9. Bob Roberts, ‘Lawless UK’, www.mirror.co.uk,

22 July 2004.
10. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6906554.stm.
11. http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/crime/

article2186579.ece.
12. This example of Peel’s Nine Principles was taken from

www.safe-nz.org.nz/Articles/peels.htm. An astonishing
and growing number of police department sites around
the world now feature Peel’s Nine Principles
prominently.

13. Hugh Dougherty, ‘Third of Crime Not Reported’,

Evening Standard

, 29 April 2004.
14. http://www.civitas.org.uk/pdf/CivitasReviewJun07 .
15. See ‘Emergency Response Time Below Average’,

www.walthamforestguardian.co.uk, 23 February 2004.
16. http://www.thisislocallondon.co.uk/news/topstories/

display.var.709208.0.police_response_times_target_
missed.php.

17. Ed Davis, former Superintendent of Police in Lowell,
Massachusetts, in a speech to the Institute of Economic
Affairs, 6 November 2001 (hereinafter, the Davis
speech). By 1999 Lowell had experienced the biggest
decrease in crime of any large-sized US city during the
1990s.

18. http://www.101.gov.uk/index.html.
19. Ian Johnston, ‘Police Plan to Put Most 999 Calls “On

Hold” ’, http://news.scotsman.com, 11 January 2004.
20. Mariel Garza, ‘Alarm Plan: Police May Quit Reacting’,

www.dailynews.com, 13 December 2002.
21. http://www.thamesvalley.police.uk/news_info/freedom/

policies_procedures/alarms.htm.
22. The authors base this argument on the work of Clark

and Heal (1979) and Morris and Heal (1981).
23. ‘Britain Tops Crime League for Break-ins and Assaults’,

Daily Telegraph

, 6 February 2007.
24. Davis speech.
25. Ibid., pp. 77, 80.
26. For a full discussion of ‘Taylorism’ and the new

challenge of market process management, see Cowen
and Parker (1997) and Parker and Stacey (1994).

27. Information about Davis’s success in cutting crime can
be found at http://www.iea.org.uk/record.jsp?type=
news&ID=107.

28. Davis speech.
29. Davis e-mail to the author, January 2004.
30. This text is also an excellent account of how politics (in

this case, Bratton’s difficult relationship with Rudolph
Giuliani) can derail police progress.

31. Arlington Police Department figures as at 16 August
2007, Public Information Request.

32. Based on a personal visit by the author to the Arlington,
Texas, Police Department in January 2003, for which he
thanks Chief T. Bowman.

33. Ty Klassen, ‘Beat Cops in West Broadway’, www.
westbroadway.mb.ca, August/September 2003.

34. Harriet Sergeant, ‘The Police Have Failed Us – So We’ve
Hired a 6ft 6in Security Guard’, www.telegraph.co.uk,
5 April 2004. The author’s experience of police foot
patrols in Westminster endorses this. They are often

ecaf_772.fm Page 10 Monday, November 12, 2007 5:40 PM

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/01/22/npolice22.xml

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/31bfef8c-361a-11dc-ad42-0000779fd2ac.html

http://www.harrisinteractive.com/harris_poll/index.asp?PID=605

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6906554.stm

http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/crime/article2186579.ece

http://www.civitas.org.uk/pdf/CivitasReviewJun07

http://www.thisislocallondon.co.uk/news/topstories/display.var.709208.0.police_response_times_target_missed.php

http://www.101.gov.uk/index.html

http://news.scotsman.com

http://www.thamesvalley.police.uk/news_info/freedom/policies_procedures/alarms.htm

http://www.iea.org.uk/record.jsp?type=news&ID=107

www.mirror.co.uk

www.safe-nz.org.nz/Articles/peels.htm

www.walthamforestguardian.co.uk

www.dailynews.com

www.westbroadway.mb.ca

www.telegraph.co.uk

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seen heads down, leaning towards each other, talking
about issues such as pensions and pay, holidays and
partners, or their superiors.

35. ‘I’m a NIMBY, Protect Me’,

The Times

, 29 May 2007
(http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/crime/
article1850921.ece).

36. ‘Just One in 58 Police is Patrolling the Streets’,

Sunday
Telegraph

, 17 March 2007.
37. ‘Volunteer Spirit Gives Blue Lamps a Chance to Glow

Again’,

Daily Telegraph

, 29 November 2004. See http://
www.metpolicecareers.co.uk/default.asp?action=
article&ID=35.

38. ‘Police Want Tesco Jails’,

The Times

, 1 August 2007.
39. This now-famous article helped popularise the idea of

zero tolerance, or what is sometimes called ‘Broken
Window’ policing. It is based on the idea that a single
broken window in a neighbourhood can invite
further crime problems by creating an air of social
uncertainty and enforcing an idea of few active
authorities.

40. ‘Police Forces Face Shake-up’, http://news.bbc.co.uk,
9 September 2003.

41. ‘Private Security Firms Join Battle on the Streets’,

Daily
Telegraph

, 2 December 2004.
42. ‘Growth in Private Police Forces’, 3 June 2005 (http://

www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/article-19063721-details/
Growth+in+%27private+police+forces%27/
article.do;jsessionid=MPPFGxvbhBldBy2d43q2zt6cmBXJ
55Q5jRGwBPvFG2xyWzpytn3l!71957603!1407319226!
7001!-1).

References

Bratton, W. with P. Knobler (1998)

Turnaround

, New York:
Random House.

Clark, R. V. G. and K. H. Heal (1979) ‘Police Effectiveness in
Dealing with Crime: Some Current British Research’,

Police Journal

, January, pp. 24 – 41.
Cowen, T. and D. Parker (1997)

Markets in the Firm

, Hobart
Paper 134, London: Institute of Economic Affairs.

Davies, S. (2002) ‘The Private Provision of Police in the
Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries’, in D. T. Beito,
P. Gordon and A. Tabarrok (eds.)

The Voluntary City

,
Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.

Dennis, N., G. Erdos, D. Robinson and G. L. Kelling (2003)

The Failure of Britain’s Police

, London: Civitas.
Greenberg, R. (1989)

Let’s Take Back Our Streets!

, Chicago,
IL: Contemporary Books.

Johnston, P. (2004) ‘Additions to the Bill’,

, 41,
Summer, York: Joseph Rowntree Foundation, pp. 7 – 9.

Kelling, G. L. and C. M. Coles (1997)

Fixing Broken Windows:
Restoring Order and Reducing Crime in our Communities

,
New York: Touchstone.

Morris, P. and K. Heal (1981)

Crime Control and the Police:
A Review of Research

, Home Office Research Study
No. 67, London: HMSO.

Parker, D. and R. Stacey (1994)

Chaos, Management and
Economics

, Hobart Paper 125, London: Institute of
Economic Affairs.

Skolnick, J. H. and D. H. Bayley (1986)

The New Blue Line:
Police Innovation in Six American Cities

, New York: The
Free Press.

Sparrow, M. K., M. H. Moore and D. M. Kennedy (1990)

Beyond 9/11: A New Era for Policing

, New York: Basic
Books.

Wilson, J. Q. and G. L. Kelling (1983) ‘The Police and
Neighbourhood Safety’,

The Atlantic

, March, pp. 29 – 38.

John Blundell

is Director General and Ralph Harris
Fellow at the Institute of Economic Affairs
( jblundell@iea.org.uk).

ecaf_772.fm Page 11 Monday, November 12, 2007 5:40 PM

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/crime/article1850921.ece

http://www.metpolicecareers.co.uk/default.asp?action=article&ID=35

http://news.bbc.co.uk

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/article-19063721-details/Growth+in+%27private+police+forces%27/article.do;jsessionid=MPPFGxvbhBldBy2d43q2zt6cmBXJ55Q5jRGwBPvFG2xyWzpytn3l!71957603!1407319226!7001!-1

SHAWFINAL 2/4/2008 2:21:06 PM

SYMPOSIUM ON PURSUING RACIAL
FAIRNESS IN CRIMINAL JUSTICE: TWENTY

YEARS AFTER MCCLESKEY v. KEMP

MARCH 2–3, 2007

KEYNOTE ADDRESS: MAINTAINING HOPE
IN THE STRUGGLE AGAINST THE

CONSTITUTIONAL TOLERANCE OF RACIAL
DISCRIMINATION

Theodore M. Shaw *

I want to focus not only on the death penalty in my remarks,
but also on the broader role of race in the criminal justice system and
McCleskey’s role in insulating systemic racial discrimination from
attack.1 Along the way, I want to make some observations about the

* Theodore M. Shaw is Director-Counsel and President of the NAACP
Legal Defense and Educational Fund Inc. (LDF). Shaw joined the LDF in 1982.
He directed its education docket and litigated school desegregation, housing
discrimination, voting rights, capital punishment, and other civil rights cases. He
was lead counsel for black and Latino students in Gratz v. Bollinger, 539 U.S. 244
(2003). Shaw has taught constitutional law, civil procedure, and civil rights at the
University of Michigan Law School, and is currently an adjunct professor of law
at Columbia University Law School. These remarks were delivered at the
symposium entitled “Pursuing Racial Fairness in the Administration of Justice:
Twenty Years After McCleskey v. Kemp,” held by the NAACP Legal Defense and
Educational Fund and Columbia Law School on Mar. 2–3, 2007.

1. McCleskey v. Kemp, 481 U.S. 279 (1987).

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60 COLUMBIA HUMAN RIGHTS LAW REVIEW [39:59

gratuitously cramped constitutional jurisprudence that has come to
be applied to race discrimination by the Supreme Court and the
lower federal courts, and that particularly has been applied to racial
discrimination claims brought by African Americans and other
people of color. At the same time that this cramped reading of the
Constitution’s Fourteenth Amendment Equal Protection Clause2 has
been applied to those claims, the Supreme Court and other courts
have demonstrated their willingness to loosen constitutional
strictures when it comes to racial discrimination claims brought by
white plaintiffs.3

Now, that sounds like sour grapes, and I readily acknowledge
that it is. So, there’s a piece of this that I want to address first—the
sour grapes piece—but I believe it to be wholly legitimate. Why
spend all this time on sour grapes? The workhorse anti-
discrimination provision of the Constitution, of course, has become
the Equal Protection Clause.4 In the infancy of the Fourteenth
Amendment, the Privileges and Immunities Clause5 had more life
than the Equal Protection Clause.6 In fact, if you go back and look at
Plessy v. Ferguson, there was more of a discourse about Privileges
and Immunities than there was about Equal Protection.7 But in time

2. U.S. Const. amend. XIV, § 1.
3. See, e.g., Bd. of Regents of the Univ. of Cal. v. Bakke, 438 U.S. 265

(1978) (holding a special admissions program reserving 16 of 100 spots for
disadvantaged minority students to be illegal); cf. Shaw v. Reno, 509 U.S. 630
(1993) (allowing white plaintiff to challenge legislative creation of majority-
minority voting districts); Nw, Fla. Chapter of the Associated. Gen. Contractors of
America v. City of Jacksonville, 508 U.S. 656 (1993) (holding that association of
general contractors had standing to mount equal protection challenge to
constitutionality of ordinance according preferential treatment to minority-owned
businesses).

4. U.S. Const. amend. XIV, § 1.
5. Id.
6. Justice Miller’s opinion in the Slaughter-House Cases in 1873 was the

first occasion the Supreme Court had to rule on a Fourteenth Amendment claim.
Slaughter-House Cases, 83 U.S. 36 (1873). The Privileges and Immunities Clause
subsequently enjoyed a short life before it fell into disuse. The Supreme Court
rarely found a violation of the Equal Protection Clause until the 1950s. In fact,
Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes referred to the Equal Protection Clause as “the
last resort of constitutional arguments.” Buck v. Bell, 274 U.S. 200, 208 (1927).

7. Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537, 543–48 (1896) (holding that “the
enforced separation of the races, as applied to the internal commerce of the state,
neither abridges the privileges or immunities of the colored man, deprives him of
his property without due process of law, nor denies him the equal protection of
the laws, within the meaning of the fourteenth amendment” and noting that the

SHAW FINAL 2/4/2008

2007] RACIAL FAIRNESS IN CRIMINAL JUSTICE 61

the Equal Protection Clause did come to be the workhorse of the
Constitution when it comes to discrimination.8

The Equal Protection Clause says, of course, that “no state
shall . . . deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal
protection of the laws.”9 Very simple. Note that the word
“intentionally” does not appear before the word “deny” or anywhere
else in Section I of the Fourteenth Amendment. The Supreme Court
has, nonetheless, found an intent requirement to be an indispensable
element of a Fourteenth Amendment claim.10 The intent standard, by
definition and logic, admits the existence of a whole category of racial
discrimination that the Constitution does not reach. In other words,
the Constitution tolerates racial discrimination. In Board of Regents
of the University of California v. Bakke, the Supreme Court identified
a whole category of discrimination that it called “societal
discrimination.”11 I often say that this is discrimination for which no
one is responsible and for which there is no remedy. The Court
wrings its hands about it and then washes its hands of it. Nobody
responsible, no remedy—the Constitution tolerates racial
discrimination.

In Brown the Supreme Court said, “[t]o separate [African-
American children] from others of similar age and qualifications
solely because of their race generates a feeling of inferiority as to
their status in the community that may affect their hearts and minds
in a way unlikely ever to be undone,” and concluded that “in the field
of public education the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’ has no place,”

Fourteenth Amendment secures positive rights “by way of prohibition against
state laws and state programs affecting those rights and privileges”).

8. See, e.g., Brown v. Bd. of Educ., 347 U.S. 483 (1954) (holding segregation
of children in a public school based on race was a violation of the Equal
Protection Clause); Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1 (1967) (finding that statutes
preventing marriages between persons based solely on race were violations of the
Equal Protection Clause).

9. U.S. Const. amend. XIV, § 1.
10. See Washington v. Davis, 426 U.S. 229, 239 (1976) (upholding the

constitutionality of police officer promotion scheme with racially discriminatory
impact but no proven racially discriminatory purpose).

11. Bd. of Regents of the Univ. of Cal. v. Bakke, 438 U.S. 265, 296, 307–10
(1978) (asserting that “[n]o one denies the regrettable fact that there has been
societal discrimination in this country” but referring to “societal discrimination”
as “an amorphous concept of injury that may be ageless in its reach into the
past”).

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62 COLUMBIA HUMAN RIGHTS LAW REVIEW [39:59

and “[s]eparate educational facilities are inherently unequal.”12 Our
school desegregation jurisprudence has since adopted a de jure/de
facto distinction—nowhere is this distinction written into the
Constitution, for those who believe strictly in original intent, but
nonetheless there it is in our constitutional jurisprudence.13 The de
facto distinction, the whole term “de facto segregation,” is a curious
concept given the history of how American communities came to be
segregated. Segregation of African Americans, as manifested in
housing and schools, did not happen accidentally, or serendipitously,
in cities and communities across the United States. It is the
consequence of decades and decades of discrimination by
governmental actors on the state, local, and federal levels that,
combined with the deeds of private actors, created the framework for
segregation we maintain today. But in any event, de facto
discrimination is not actionable. The Constitution tolerates racial
discrimination.

Black and brown students in 2007 are heavily segregated by
race and by economic status, and are in inferior schools that are often
pipelines to jails and prisons throughout our country.14 Our
jurisprudence holds that this segregation, because some districts
maintained desegregated schools for a period of time under court
supervision, is somehow unconnected to our long history of
segregation and discrimination in public schools now, leaving this
segregation and this inequality unreachable by law. The Constitution
tolerates racial discrimination under this jurisprudence.

And then, of course, there is McCleskey, which accepts for the
purposes of adjudication the legitimacy of the Baldus study and finds
that neither the Fourteenth Amendment nor the Eighth Amendment

12. Brown, 347 U.S. at 494–95.
13. See Keyes v. Sch. Dist. No. 1, Denver, Colo. 413 U.S. 189 (1973)

(emphasizing “purpose or intent to segregate” as the differentiating factor
between de jure and de facto segregation); Freeman v. Pitts, 503 U.S. 467, 493
(1992) (finding that the requirements for eliminating de facto segregation are less
strict than the requirements for eliminating de jure segregation); Parents
Involved in Cmty. Schs. v. Seattle Sch. Dist. No. 1, 127 S.Ct. 2738, 2761 (2007)
(further discussing the distinction between de facto and de jure segregation).

14. See generally Gary Orfield et al., The Civil Rights Project at Harvard
University, Losing Our Future: How Minority Youth are Being Left Behind by
the Graduation Rate Crisis (2004), available at http://www.urban.org/
publications/410936.html (finding that, controlling for poverty, the level of
nonwhite students at a school is correlated with higher dropout rates and a
higher likelihood of a prison sentence).

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2007] RACIAL FAIRNESS IN CRIMINAL JUSTICE 63

was violated.15 I continue to believe that perhaps the most pernicious
part of McCleskey is the majority’s observation that the racial
disparities that were spotlighted by the Baldus study were not
limited to capital cases, and that, therefore, the court couldn’t do
anything about them, and shouldn’t.16 The notion that the fact that
racial discrimination is systemic renders it non-actionable should be
stunning. In fact, in litigation, what it means is that the more
systemic the showing, the more certain the loss. It is a shameful
jurisprudence that ought to make any fair-minded person seethe
with anger against the injustice of our constitutional tolerance of
racial discrimination—but of course the fault lies not with the
Constitution, but rather with ourselves. And by that I mean with the
judges and the justices who created this cramped reading of the
Constitution, with those who teach and practice law who yield
unquestioning and uncritical of this jurisprudence, and all who
accept it. There is nothing written into the Constitution that requires
it, but there it is nonetheless.

And for those of us who accept the notion that we need to
play within the sandbox that the conservative Supreme Court
decisions have created, it creates a dilemma for us. We’re lawyers.
We operate within the law. We respect the institution that is the
Supreme Court and we respect the lower federal courts. I am not
advocating that we disrespect our system of adjudicating cases or the
judiciary itself. I am advocating that we cannot accept the principle
that the Constitution tolerates racial discrimination simply because
we have had judges and justices on the courts that, in their time,
when the issues came to them, were not able to find their way to a
vigorous and aggressive interpretation of the Constitution that does
not tolerate racial discrimination.

We make these arguments all the time in our cases. We made
them in Bakke.17 We made them in the Grutter and Gratz cases.18 We

15. McCleskey, 481 U.S. at 313.
16. Id. at 314–19.
17. Bakke, 438 U.S. 265 (1978) (holding that a white applicant must be

admitted to a state medical school because the school could not prove that he
would have been rejected absent a program to fill 16 of 100 spots with
disadvantaged minority youth); see Brief of NAACP Legal Defense Fund as
Amicus Curiae in Support of Petitioners, Bakke, 438 U.S. 265 (No. 76-811).

18. Grutter v. Bollinger, 539 U.S. 306 (2003) (holding a state law school
admissions program that considered race for the purpose of achieving student
body diversity did not violate the Fourteenth Amendment); Gratz v. Bollinger,

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64 COLUMBIA HUMAN RIGHTS LAW REVIEW [39:59

continue to make them at every opportunity. And I know that
sometimes people view us as howling in the wind, and think that
nobody is paying attention, perhaps. But I believe that we have to
continue to stand against an interpretation of the Constitution that
leaves black, brown, and other people of color unprotected by the
Fourteenth Amendment, or by other constitutional provisions.

If I had more time, I would tell you a little bit more about the
sour grapes that I have with respect to how the Constitution is
interpreted more liberally in the so-called “reverse discrimination
cases.” But let me give you two quick examples. Shaw v. Reno was a
case in which the Supreme Court found that white voters had
standing to bring an “analytically distinct” equal protection claim
challenging legislative creation of majority-minority districts in
North Carolina, even though white voting strength had not been
diluted.19 There was no pre-existing cause of action for the kind of
claim that was brought before the Court. Interestingly enough, in
Shaw the Court cited Wright v. Rockefeller20 for the proposition that
our Constitution commanded the welding together of all the different
people in this country, and used it as a battering ram against
majority-minority districts that were drawn in the face of racially
polarized voting.21 If you read the Court’s opinion in Shaw, you would
think that there was an affirmative duty imposed by the Constitution
to integrate. Well, the Legal Defense Fund has been fighting to
integrate this society since well before 1954, and frankly we are one
of the few organizations that is fighting to do it today—see the two
cases in the Supreme Court pending now out of Louisville, Kentucky
and Seattle, Washington involving the constitutionality of voluntary

539 U.S. 244 (2003) (holding that state university’s admissions program was not
sufficiently tailored to achieve a legitimate state objective and thus violated the
Equal Protection Clause); see Brief of NAACP Legal Defense Fund as Amicus
Curiae in Support of Respondents, Grutter, 539 U.S. 306 (No. 02-241).

19. Shaw v. Reno, 509 U.S. 630, 652 (1993) (noting that “[n]othing in the
decision precludes white voters (or voters of any other race) from bringing the
analytically distinct claim that a reapportionment plan rationally cannot be
understood as anything other than an effort to segregate citizens into separate
voting districts on the basis of race without sufficient justification.”).

20. Wright v. Rockefeller, 376 U.S. 52, 58 (1964) (deferring to trial court
finding of failure to show that redistricting scheme was “the product of a state
contrivance to segregate on the basis of race or place of origin.”).

21. Shaw, 509 U.S. at 645–48.

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2007] RACIAL FAIRNESS IN CRIMINAL JUSTICE 65

school integration.22 The Supreme Court’s jurisprudence in race cases
has made the struggle to desegregate and to integrate the United
States a difficult process with limited and ephemeral effect.

Second example: the so-called “reverse discrimination” cases
involving affirmative action. The underlying intent of affirmative
action is not the subordination or the denial of opportunities to white
people, and yet the Supreme Court, in spite of its imposition of an
intent doctrine in equal protection cases, cannot find a way to
distinguish affirmative action from invidious discrimination. Here’s
where we stand with respect to the Equal Protection Clause’s
application to race: it’s possible for a black or brown person, a person
of color, to win a case where the defendant is blatantly, clumsily, and
stupidly discriminatory these days; it is also possible to see
discrimination inferred under the Arlington Heights standard23, but
courts are reluctant to find discrimination and to grant those
inferences these days.24 And so they are often hostile to those kinds of
claims. Our federal jurisprudence treats systemic race discrimination
as it would a political question: it’s non-justiciable. Our jurisprudence
has erected almost insurmountable barriers to challenging racial
discrimination on all fronts. Nowhere is the effect of this gratuitously
cramped and fundamentally flawed jurisprudence manifested more
importantly than in our criminal justice system. McCleskey sits at
the pinnacle of this jurisprudence, where the stakes are the highest,
and it guts basic notions of fairness. It goes to the core of our national
principles.

22. See Parents Involved in Cmty. Schs. v. Seattle Sch. Dist. No. 1, 127 S.

Ct. 2738 (2007) (holding that racial balancing was not a compelling state interest
and that race could not be used as sole factor in assigning students to schools).
The Seattle and Louisville cases were consolidated for the purposes of this
decision. Id. at 2746.

23. See Vill. of Arlington Heights v. Metro. Hous. Dev. Corp., 429 U.S. 252,
265 (1977) (holding that evidence of a discriminatory purpose, rather than
discriminatory effects alone, is needed to invalidate an official action under the
Equal Protection Clause).

24. See, e.g., Smith & Lee Assocs. v. City of Taylor, Mich., 102 F.3d 781,
794 (6th Cir. 1996) (reversing district court’s finding of discrimination and
holding that even if plaintiffs can establish that a defendant “was motivated by a
discriminatory animus, defendant must be given the opportunity to prove by a
preponderance of the evidence that it would have reached the same decision even
if it had not been influenced by discriminatory animus”); Cardinal Towing & Auto
Repair, Inc. v. City of Bedford Tex., 180 F.3d 686, 698 (5th Cir. 1999) (affirming
summary judgment for defendant and refusing to infer discriminatory intent
where not conclusively demonstrated).

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66 COLUMBIA HUMAN RIGHTS LAW REVIEW [39:59

The great dream of this nation is that a child born today
enters the world unbounded, with a life full of possibilities dictated
only by the scope of his or her ambition, talents, and abilities. That
dream recalls the language of Martin Luther King’s 1963 speech
about living in a country where his children would be judged not by
the color of their skin but by the content of their character.25 Of
course, we’re all well aware of the limitations of this vision, of the
limiting effects of poverty, inequities of gender, the benefits of
wealth, the effects of education, work opportunities, and life
circumstances. And yet, of all the things that matter, that help or
that hinder, for a black male born today, one fact remains true: over
the course of his lifetime, he has a one-third chance of spending time
behind bars.26 For black females, the odds are not much better.27
They are more than twice as likely to spend time in prison as white
or Hispanic women.28

The devastating effect of the criminal justice system on black
communities today is undeniable. From the War on Drugs, to racial
profiling, down the line to the sentence of death, African Americans
find themselves under siege—and increasingly so—by our system of
criminal justice. McCleskey v. Kemp stands out as a decision that has
erected a barrier to challenging the discriminatory policies and
practices that African Americans encounter in their contacts with the
law. The injustices that this barrier conceals are ones that we all
need to note.

Statistics alone should lead one to question the role of race in
the application of the death penalty, the most final of punishments.
African Americans are thirteen percent of the population and forty-
one percent of the nation’s 3,344 prisoners on death row.29 Since the
death penalty was reinstated in 1976, thirty-four percent of those
executed have been African-American.30 That represents 362

25. Martin Luther King, Jr., I Have a Dream: Writings and Speeches that

Changed the World 104 (James Washington ed., HarperCollins 1992).
26. Bureau of Justice, Special Report, Prevalence of Imprisonment in the

U.S. Population, 1974–2001 1 (2003), available at http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/
pub/pdf/piusp01 .

27. Id. at 1.
28. Id.
29. Criminal Justice Project of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational

Fund, Death Row U.S.A. 3 (2006), available at http://www.naacpldf.org/content/
pdf/pubs/drusa/DRUSA_Fall_2006 .

30. Id. at 7.

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2007] RACIAL FAIRNESS IN CRIMINAL JUSTICE 67

individuals who have had their lives taken at the hands of the state.
Disturbingly, although blacks and whites are murder victims in
nearly equal numbers, seventy-nine percent of people executed since
the death penalty was reinstated have been executed for the murders
of white victims.31

David Baldus showed us the effect of a victim’s race at the
time of McCleskey, and study after study has confirmed the effect of a
victim’s whiteness on whether or not the defendant will receive the
death penalty.32 In 2003 a study ordered by Maryland Governor
Parris Glendening concluded that defendants accused of killing white
victims were significantly more likely to face the death penalty than
those accused of killing black victims.33 The effect was further
exacerbated when the defendant was black.34 The study also detected
racial bias in prosecutors’ decisions to seek the death penalty in a
given case.35 Similar studies, done in North Carolina and New Jersey
and released in 2001, also found that the race of a victim had a
significant effect on whether a defendant would be sentenced to
death.36 A death penalty study in Pennsylvania, released in 1998,
found that controlling for case differences, black offenders in
Philadelphia were 1.6 times more likely to receive the death penalty
than other defendants.37 The racial combination most likely to result
in a death sentence was a black defendant with a non-black victim.38

31. Id. at 5.
32. David C. Baldus et al., Racial Discrimination and the Death Penalty in

the Post-Furman Era: An Empirical and Legal Overview, with Recent Findings
from Philadelphia, 83 Cornell L. Rev. 1638, 1714 (1998); see also Capital
Punishment Project, ACLU, The Persistent Problem of Racial Disparities in The
Federal Death Penalty (2007), available at http://www.aclu.org/pdfs/capital/
racial_disparities_federal_deathpen ; U.S. Dep’t of Justice Survey of the
Federal Death Penalty System (2001) available at http://www.usdoj.gov/dag/
pubdoc/dpsurvey.html.

33. Raymond Paternoster et al., An Empirical Analysis of Maryland’s
Death Sentencing System with Respect to the Influence of Race and Legal
Jurisdiction 22 (2003), available at http://www.thejusticeproject.org/press/reports/
an-empirical-analysis-of-with.html.

34. Id. at 24.
35. Id. at 34–35.
36. Issac Unah & John Charles Boger, Race and the Death Penalty in

North Carolina 22 (2001), available at http://www.common-sense.org/pdfs/NC
DeathPenaltyReport2001 .

37. Baldus, supra note 32, at 1726.
38. Id. at 1696.

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68 COLUMBIA HUMAN RIGHTS LAW REVIEW [39:59

History sadly teaches us not to be surprised by these
statistics. The link between extralegal violence against African
Americans for offenses against white society in the form of lynching
and the modern death penalty is one that is often anecdotally
explored. By the way, I encourage all of you to read a new book by
Sherilyn Ifill, one of LDF’s former lawyers who is now a law
professor, called “On the Courthouse Lawn.”39 It is about lynching,
and it’s a powerful, powerful book that really deserves some
attention, and that will get it. It’s getting it already. I could go on and
on linking these statistics between the lynching era and the present
day era. For example, between 1930 and 1967, 3,859 people were
executed, fifty-four percent of whom were black.40 Mississippi,
Georgia, Texas, Louisiana, and Alabama were leading lynching
states.41 Not surprisingly, those are states where the death penalty is
applied most disproportionately to African Americans.42

Adding to the effects of a victim’s race on death penalty
outcomes are the defendant’s racial attributes. A 2005 study by
professors and psychologists at Cornell, Stanford, UCLA, and Yale
found that defendants perceived as having a more stereotypically
black appearance—a broad nose, thick lips, dark skin—were more
likely to receive the death penalty than defendants whose
appearance was perceived as less stereotypically black.43 Of the
population examined, twenty-four percent of those with a less
stereotypically black appearance received the death penalty while
fifty-eight percent of those perceived as the most stereotypically
black were sentenced to death.44

These are the realities that matter. They matter in the hearts
and minds of black Americans certainly, but they should matter to all
of us concerned that race not dictate who lives and who dies. How

39. Id.
40. Furman v. Georgia, 408 U.S. 364 (1972).
41. See generally id. at 238 (discussing these states and prevalence of the

death penalty).
42. Criminal Justice Project of the NAACP Legal Defense and Education

Fund, Death Row U.S.A. 8–9 (2006), available at http://www.naacpldf.org/
content/pdf/pubs/drusa/DRUSA_Fall_2006 .

43. Jennifer L. Eberhardt, et al., Looking Deathworthy: Perceived
Stereotypicality of Black Defendants Predicts Capital-Sentencing Outcomes, 17
Psychol. Sci. 383, 383 (2006).

44. Id. at 384.

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2007] RACIAL FAIRNESS IN CRIMINAL JUSTICE 69

can we look upon those numbers and decide that they do not matter?
In my mind, the answer is simple: we cannot.

When I think about black children who are born today, I
think about how their lives will be lived out and affected by the War
on Drugs. Since its early days in the 1980s and 1990s, federal, state,
and local government have employed the war on drugs to reduce the
use and sale of illegal narcotics.45 This is a war that is waged with
military-style tactics against citizens and communities, and although
statistics show that drugs and sales are colorblind in this country,
this war has been heavily focused upon the African-American
community. And that’s why the kind of law enforcement
relationships that affect African-American communities, in
particular, are not replicated in other communities in this country,
even though drug use is ubiquitous.

Due in no small part to the war on drugs, the United States
now has the highest rate of incarceration in the world.46 As of
December 2005, there were over 2.2 million prisoners in federal or
state prisons or local jails.47 One out of every 136 U.S. residents was
being held in prison or jail.48 Moreover, 8.1% of black males between
twenty-five and twenty-nine were incarcerated, compared to 1% of
white men in the same age group.49 The effect of the war on drugs on
incarceration rates cannot be overstated. At the end of 2003, twenty
percent of inmates held in state prisons were being held for drug
offenses.50 Despite comprising only thirteen percent of the nation’s
drug users, fifty-three percent of those persons were African-
American.51 In the same year, nearly 87,000 people were being held
in federal prisons for drug offenses.52 As of 1997, forty percent of

45. See generally Lester Grinspoon & James B. Bakalar, The War on

Drugs—A Peace Proposal, 330 New Eng. J. Med. 357 (1994) (arguing that the war
on drugs is inefficient, unfair, and a misappropriation of resources which could
better serve the public in other sectors).

46. Marc Mauer, Comparative International Rates of Incarceration: An
Examination of Causes and Trends 2 (2003), available at www.soros.org/
initiatives/justice/articles_publications/publications/intl_incarceration_20030620/i
ntl_rates ; see also Bureau of Justice Statistics, Prisoners in 2005 1 (2006),
available at http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/pdf/p05 .

47. Bureau of Justice Statistics, supra note 46, at 1.
48. Id. at 2.
49. Id. at 8.
50. Id. at 9.
51. Id.
52. Id. at 10.

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70 COLUMBIA HUMAN RIGHTS LAW REVIEW [39:59

those being held in federal prisons on drug offenses were African
Americans.53

The crack cocaine sentencing disparity is only one example of
how the war on drugs has led to disparate incarceration rates. As of
1997, eighty-six percent of all offenders sentenced in federal court on
crack offenses were African American.54 One would think that white
Americans don’t use or didn’t use crack cocaine. Go back and look at
the Bureau of Justice web statistics—they put the lie to that
assumption. More than sixty-six percent of crack users were white or
Hispanic,55 yet more than eighty percent of defendants sentenced for
crack offenses are African- American.56

When you think about African Americans incarcerated for
drug offenses, racial profiling cannot be left out of the equation. Such
profiling has been a primary tool in the war on drugs,57 based on the
flawed assumption that race is a proxy for criminality. The war on
drugs and racial profiling together constitute a double blow to
African Americans. As a Justice Department study found,
“disproportionate minority arrests for drug possession and
distribution have fueled perceptions by police and others that race is
an appropriate factor in the decision to stop or search an
individual.”58 Now, that was the Justice Department that said that,
not the Legal Defense Fund or any other organization in this room.
So, even the Justice Department knows that our system is flawed
along lines of race.

The statistics involving profiling practices are now familiar.
Approximately forty percent of stops on the New Jersey Turnpike
and seventy-seven percent of those searched are African-American.59

53. Bureau of Justice Statistics, Federal Drug Offenders, 1999 with Trends
1984–99 11 (2001), available at www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/pdf/fdo99 .

54. Id.
55. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, 2003

National Survey on Drug Use & Health: Detailed Tables (2005), available at
http://www.oas.samhsa.gov/Nhsda/2k3tabs/Sect1peTabs1to66.htm#tab1.43a.

56. Bureau of Justice Statistics, supra note 53, at 11.
57. See generally Human Rights Watch, Punishment and Prejudice: Racial

Disparities in the War on Drugs 12 (2000), available at http://www.hrw.org/
reports/2000/usa/.

58. Deborah Ramirez et al., A Resource Guide on Racial Profiling Data
Collection Systems: Promising Practices and Lessons Learned 11 (2000),
available at http://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/bja/184768 .

59. David Rudovsky, Law Enforcement by Stereotype and Serendipity,
Racial Profiling and Stops and Searches Without Cause, 3 U. Pa. J. Const. L.

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2007] RACIAL FAIRNESS IN CRIMINAL JUSTICE 71

We’ve made some progress, and we continue to make progress. Some
states have passed laws against profiling.60 But, as is the case with
the McCleskey decision, which is the backdrop for our gathering
today, the Supreme Court has strung up major legal hurdles to
combating these issues. In Whren v. United States, the Supreme
Court held that, as long as a police officer had a lawful justification
for a traffic stop, the fact that he might have an ulterior motive and
that the stop might be a pretext for discrimination is simply
irrelevant.61 Once again, the Constitution tolerates discrimination.

These are only a few of the issues with which we are
struggling. Bias in jury selection, prosecutorial decisions about whom
to charge and what to charge them with, the newly emerging tools of
database gathering with respect to gangs, and the ongoing effects of
minimum sentencing laws, all have damaging effects on the lives and
fates of African Americans.

And of course, incarceration is not the end of the tale.
According to a report by the Sentencing Project, 1.4 million black
men, a full thirteen percent of the male black population, are
disenfranchised.62 Given the rates of incarceration today, in the next
generation, three in ten black men—three in ten of the black males
born today—can expect to at some point lose their right to vote.63 In
states that permanently disenfranchise ex-offenders, forty percent of
black men may permanently lose their right to vote.64 These laws
include many persons on probation and parole, a population that is
also disproportionately African-American—as of 2005, thirty percent
of probationers and forty percent of those on parole were black.65

296, 300 (2001) (citing State v. Soto, 734 A.2d 350, 360 (N.J. Super. Ct. Law Div.
1996)).

60. National Conference for Community and Justice, Racial and Ethnic
Profiling 2, available at http://www.nccj.org/documents/pp_racial_ethnic_and_
religious_profiling (last visited Oct. 10, 2007) (discussing how over fifteen
states have enacted laws to combat racial profiling including requiring law
enforcement agencies to develop policies and collect information regarding the
race and gender of the drivers in stops they make).

61. Whren v. United States, 517 U.S. 806 (1996).
62. The Sentencing Project, Felony Disenfranchisement Laws in the

United States 1 (Apr. 2007), available at http://sentencingproject.org/Admin/
Documents/publications/fd_bs_fdlawsinus .

63. Id.
64. Id.
65. Bureau of Justice Statistics, supra note 46, at 6–9.

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72 COLUMBIA HUMAN RIGHTS LAW REVIEW [39:59

Let us return to McCleskey for a moment. The words that
strike most deeply are those of Justice Brennan’s powerful dissent.
He wrote in words that still ring tragically true today:

At some point in this case, Warren McCleskey doubtless
asked his lawyer whether a jury was likely to sentence him
to die. A candid reply to this question would have been
disturbing. First, counsel would have to tell McCleskey
that few of the details of the crime or of McCleskey’s past
criminal conduct were more important than the fact that
his victim was white. Furthermore, counsel would feel
bound to tell McCleskey that defendants charged with
killing white victims in Georgia are 4.3 times as likely to be
sentenced to death as defendants charged with killing
blacks. In addition, frankness would compel the disclosure
that it was more likely than not that the race of
McCleskey’s victim would determine whether he received a
death sentence . . . . Finally, the assessment would not be
complete without the information that cases involving black
defendants and white victims are more likely to result in a
death sentence than cases featuring any other racial
combination of defendant and victim. The story could be
told in a variety of ways, but McCleskey could not fail to
grasp its essential narrative line: there was a significant
chance that race would play a prominent role in
determining if he lived or died.66

Well, it did. And he died. In my mind, it is the hope that we
can move beyond this reality for which we today are gathered. It is
the hope that, at some point, the narrative transmitted by the
McCleskey decision—that race plays a role in who lives or dies, who
is free, who is jailed, who is stopped, arrested, prosecuted, whose
name appears in what database—will one day no longer be true. It is,
deeply, our hope that no mother will look at her child at the moment
of birth and think that there is a thirty percent chance that she will
see that child go to jail.

Although the stories our criminal justice system offers often
are not happy ones, for me this is not a day of despair. Rather, it is a
time to look forward to what we, as civil rights and human rights
activists, lawyers, and communities can do to change the lives of
black Americans, brown Americans, indeed all Americans. That you
have all gathered with us, put your minds and your energies to

66. McCleskey v. Kemp, 481 U.S. 279, 321 (1987) (Brennan, J., dissenting)
(internal quotations and citations omitted).

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2007] RACIAL FAIRNESS IN CRIMINAL JUSTICE 73

thinking beyond what the Supreme Court has said, itself tells me
that hope is not lost. Although we are thick in the battle for black
children’s lives and for the fate of justice in this country, it is a battle
in which we can, in which we will—indeed, a battle in which we
must—prevail.

I have come to deeply believe, personally, that hope is not
something that is fortuitous. It is not serendipitous. Hope really
means looking into the jaws of despair, recognizing that there’s
reason to be cynical and yet refusing to give into it. It is a choice; it is
not serendipitous. Choose hope and then work to make hope reality.
Thank you.

ACCESSING AND TRAINING POLICE AND SECURITY
PERSONNEL RELEVANT TO ETHNIC AND

CULTURAL SENSITIVITY

Laurence Armand French, Ph.D.*
. NealWailes,Ph.D.** •

ABSTRACT

Law enforcement cross-cultural training and psychological screening
is an increasingly important topic, given the increasing need for intemational
police initiatives throughout the world today. The intensity of inter-ethnic
conflict obviates any meaningful in-house measures or evaluations of
these forces, whether they are civilian or military. While objective
psychological and cultural measures exist, there are no universal standards
for the assessments and training protocols. Clearly, the dilemma gets
more complicated when the military is assigned policing duties in
occupied countries. Internal ethnic strife only adds to the complexity of
this phenomenon. This paper assesses the nature of this current problem
while offering insights into practical solutions.

INTRODUCTION

The need for objective clinical measurements of law enforcement
and security personnel in Central and Eastern Europe is a critical issue of
concern in the region, given the questionable practices of ethnic cleansing
subsequent to the break up of the former Soviet Union and the continued
expose of these practices before the World Court in The Hague. Another

•Laurence Armand French, Ph.D., is Professor Emeritus of Psychology at
Western New Mexico University and a senior research associate, Justiceworks at the
University of New Hampshire. :

**S.N. Wailes, Ph.D., is Professor of Sociology and Crimitial .Justice at Jackson
State University.

dimension of this phenomenon is the prevalence of United Nation peace
keeping forces in this region, notably Kosovo and adjacent regions where
continued conflict exists between Muslims and Orthodox Christians.
Abuses in Iraq, by both United States and British troops, has highlighted
recent interracial/ethnic abuses by the occupation forces in fray and by
local military and police agents trained by the occupation forces. This
concern also extends to the torture and execution of detained suspected
enemy combatants in in-country and out-of-country holding facilities,
including Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. This problem is so prevalent and the
world outcry so intense that the United States was forced to report
progress in its treatment of military prisoners, hi May 2006, the United
States reported to the United Nations’ anti-torture body that it has held 103
courts martial for the mistreatment of detainees in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Moreover, the United States reported that another 1

investigations are
pending. This review of abuses by the U.S. military was part of the UN
committee’s regular review of the 141 nations that ratified the Convention
against Torture. More significantly, it highlights the intensity of racial,
ethnic, and religious differences in the contemporary War on Terrorism.
To best assess this phenomenon, we need to look at the screening of
security forces in volatile situations, the mechanism of inter-group
hostilities, intemational human rights guarantees, and the nature of
collective stress. Classical sociological theories aid in understanding
cultural conflict issues. Eric Goode provided the social philosophical
foundation for these theories:

All civilizations set rules concerning what is real and what is not,
what is true and what is false. All societies select out of the data
before them a world… and declare that the real world. Each one of
these artificially constructed worlds is to some degree idiosyncratic,
unique. No individual views reality directly (Plato’s Republic,
Allegory of the Cave), in the raw, so to speak. What is commonly
thought of as reality, that which exists, or simply is, is a set of
suppositions, rationalizations,justifications, defenses, all generally
collectively agreed-upon¿ which guide and channel each
individual’s perceptions in a specific and distinct direction….

Every society establishes a kind of epistemological methodology.

(Goode, 19

)

Theories of Social and Cultural Conflict

George Simnel (19

) and the major student of his work, Lewis Coser,
(1955), elucidated the mechanisms and functions of social conflict.
Much of their work is applicable to the ethnic and religious strife
occurring today, regardless if it is Northern Ireland, the Horn of Africa,
the Balkans, or the Middle East. Accordingly, objective, or calculated
conflict, what Sinimel teamed realistic conflict, is that which is directed
toward tangible social objectives such as scarce status, power, and
resources. Non-realistic {s\ib]QcXivQ) conflict, in comparison, stems from
social frustrations. In the former, conflict is viewed as a rational process
directed toward the accomplishment of a specific goal, while the latter,
aggression, becomes an end in itself.

It is generally understood that realistic conflict is widely used by
botli special interest groups (power elites) and by those coveting power
and authority (revolutionaries) while non-realistic conflict is most likely
to engage individuals and/or groups who are caught up in crisis situations,
including those generated by cultural conflict. Taken a step further,
Simmel and Coser claimed that reciprocal animosities between cultural
groups within a given society tend to strengthen both groups’ internal
cohesion while, at the same time, maintain the rigid class and/or caste
structures and social distances that exist between these groups. This
reciprocal process, in tum, creates a self-fulfilling prophecy that tends to
perpetuate itself, and even to intensify, as the social distance between
these groups increases. A corollary to this postulate is: The more rigid
these divisions are within the society, the more insignificant will be the
cultural gap and resulting psychological ambiguity among those caught
up in this reciprocal conflict situation.

In these conflicts over ideologies and/or scarce resources, hostilities
tend to preserve group boundaries, serving to establish and maintain the
identity and boundaries of society and groups: “patterned enmities and

reciprocal antagonisms tend to conserve social divisions and systems of
stratification.” Here, realistic conflict, like the current fight over ideology
and resources (oil), occurs when war is used as a deliberate means toward
desired ends. Accordingly, war helps society overcome internal divisions,
marginality, anomie, and alienation by providing an external source to
target while, at the same time, it increases the internal cohesion of the
group. The basic social psychological tenet here is: Out-group hostility
increases in-group cohesion.

Similarly, R.E. Park (1950) and Schermerhom (1970) presented
theories that addressed the psychological ramifications of cultural conflict.
Park termed those people caught up in cultural conflict, marginals,
viewing their plight to be the result of partial socialization within both
their respective minority subculture and the majority society, without
being adequately socialized in either social system. He linked this process
to the colonial missionary effort among non-Christian cultures: “The
Christian convert exhibits many, if not most, of the characteristics of the
marginal man ^ the same spiritual instability, intensified self-
consciousness, restlessness, andmalaise”(1950: 3

). R. A. Schermerhom

. names the social outcasts, pariahs, suggesting their behavior could
progress and/or regress along acontinuum, depending upon circumstances
relevant to the majority/minority relations at any given time. He termed
the variables ̂ tàges’.passive, exposed marginal, and activated inascending
order of minority involvement within the majority society. Here, the
passive stage is one of inactivity and ritualism, while the exposed
marginal stage reflects social and/or personal strain between minorities
and members of Hie dominant society. The activated stage is one of action
on behalf of minority members often involving conflict and other forms
of confrontation with the majority (ruling or occupying) society.

The works of both Park and Schermerhom address the behavioral and
psychological ramifications associated with the transitional stages inherent
within maj ority/minority relations, and their works certainly complement
the Marxian concept of alienation. Clearly, similarities can be seen
between Marx’s (19

) Lumpenproletariat, Park’s Marginal Man, and

Schermerhom’s Pariah’s concepts reflecting social disorganization. T.
Sellin’s (1938) conflict theoiy addresses similar concems from a cultural
perspective. Sellin posited that contravening cultural conflict is often the
basis of high incidents of crime, violence, and marginality within certain
subcultures. His basic tenet is that the dominant society often imposes its
ethnocentric perspective upon the minority culture(s). This strain results
in primary conflict, while the resulting ambiguity activates infra-group
hostilities ternied secondary conflict (conflicts in Palestine, Somalia, and
Iraq are current illustrations of this phenomenon).

Hence, realistic conflict, planned animosities between competing
powers, accounts for the initial conflict and the grounds for engagement,
as well as for the propaganda needed to foster out group hostilities so as
to solidify their members to support and participate in the ensuing
conflict. However, psychological factors contribute greatly to the
emergence of unrealistic conflict (such as mass murder, torture, and
prisoner abuse) that accompanies these conflicts. Erik Erikson, the noted
cultural psychiatrist, addressed the nature of mass alienation and its
resulting trauma. Erikson termed this process cultural identity crises, a
phenomenon he noted among U.S. military personnel returning home
following World War II. The current situation is more complex, as the
result of the merging of military and law enforcement personnel as peace
keepers, law enforcement, including military police; standards do not
adequately address the psychological factors associated with culturally
engendered stress and trauma.

A Lack of Universal Standards for Law
Enforcement Assessment

The problem with police and correctional personnel assessment is
universal. While the scientific methods are clearly articulated, political
interference obstructs their application. French (2002) offered objective
measures in his article, “Intemationai Applications of Police Assessment:
Predicting Aggression, Stress and Mental Disorders” cited in Milan’s
(2002) book. Policing in Central and Eastern Europe: Deviance, Violence,

and Victimization. In his article, French noted the convoluted legal battle
in the United States to dilute objective measures because they might
disclose intimate aspects of the person being tested, factors relevant to
evaluating police, security, and correctional personnel (Blumberg, 1994;
Bonifacio, 1991; Brewster & Staloff, 1999; Carpenter & Raza, 1987;
Griffm & Ruiz, 1999; Hathaway & McKinley, 1989; Hargrave, et al.,
1988; Hiatt & Hargrave, 1988; Matarazzo, et al., 19

The standard for recognition in the United States is the Commission
on Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies (CALEA, 2002). CALEA
was established in 1979 as an independent accrediting authority by the
Intemational Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP); the National
Organization of BlackLaw Enforcement Executive (NOBLE); the National
Sheriffs’ Association (NSA); and the Police Executive Research Forum
(PEKE). While CALEA states global standards for “recruitment and
selection” and training for police academies, it does not offer specific
recommendations for psychological assessments (Pollone, 1992; Pope, et
al., 1993; Rodgers, 19

; Rostov, et a l , 1999; Weiss, et al., 1999). The
general standards are more directed toward existing anti-discriminatory
laws in the United States: The academy has minority and female employees
in approximate proportion to the makeup of the available work force in the
academy’s service community or has a recruitment plan (5.1.1).

A recent study of law enforcement screening in Texas indicates that
a wide variety of psychological tools were used with few commonalties
(Dantzker & McCoy, 2006). Moreover, on-going stress assessments are
lacking. Marshall (2006), in her study, showed that repeated exposure to
traumatic events was common among the law enforcement personnel
involved in her Delaware sample. Clearly, on-going clinical assessments
for stress are requisites for security personnel, regardless if they operate
in military or civilian forces. The conflict between the National Guard
personnel and the New Orleans Police toward Hurricane Katrina refugees
in August 2005 clearly reflects this phenomenon.

Evidently, the United States does not offer the ideal model for the best
practice in law enforcement assessment. Indeed,’ its standards today

would obviate membership in the European Union, making the standards
held out for former Soviet Union members such as Bosnia more stringent
than those mandated in the United States. This is only speaking of civilian
law enforcement and correctional agencies. It does not address the serious
problem in the U.S. military where National Guard and Army, Air Force,
Navy, and Marine Corps reserve units are reassigned as military police
without adequate training fpr the MOS (Military Occupational Specialty).

Unfortunately, the U.S. military, in its quest for volunteers, has
greatly relaxed its educational and criminal background requirements,
even allowing neo-Nazi and other racist extremists to sign up. Holthouse
(2006) notes that hundreds of neo-Nazis identify online as active duty
soldiers and that extremists in the military are difficult to expose because
they are not as open as gang members and other groups. The rules were
tightened after the Oklahoma City bombing, when it was discovered that
the principal participants all got their training in the U.S. Army. Even then,
future terrorists slipped through the system, including Eric Rudolph who
set off a bomb at the Atlanta Summer Olympics, as well as at abortion
clinics. He was trained at the Air Assault School while in the lOP*
Airborne Division at Fort Campbell, Kentucky. John Allen Muhammad,
the convicted mastermind of the Beltway sniper attacks, was a U.S. Army
Gulf War veteran who wanted the $ 10 million ransom to establish a black
separatist nation in Canada. Making matters worse, racism is often

. promoted by high-ranking officers, allowing for a milieu of violence and
abuse toward the perceived enemy (out-group), including civilians. This
atmosphere gives credence to abuse among troops, especially when under
stress. A common volatile combination is marginalized undereducated
individuals with character deficits and/or mental instability and combat
stress. Private Steven Green, the gang leader charged with the rape and
murder of a 14-year-old Iraqi girl and her family is aprime example of this
phenomenon (Childress & Hirsh, 2006). Also in the news is the accusation
that a detachment of U.S. Marine Corps killed 24 Iraqi civilians following
the death of one of their men in November 2005 (Thomas & Johnson,
2006).

These cases are only some that were found out by outside sources.
It is common practice with the military culture, notably the United States
military, to cover up these incidents. This practice is also common among
police forces and among correctional officers. Here, the perceived notion
that civilians, regaidless if they are their own people or foreign, represent
a potential enemy (out-group) allows for a tight in-group cohesion among
these armed personnel, ironically licensed to protect civilians.

Clearly, the mix of contravening ethnic/religious groups provides
for potentially volatile eruptions, both between the indigenous groups and
between the indigenous group and the outside peace keeping forces. The
potential for both manifest and latent sources of inter-group violence
needs to be addressed if the policing agents are to control, and not
exacerbate, existing potentials for hostilities and aggression. Added to
this combustible formula is the lack of a consistent training baseline
among these various policing forces. To illustrate, an increasing number
of military personnel are being assigned policing duties in the occupational
regions, including Iraq, Afghanistan and Kosovo, regardless of their
original MO S (Military Occupational Specialty). This practice included
using U.S. National Guard and Reserve units, as well as active-duty Navy
and Air Force enlisted personnel, as military police and security forces.
Most often, the military persormel assigned as police do not receive
adequate law enforcement training or ethnic/cultural sensitivity training.
Indeed, many of these same individuals may have recently completed a
combat tour in Iraq or Afghanistan under their regular MO S and, hence,
still carry the proactive stigma of viewing the enemy in extremely
negative terms. Trading battle hate for community compassion is not an
easy transition under any circumstance but is even more difficult when
there is little, or no, retaining in the area of law enforcement. Part ofthe
problem with civilian and detainee abuse has been attributed to the
effectiveness of America’s military psychology of presenting the enemy
in clearly negative, hostile stereotypes—those of radical, anti-Christian,
Muslims.

Add to this the collective impact of a social crisis, such as the terrorist
attacks of September 11,2001 and the dynamics ofgroup inclusion versus
exclusion become simplified into an us-versus-them polarization. Indeed,
the neurophysiology of the human brain allows for up to six months for
a rational assessment to overcome our emotional disorganization (ICD,
DSM, Adjustment Disorder; Acute Stress Disorder, Post-Traumatic
Stress Disorder). It is during this period that geopolitical action is crucially
relevant to a reasonable solution to the crisis. When the polarization of
the out-group arid the cohesion of the in-group become reciprocal,
hostilities are likely to abound. Here, the group attribution bias plays a
significant role where negative actions of the out-group are seen as being
deliberate and pervasive (internal disposition), and misdeeds of the in-
group are dismissed as exceptionalities (a few bad apples) and not
attributed to the group norm (external situation). Often, the out-group is
dehumanized (uncivilized, barbaric, animalistic, great Satans, fanatic
Islamic butchers) thereby providing a justification for harsh treatment
(shock-and-awe massive bombardments, assassinations, torture, and
homicide) of the perceived enemy. In pitted ideological combat situations,
the degree of in-group cohesion intensifies leading to loss of individuation
(diminished capacity for value assessment) and the increased likelihood
of group-think and risky behaviors (risky-shift phenomenon). This
phenomenon occurs at the top political and military echelons, as well as
on the battlefield.

Suicide bombers fit E. Durkheim’s concept of altruistic suicide. This
act represents the highest degree ofgroup cohesion and loss of individuation.
While these acts are deplored by those targeted, they carry the highest
honor among the in-group. All societies have recognized altruistic
suicide during war as a high honor presenting their most coveted medals
for these acts, whether it be a Marine jumping on a grenade to save his
buddies, a kamikaze pilot, or a suicide bomber. Out-group hostilities
intensify when in-group dissension is suppressed, as it was during the
George W. Bush administration and the Taliban. No one was allowed to
play the Devil’s advocate role, hence leading to a quagmire where both

parties feel compelled to “stay the course” or “lose face.” Obviously,
sociocultural analysis of out-grpups is paramount for effective training of
security forces, whether they are military, police, or corrections. This
needs to be done at both the political and tactical levels if the level of
hatred and hostility toward an entire population is to be reduced. This
would also aid in reducing the overall stress level of those on the front
lines. What is also needed is a better understanding of police and combat
stress and ways to assess and treat it.

The Clinical Spectrum of Trauma

Physical trauma, such as loss of limbs, bums, lacerations, and the
like, heals more quickly than do the psychological residual associated
with traumatic events. Experiencing a traumatic eVent in which others
died can also have a devastating psychological effect on survivors. Often
the psychological effects are Isáent and subtle and only surface later
following losses in one’s life. Anniversaries of traumatic events act as
triggers, as do similar events, as those that caused the initial psychological
trauma. Effective treatment of traumatic events is challenging, given that
these events are registered in the sub-cortical regions of the brain where
emotions are processed. Although post-traumatic stress disorder was first
classified as a specific mental condition in 1980 in the Diagnostic and
Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Third Edition (DSM-III) the
actual mechanisms of trauma were not well understood until the 1990s
when the advent of advanced brain imaging became available.
Neurophysiologic and neuropsychological research challenged the long-
held psychoanalytical premises that serious psychological problems
could be treated rationally engaging the cerebral cortex. Research has
found that sub-cortical functions, notably those in the greater limbic
system, play a significant role in emotional disturbances, and treatment
that addresses those areas of the central nervous system (CNS) offer the
best chances for remission of severe symptoms (Shin, et al., 2005). These
treatments rely heavily on new advances made in psychopharmacology

with medications that address the major neurotransmitters and
rieuromodulators associated with anxiety, depression and psychosis
(Adams, etal., 1996; APA, 1980; 2002). ^

Brain activity associated with anxiety and depression, the most
common symptoms of psychological trauma, include the ventral prefrontal
cortex, the eingulate cortex, the amygdale and the hippocampus. These
are the major central nervous system components associated with the
regulation of emotions. Moreover, serotonin, the major neuromodulator,
plays a significant role in how these regions communicate. Here, the
ventral prefrontal cortex (lying within the cerebral cortex) plays the
executive role within the brain’s neural circuitry providing us vvith an
interpretation of sub-cortical dysregulation. Theneurophysiological effect
of emotional stress secondary to depression or anxiety results in a
reduction of glial cells and, subsequently, diminished capacity for GA-
ergic processes vital to inhibitory responses, (GABA being the major
inhibitory neurotransmitter) (Woods, et al., 1988). An article in the
Journal of Clinical Psychiatry surveyed recent research on this topic:

… studies implicate abnormalities in the ventral prefrontal
cortex in anxiety disorders, including posttraumatic stress
disorder (PTSD) and panic disorder. Reduced inhibition
in the ventral prefrontal cortex is suggested by reduced
ligand binding to GAEA receptors in both panic disorder
and PTSD. Those with PTSD or panic disorder showed
enhanced norepinephrine release and activation of the
noradrenergic systems compared with health subjects
when exposed to traumatic reminders, phobic stimuli, or
yohiznbine. The orbital frontal cortex was one of the areas
in the brain that distinguished patients with PTSD or panic
disorder from healthy subjects. (Keller, 2005: 1478)

Similar research indicates significant impact within the greater
limbic system, notably within the amygdale and hippocampus. The
amygdale is the sub-cortical CNS component most closely associated
with emotional expression and it is found to have a direct connection to
the orbital frontal cortex. The amygdale, in tum, is wired to other brain
regions that control aspects of physiologic, hormonal and cognitive
expressions of emotions including the responses of the autonomie nervous
system (ANS), located within the peripheral nervous system (PNS).
Exaggerated activity in the amygdale is shown when PTSD is present,
hence contributingtoadistortionofemotional experiences and perceptions.
Similarly, the hippocampus, that region of the CNS that accesses and
processes memory, is impacted by stress. It also has the capacity to
influence emotional context or mood. Postmortem findings indicate
serious atrophy of the hippocampus among clients suffering from severe
or chronic stress, including those diagnosed with PTSD (Fava, et al.,
2005).

Chronic stress depletes the body of its restorative functioning, often
leading to a host of associated health issues. This phenomenon was first
noted by Hans Selye in the 1920s as the General Adaptation Syndrome.
Selye posited that continued stress causes a spiraling decomposition of the
body’s immune system through a three-stage process: an alarm reaction,
a stage of resistance, and a stage of exhaustion or desperation (Huethner,
1996). Research since the 1990s better explains the particulars involved
in this process. The physiological reactions involve the major stress
hormones. Glucocorticoids, notably cortisol, is released by the adrenal
gland of the PNS which helps maintain homeosatatis by regulating certain
enzymes. During stress, cortisol plays a major role in increasing blood
glucose levels and elevating blood pressure, necessary processes within
the arousal state of the autonomie nervous system. The limbic system
controls cortisone production by regulating the release of the corticotrophin,
releasing hormone (CRH) from the hypothalamus via serotoniergic,
dopaminergic, and cholinergic neurons. CRH stimulates release for the
adrenocorticotrophic hormone (ACTH) from the anterior pituitary. ACTH,

in tum, activates adenylae cyclase in the adrenal cortex. The adrenal
cortex represents the endocrine organ that secretes corticosteroirds for
metabolic processing—aldostrone for sodium retention in the kidneys,
androgens for male sexual development, and estrogens for female sexual
development. In addition, the adrenal medulla secretes epinephrine
(adrenaline) and norepineephrlne (NE) for the activation ofthe sympathetic
mode ofthe autonomie nervous system responses (French, 2003; 2005).

Another stress response involves the locus coemleus, located in the
brain stem where the rich supply of norepinephrine (NE) is stored. The
noradrenergic hypothesis holds that intense, recurring anxiety, such as
that caused by PTSD, is caused by either hypersensitive neurons in the
locus coeruleus or by a dysfunction in the natural braking mechanism
(hyperpolarizationprocess), or both. Excitable stimuli, drugs/medications,
or subtle factors, independently or in combination, can act as acute anxiety
triggers that can result in impulsive responses. The fimction ofthe locus
coeruleus is to allow the brain stem neuron to release NE (noradrenaline)
back upon itself, a mechanism that is more rapid than that which occurs
within the traditional synaptic inter-neuronal network (a major web of
hypervigilance in PTSD clients). Once stimulated, the locus ceruleus cell
continues to fire, alerting signals to the sub-cortical limbic system,
uninhibited by the normal braking mechanisms. Here, anti-panic agents
(antidepressants, anxiolytics medications) are thought to have an effect by
normalizing the cell’s self-stimulation. Benzodiazepines, a class of
anxiolytics, reinforce the braking effect by acting as a GABA agonist.
Beta-blockers and ace inhibitors may also be helpful in maintaining future
episodes by raising the excitability threshold ofthe autonomie sympathetic
reaction. Other interventions address the intensity of the limbic system
impulses with the use of mood stabilizers.

Assessing and Diagnosing Trauma

Traumatic stress falls in a clinical continuum that, in ascending order
according to Intemationai Classifications of Diseases (1CD-3-CM &
ICD-10), would include bereavement (V62.82); adjustment disorders;

substance-related disorders; depressive disorders; anxiety disorders, and
even psychotic disorders (APA, 2000; Groth-Mamat, 1997). The most
common serious mental disorder associated with stress is Posttraumatic
Stress Disorder (PTSD). Untreated acute or chronic stress secondary to
traumatic events can result in PTSD. Adequate clinical responses to
traumatic disasters, however, can do much to prevent PTSD, relegating
the stress reaction to a more treatable condition such as an Adjustment
Disorder or an Acute Stress Disorder (Ursano, at al., 1999, 2006).

Collective trauma is a consequence to significant disasters, either
natural or man-made, such as a deadly tsunami or hurricane or terrorist
attack. Everyone involved gets caught up in mass social and emotional
disorganization because of the disruptive nature of the event on his or her
everyday life. Generally speaking, those directly involved in these
stressful events suffer, at minimum, from an Adjustment Disorder: “The
development of emotional or behavioral symptoms in response to an
identifiable Stressor occurring within three months of the onset of the-
Stressor” (APA, 2000:285). The Adjustment Disorder is considered to be
acute if the disturbance lasts less than six months and chronic if it persists
for six months or longer. Adjustment Disorders can be with Depressed
Mood (3 09.00), with Anxiety (309.24), with Mixed Anxiety and Depressed
Mood (309.28), with Disturbance of Conduct (309.30), or with Mixed
Disturbance of Emotions and Conduct (309.4(3). Adjustments Disorders
reflect the nature and extent of neurological deregulation significant
Stressors have on our Central Nervous System. Adequate neuro-
compensation usually occurs within six months. If symptoms persist, then
other diagnoses need to be ruled out, including depression, anxiety, and
psychosis.

Most people affected by the 2001 terrorist attacks on the U.S.A., the
2004 massive South Asia tsunami, or the 2005 hurricanes, Katrina and
Rita, likely experience a bout of Adjustment Disorder. For the vast
majority of these individuals, the major symptoms diminished six months
or so following the initial disaster. Some would retain residuals of
depression or anxiety depending on their pre-morbid susceptibility to

these conditions. People adversely affected by these disasters are more
likely to experience the more severe Acute Stress Disorder, while those
only tangentially affected could be afflicted by sympathetic bereavement.
Self-medication by means of substance use is also common during these
times of stress adjustment.

Acute Stress Disorder is likely when, a person is exposed to a
traumatic event in wliich they feel that they are threatened by serious
injury or even death. The autonomie neurological deregulation process
here involves three or more ofthe following dissociative symptoms:

1. A subjective sense of numbing, detachment, or absence of
emotional responsiveness,

2. A reduction in awareness ofhis or her surroundings (being in a
daze),

3. De-realization,

4. Depersonalization, and

5. Dissociative amnesia (inability to recall significant aspects ofthe
trauma).

Also, the traumatic event is persistently re-experienced as the result
of recurrent images, thoughts, dreams, illusions, flashbacks, or a sense of
reliving the experience; or distress on exposure to reminders of the
tratimatic event; marked avoidance of stimuli that arouse recollections of
the trauma with marked symptoms of anxiety or increased arousal
(difficulty with sleep, irritability, poor concentration, hyper vigilance,
exaggerated startle response, or motor restlessness). For this diagnosis,
the disturbance needs to exist for a minimum of two days and a maximum
of four weeks occurring within four weeks of the traumatic event,
resulting in a serious impairment in social, occupational, or other important
aspects of one’s life (APA, 2000: 221-22).

Posttraumatic Stress Disorder has similar symptoms but is even
more severe in that the dissociative nature ofthe disorder is more difficult
to address clinically. PTSD patients often feel as if the traumatic event

is recurring, causing them to seek methods of escape, including self
medication with mind-altering substances (alcohol, tobacco, etc.).
Attempts at avoiding stimuli perceived as being associated with the
trauma and numbing experiences include:

1. Efforts to avoid thoughts, feelings, or conversations associated
with the trauma. Efforts to avoid activities, places, or people that
arouse recollections of the trauma.

2. Liability to recall an important aspect of the trauma.

3. Markedly diminished interest or participation in significant
activities.

4. Feelings of detachment or estrangement from others.
5. Restrictive range of affect (unable to maintain intimate

relationships).
6. Sense of foreshortened future (does not expect to have a career,

family or a normal life span).

Persistent symptoms of PTSD include:
1. difficulty falling or staying asleep,

2. irritability or outbursts of anger, .
3. difficulty concentrating,
4. hyper vigilance, and/or
5. exaggerated startle response.

PTSD can be classified as acute if the duration of symptoms is less
than 3 months, chronic if the duration of symptoms is 3 months or longer,
or with delayed response if the onset of symptoms is at least 6 months
following the Stressor (APA, 2000:219-20).

A serious side affect of delayed PTSD is suicide (Raymond, 1988;
Stockmeier, et al., 1998). This is problematic among combatants fighting
a prolonged war where suicide bombings and roadside explosive devices
exacerbate anxiety levels. Survival guilt is yet another symptom that
impacts PTSD. It is now estimated that four out of five service members
returning from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, who are considered risks
for PTSD, do not receive adequate assessments or treatment. While a
number of assessment tools are available, the most widely used evaluation

methods include the Kdental Stares Exani, the diagnostic criteria of the
DSM-IV-TR, and the MinnesotaMultiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI;
IvINIPi-2) (Graham, 2000; Green, 2000; Pope, et a l , 1993). The U.S.
Veterans Administration employs group therapy sessions, substance-use
disorder therapy, and the use of sertraline (Zoloft)–an SSRI (select
serotonin reuptake inhibitor) that addresses both depressive and anxiolj’tic
symptoms. Serious dissociative symptoms, including Brief Psychotic
Disorders (298.80) often require the addition of a neuroleplic agent.

Any viable cross-cultural and psychological training mission with
security forces, especially those seeing action in alien cultures, needs to
be cognizant of the mitigating psychological factors that are likely to
trigger either marginality and / or intense outwardly directed hate toward
the group that they perceive as causing their stress. Adequate police
training needs to involve independent, objective measures of charter
logic, psychiatric, and socio-religious biases and how individual law
enforcement or correctional personnel can check these human attributes
in the conduct of their professional duties. All military and law enforcement
personnel should also be schooled in the geo-politics surrounding the
social divisions with which they are involved in their peace keeping
capacit}’. This is no easy order, but it is required if the levels of stress and
resulting trauma and violence are to be curbed.

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0091-4169/08/9803-

1119

THE JOURNAL OF CRIMINAL LAW &

CRIMINOLOGY

Vol. 98, No. 3
Printed in U.S.A.

CRIMINOLOGY

POLICE, POLITICS, AND CULTURE IN A
DEEPLY DIVIDED SOCIETY

BAD HASISI*

This Article deals with minorities ‘ perceptions of the police in “deeply
divided societies. ” These societies are generally characterized by political
disagreements, and the literature shows that most researchers emphasize
the centrality of the political variable in order to understand police-
minority interactions. This Article acknowledges the centrality of the
political variable and adds a cultural variable that may improve the
understanding of police-minority relations in a deeply divided society. In
some societies, the disparity in the perceptions of majority and minority
groups cannot be attributed solely to the political variable, but also to
cultural differences. This is especially prominent in the case of native or
immigrant minorities. Hence, it is reasonable to expect that this cultural
pluralism will be reflected in minorities ‘ interaction with and its perception
of the police.

Findings from a survey conducted in Israel indicate that political
disagreements between Jews and Arabs have negatively affected the Arab
minority’s perceptions of the police. This Article also shows that the Arab
minority group is not homogenous in regard to their relationship with the
police; there are significant political and cultural differences among Arab
sub-groups (Muslim, Christian, and Druze). The Druze hold similar
political orientations to the Jewish majority, and consequently their
perceptions of the police were found to be more positive than those of
Muslim Arabs. Nevertheless, both Druze and Muslim Arabs expressed

Dr. Hasisi is a lecturer at the Institute
of Law. Émail: Hasisi@mscc.huji.ac.il.

of Criminology at the Hebrew University Faculty

1119

1120 BADI HASISI [Vol.98

restricted receptivity to contact with the police when police practices
threatened their community cultural codes. Theßndings from this research
call for both a deeper analysis of the relationships between minority groups
and the police, and for a more attentive probe of the distinctions among
minority groups.

I. INTRODUCTIO

A review of the academic literature in the field of police-minority
relations in deeply divided societies reveals that tense relations between the
minority and the police are a frequent phenomenon. One of the sources of
this tension is the political and social marginality of the minority, which is
most often accompanied by unbalanced and unfair policing.’ Researchers
emphasize the centrality of the political variable in understanding police-
minority interactions in deeply divided societies. In fact, often hovering
above deeply divided democratic societies is the question of the legitimacy
of the political regime in the eyes of the minority group.

The tense relations between the Arab minority in Israel and the police
are common knowledge. Throughout the history of Arab-Jewish relations
in Israel, this tension was sharply brought into relief in several mass
political events, with the most violent example in October 2000. Prime
Minister Ariel Sharon paid a visit to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, an act
perceived by the Arab minority as violating the sanctity of the Al-Aksa
Mosque. The visit incited eight days of violent riots that ended with twelve
Arab citizens dead, all of them by police gunfire. This event emphasized
the influence of political variables on minority relations with the police in
Israel, and yet this is not the sole variable on which we should focus.

In deeply divided societies where divisions are also based on different
ethnicities, emphasis is put on the cultural distinction between the majority
and the minority. This distinction is liable to find its expression in the
cultural perception of govemmental institutions, including the police. The
impact of cultural pluralism on police-minority relations is reinforced due
to the under-representation of members of the minority in the police force.
The combination of these factors exacerbates the cultural disparity between

‘ See JOHN D . BREWER, BLACK AND BLUE: POLICING IN SOUTH AFRICA (1994) [hereinafter

BREWER, BLACK AND BLUE]; RONALD WEITZER, POLICING UNDER FIRE: ETHNIC CONFLICT

AND POLICE-COMMUNITY RELATIONS IN NORTHERN IRELAND (1995) [hereinafter WEITZER,

POLICING UNDER FIRE]; RONALD WEITZER, TRANSFORMING SETTLER STATES: COMMUNAL

CONFLICT AND INTERNAL SECURITY IN NORTHERN IRELAND AND ZIMBABWE (1990)

[hereinafter WEITZER, TRANSFORMING SETTLER STATES]; John D. Brewer, Policing in
Divided Societies: Theorizing a Type of Policing, 1 POLICING & Soc’Y 179(1991).

2008] POLICE, POLITICS, AND CULTURE 1121

the service-providers—police officers who belong to the majority group—
and service-users—members of the minority group. We can assume that
where there is greater cultural disparity between the majority and minority,
there will be greater tension in minority-police relations. The Israeli-Arab
minority is a native, traditional minority that differs significantly in culture
from the Jewish majority, who are culturally Western-oriented. This
cultural distinction, and not just political variables, will be reflected in
minority attitudes toward the police.

This Article aims to evaluate the impact of political and cultural
variables on minority perceptions of the police in deeply divided societies.
First, I will try to illustrate the distinction between political and cultural
variables and explain how making this distinction facilitates a better
understanding of police-minority relations in deeply divided societies.
Then I will compare the attitudes of Israeli Arabs and Jews toward the
police and turn to the core of this Article: an in-depth analysis of the
attitudes of different Arab sub-groups (Muslims, Christians, and Druze)
toward the Israeli police. In so doing, I wish to elaborate upon the cultural
explanations for the existing tension, along with the more obvious political
reasons.

II. POLITICS VERSUS CULTURE

When analyzing police-minority relations, the line between political
and cultural variables can become quite vague. Nevertheless, I will try to
argue that there is an analytical distinction between the two variables that
has significant ramifications on police-minority relations. The political
aspect in police-minority relations becomes manifest when we ask the
following questions: How do minority groups perceive the role of the police
in the ccjnstruction of the (controversial) socio-political order? What is the
image of the police in society? What do the police represent among
minority groups? Are the police there “to protect and to serve” or “to chase
after and repress”? What styles ofi policing are practiced toward minority
groups? ‘Is it “high” or “low” policing?

Criminological and sociological scholars have tried to answer these
questions by addressing the socio-political variables that characterize
several minority groups. Many studies have pointed to the tense relations
that often exist between police and minorities in various societies. There is
evidence; of high rates of minority arrest and incarceration, high rates of
police violence toward minorities, and negative attitudes among minorities

1122 BADIHASISI [Vol.98

toward the police.^ Furthermore, stereotypical images of minorities are
prevalent among police officers. Most commonly, police view minority
members as a potential criminal threat.^

Research also shows high rates of crime among minorities. These
crime rates are influenced by various social factors associated with minority
status.” For example, evidence shows overrepresentation of broken
families, high rates of divorce, high residential density, low economic
status, high levels of unemployment, and high adolescent drop-out rates.
These variables increase social disorganization and affect crime rates. In
addition, minority populations tend to be younger and more likely to be
visible in the streets.’ All of these factors create a supportive environment
for the development of criminal behavior and, in tum, increase the contact

^ See, e.g., DAVID H . BAYLEY & HAROLD MENDELSOHN, MINORITIES AND THE POLICE:

CONFRONTATION IN AMERICA (1969); ROBERT BLAUNER, RACIAL OPPRESSION IN AMERICA

(1972); RANDALL KENNEDY, RACE, CRIME, AND THE LAW (1997); AUSTIN T . TURK,

CRIMINALITY AND LEGAL ORDER (1969); SAMUEL WALKER, THE POLICE IN AMERICA: AN

INTRODUCTION (3d ed. 1999); Scott H. Decker, Citizen Attitudes Toward the Police: A
Review of Past Findings and Suggestions for Future Policy, 9 J. POLICE SCI. & ADMIN. 80
(1981); Joe R. Feagin, The Continuing Significance of Race: Antiblack Discrimination in
Public Places, 56 AM. SOC. REV. 101 (1991); Simon Holdaway, Police Race Relations in
England and Wales: Theory, Policy, and Practice, 1 POLICE & Soc’Y 49 (2003); David
Jacobs & Ronald Helms, Collective Outbursts, Politics, and Punitive Resources: Toward a
Political Sociology of Spending on S^ial Control, 11 Soc. FORCES 1497 (1999); Michael D.
Reisig & Roger B. Parks, Experience, Quality of Life, and Neighborhood Context: A
Hierarchical Analysis of Satisfaction with Police, 17 JuST. Q. 607 (2000); Tom R. Tyler,
Policing in Black and White: Ethnic Group Differences in Trust and Confidence in the
Police, 8 POLICE Q . 322 (2005); Ronald Weitzer & Steven A. Tuch, Race and Perceptions of
Police Misconduct, 51 Soc. PROBS. 305 (2004).

‘ E.g., HUBERT M . BLALOCK, JR., TOWARD A THEORY OF MINORITY-GROUP RELATIONS

(1967); PAMELA IRVING JACKSON, MINORITY GROUP THREAT, CRIME, AND POLICING: SOCIAL

CONTEXT AND SOCIAL CONTROL (1989); Lawrence Bobo & Vincent L. Hutchings,
Perceptions of Racial Group Competition: Extending Blumer’s Theory of Group Position to
a Multiracial Social Context, 61 AM. SOC. REV. 951 (1996); Feagin, supra note 2; Malcolm
D. Holmes, Minority Threat and Police Brutality: Determinants of Civil Rights Criminal
Complaints in U.S. Municipalities, 38 CRIMINOLOGY 343 (2000); Karen F. Parker et al..
Racial Threat, Concentrated Disadvantage and Social Control: Considering the Macro-
Level Sources of Variation in Arrests, 43 CRIMINOLOGY 1111 (2005); Lincoln Quillian &
Devah Pager, Black Neighbors, Higher Crime? The Role of Racial Stereotypes in
Evaluations of Neighborhood Crime, 107 AM. J. Soc. 717 (2001).

•* See, e.g., CLIFFORD R. SHAW & HENRY D . MCKAY, JUVENILE DELINOUENCY AND URBAN

AREAS: A STUDY OF RATES OF DELINOUENTS IN RELATION TO DIFFERENTIAL

CHARACTERISTICS OF LOCAL COMMUNITIES IN AMERICAN CITIES (1942).

^ E.g., Richard Block, Community, Environment, and Violent Crime, 17 CRIMINOLOGY 46
(1979); Robert J. Sampson & W. Byron Groves, Community Structure and Crime: Testing
Social-Disorganization Theory, 94 AM. J. Soc. 774 (1989).

2008] POLICE, POLITICS, AND CULTURE

betweeri minorities and the police

1123

Police officers face many obstacles in
policing underclass minority neighborhoods because criminals and innocent
citizens ¡may share the same socio-economic characteristics.^ This, in tum,
increases complaints from minority groups regarding racial profiling by the
police.”

Research shows that a tense and alienated relationship between police
and the minority community strongly discourages police officers from
enforcing criminal laws while also dissuading minorities from collaborating
with pólice to prevent and report crime.^ The primary complaint of
minority groups is that they are simultaneously over-policed as suspects and
under-policed as victims, which has reduced their confidence in and
willingness to collaborate with the police.’

The political explanation of police-minority relations is quite common
in many researches; nevertheless, it lacks any reference to the impact of
societaUcultural diversity on minority interactions and perceptions of the
police. The cultural explanation of police-minority relations focuses on the
impact of police organizational culture and how it affects interactions with
minority groups. The pertinent questions are: How does the cultural
context of police activity interact with the cultural pluralism of some
minority groups? How do the cultural characteristics of the minority groups
affect their perceptions of police organizational knowledge? To what extent
are police officers aware of the various cultural characteristics of the
different communities in society?

The cultural approach focuses on the interaction between the formal
rules of,the police and the sub-cultural values of minority groups. Some of
the disparities between the majority and the minority are not merely
political, but can also be attributed to cultural differences, such as language,
religion^ customs, family structure, informal social control, moral
perceptions, and gender relations. Some cultural minorities act according to
their oŵ n cultural norms and consequently may be accused of committing
crimes because the legal culture of the state reflects the views of the

^ See Rodney Stark, Deviant Places: A Theory of the Ecology of Crime, 25 CRIMINOLOGY
893 (1987).

‘ RONALD WEITZER & STEVEN A. TUCH RACE AND POLICING IN AMERICA: CONFLICT AND

REFORM (2006); BRIAN L. WITHROW, RXCIAL PROFILING: FROM RHETORIC TO REASON

(2006).
* E.g., HUNG-EN SUNG, THE FRAGMENTATION OF POLICING IN AMERICAN CITIES: TOWARD

AN ECOLOGICAL THEORY OF POLICE-CITIZEN RELATIONS (2002).

‘ See .BENJAMIN BOWLING, VIOLENT RACISM: VICTIMIZATION, POLICING AND SOCIAL

CONTEXT; (1998); Harry Blagg & Giulietta Vaiuri, Aboriginal Community Patrols in
A ustralia:\ Self-Policing, Self-Determination and Security, 14 POLICING & Soc’Y 313 (2004).

1124 BADI HASISI [Vol. 98

dominant group. Examples of such cases include bigamy, family honor
murder, spousal and child abuse, parent-child suicide, acts of blood
revenge, and celebratory shooting. It is reasonable to expect that the
interactions of the minority with the police will reflect these cultural
differences.

Some studies have claimed that the police generally represent and act
in accordance with the culture of the dominant group, and this is further
emphasized by the under-representation of minority members in the police
force.'” As a result, some actions taken by the police might be viewed as
culturally inappropriate by traditional communities. Standard police
procedure among the majority group may create unpredictable reactions in
the minority community due to cultural differences.

III. POLICE-MINORITY RELATIONS IN A DEEPLY DIVIDED SOCIETY

There is no better case that draws attention to the dominance of the
political explanation in police-minority relations than the example of deeply
divided societies.” These are societies divided along ethnic lines where the
state traditionally is affiliated with the dominant group.’^ Examples of
these societies include Northern Ireland until 1969, Israel, Georgia, Estonia,
and Latvia.’^ The minority perceives the state as non-neutral, and this view,
as a result, decreases the legitimacy of the government and police in the
eyes of the minority. The minority’s perception of the police is not only
influenced by police actions, but also by what the police represent to the

‘” Edna Erez et al., Introduction: Policing a Multicultural Society, 7 POLICE & Soc’Y
(SPECIAL ISSUE) 5 (2003); Lorraine Mazerolle et al., Policing the Plight of Indigenous
Australians: Past Conflicts and Present Challenges, 7 POLICE & SOC’Y (SPECIAL ISSUE) 77
(2003).

” See, e.g., MIKE BROGDEN & CLIFFORD SHEARING, POLICING FOR A NEW SOUTH AFRICA

(1993); DONATELLA DELLA PORTA, SOCIAL MOVEMENTS, POLITICAL VIOLENCE, AND THE

STATE: A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF ITALY AND GERMANY (1995); JOHN MCGARRY &

BRENDAN O’LEARY, POLICING NORTHERN IRELAND: PROPOSALS FOR A NEW START (1999);

RICHARD MAPSTONE, POLICING IN A DIVIDED SOCIETY: A STUDY OF PART TIME POLICING IN

NORTHERN IRELAND (1994); WEITZER, POLICING UNDER FIRE, supra note 1; JOHN WHYTE,

INTERPRETING NORTHERN IRELAND (1990); Graham Ellison & Greg Martin, Policing,
Collective Action and Social Movement Theory: The Case of Northern Ireland Civil Rights
Campaign, 51 BRIT. J. Soc. 681 (2000).

‘̂ For more research on deeply divided societies, see AREND LUPHART, PATTERNS OF
DEMOCRACY: GOVERNMENT FORMS AND PERFORMANCE IN THIRTY-SIX COUNTRIES (1999);

Sammy Smooha & Theodor Hanf, The Diverse Modes of Conflict-Regulation in Deeply
Divided Societies, 33 INT’L J. COMP. SOC. 26 (1992); Pierre L. Van Den Bereghe,
Multicultural Democracy: Can It Work?, 8 NATIONS & NATIONALISM 433 (2002).

” For further elaboration, see THE FATE OF ETHNIC DEMOCRACY IN POST-COMMUNIST

EUROPE (Sammy Smooha & Priit Järve eds., 2005) (discussing “ethnic democracy”).

2008] POLICE, POLITICS, AND CULTURE 1125

people.’,” Such perceived illegitimacy produces a threat to internal security,
and the hulk of the state’s policing resources are therefore consigned to the
management of political offenses.’] This pattem affects the nature of police
activities in deeply divided societies so that when policing puhlic events,
for exainple, the police generally practice a “zero tolerance” policy toward
minority group protesters and regard their actions as political suhversion
against the state.’*

At the same time, the policing of non-political crimes among the
minority is typically less effective. This is due to police neglect of
incidents that occur in the minority community, particularly when the crime
hears no threat to the dominant group.’^ Weak police performance in the
minority community is also attrihutahle to the minority group’s lack of
cooperation with the police. The literature shows that the main reason that
minority groups in deeply divided societies tend to avoid cooperation with
the police is due to political disagreements hetween majority and minority
communities.’^

Ronald Weitzer, a sociologist at George Washington University, has
developed a comprehensive model of the policing of deeply divided
societies hased on his research in Northern Ireland and Zimhahwe.’^
Weitzer’s model describes police policies or practices as institutionally
biased against members of the subordinate minority group. There is
chronic over-representation of the dominant ethnic group in the police
force, especially in the top ranks. The police tend to repress the regime’s

‘•* WEITZER, POLICING UNDER FIRE, supra note 1.

‘ ‘ GRAHAM ELLISON & JIM SMYTH, THE CROWNED HARP: POLICING NORTHERN IRELAND

(2000); AÖGAN MULCAHY, POLICING NORTHERN IRELAND: CONFLICT, LEGITIMACY AND

REFORM (2006); WEITZER, POLICING UNDER FIRE, supra note 1 ; Andrew Goldsmith, Policing
Weak States: Citizen Safety and State Responsibility, 13 POLICING & Soc’Y 3 (2003).

” DELLA PORTA, supra note 11; MERCEDES S. HINTON, THE STATE ON THE STREETS:

POLICE AND POLITICS, IN ARGENTINA AND BRIAZIL (2006); P. A. J. WADDINGTON, LIBERTY AND

ORDER: PUBLIC ORDER POLICING IN A CAPITAL CITY (1994); Vince Boudreau, Precarious

Regimes and Matchup Problems in the Explanation of Repressive Policy, in REPRESSION AND
MOBILIZATION 33 (Christian Davenport et al! eds., 2005); Ellison & Martin, supra note 11.

” See BLALOCK, supra note 3; BOWLING, supra note 9; JACKSON, supra note 3; Feagin,
supra note 2; Holmes, supra note 3; Stephanie L. Kent & David Jacobs, Minority Threat and
Police Strength from 1980 to 2000: A Fixed-Effects Analysis of Nonlinear and Interactive
Effects in Large U.S. Cities, 43 CRIMINOLOGJY 731 (2005); Gustavo S. Mesch & Ilan Talmud,
The Influence of Community Characteristics on Police Performance in a Deeply Divided
Society: Tfte Case of Israel, 2\ Soc. Focus 233 (1998).

‘* See MCGARRY & O’LEARY, supra note 11; MULCAHY, supra note 15; WEITZER,
POLICING UNDER FIRE, supra note I; WEITZER, TRANSFORMING SETTLER STATES,^wpra note
I.

” WEITZER, POLICING UNDER FIRE, supra note 1.

1126 BADIHASISI [Vol.98

opponents, holding dual responsihility for ordinary crime control and
homeland security. In the absence of effective mechanisms of
accountability, the police in these countries also enjoy legal systems that
provide them with great latitude in their ability to control the minority
population, including with respect to the use of force.

The Weitzer model addresses very important political dimensions in
police-minority relations in deeply divided societies, but lacks any reference
to the cultural explanation. The reason might be that when Weitzer
developed the model, he focused his analysis on Northern Ireland. There
are few cultural dissimilarities between the Protestant majority and the
Catholic minority in this country that might influence the relationship with
the police. In contrast, in Israel there are marked cultural distinctions
between the Arab native minority and the Jewish majority that might affect
relations with the police. Arabs are part of a Mediterranean, Islamic-Arabic
culture, while Jewish culture is often more Western-oriented. These
differences are manifested in various cultural expressions, including
languages (Hebrew versus Arabic), religion (Jewish versus Muslim,
Christian, and Druze), family structure (nuclear family versus extended
family), residential patterns (urban versus rural or patrilocal),
interrelations among the extended family (weak versus strong), the role of
the clan as an informal social control institution (among Arabs), gender
relations and segregation, and leisure patterns.

Arab society is still largely governed by traditional social structures
and has not undergone radical urbanization, with a significant percentage of
Arabs living in rural villages.’̂ ^ Communities have preserved informal
mechanisms of social control.^^ The Arab society in Israel exhibits some of
the characteristics of a stateless society, especially with regard to the culture
of lawlessness (toward some Israeli laws) and community self-policing.^”

^̂ BREWER, BLACK AND BLUE, supra note 1 ; WEITZER, POLICING UNDER FIRE, supra note
I.

‘̂ A patrilocal residence is one in which the family unit lives near the male relations.
The concept of location may extend to a larger area such as a village, town, or clan area.

^̂ Majid al-Haj, Ethnic Relations in an Arab Town in Israel, in STUDIES IN ISRAELI
ETHNICITY: AFTER THE INGATHERING (Alex Weingrod ed., 1985).

” JOSEPH GINAT, BLOOD REVENGE: FAMILY HONOR, MEDIATION AND OUTCASTING

(1997); BRYNJAR LIA, A POLICE FORCE WITHOUT A STATE: A HISTORY OF THE PALESTINIAN

SECURITY FORCES IN THE WEST BANK AND GAZA (2006); Manar Hasan, The Politics of
Honor: Patriarchy, the State and the Murder of Women in the Name of Family Honor, 21 J.
ISRAELI HIST. 1 (2002).

^̂ See STANLEY COHEN, INT’L CENTRE FOR PEACE IN THE MIDDLE EAST, CRIME, LAW, AND

SOCIAL CONTROL AMONG THE ARABS IN ISRAEL (1990); LIA, supra note 23; Ginat, supra note
23.

2008] POLICE, POLITICS, AND CULTURE 1127

The stateless characteristics of the Arab minority intensify as a result of the
social and geographical segregation of Arabs and Jews in Israel.^^ These
cultural characteristics are prevalent enough to influence the relations
between the minority and the police.

The cultural variable in police-minority relations is not applicable
solely to deeply divided societies! It is relevant also to several Western
immigrant societies—including the United States, Canada, New Zealand,
and Australia—where native minorities still live in segregated communities
and hold different cultural codes from the white majority, especially in
terms of traditionally informal social control.’̂ * This makes police work a
very complex task in these communities. Furthermore, several Western
countries host immigrants from non-Western cultures, and some of these
immigrant groups have maintained cultural codes from their homelands,
even creating a Diaspora in their host countries.’^’ The immigrants are

generally unfamiliar with the culture
vulnerability may make them targets

their
the

community.̂ ** These immigrants niay in fact hesitate to contact the police

of the host country, and
for abuse by criminals in

since rriany come from countries or cultures that had poor relationships with
the police.^’ To sum up, in the case of native and immigrant minorities, the
political variable is quite important when analyzing police-minority

^̂ See Smooha & Hanf, supra note 12; Ghazi Falah, Living Together Apart: Residential
Segregation in Mixed Arab-Jewish Cities in Israel, 33 URB. STUD. 23 (1996).

*̂ See DENNIS P. FORCESE, POLICING CANADIAN SOCIETY (1992); Jhama Chatterjee & Liz
Elliott, Restorative Policing in Canada: The Royal Canadian Mounted Police, Community
Justice Forums, and the Youth Criminal Justice Act, 4 POLICE PRAC. & RES. 347 (2003);

Queensland Case Study, 6 POLICE PRAC

MazeroUe et al., supra note 10.
^̂ Wing Hong Chui & Lai-Kwan Regin Ip, Policing in a Multicultural Society: A

& RES. 279 (2005); Eric D. Poole & Mark R.
Pogrebin, Crime and Law Enforcement in the Korean American Community, 13 POLICE
STUD. INT’L REV. POLICE DEV. 57 (1990).

^̂ IMMIGRATION AND CRIME: RACE, ETHNICITY, AND VIOLENCE (Ramiro Martinez, Jr., &

Abel Vaienzuela, Jr., eds., 2006); Stephen Egharevba, African Immigrants’ Perception of
Police in Finland: Is It Based on the Discpurse of Race or Culture?, 34 INT’L J. Soc. L. 42
(2006); Lars Holmberg & Britta Kyvsjgaard, Are Immigrants and Their Descendants
Discriminated Against in the Danish Criminal Justice System?, 4 J. SCANDINAVIAN STUD.
CRIMINOLOGY & CRIME PREVENTION 125 (2003); David J. Smith, Ethnic Origins, Crime, and
Criminal Justice in England and Wales, in ETHNICITY, CRIME, AND IMMIGRATION:
COMPARATIVE AND CROSS-NATIONAL PERSPECTIVES 101 (Michael H. Tonry ed., 1997).

^’ Robert C. Davis et al.. Immigrants ‘and the Criminal Justice System: An Exploratory
Study, 13 VIOLENCE & VICTIMS 21 (1998); Robert C. Davis & Nieole J. Henderson,
Willingness to Report Crimes: The Role of Ethnic Group Membership and Community
Efficacy,\49 CRIME & DELINQ. 564 (2003)1; Cecilia Menjivar & Cynthia L. Bejarano, Latino
Immigrarits ‘ Perceptions of Crime and Police Authorities in the United States: A Case Study
from the Phoenix Metropolitan Area, 27 ETHNIC & RACIAL STUD. 120 (2004).

1128 BADI HASISI [Vol.98

relations. However, we iriiss a significant part of the picture by ignoring the
impact of cultural differences on the majority and the minority and how
these differences may affect the minority’s perceptions of the police.

rv. ARABS IN ISRAEL: BETWEEN POLITICAL THREAT AND CULTURAL

ESTRANGEMENT

Arabs inside Israel’s “Green Line” constitute about 17% of Israel’s
population, or L1 million people.^” They are a native minority and part of
the Palestinian nation. For more than 100 years, the Palestinian people
have been engaged in a violent and ongoing national conflict with the
Jewish national movement and, at a later stage, with the State of Israel.
Immediately upon its establishment following the war in 1948, the State of
Israel endorsed full, formal citizenship for members of the Arab minority
who continued to reside in Israel. The national Palestinian identity of the
Arab minority transformed them, in the eyes of the Jewish majority, into a
group that was affiliated with the enemy and which possessed “dual
loyalty.” The solution to this threat was to enforce military rule on the
minority community from 1948 to 1966. Though military rule has ended, it
has not reduced the high threat perception currently held by the Jewish
majority toward the Arab minority. A recent survey has shown that a
majority of Israeli Jews (67%) believe that the Arab community’s high
birthrate endangers the state; that Arabs are intent on changing the state’s
Jewish character (72%); that Arabs might assist enemies of the state (78%);
and that Arabs might launch a popular revolt (72%). It also showed that a
majority of Israeli Jews (84%) fear Arabs because of their support of the
Palestinian people and believe that most Israeli Arabs would be more loyal
to a Palestinian state than to Israel (66%).^’

The majority of the Israeli-Arab population lives in three geographic
areas: the Galilee, the Triangle, and the Negev—areas at the periphery (and
frontier) of Israeli society. Although there is an urban middle-class sector, a
large number of Arabs live in rural towns and villages and continue to abide
by traditional forms of social organization. In fact, 90% of Israeli

Arabs

^̂ The so-called Green Line is the 1949 Armistice line established following the war of
1948; later it became known as the pre-1967 border in order to demarcate the Arab territories
occupied following the 1967 War (the West Bank, Gaza strip, East Jerusalem, and the Golan
Heights). My use of the term the “Arabs in Israel” excludes the Palestinians in East
Jerusalem and the Druze in the Golan Heights. If we chose to include these groups, then the
Arabs in Israel would constitute about 19.9% (1.43 million) of the State of Israel’s
population. CENT. BUREAU OF STATISTICS, ANNUAL POPULATION REPORT, 2003 (2006).

‘ ‘ SAMMY SMOOHA, INDEX OF ARAB-JEWISH RELATIONS IN ISRAEL (2004).

2008] POLICE, POLITICS, AND CULTURE 1129

live in small towns populated by Arabs exclusively. Only eight cities are
ethnically mixed, and these are extremely segregated residentially.^^ Such
segregation is accepted by many Israelis; only a minority of Jews or Arabs
express willingness to live in a mixed neighborhood.”

The Arab minority is not a single homogenous group, but rather is
characterized by an inner diversity that affects its relationship with the
police. One of the features of this diversity is the religious-ethnic divide
among Muslims, Christians, Druze, and Bedouins.^” Ethnic distinctions
among Arabs in Israel are institutionalized; for example, the State of Israel
recognizes religious-ethnic divides and finances separate institutions for
each of the Arab religious-ethnic groups. The sub-ethnic distinctions of the
Arab minority are not limited solely to the religious aspect, but are also
manifested in the political attitudes and behaviors of the various Arab
groups.

Druze have a basic difference from Muslims and Christians in their
relations with the State of Israel.^? The Druze are an Arab ethnic group
culturally. However, the Druze peoples’ political identification with
Palestinian national motifs is very weak, and thus they are perceived as less
threatening by the Israeli state.^* Members of the Druze group share similar
political orientations with the Jewish majority and are in fact drafted into
the Israeli armed forces and the police.” In light of this, we may expect
that compared to other Arab sub-groups, the Druze will express relatively
more positive attitudes toward the police.

” Falah, supra note 25.
‘^ Sammy Smooha, The Arab Minority in Israel: Radicalization or Politicization?, in

ISRAEL: STATE AND SOCIETY, 1948-1988′ STUDIES IN CONTEMPORARY JEWRY (Peter Y.

Medding ed., 1989); see also Smooha & Hanf, supra note 12.
” According to the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics, the ethnic distribution of the Arab

population is as follows: a majority (65%) are non-Bedouin Muslims, 9% are Christians, 9%
are Druze, and 17% are Bedouins. The majority of the Bedouins reside in the southem
police district, while the majority of Druze and Christians reside in the Northern District.
CENTRAL BUREAU OF STATISTICS, supra note 30.

^’ The Druze are a religious community, considered to be an offshoot of the Ismaili
Islam, found primarily in Lebanon, Israel, and Sjria. In Israel, the Druze are the only Arabs
who are allowed to fight for the Israel Defense Forces, and many of them serve in the Israeli
police.

*̂ Sammy Smooha, Part of the Problem and Part of the Solution: National Security and
the Arab Minority, in NATIONAL SECURITY AND DEMOCRACY IN ISRAEL 81 (Y. Avner ed.,
1993).

•” Hillel Friseh, The Druze Minority in^ the Israeli Military: Traditionalizing an Ethnic
Policing Role, 20 ARMED FORCES & Soc. 53 (1993).

1130 BADI HASISI [Vol.98

Although the Druze share similar political orientations with the Jewish
majority, they still preserve the traditional ways of life in their segregated
communities, customs that are very similar to those of the Muslim Arabs.
This is quite salient in their patterns of patrilocal residence, the centrality of
the extended family as an informal social control mechanism, and their
maintenance of social separation between the genders. These
characteristics indicate that the Druze politically identify with the Jews, but
culturally identify with the Muslim Arabs. In recent years, few clashes
between the police and the Druze have erupted, and these mostly have
stemmed from the difference between the modem and traditional cultures.
In October 2007, a violent clash took place between the police and the
Druze citizens of a small northern village called Pki’in. Several Druze
vigilantes from the community burned some new cellular antennas that
were installed in the village. The people of the village believed that the
cellular antennas were responsible for the increase in cancer rates in their
community. More than 200 police officers sent to arrest the vigilantes were
met with harsh community resistance. The police used live ammunition
and many citizens and police officers were wounded. Some of the wounded
police officers were Druze. This incident emphasizes the traditional
structure of Druze society in Israel and its potential conflict with law
enforcement.

When addressing the population of the Christian Arabs, we face the
same complexity. Because they identify strongly with the Palestinian
national identity and share the Muslim Arabs’ political orientation, one
might assume the Christian Arabs’ attitudes toward the police to be more
negative. However, the lifestyle of most Christian Arabs is more Western-
oriented, similar to that of the Jewish population. In addition, this
community is largely urban, better situated economically, and in
consequence highly represented in the Israeli-Arab elite class.”^ The
birthrate is significantly low among Christian Arabs; it is even lower than
the rate among Jews and significantly differs from that of Muslims and
Druze. The practice of naming children to reflect a European-Christian
heritage and the use of foreign languages in daily speech are culturally
Western characteristics of the Christian Arabs. Furthermore, Christian
Arabs occupy a higher class position compared to the rest of the Arab sub-
groups, especially in terms of educational attainment and income.”’

‘^ Amalia Sa’ar, Carefully on the Margins: Christian Palestinians in Haifa Between
Nation and State, 25 AM. ETHNOLOGIST 215,215-16 (1998).

•” V. Kraus & Y. Yonay, The Power and Limits of Ethnonationalism: Palestinians and
Eastern Jews in Israel, 1974-1991, 51 BRIT. J. Soc’Y 550 (2000). The Christian schools in

2008] POLICE, POLITICS, AND CULTURE 1131

Accordingly, we may conclude that the Christian Arabs are politically very
close to’ the Muslim Arabs but culturally different from them, and from the
Druze. Consequently, they still iview themselves as a distinct cultural-
religious minority among Arabs in Israel.'”‘

I have several research hypotheses for this study. I expect that the
political and cultural differences within the Arab minority will create a
complex picture of their perceptions toward the police. For example, I
expect that the Druze will express positive attitudes toward the police in the
political context. At the same tinie, I suspect that they will share similar
(negative) attitudes to those of Muslim Arabs when community cultural
codes are threatened by police practices. I also expect that Christian Arabs,
similarly to Muslim Arabs, will express negative attitudes toward the police
in the political context, but at the same time, they will be more likely than
Muslim and Druze to contact the police for assistance due to their class
position and Westernized cultural orientation.

V. ARAB-POLICE RELATIONS IN ISRAEL

The Or Commission—formed to investigate the violent clashes
between the police (and the Border Police)'” and the Israeli Arab minority
in October of 2000—has noted that many Arabs do not believe that the
police serve the Arab population, but are instead the “long arm” of a regime
designed to control and suppress Airab political activities. At the same time,
many police officers view Arabs as disloyal citizens. The police are
inconsistent in enforcing ordinary criminal laws in Arab communities, a
practice that leads
communities.”^

to a degree of unchecked crime within minority

Israel haVe a reputation as elite schools and of ofTering a better quality of education than
public Arab schools. Sa’ar, supra note 38′ at 217-18.

‘”‘ Sa’ar, íM/jra note 38, at 231.
•” The Border Police was established in 1953 with the main function of preventing

terrorist sabotage activities and the infiltration of Palestinians from neighboring Arab
countries. COHEN, supra note 24. Over tile years, this unit has become semi-militaristic and
has come to deal mostly with public order policing. Arab protest in Israel has a traumatic
and violent history of encounters with the Border Police. Furthermore, the Border Police is
very active in the Palestinian territories] especially in policing terrorism, patrolling, and
public or;der policing. These activities have given it a very negative reputation among Arabs
in Israel See Badi Hasisi & Ronald \^[eitzer, Police Relations with Arabs and Jews in
Israel, 47 BRIT. J. CRIMINOLOGY 728 (2007).

“^ OR; COMM’N, REPORT OF THE STATE COMMISSION OF INQUIRY TO INVESTIGATE THE

CLASHES’ BETWEEN THE SECURITY FORCES AND ISRAELI CITIZENS IN OCTOBER 2000 (2003).

1132 BADI HASISI [Vol.98

There is minimal research on police-minority relations in Israel, most
of which emphasizes the negative attitudes of Israeli Arabs toward the
police.”*^ In one poll, only 53% of Israeli Arabs felt that they should obey
the police, compared to 85% of Jews.”” Surveys conducted between 2000
and 2002 show that Arab respondents express negative attitudes toward the
police.”^ In the 2001 poll, approximately 70% of Arabs thought that the
police force was not egalitarian in its attitude toward all citizens of Israel,
while only 35% of Jews agreed. The violent clashes between the police and
Arab citizens in the October 2000 mass events significantly influenced this
disparity in views. Still, even by the time of the 2002 poll, a significant
majority of Arab respondents (62%) maintained their belief that the police
are not egalitarian toward all citizens of Israel.

Taking into consideration the political and cultural diversity among
Israeli Arabs (Muslim, Christian, and Druze), it is surprising that we could
not find even one researcher who addressed the impact of this diversity on
the attitudes of Arab minority sub-groups toward the police. The current
research is therefore quite original.

VI. DATA AND METHODOLOGY

Data for this study comes from a telephone survey which was
conducted over a period of two weeks in March 2003 among adult Arabs
and Jews over the age of eighteen residing in the Israeli police force’s
Northern District. The Northern District ranges from the Hadera Valley
(Wadi Ara) to the Lebanese border. The majority (70%) of the Israeli-Arab
population lives in the Northern District, typically in communities that are
highly segregated fi-om the Jewish population.

Data was collected from a representative telephone sample drawn from
locales in the Northern District with more than 1,000 residents. The sample
included 255 Jewish and 471 Arab respondents. The 471 Arab respondents
included 328 Muslims, 77 Christians, and 66 Druze Arabs.’**. Cluster
sampling was used to ensure that each group was adequately represented in

••̂ Hasisi & Weitzer, supra note 41, at 740-42 (2007); Arye Rattner, The Margins of
Justice: Attitudes Towards the Law and the Legal System Among Jews and Arabs in Israel, 4
INT’L J. PUB. OPINION RES. 358 (1994); David Weisburd et al.. Community Polieing in Israel:
Resistance and Change, 25 POLICING 80 (2002).

‘”‘ IRA CAHANMAN & TAMAR TZEMACH, ISRAELI POLICE IN THE EYE OF THE PUBLIC:

ATTITUDES ON SELECTED ISSUES (1991).

‘ ‘ ‘ ARYE RATTNER & DANA YAGIL, THE CULTURE OF LAW: THE CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM

IN THE EYE OF THE ISRAELI SOCIETY (2002).

“” Bedouin Arabs were excluded from the sample due to their small number in the
Northern District.

2008] POLICE, POLITICS, AND CULTURE 1133

the sample, and the response rate was 40% both for Arab and Jewish
respondents. Interviews were conducted both in Arabic and Hebrew by
Arab or Jewish interviewers matched to the respondent’s background.

A. DEPENDENT VARIABLE

In this study, two themes in citizens’ attitudes toward the police were
examined: trust in the police and community receptivity to contacting the
police. The trust variable includes five measures in a five-point Likert scale
ranging from “strongly disagree’] to “strongly agree” in regard to the
following statements: “I have trust in the police;” “I have trust in the Border
Police” (also known as the Border Patrol); “The police do their job fairly;”
“The police work to prevent crime near my residence;” and “I would permit
a member of my family to become a police officer” (Cronbach’s alpha =
.77).”‘ The receptivity variable includes four measures in a five-point
Likert scale ranging from “strongly disagree” to “strongly agree” in regard
to the following statements: “Reporting criminals to the police in my view
is informing on them;” “I feel that police officers are

not welcome in my

community;” “In the event that I b|ecome a victim of property crime, I will
report the crime to the police;” and “In the event that I become a victim of
violent crime, I will report the crime to the police.””^ The receptivity
variable eventually combined two items: willingness to report property
crimes and willingness to report a violent crime to the police (Cronbach’s
alpha = .66).

B. INDEPENDENT VARIABLES

The independent variables in this study include the standard
demographic factors of age, gender, and social class, with the latter
measured by educational attainment. Most studies of police-citizen
relations find that age is a significant predictor of attitudes toward the
police, I with young people more likely than older age groups to hold
negative views of the police.’*^ Gender and class, however, are less
consistent predictors.

I suspect that the fear of crime may affect the public perception of the
police.'” Some studies have found that people who are fearful of crime may

“‘

5ee Table 1.

•”* 5eeTable3.
“” B. ßrown & W. Benedict, Perceptions of the Police: Past Findings, Methodological

Issues, Conceptual Issues, and Policy Implications, 25 POLICING 543, 554 (2002).
“̂ Allen E. Liska et al.. Fears of Crime as a Social Fact, 60 Soc. FORCES 760 (1982).

1134 BADI HASISI [Vol.98

blame the police for the crime they fear.^’ Fear of crime is measured in the
present study by the following question: “To what extent are you afraid of
becoming a victim of violent crime?” Responses were rated on a scale of 1
(not afraid at all) to 5 (very afraid).

A significant part of the Israeli-Arab minority holds dissident political
attitudes toward the regime and rejects the Jewish identity of the state. I
expect that those Arabs who express moderate attitudes toward the Israeli
state will be more favorable in their perceptions of the police and more
receptive to contacting the police. This variable was measured by asking
Arab respondents if Israel, as a Jewish and democratic state, can guarantee
equal rights to its Israeli-Arab citizens.^^

We know that highly controversial incidents involving the police may
have an immediate and powerful effect on citizens’ opinions, particularly
when the incident involves members of one’s own ethnic group. In Israel, it
is possible that Arab communities that experienced a violent conflict with
the police in October 2000 would evaluate the police negatively. Arab
respondents were asked whether their community had experienced such an
incident.^” Approximately half of our Arab respondents reported that such a
clash had occurred in their community (scored 1) and the other half reported
no such incident (scored 0). This variable was measured for Arab
respondents only.

In a society as politicized as Israel, a person’s ethnicity might be
expected to influence his or her evaluations of the police. The variable of
ethnicity distinguishes between Arabs and Jewish respondents, and also
among Arab sub-groups (Muslims, Christians, and Druze).

VII. ANALYSIS

I compared the attitudes and preferences of Arabs, Jews, and Arab sub-
groups (Muslims, Christians, and Druze) regarding the two key dimensions
of police-citizen relations—trust and receptivity. Both bivariate and
multivariate analyses were conducted. In the multivariate models, a linear
regression analysis was performed only for the Arab respondents on each of
the two indices reflecting the main dependent variables. The trust index of
the police combined five items: trust in the police, trust in the Border
Police, the fair performance of the police, the perception of police crime

^’ See Brown & Benedict, supra note 49; Mary Holland Baker et a l , The Impact of a
Crime Wave: Perceptions, Fear, and Confidence in the Police, 17 Law & SOC’Y REV. 319
(1983).

^̂ This variable was measured for Arab respondents only.
^̂ This variable is labeled police-community clash.

2008] POLICE. POLITICS, AND CULTURE 1135

prevention efforts near the respondent’s residence, and the likelihood of
permitting a member of one’s family to become a police officer. The
receptivity scale combined two items: willingness to report property crimes
and willingness to report a violent crime to the police.

A. TRUST IN THE POLICE

Table 1
Trust in Law Enforcement Institutions and Police Performance

Percentage Agreeing

Mean (Standard Deviation)

Jews

(TV = 2 5 5 )

Arabs

(7V=471)

“Trust the Israel

Police***

59.6

3.72 (1.10)

44.8

3.35 (1.32)

”Trust the Border

Police***

82.1

4.2:7 (0.97)

39.3
2.96 (1.60)

pólice do their j o b

fairly*-^*

54.1

3.5,4 (1.12)

32.1

2.84 (1.43)

** Police work to prevent

crime near your

residence***

42.1

3.21 (1.19)

32.3

2.93 (1.34)

° You would permit a

member of your family

to beconie a police

officer-i**

60.4

3.65 (1.55)

47.3

3.06 (1.78)

Asterisks denote significance levels from analysis of variance. * < .05 ** < .01 *** <.OO1

° The respondents were asked if they agree with the statement, “I have trust in the police?”
The response format was ordinal; the ranges from 1 to 5: 1 = strongly disagree; 5 = strongly
agree.
” The respondents were asked if they agree with the statement, “I have trust in the Border
Police?” The response format was ordinal; the ranges from 1 to 5: 1 = strongly disagree; 5 =
strongly agree.
‘̂ The respondents were asked if they agree with the statement, “The police do their job
fairly.” The response format is ordinal; the ranges from 1 to 5: 1 = strongly disagree; 5 =
strongly agree.
” The respondents were asked if they agree with the statement, “The police work to prevent
crime near my residence.” The response format is ordinal; the ranges from 1 to 5: 1 =
strongly disagree; 5 = strongly agree.
‘ The respondents were asked if they agree with the statement, “I would permit a member of
your family to become a police officer.” The response format is ordinal; the ranges from 1
to 5: 1 = strongly disagree; 5 = strongly agree.

1136 BADI HASISI [Vol. 98

The findings in Table 1 show that the police are highly trusted among
Jewish respondents in comparison to relatively low levels of trust among
Arab respondents—59.6% and 44.8%, respectively. A significant disparity
between Jews and Arabs was found in relation to trust in the Border
Police—82% and 39.3%, respectively. Jewish respondents are more likely
to evaluate the performance of the police as fair and are also more satisfied
with police crime control than are Arab respondents. The data in Table 1
also show that Jewish respondents are more inclined than Arab respondents
to permit a member of their family to join the police force.

Table 2
Means (Standard Deviation) of Trust in Law Enforcement Institutions and Police

Performance, by Arab Sub-Ethnic Group

Trust the Israel
Police**
Trust the Border
Police***
The police do
their job fairly***
Police work to
prevent crime
near your
residence

Muslims
Af=328

40.2
3.25 (1.33)

31.4
2.70 (1.58)

32.2
2.84 (1.45)

30
2.88 (1.33)

Arab Sub-Ethnicity
Percentage Agreeing

Mean (Standard Deviation)

Christians
A^=77

41.6
3.30 (1.34)

41.7
3.04 (1.60)

26
2.75 (1.38)

39
3.06 (1.35)

Druze
N=6e

63.6
3.74 (1.25)

75.8
4.09 (1.28)

41
3.05 (1.43)

32.2
2.92(1.38)

35.7
2.65 (1.71)

55.8
3.35 (1.76)

84.8
4.35 (1.33)

You would permit
a member of your
family to become
a police
officer***

Asterisks denote significance levels from analysis of variance. * < .05 ** < .01 *** < .001

Table 2 presents the attitudes of Arab sub-groups (Muslims,
Christians, and Druze). Findings from the table show that Druze
respondents hold more positive attitudes toward the police than do Muslim
and Christian Arabs. The Druze’s level of trust in the pólice and Border

2008] POLICE, POLITICS, AND CULTURE 1137

Police is very similar to that of Jewish respondents.”’ More than Muslim

and Christian Arabs, the Druze tend to evaluate the performance of the

police as fair. Furthermore, the Druze are even more enthusiastic than the

Jews about a member of their family joining the police (84.8%), and they

significantly differ in their views on this issue from Muslim and Christian

Arabs. ;

B. RECEPTIVITY TO THE POLICE

Table 3
Receptivity to the Police

” Reporting criminals to the

police in my view is informing

on them***

*” I feel that police officers are

not welcome in my

community***

•^Willingness to report property

crime to police***

” Willingness to report violent

crime to police***
Percentage Agreeing
Mean (Standard Deviation)

Jews Arabs

N=255 N=A1\

15.7 31.0

1.87 (1.36) 2.55 (1.63)

15.8 34.7

1.82 (1.38) 2.73 (1.60)

85.8 68.4

4.49 (1.07) 4.01 (1.40)

81.6 65.6

4.41 (1.07) 3.89 (1.45)

Asterisks denote significance levels from analysis of variance. * < .05 ** < .01 *** <.OO1 " The respondents were asked if they agrçe with the statement, "Reporting criminals to the police in my view is informing on them." The response format is ordinal; the ranges from 1 to 5: I = strongly disagree; 5 = strongly agree.

‘ The

respondents were asked if they agree

with the statement, “I feel that police officers are
not welcome in my community.” The response format is ordinal; the ranges from 1 to 5: 1 =
strongly disagree; 5 = strongly agree.

with the statement, “In case you hecome a victim
of property crime, you will report the crime to the police.” The response format is ordinal;
the ranges from 1 to 5: 1= strongly disagree; 5 = strongly agree.

The respondents were asked if they agree
of violent crime, you will report the crime to the police.” The response format is ordinal; the
ranges from 1 to 5: 1 = strongly disagree; 5

with the statement, “In case you become a victim

• strongly agree.

5ee Table 1.

1138 BADI HASISI [Vol.98

A receptive relationship between the police and the community is
crucial for effective police performance. Table 3 shows that Arab
respondents are more cautious than Jewish respondents in their interaction
with the police. In comparison with Jewish respondents, Arabs generally
endorse the statement, “Reporting criminals to the police is like informing
on them.” Similar views are also shown by the response indicating that
police officers are not welcome in the community. Furthermore, this
dynamic is observed in the case of reporting both property and violent
crimes, as Arab respondents seem to feel restricted from either reporting
crimes or complaining. This constrained relationship between the police
and the Arab minority may be best explained by the political variable.
Similar findings were documented among non-dominant groups in Northern
freland and South Africa.’^

Table 4
Receptivity to the Police, by Arab Sub-Ethnic Group

Arab Sub-Ethnicity
Percentage Agreeing
Mean (Standard Deviation)

Muslims Christians Druze
Af=328 N=ll N=66

Reporting criminals to the ^ ^ ^ ^3 4 40 0

police in my view is 2.53(1.64) 2.35(1.53) 2.78(1.74)
informing on them
I feel that police officers are – ^ „ , ^ , . „ „

iO.Ö jZ.J JU.o

not welcome in my 2.83(1.61) 2.68(1.52) 2.42(1.60)
community
Willingness to report 67.7 83.1 60.6
property crime to police*** 3.97 (1.43) 4.44 (1.09) 3.73 (1.51)
Willingness to report violent 63.7 75.0 66.7
crime to police* 3.81 (1.50) 4.28 (1.18) 3.92(1.38)

Asterisks denote significance levels from analysis of variance. * < .05 ** < .01 *** <.OO1

As noted earlier, the Druze hold similar political attitudes to those of
Jews, so if the explanation for police receptivity were solely political, then I
would expect the Druze to express more receptivity to the police. Findings
in Table 4 show that this is not the case. In reality, the Druze express

” John Brewer, Policing, in THE ELUSIVE SEARCH FOR PEACE: SOUTH AFRICA, ISRAEL,

AND NORTHERN IRELAND ( H . Gilomee & J. Gagiano eds., 1990); see BREWER, BLACK AND
BLUE, supra note 1 ; WEITZER, POLICING UNDER FIRE, supra note 1.

2008] POLICE, POLITICS, AND CULTURE 1139

similar attitudes to those of Muslims in all aspects of police receptivity.
They eVen endorse, more than Muslims, the statement that reporting
criminals to the police is like informing on them (40%). Thirty percent of
Druze respondents think that police officers are not welcome in their
communities, and the Druze express an unwillingness, similar to that of
Muslims, to report property and violent crimes to the police.

These fmdings suggest that the political explanation is not entirely
adequate to explain the Arab minority’s lack of receptivity to the police.
However, that the Druze share a similar political orientation with Israeli
Jews while maintaining cultural similarities with the Muslims, and this
might be the explanation. The cultural explanation is also manifest when
focusing on Christian Arabs’ receptivity to the police. Table 4 shows that
although Christian Arabs share a similar political orientation with Muslim
Arabs (as expressed in their negative attitudes toward the police in Table 2),
they still are significantly more willing to contact the police in the event of
property and violent crimes, and in this they are more similar to Israeli
Jews. I

The data presented above point to differences among Arab sub-groups.
The Dmze express positive perceptions of the police in the political context,
but like Muslim Arabs, they are more restricted in their willingness to
contact the police. Conversely, Christian Arabs express negative
perceptions of the police in the political context, but also express positive
perceptions in regard to making contact with the police. At this stage, I will
first try to determine if these differences persist, independent of the
influence of other variables. The survey included questions regarding
respondents’ demographic attributes and other potentially relevant
predictors. Second, I will try to determine what other factors, in addition to
ethnic background, predict the Arab minority’s perceptions of the police in
Israel. !

1 cianducted a multivariate analysis to estimate the effect of several
predictors on the public’s perceptions of the police. This was done in two
stages. First, I used the complete survey sample including Israeli Jews as
the reference category. By conditioning out this variable, I could estimate
the impact of the independent viariables and focus on the differences
between each Arab minority group relative to Israeli Jews. Second, I
estimated the model solely for the Israeli Arab minority sub-groups,
excluding Jewish respondents since some of the independent variables were
measured only for Arab respondents—e.g., endorsing the Jewish-

1140 BADI HASISI [Vol. 98

democratic state in Israel and experiencing violent clashes with the police
during the October 2000 events.^^

In general, the police trust model in Table 5 is more powerful than the
community receptivity model, as indicated by the adjusted R̂ figures in the
models.” We can see in the police trust model that education has a strong
effect on predicting the public’s trust in the police: the higher the education
of the respondents, the lower their support of the police. This finding can
be explained by the effect of education on the politicization of public
awareness of police performance.

Table 5
Regression Estimates for Effects of Predictors on Public Perceptions of the Police

Education
Gender (1= male)
Fear of Crime
Ethnicity

Jewish (ref.)

Muslim
Christian

Druze

R̂ (Adjusted R )̂

Trust Model

b(ß)
-.34 (-.25)***

-.60 (-.07)*
.31 (.11)**

-4.25 (-.48)***
-2.68 (-.19)***

-.77 (-.05)
.22 (.21)

654

Receptivity Model

b(ß)
.02 (.03)

-.69 (-.15)**
21 (.14)***

-1.15 (-.25)***
-.21 (-.03)

-1.33 (-.17)***
.10 (.09)

712
Asterisks denote significance levels from analysis of variance. * < .05 ** < .01 *** <.OO1

Gender has significant impact both on the trust and the receptivity
model. Women tend to express more trust and be more receptive in their
interaction with the police than men. One reason that Israeli women hold
positive views of the police may have to do with the fact that they are more
concerned than men about becoming victims of crime.̂ ^

Fear of crime may affect one’s perceptions of the police insofar as the
police are evaluated for their performance in preventing or solving crimes.’^
The findings indicate that fear of violent victimization affects both the trust

‘* See Table 6.
” Variance Inflation Factor (VIF) was conducted to verify if any independent variable in

the model is a linear function of other independent variables. VIF values were less than two
among all variables in the models.

‘^ See Hasisi & Weitzer, supra note 41.
‘ ‘ See Brown & Benedict, supra note 49.

2008] POLICE, POLITICS, AND CULTURE 1141

and thê receptivity models; the greater the fear of crime, the higher the
evaluation of the police and the greater the inclination to contact the police.
As suggested above, this finding might be affected by the fact that the fear
of crime is more prominent among women.

Finally, I examined the effect of Arab sub-ethnicity in both models
using Israeli Jews as the reference group. The results show that ethnic
differerices persist. Net of the other factors, Muslim and Christian Arabs
are more likely than Druze (and Jews) to hold negative perceptions of the
police in the trust model. Reviewing the receptivity model, we can see that
Druze are more similar to Muslims in their restricted receptivity to the
police, whereas Christian Arabs express receptive attitudes similar to those
expressed by Jewish respondents in regard to contacting the police.

In the second stage, I estimated the trust and receptivity models solely
for Arab respondents. In the police trust model we can see that education
has a strong effect on predicting Arab trust of the police. The higher the
education of an Arab individual, the lower their support of the police. One
reason that highly educated Arabs might be critical of the police is that they
typically live, not with middle-class Jews, but with poor and working-class
Arabs, and therefore experience

60
the same kind of treatment from the

police. Education had no significant effect on the receptivity model.
Table 6

Regression Estimates for Effects of Predictors on

Israeli Arab Perceptions of the Police

Education
Gender (1= male)
Fear of Crime
Community-Police Clash (Oct. 2000)
Israel as a Jewish-democratic state can
guarantee equal rights to the Israeli Arabs
Ethnicity

Druze Cref “Í

Muslim
Christian
R̂ (Adjusted R )̂
N
Trust Model

b(ß)
-.46 (-.27)***

-.71 (-.06)
.40 (.12)**

-1.00 (-.10)*

1.2 (.19)***

-3.12 (.27)***
-1.80 (-.13)*

.25 (.24)

425

Receptivity Model

b(P)
-.05 (-.06)

-.64 (-.13)**
.32 (.21)***
-.15 (-.03)

.13 (.09)*

.21 (.04)
1.20 (.18)**

.11 (.10)

454

Asterisks denote significance levels from analysis of variance. * < .05 ** < .01 *** <.OO1

*” NOH LEWIN-EPSTEIN & MOSHE SEMYONOV, THE ARAB MINORITY IN ISRAEL’S

ECONOMY: PATTERNS OF ETHNIC INEQUALITY (1993).

1142 BADI HASISI [Vol.98

Fear of crime may affect one’s perceptions of the police insofar as the
police are evaluated for their performance in preventing or solving crimes.*”
The fmdings indicate that fear of violent victimization affects both the trust
and the receptivity models; the greater the fear of crime, the higher the
evaluation of the police and the greater the inclination to contact the police.

Gender had no significant impact on the trust model, but there was
some impact on the receptivity model. Arab women tend to be more
receptive in their interaction with the police than Arab men. One reason
that Arab women might be more receptive to contacting the police may
have to do with the fact that they are more concerned than Arab men about
becoming victims of crime, especially when traditional social controls in
the Arab community are gender-biased.^^ Another reason may have to do
with the negative political image of the police among Arab men, who
frequently—more than Arab women—experience violent clashes with
police at political events.*^

Police-community conflict during the riots of October 2000 had a
significant effect on the trust model of policing. Arabs who report that their
community had experienced a violent clash with police officers are more
inclined to express negative attitudes toward the police. This flnding is
consistent with other studies that document the effects of highly
controversial policing incidents on citizens’ perceptions of the police.
This variable has no significant effect in the case of the receptivity model.

I expected that Arabs who agree that Israel, as a Jewish and democratic
state, can guarantee equal rights to its Arab citizens would be more
supportive of the police. This was confirmed in the two models: Arab
respondents who agree with the statement express more positive attitudes
toward the police and are more inclined to contact the police. The effect of
this variable is, however, more salient in the (political) trust model.

Finally, I examined the effect of Arab sub-ethnicity in both models.
The resuhs show that ethnic differences persist; net of the other factors,
Muslim and Christian Arabs were more likely than Dmze to hold negative

*’ See Brown & Benedict, supra note 49.
*̂ See WOMEN AGAINST VIOLENCE, ATTITUDES TOWARDS THE STATUS AND RIGHTS OF

PALESTINIAN WOMEN IN ISRAEL (2006); Hasan, supra note 23; Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorlcian,
Law, Politics, and Violence Against Women: a Case Study of Palestinians in Israel, 21 LAW
& P O L ‘ Y 1 9 0 , 196(1999).

” See Hasisi & Weitzer, supra note 41.
^ Robert J. Kaminski & Eric S. Jefferis, The Effect of a Violent Televised Arrest on

Public Perceptions of the Police, 21 POLICING 683 (1998); Ronald Weitzer & Steven A.
Tuch, Perceptions of Racial Profding: Race, Class, and Personal Experience, 40
CRIMINOLOGY 435 (2002).

2008] POLICE, POLITICS, AND CULTURE 1143

perceptions of the police in the trust model. When reviewing the receptivity
model, we can see that Druze are more similar to Muslims in their restricted
receptivity to the police, whereas Christian Arabs express more receptive
attitudes than Muslim and Druze in regard to contacting the police.

VIII. DISCUSSION

Most of the research on police-minority relations in deeply divided
societies has emphasized the political explanation, yet very little research
has addressed the influence of cultural pluralism on police-community
relatioris. In this article I have tried to elaborate on the influence of the
cultural diversity and resistance of the Arab native minority in Israel upon
police performance, alongside political variables.

The major contribution of this Article is that it sheds light on the
differences within minority groups and their ramiflcations on police-
minority relations. We usually refer to minority groups as a coherent,
homogeneous group. By doing so, we may miss important distinctions
within the minority group that have an effect on their relations with the
police. [ This Article shows thatj depending upon political and cultural
affiliations, the Arab minority has different perceptions toward the police.
Arabs who hold similar political attitudes to the Jewish majority (i.e., the
Druze) expressed positive attitudes toward the police. By the same token.
Arabs with a cultural similarity to
expressed a more open receptivity

the Jewish majority (i.e., the Christians)
to the police. Both political and cultural

variables contributed to a better understanding of police-minority relations
in Israel.

This research can be extended to explore the relationship between
police and minorities in other countries. Native-aboriginal populations
reside in several Western countries, and recent studies have revealed the
tense relationship between the police and the aboriginal population in these
countries.*^ Furthermore, this research can also be extended to several
Western countries who host immigrants from different cultures. Several
studies have shown the tense relations between these immigrant groups and
the police. This Article suggests that a deeper analysis of the relationships
between minority groups and the police should be conducted, and that
researchers should be more attentive in their analysis of the differences
within minority groups.

This research can also be extended to explore the relationship between
the police and other social groups in Israeli society. Indeed, the Jewish

65
I

Blagg & Vaiuri, supra note 9.

1144 BADI HASISI [Vol.98

population is not a homogenous group in cultural terms. For instance, ultra-
Orthodox Jews are culturally distinguishable from the secular Jewish
majority. Consequently, they hold signiflcant negative attitudes toward the
police.^* Further research should be directed toward analyzing police
performance as perceived by ultra-Orthodox Jews, which might clarify the
impact of cultural diversity on their criminal behavior and attitudes toward
the police.

There are some limitations to this research that should be mentioned.
Less than 25% of the statistical variance is explained in each model, and
this raises the question of what factors are not taken into account and how
they might affect the findings. The suggested models take into account
many possible variables that have confounded other studies. Nonetheless,
as in all multivariate analyses, we should be cautious in drawing
conclusions.*^ Future studies should even more closely specify their
models of minority attitudes toward the police.

IX. CONCLUSION

This Article offers a framework for analyzing police-minority relations
in deeply divided societies. In these kinds of societies, the regime has
severe problems with its legitimacy among the minority group, which in
tum affects the group’s relationship with the police. Research shows that
the political and cultural disparities between Arabs and Jews in Israel have
reduced the trust and the willingness of Israeli Arabs to cooperate with the
police. The political explanations assume that the major source of the
tension between the police and the minority group stem from political
variables, and in order to improve this relationship, socio-political reforms
regarding the minority group are necessary. The cultural explanations
assume that the tensions between the police and the minority group are also
influenced by cultural variables, and not just socio-political factors. Thus,
in order to improve the relationship between the minority and the police,
cultural reforms are required in order to change the police culture both in

^ MINISTRY OF PUB. S E C , STATE OF ISRAEL, PUBLIC ATTITUDES TOWARDS THE ISRAELI

POLICE (2002); MINISTRY OF PUB. S E C , STATE OF ISRAEL, PUBLIC ATTITUDES TOWARDS THE

ISRAELI POLICE (2001); RAFI SMITH, KEREN SHARVIT & SMITH CONSULTING & RESEARCH

INC., PUBLIC ATTITUDES TOWARDS THE ISRAELI POLICE: EXECUTIVE SUMMARY (2000);

MINISTRY OF PUB. S E C , STATE OF ISRAEL, PUBLIC ATTITUDES TOWARDS THE ISRAELI POLICE

(1999).
” David Weisburd, Magic and Science in Multivariate Sentencing Models: Reflecting on

the Limits of Statistical Methods, 35 ISRAEL L. REV. 225 (2001).

2008] POLICE, POLITICS, AND CULTURE 1145

the making of management-level End street-level decisions with respect to
minority groups.**

The cultural and political differences between Jews and Arabs in Israel
pose a challenge for police performance in the minority community. While
the police are focused on law enforcement, they must also be aware of and
sensitive to the cultural distinctiveness of the minority community and
suitably adjust themselves to it when providing services to Arab citizens.
Increased distribution of community police stations in Arab communities
would create better access to police and facilitate the procedure of flling
complaints. In order to improve Arab-police relations, a multicultural
approach is needed. This approach could be put into practice by recruiting
more Arab policemen and policewomen, especially non-Bedouin Muslims*’
and, at the same time, by creating strong ties between the local political
leadership and the chiefs of policé stations, ties which have proven to be
valuable in times of crisis.™

However, a multicultural approach is not without risk. A policy of
cultural relativity that is too flexible in the policing of a minority group is
liable to create a differential enforcement of laws and may even perpetuate
criminal behaviors. I conclude that a balanced approach to police presence
is necessary and that greater consideration and judgment should be
exercised when enforcing the law. The complex task of policing the Arab
minority in Israel must take into account the population’s political and
cultural composition, balancing its particular and diverse needs with the
need to maintain the rule of the law.

‘* Janet Chan, Changing Police Culture, 36 BRIT. J. CRIMINOLOGY 109 (1996).
” Although non-Bedouin Muslims compose about 12% of the Israeli population, their

representation in the police force is less than 2%. See Hasisi & Weitzer, supra note 41.
™ INDEP. COMM’N ON POLICING FOR NORTHERN IRELAND, A NEW BEGINNING: POLICING IN

NORTHERN IRELAND 81 -90 ( 1999).

Age, Racial/Ethnic Minority Status, Gender
and Misdemeanor Sentencing

Ed A. Mufioz
Adrienne B. Freng

ABSTRACT. Researchers have increasingly examined interactions be-
tween various combinations of legal and extralegal variables to explain
disparities in felony criminal sentencing decisions. This paper focuses on
ihc combined effects of extralegal variables such as age, racial/ethnie mi-
nority status, and gender have on misdemeanor criminal sentencing. Re-
sults indicate that adull. White males experienced the harshest fine
amounts, while young, young adult, and adult racial/ethnic minority
mules had a higher likelihood of receiving other punitive senlenees in
addition to, or rather than just a fine. The results provide support for
eompeting theoretieal approaches of contextual discrimination and fo-
ca I concerns. The implications for raeial/ethnie bias in lower court deci-
sicms are discussed, doi: I0.I300/J222v05n{)4_02 {Article copies available for
af^efrom The Haworth Document Delivery Service: l-800-HAWORTH. E-mail
address: Website: © 2007 by The Haworth Press. All rights reserved.}

Dr. Ed A. Mufioz is currenlly Assistant Professor of Criminal Justice and Director
of ChicaiWo Studies at the University of Wyoming, Laramie, WY.

Dr. Adrienne B. Freng is currently Assistant Professor in the Department of Crimi-
nal Justic;e at the University of Wyoming, Laramie, WY.

Address correspondence to: Ed A. Mufioz, University of Wyoming, 105 Ross Hal!,
Laramie, WY 82071 fE-mail: emunoz@uwyo.edu).

The authors would like to thank the Nebraska Mexican American Commission for
the use of their 1993 Sentencing Research Project Data.

Joumal of Ethniciiy in Criminal Justice, Vol. 5(4) 2007
Available online al http://jeci.haworthpress.com

30 JOURNAL OF ETHNICITY IN CRIMINAL JUSTICE

KEYWORDS. Latinos, Native Americans, race, ethnicity, misdemean-
ors, discrimination

Refined theoretical approaches and sophisticated methodological ad-
vatices have increasingly shown that an individual’s racial/ethnic status
in and of itself may not be as important in the adjudication of criminal
behavior as once believed. Recent reviews of criminal sentencing litera-
ture demonstrate the complex interplay of racial/ethnic status with other
legal and extralegal variables that differentially and uniquely impact the
administration of justice (Spohn, 2000; Zatz, 2000). There is little doubt
that legal variables, such as number and severity of offenses and/or
prior record, are the primary determinants in felony sentencing deci-
sions (Spohn, 2000). However, sentencing disparity can be accounted
for by subtle and indirect, yet systematic racial/ethnic discrimination in
the criminal justice system (Zatz, 2000).

Scholars have pointed to the concepts of “contextual discrimination”
and “focal concerns” to help untangle perceived and actual inconsisten-
cies in racial/ethnic sentencing disparities. Contextual discrimination
allows for the possibility that more severe punishment can be experi-
enced by either majority or minority racial/ethnic groups and is de-
pendent upon a number of factors including but not limited to region,
jurisdictional levels, types of crime, and distinctive offender-victim
relationships (Spohn & DeLone, 2000). These primarily structural
factors influence the more social psychological focal concerns of judi-
cial and other criminal justice decision making processes revolving
around the determination of blameworthiness, the protection of the
community, and the consideration of practical constraints and conse-
quences (Steffensmeier & Demuth, 2001, 2000). When information is
limited, focal concerns may be affected by criminal stereotypes that of-
tentimes are based on individual characteristics of the defendant such as
age, racial/ethnic status, and/or gender (Spohn & Holleran, 2000;
Steffensmeier, Ulmer, & Kramer, 1998).

Considering that misdemeanors are the most common types of of-
fenses for which people are detained, interrogated, arrested, and con-
victed for (Feeley, 1979; Nelson, 1994), it is surprising that the under-
examination of contextual discrimination and focal concerns theoretical
approaches in misdemeanor sentencing outcomes exists. The “libera-
tion hypothesis” (Kalven&Zeisel, 1966; Smith &Damphousse, 1998;
Spohn & Cederblom, 1991; Spohn & DeLone, 2000), for example, con-
tends that as crime severity increases, legal discretion decreases due to

Ed A. Mufioz and Adrienne B. Freng 31

relatively more concrete and unambiguous criminal evidence in com-
parison to lesser crimes (i.e., physical and/or economic injury vs. vic-
timless). In addition, the adjudication of misdemeanor criminal codes
poses ar increased risk for differential outcomes as lower criminal court
officials have fewer restrictions on decision-making (Nelson, 1994).
Rather than basing decisions on a “calculable set of rules,” such as sen-
tencing guidelines, lower court prosecutors, defense attorneys, and
judges more often rely upon discretionary judgment in the adjudication
of misdemeanor criminal offenses (Feeley, 1979).

This coupled with increasing evidence suggesting that racial/ethnic
discrimination may be confined to less serious crimes (Crawford,
Chiricos, & Kleck, 1998; Munoz & Sapp, 2003; Spohn & DeLone,
2(K)0) \varrants more analyses of racial/ethnic discrimination in misde-
tneanor sentencing decisions. Equally important is weighing the impli-
cations of biased misdemeanor criminal justice on felony criminal
justice, especially when misdemeanors are factored into varied sentenc-
ing guidelines for felonies in the form of prior arrests, convictions,
and/or sentences (Holleran & Spohn, 2004; Johnson, 2003; Lubitz &
Ross, 21)01; Spohn, 2000; Ulmer & Johnson, 2004; Zatz, 2000).

COSTEXTUAUZING CRIMINAL JUSTICE OFFICIALS’
FOCAL CONCERNS

More and more, judicial decision-making has been found to center
around three focal concerns-blame worthiness, protection of the com-
munity, and practical constraints and consequences (Steffensmeier &
Demuth, 2001, 2000; Steffensmeier, Ulmer, & Kramer, 1998). Blame-
worthiness is associated with the view that the punishment fit the crime
and corresponds with sentencing research indicating that the type and
severity of the criminal offense are the primary determinants in sentenc-
ing decisions. Other factors that can congeal or mitigate perceptions of
blameworthiness are offenders’ prior offending and convictions, prior
victimization at the hand of others, and offenders’ roles in criminal
activities.

Attributionally related, but conceptually discrete, the protection of
the community focuses on the need for incapacitation of convicted
criminals and deterrence of possible offenders. Rational court actors are
forced 😮 make predictions about an offender’s future positive or nega-
tive behavior based on the nature and scope of a particular crime, as well
as legal (i.e., prior record), and sometimes, extralega! factors (i.e., fam-

32 JOURNAL OF ETHNICITY IN CRIMINAL JUSTICE

ily history) (Albonetti, 1991; Steffensmeier, Ulmer, & Kramer, 1998).
Incarceration may be deemed the most effective punishment for a
low-level drug offense by a youthful offender, especially if the offender
is known for his/her truant school behavior and whose family has a
criminal history. Incarceration certainly looms larger if previous at-
tempts at rehabilitation (i.e., alternative schooling, substance use
counseling) have been deemed ineffective.

Organizational and individual practical constraints and consequences
also impact sentencing dispositions. Court efficiency and incarceration
resources are considered, in addition to an offender’s ability to do time
(i.e., special needs for the aged or disabled). Court aetors are conscious
as well, of local politieal conditions and community norms that eould
impact their continued public employment within the criminal justice
system (Dixon, 1995; Eisenstein, Flemming, & Nardulli, 1988; Myers
& Talarico, 1987; Steffensmeier, Ulmer, & Kramer, 1998). A White
judge may not be as likely to sentence minorities to the full extent of the
law if his/her jurisdiction is comprised disproportionately of non-White
voting citizens.

This complex interplay of judicial foeal concerns is complicated by a
high degree of uncertainty as judges do not always have the necessary
information at hand to make unbiased sentencing decisions. Thus,
judges and other criminal justice actors tend to rely on perceptual short-
hand that is oftentimes tinged by age, race/ethnicity, and gender attribu-
tions (Farrell & Holmes, 1991; Steffensmeier, Ulmer, & Kramer,
1998). The interaction of these extralegal variables, as well as their in-
teraction with legal variables, allows for the manifestation of contextual
discrimination, a type of indirect discrimination that oecurs in certain
circumstances or situations (“e.g., certain regions, particular crimes,
special victim-offender relationships”) (Spohn, 2000; Walker, Spohn,
& DeLone, 2000: p. 17). While much research indicates that racial/eth-
nie minorities fall victim to disparity in the criminal justiee system
based on certain variables, contextual discrimination is also supported
by research showing that in particular contexts. Whites experience
harsher sentencing for the conviction of criminal offenses (Klein,
Petersilia, & Turner, 1990; Munoz & Sapp, 2003; Myers, 1987; Myers
& Talarieo, 1987, 1986; Walsh, 1991, 1987). Thus, it cannot be as-
sumed that non-Whites will always be the recipients of biased judicial
discretion.

To further illustrate, a “symbolic assailant” thesis posits that net of
other relevant factors, non-Whites are at increased risk for involvement
in the criminal justice system due to their historical categorization by

Ed A. MuHoz and Adrienne B. Freng 33

law enforcement officials as individuals highly capable of wrongdoing
(Mann, 1993; Skolnick, 1966). Socially constructed images of non-
White male and female criminality have worked to criminalize non-
Whites, regardless of any observed criminal behavior, placing them at a
higher risk for interrogation and/or arrest (Mann & Zatz, 1998). This is
the basis for the current clash on law enforcement’s alleged racial pro-
filing piMicies (Bass, 2001; Leitzel, 2001; Taylor & Whitney, 1999;
Toby, 2000) that could begin the cumulative disadvantage that ra-
cial/ethnic minorities face when drawn into the criminal justice system.
Racial/ethnic bias at the law enforcement level carries the possibility of
filtering on through criminal processing and on to court dispositions
(Spohn, 1995; Zatz, 1987).

On the other hand. Whites are most likely portrayed as the prime vic-
tims of non-White criminality. Understandably, images of White crimi-
nality can work as a cumulative advantage in that they frequently
provide Whites with charitable discretion from police officers, prose-
cuting attorneys, judges and juries. Even when Whites are found to be
typical offenders for particular crimes (i.e., corporate crime, serial kill-
ings), race is seldom discussed as a characteristic for the observed of-
fending pattern. In most instances, typical White offenses are treated as
anomalies with perpetrators differentiated as victims of some personal
misfortune and/or distress (Mann & Zatz, 1998).

Even so, there are particular contexts when White criminal offenders
may be most likely to receive harsh punishment. This tends to occur in
locations where the non-White population is relatively large, but has
limited social, economic, and political power. As Meyers and Talarieo
(1987) explain, there may be vestiges of paternalistic attitudes towards
non-White criminality that foster sentence leniency, especially when
victims are themselves non-White. Conversely, there may be less toler-
ance fo:- White criminality when victims are White. Racially/ethnically
segregated communities also reduce perceived and actual racial/ethnic
econon-iic competition, and thus reduce the possible overzealous social
control of non-White minority populations. Politically, elected judges
may be perceptive to the potential voting power a large non-White pop-
ulation could organize if it perceives and experiences criminal injustice
(Myers & Talarieo, 1987). This complex interplay of regional structural
characteristics, victim/offender characteristics, and the nature and
scope of the criminal offense supply the basis for focal concerns in
crimind justice decision-making and allow for the manifestation of
contextual discrimination in the form of sentencing disparities within
and between particular majority and minority social groupings.

34 JOURNA L OF ETHNICITY IN CRIMINAL JUSTICE

Equally important is the role that age and gender play with respect to
criminal activity. Research does show that gender differences in offend-
ing do exist-females are arrested in substantially higher proportions
than their male counterparts for petty larceny offenses-yet some argue
that this is probably an indication of the relatively precarious economic
situation in which females fmd themselves in comparison to males
(Belknap, 1996;Chesney-Lind, 1997). Gender differences in offending
also could result from the negative effects of socially constructed no-
tions of female criminality on the enforcement and adjudication of
criminal codes (Mann & Zatz, 1998). Nevertheless, years of crimino-
logical research have left little doubt that criminal behavior is most
prevalent among young males (Belknap, 1996; Chesney-Lind, 1997;
Elliott, i994;Hindelang, 1978).

Not as clear from criminological research is if non-Whites participate
in criminal behavior at a higher rate than their White counterparts.
Some researchers argue that non-Whites’ disproportionate representa-
tion in official criminal statistics is due to their higher participation in
more serious criminal behavior (Blumstein, 1994, 1982; Hindelang
1978; Hindelang, Hirschi, & Weis, 1979; Wilbanks, 1987). Compari-
sons of self-report data with official crime data, however, dispute this
explanation by indicating no significant racial/ethnic differences in lev-
els of criminal behavior (Elliott 1994; Elliott, Huizinga, & Morse 1986;
Hawkins, Laub, & Lauritsen, 1998; Hindelang, 1978; Huizinga &
Elliott, 1987). Despite this mixed and inconclusive evidence young,
non-White males and females disproportionately populate incarceration
facilities and there is evidence that this may be attributable in part to
sentencing bias based on negative criminal perceptions of young,
non-White males and females (Farrell & Holmes, 1991; Spohn &
HoUeran, 2000; Steffensmeier, Ulmer, & Kramer, 1998).

In particular, evidence shows that race/ethnicity is a particularly sig-
nificant criminal justice determinant when taking into account the over-
abundance and unpredictability of particular law enforcement and
sentencing jurisdictions, the diverse aspects of criminal justice deci-
sion-making, and the appropriate disaggregation of criminal justice data
(Crutchfield, Bridges, & Pitchford, 1994; Hawkins & Hardy, 1989;
Myers & Talarieo, 1987; Spohn, 2000; Spohn & DeLone, 2000; Zatz,
2000). Hence, the impact of judicial focal concerns for contextual dis-
crimination can be better scrutinized in social contexts where non-
White enclaves are comparatively large and rapidly increasing, which
could pose an apparent threat to the White majority and influence the
rigid social control of minority populations (Bridges & Crutchfield,

Ed A. Munoz and Adrienne B. Freng 35

1988; Bridges, Crutchfield, & Simpson, 1987; Brownsberger, 2000;
Hawkins & Hardy, 1989).

SETTING FOR THE STUDY

The demographic phenomenon referred to as “The Browning of
America” (Johnson, Farrell, & Guinn, 1997; Morales, 2001) is occur-
ring at unprecedented levels in areas not typically recognized for their
racial/ethnic minority populations. The Midwest, for example, ranked
second in total regional population according to 20(X) U.S. census data,
yet had the least proportional racial/ethnic diversity with Whites ac-
countinj^ for 85% of its total regional population (Grieco, 2001a).
Among non-White racial groups. Blacks comprise 10.6%, Native
Americans comprise 1.1%, and Asians, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific
Islanders comprise 2.3% of the Midwestern total population (Barnes &
Bennett, 2002; Grieco, 2001b; McKinnon, 2001; Ogunwole, 2002).
Within the different racial groupings, a total of 4.9% identified as being
Latino (Guzman, 2001).

Intenjsting, however, is that the Midwest’s ten-year proportional in-
creases for Whites (5.2%) and Blacks (19.6%) were minimal in compar-
ison to large proportional increases for Native Americans (111.5%),
Asians, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islanders (88.6%), and Latinos
(81.0%) (Barnes & Bennett, 2002; Grieco, 2001a, 2001b; Guzman, 2001;
McKinnon, 2001; Ogunwole, 2002). The increasing growth of racial/eth-
nic diversity within the Midwest region has been especially pronounced
for particular states and counties. Within Nebraska, for example, twelve
out of ninety-three counties had a larger 10-year increase in their diver-
sity index (i.e., the probability that two randomly selected people would
differ by race/ethnicity) compared with the average for all U.S. counties
(Brewer & Suchan, 2001). Much of the increase in Nebraska’s diversity
index can be explained by a large increase in its Latino population
(155.4%) and to a lesser extent an increase in its Asian, Hawaiian, and
Pacific Islander population (83.3%; U.S. Bureau of the Census, 2001,
2000).

The three counties selected for this study, Madison, Dakota, and
Scottsbluff, typify this population shift. Census data for 1990 in Table 1
indicate: that Whites were the overwhelming majority in Nebraska and
for selected counties. Latinos are the largest non-White minority group
in Dakota (6.1%), Madison (1.7%), and Scottsbluff (14.5%) counties.
By 2(X)0, Latinos proportionally increased three and one-half times to

S’ (S ijo M rs O o; —

Ed A. Mufioz and Adrienne B. Freng 37

22.6% cif the Dakota County population, and over four fold to 8.6% of
the Madison County population. Latinos in Scottsbluff County in-
creased only by two-fifths to 17.2% in 20(K). Increases for other
non-White racial ethnic groups were smaller and more variable by
county. Of particular note is the growth of the Asian population in Da-
kota County, which increased by almost four-fifths from 2.1% in 1990
to 3.1% in 2000 (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 2001, 2000).

To further explain, within the past two decades Madison and Dakota
Counties have confronted a restructuring of economic opportunities
within their county borders that is similar to other Midwestern non-met-
ropolitan counties experiencing extraordinary increases in their ra-
cial/ethnic minority populations. More specifically, meatpacking
corporations have moved their production sites from urban to rural ar-
eas to be closer to their product and to move away from high-paying un-
ion labor. Needless to say, the recruitment of labor from a small,
relatively elderly population for lowered economic incentives has
proved difficult for meatpacking corporations. To compensate for labor
shortages, meatpackers formally and informally recruited Southeast
Asian and Latino immigrants to fill their needs. While some migrants
were male sojourners, the tendency has been for family settlement, which
has given rise to Mexican and Southeast Asian community development
amidst previously homogenous Anglo communities (Stull, Broadway, &
Griffith, 1995).

All in all, non-White county proportional increases were compara-
tively Uirger to overall net changes in respective county population to-
tals as seen in Table 1. Moreover, non-Whites more than doubled
proportionately in the Tri-County study population from 6.3% in 1990
to 12.9% in 20(X). Whites, in contrast, decreased proportionately from
93.7% in 1990 to 87.1 % in 2000, even though they experienced a slight
numerical increase from 1990 to 2000 (U.S. Bureau of the Census,
2001, 2000). Large, rapid increases in the non-White population due to
immignition have been found to increase racist and xenophobic fears
that often spiral into moral panics, wherein immigrants are blamed for a
variety of social ills, including criminal activity (Hyun Sook, 1997;
Johnson, Farrell, & Guinn, 1997). Without a doubt, this current ra-
cial/ethaic shift in the U.S. population (Grieco & Cassidy, 2(X)1) is pro-
ducing a growing interest in the criminal sentencing experience of
racial/eihnic groups other than Blacks and Whites (Demuth, 2003;
Everett & Wojtkiewicz, 2002; Hagan & Palloni, 1999; HoUeran &
Spohn, 2004; Johnson, 2003; Munoz & McMorris, 2002; Steffensmeier
& Demuth, 2001, 2000; Ulmer & Johnson, 2004).

38 JOURNAL OF ETHNICITY IN CRIMINAL JUSTICE

RESEARCH QUESTIONS

This study examines the nature and scope of contextual discrimina-
tion in three Nebraska non-metropolitan counties where non-White
populations are comparatively large and rapidly increasing, a factor
which could impact judicial focal concerns. Based on the preceding dis-
cussion, we examine the following hypotheses:

HI: Racial/ethnic misdemeanor sentencing disparity will be present,
but variable in nature and scope for both Whites and non-Whites.

H2: Male offenders will be sentenced more severely than female
offenders and younger offenders will be sentenced more severely
than older offenders.

H3: The combination of age, racial/ethnic status, and gender will
have the most negative impact on sentencing outcomes for youn-
ger, non-White males and females.

H4: Legal variables will have a greater impact on sentencing out-
comes than extralegal variables.

H5: Offenders from counties (Dakota and Madison) with a high
degree of racial/ethnic change will receive harsher sentencing than
those with a low degree of racial/ethnic change (Scottsbluff).

DATA AND METHODS

Sample

The study utilized secondary data collected from misdemeanor crim-
inal cases filed in Dakota, Scottsbiuff, and Madison counties in Ne-
braska during the 1992 calendar year. The data was collected in the
summer of 1993 by a private consulting firm under the auspices of the
Nebraska Mexican American Commission, which was acting upon
their constituents’ protest regarding perceived law enforcement mis-
treatment in several areas of the state. The existing data set was made
readily available for analysis to the lead author who was employed by
the consulting firm at the time of data collection. To our knowledge, we
are not aware of another available misdemeanor data set with more re-

Ed A. Mufioz and Adrienne B. Freng 39

cent data. The project collected court data from the three non-metropoli-
tan Nebi-aska counties mentioned above on the basis of their historically
large and/or rapidly growing Latino populations. In addition, cases in-
volving Native Americans were included in the racial/ethnic minority
category based on their historical and demographic similarities to the
Latino populace in Nebraska. Thus, the analysis compared disparities
between White and Latino and Native American combined male and
female misdemeanants. This left a total of 8,289 cases for analysis.

Measures

Descriptive statistics for the data are shown in Table 2. Predictably,
males (71.5%) accounted for the overwhelming majority of misde-
meanor cases compared to females (27.6%). For a small number of
cases (.9%), gender of the offender was not recorded. To address this is-
sue, male was substituted for the gender of those missing cases. Addi-
tionally, a dummy variable was created to control for this missing data
in the following analyses (1 if missing, 0 if not).

Latinos and Native Americans were collapsed into one racial/ethnic
category for analytic convenience that is grounded in theoretical ratio-
nale. Theoretically, Latino and Native American populations have in-
digenous origins in the Americas (Menchaca, 2001) and continue to
experience racial and ethnic discrimination on many societal fronts
(Healej, 2003). Also, both Latinos and Native Americans have been
more similarly impacted by Anglo (internal) colonization that often-
times relied on the assistance of criminal justice agents to accomplish
the goals of securing land and cheap labor (Rosales, 1999; Blauner,
1994, 1972; Mirande, 1987; Barrera, 1979). This particularly has been
the case: for Latinos and Native Americans in rural Nebraska (Becher,
1999; Hardhoff, 1998; Sayer, 1997; Vald^s, 1990). Additionally, the
nature and scope of Latino and Native American male and female crimi-
nal stereotypes (i.e., distrustful, violent, bloodthirsty, thieving, gang-
banging substance abusers; see Bender, 2003; Mann & Zatz, 1998) and
patterns of offending and conviction are generally comparable (i.e.,
property, assault, drugs/alcohol; see Munoz & McMorris, 2002;
Mufioz, McMorris, & DeLisi, 2004), and differ from other racial/ethnic
minority groups (see Walker, Spohn, & DeLone, 2(X)7; Mann & Zatz,
1998).

The smaller number of Native American misdemeanants did not al-
low for comparisons of combined age, race/ethnicity, and gender ef-
fects between Whites, Latinos, and Native Americans separately. Thus,

40 JOURNAL OF ETHNICITY IN CRIMINAL JUSTICE

TABLE 2. Descriptive Statistics

variable
Gender

Male
Female
Missing Gender

White
Racial/ethnic minority

Age
Youth 11-24
Young Adult 25-29
Adult 30-91
Missing Age

Nebraska County
Dakota
ScottsblufF
Madison

Total Offenses (range = 1 to 5)

Offense Type
Traffic
Assault
Resisting Arrest/Distiirbing Peace
Drugs/Alcohol
Property
Other Offenses

Sentence
Fine Amount (range $0 to $210)
Fine Only
Fine and/or Something Else

Mean or % (“SDl

71.5%
27.6%

.9%

71.2%
28.8%

43.3%
15.6%
38.0%
3.2%

20.5%
43.8%
35.7%

1.19 (.55)

76.2%
3.5%
2.2%

10.4%
4.7%
3.1%

“f:

$51.73 ($53.92)

88.8%
11.2%

8289

8289
8289
8289
8289
8289

8186
7568

combining Latinos and Native Americans into the racial/ethnic minor-
ity category produced a sufficient number of cases to allow for this com-
bined main effects analytical strategy. Finally, African (n = 113) and
Asian Americans (n = 81) were excluded from the analysis because of
negligible numbers and previous research that has indicated different
offending and conviction patterns that could confound the results re-

Ed A. Munoz and Adrienne B. Freng 41

lated to race and ethnicity (see Walker, Spohn, & DeLone, 2001;
Mufioz & Sapp, 2003; Mann & Zatz, 1998).

The majority of cases originated in Scottsbluff County (43.8%), fol-
lowed by Madison (35.7%) and Dakota (20.5%) counties respectively,
which roughly corresponded proportionately to total county population
data presented in Table I. The average age of offenders was 29.8 and
ranged from 11-91 years. From this, three age dummy variables were
created for multivariate analyses. We compared Young Adults (25-29)
and Adults (30-91) to Youth (11-24). A small number of cases had
missing age information (3.2%). These cases were placed in the young
adult category based on the median age of offender (age 26). A dummy
variable for missing age (I if missing, 0 if not) was included as a control
in the following analyses.

As mentioned earlier, researchers have demonstrated the usefulness
of employing interactive statistical models along with additive models
to examine the effects of legal and extralegal variables in sentencing de-
cisions (Spohn & HoUeran, 2000; Spohn & DeLone, 2000; Steffens-
meier, Lflmer, & Kramer, 1998). Here, we employed models to examine
the combined effects of age, race/ethnicity, and gender on the adjudica-
tion of iTiisdemeanor criminal codes. Dummy variables were created
employing each of the various combinations of age, race/ethnicity, and
gender categories. Young, White females were then utilized as the ref-
erence group in sentencing comparisons within and between particular
age, race/ethnicity, and gender groupings.

In terms of legal variables, many offenders had more than one type of
offense listed in offender records, but only the first three offenses were
listed in the data set. Small cell totals were collapsed to reduce offense
types into six general offense categories, which were then ranked for se-
riousness of the offense. This ranking was as follows, starting with the
most serious and ending with the least serious: (1) assault, (2) resisting
arrest/disturbing the peace, (3) drug/alcohol, (4) property, (5) traffic,
and (6) other. The most serious offense of the three possible charges
listed for an offender was used for analysis. Traffic offenses were the
most serious offense brought forth for the overwhelming majority of
sample misdemeanants (76.2%). Personal, domestic, and sexual as-
saults were combined into one category (3.5%) as they involve, more
often thun not, varying levels of illegal physical contact. Resisting arrest
and disturbing the peace were combined into one category and exam-
ined separately from assaults, as they are not always physically violent
in nature (2.2%). Drug and alcohol offenses were combined to form an-
other category (10.4%). Trespassing, usually related to attempted or

42 JOURNAL OF ETHNICITY IN CRIMINAL JUSTICE

suspected theft, was combined with property offenses (4.7%). The
‘Other’ category consisted of all other offenses including leash laws,
failure to appear, etc. (3.1%).

Genera! offense categories may mask some important differences in
charging due to race/ethnicity and socio-economic status (SES) of of-
fenders and victims, but the general overall heightened ambiguity of
misdemeanor criminal processing, adjudication, and sentencing helps
render this concern moot. In his case study, Feeley (1979) describes
lower criminal courts having a market place atmosphere where offi-
cials use cursory knowledge to make seemingly arbitrary decisions.
External actions and decisions determine lower criminal courts work-
load. Police officers and/or citizens whose perspectives differ from
court officials initiate almost all cases, and “court officials are continu-
ally evaluating the ‘seriousness’ of the case from the information at
hand and fashioning options and sanctions accordingly” (Feeley, 1979:
p. 158).

A defendant’s prior record is handled in a similar informal manner in
lower criminal courts and may be why this information was absent from
county court files used for the study. What appears to be most influen-
tial in misdemeanor case dispositions is the total number of offenses per
defendant, which court officials use as bargaining chips in the adjudica-
tion and sentencing of convicted misdemeanants (Feeley, 1979). In the
current sample of cases, 13.6 percent of misdemeanants had two or
more charges brought against them and the mean number of charges
was 1.19. Additionally, in order to address the skewness of this vari-
able, the total offenses category was truncated at five offenses.

Selection bias can be introduced at various stages of the criminal jus-
tice decision-making process from police discretion and victim report-
ing to prosecutorial and judicial case dismissals (Peterson & Hagan,
1984; Zatz & Hagan, 1985). There was little we could do to address law
enforcement discretion and victim reporting as the current data come
from misdemeanor court record files and not police reports and arrest
records. We also recognize the limited quality of the selected court
record data due to the limited criminal justice resources available in
these smaller non-metropolitan county jurisdictions. These data limita-
tions preclude a reasonable determination as to whether non-convic-
tions were due to insufficient evidence, to charges being re-filed, to
charges being bound over to felony District Court, or to defendants be-
ing extradited or entering into unspecified plea bargains. Because of
this ambiguity, we did not include non-convictions and truncated the
sample to misdemeanor convictions.

Ed A. Munoz and Adrienne B. Freng 43

Two sentencing outcomes regarding fines were the focus of the anal-
ysis. Because fmes were the most common disposition for misde-
meanor violations (88.8%; particularly for simple traffic violations),
one of tlie sentencing variables was amount of fine levied for the con-
viction î f a misdemeanor offense. Originally, this variable contained
amounts varying from $0 to more than $997. To utilize this variable in
OLS, wi; initiated a process to normalize the data without using the nat-
ural logarithm so as to maintain the measure of dollars for interpretation
purposes (Munoz & McMorris, 2002). Since fines tended to cluster
around certain amounts, fines were recoded into $ 10 increments, round-
ing to the higher $ 10 amount. Also, since only five percent of individu-
als received fines exceeding $210, fine amount was truncated at this
amount to address skewness (see Munoz & McMorris, 2002 for
additional discussion).

In addition to fines, other possible judgments against offenders were
probation, restitution, jail time, required defensive driving school,
driver’s license suspension, or work release/electronic monitoring.
Hence, a second sentencing variable was created and included other
judgments in addition to, or rather than, imposed fines. We compared
individuals who received only a fine, to those who received a fine
and/or yM\ time, probation, and/or restitution for misdemeanor convic-
tions. Other dispositions were too few in number and were omitted from
analyses.

Added justification for this strategy comes from previous research
that shows little or no racial/ethnic disparities in misdemeanor fine
amounts (Feeley, 1979; Munoz, Lopez, & Stewart, 1998; Nelson,
1994), and in some cases, higher fine amounts for Whites (Munoz &
Sapp, 2003; Munoz & Martinez, 2001; Nelson, 1994). Even if fines are
high, they represent a more favorable sentencing disposition than incar-
ceratior, which restricts activity, and most important, economic activity
necessary for the payment of fines. On the surface, probation may seem
like a desirable outcome, but court mandated participation in commu-
nity service, substance abuse treatment, and/or defensive driving pro-
grams can be more costly in time and money than a one-time fine. The
same ctin be said for restitution, as a convicted misdemeanant may be
forced to pay for damages to person and/or property beyond their
means. More importantly, however, prior sentences of convicted crimi-
nals are part of legal decisionmakers focal concerns (Zatz, 2(X)0), par-
ticularly when determining how best to protect the community. On the
other hand, scholars have questioned the efficacy of court ordered pro-
bation and diversionary programs for convicted females and youth,

44 JOURNAL OF ETHNICITY IN CRIMINAL JUSTICE

both culturally similar and dissimilar, that are desigtied primarily for
convicted White and Black adult males (Belknap, 1996; Botvin et al.,
1995; Chesney-Lind & Sheldon, 1998; Mari’n, 1993; Sarri, 1987). In
these data, 11.2 percent of misdemeanants had a fine and/or some other
sentence disposed.

Analytic Strategy

To examine the effect of legal and extralegal variables on misde-
meanor dispositions, several analytic techniques were used. First,
bivariate relationships were assessed in Table 3 to determine the rela-
tionship between the variables and race/ethnic status using chi-square

TABLE 3. Bivariate Relations: Racial/Ethnic Status by Contextual, Legal, and
Sentence Variables

County
Dakota
Madison
Scottsbluff

Total Offenses

OfFense Type
Traffic
Assault
Resist/Disturb
DruRs/Alcohol
Property
Other

Sentence
Fine Amount

Fine Only
Fine and/or
Something Else

***p

Whites

19.1%
42.9%
38.0%

l.U
sd = .426

87.6%
1.6%
.8%

6.1%
2.7%
1.1%

$47.97
sd = $47.90

92.9%
7.1%

R/E minority

24.0%
18.0%
58.0%

1.38
sd = .74

47.8%
8.3%
5.5%

20.8%
9.8%
7,8%

$61.33
sd = $65.94

77.2%
22.8%

Total

20.5%
35.7%
43.8%

1.19
sd = .55

76.2%
3.5%
2.2%
10.4%
4.7%
3.1%

$51.73
sd = $53.92

88.8%
11.2%

Chi-Square or F
Statistic

469.92***”

420.96***”

1522.58***’

102.84***”

359.04***’

Ed A. Munoz and Adrienne B. Freng 45

and tests of means. Second, the individual contribution of legal, extra-
legal, and county variables, and measures for age, racial/ethnic status,
and gender combinations on misdemeanor dispositions was examined
using regression techniques. In additive multivariate analyses, females.
Whites, Scottsbluff County, and traffic offenses serve as reference
groups due to our expectation that male, racial/ethnic minority, Dakota
and Madison County, and non-traffic related misdemeanants would be
sentenced the harshest. Young offenders also serve as a reference
group; however, we expect this group to experience harsher sentencing
than their older counterparts. In interactive multivariate analyses,
young. White females serve as the reference group for within and be-
tween age, race/ethnicity, and gender group comparisons. The OLS re-
gression results are in shown in Table 4, while logistic regression results
are shown in Table 5.

FINDINGS

Bivariate Analyses

The results of the bivariate analyses are presented in Table 3 and indi-
cate that significant racial/ethnic relationships exist between all the
variables. Based on the sample findings, there is little county racial/eth-
nic disproportionality visible when compared to 1990 census data in Ta-
ble 1. There are significant differences in legal variables by race/
ethnicity. Whites are significantly more likely to be convicted for traffic
offenses (87.6%) rather than any other type of offense, while racial/eth-
nic minority misdemeanants are more likely to be convicted for of-
fenses (52.2% combined total) other than traffic violations. White and
racial/ethnic minority proportional differences for assault, resist/dis-
turb, drugs/alcohol, property, and other offenses are consistently large
ranging from approximately three (drugs/alcohol) to seven (other)
times larger for racial/ethnic minority misdemeanants. Further evidence
of significant legal differences between White and racial/ethnic minor-
ity misdemeanants can be seen when examining total offenses as the
mean number of offenses for racial/ethnic minority misdemeanants
(1.38) ^vas higher than White misdemeanants (1.11). Racial/ethnic mi-
nority individuals ($61.33), on average, also received higher fine
amounts than Whites ($47.97). While the majority of defendants re-
ceived just a fme, racial/ethnic minority individuals were three times
more likely to receive a fme and/or some other disposition, suggesting

46 JOURNAL OF ETHNICITY IN CRIMINAL JUSTICE

TABLE 4. Coefficients from OLS Regression of Fine Amount

Male
Missing Gender
Racial/ethnic minority
Young Adult
Adult
Missing Age
Dakota
Madison
Total Offenses
Assault
Resist/Disturb
Alcohol/DruR
Property
Other
Young White Male
YounR R/E minority Male
Younf! Adult White Male
Young Adult R/E minority
Male
Adult White Male
Adult R/E minority Male
Young R’E minority Female
Young Adult White Female
Young Adult R/E minority
Female
Adult White Female
Adult R/E minority Female
Constant

R̂
SE

Model

b(se)

3.23** (1.08)
-6.26 (5.54)

.13 (1.22)
3.07* (1.42)

4.73** (1.07)
-16.33**(3.10)
28.08** (1.42)
11.27** ( l . I I )
21.63** (1.00)
-9.30** (2.75)
13.92** (3.49)
69,52** (1.81)

.73 (2.40)
-6.16* (3.05)

5.35**(1.6l)

.357
43.28

beta

.027
-.010
.001
.022
.043

-.053
.207
.100
.220

-.032
.038
.390
.003

-.019

Model 2
b(se)

28.16** (1.42)
11.44** (1.12)
21.60** (I.OO)
-9.02** (2.75)
13,84** (3.49)
69.49** (1.81)
.634 (2.40)
-6.15* (3.06)
1.86 (1.89)
2.16 (2.26)
5.89* (2.34)
5.42* (2.75)

8.76** (1.91)
5.94* (2.52)
5.57 (3.51)
3.22 (2.99)
-.539 (4.54)

1.14 (2.23)
7.98* (3.83)
5.97** (1.97)

.358
43.27

beta

,208
.102
.219

-.031
.037
.390
.002

-.018
.014
.012
.030
.022

,065
.027
.016
-Oil

-.001

.006

.020

*p<0.05; **p

that racial/ethnic minority misdemeanants may be at more risk for
harsher misdemeanor sentencing.

Multivariate Analyses

Based on the bivariate results indicating differences in misdemeanor
adjudication, multivariate OLS regression analyses were conducted to

Ed A. MuHoz and Adrienne B. Freng 47

TABLE 5. Coefficients from Logistic Regressions Predicting Fine and/or Other
Punishment versus Fine Only

Male
Racial/etiinic minority
Young Aiiult
Adult
Dakota
Madison
Total Offenses
Assault
Resisl/Disturb
Alcohol/Dmg
Property
Other
Young W hite Male
Young R-‘E minority Male
Young Aiiult White Male
Young Adult R/E minority
Male
Adult White Male
Adult R / i minority Mate
Young R’E minority Female
YounR A dult Whit e Female
Young Adult R/E minority
Female
Adult Wiiite Female
Adult R/E minority Female
Constant

Model Chi-Square
{dO
Nagelkeike R’
-2 Log Likelihood

b(se)
.32*
.75**
.79**
.83**
1.99**
2.39**
1.14**
4.39**
4.29**
4.14**
3.90**
2.36**

-8.16**

Model

(.14)
(-13)
(.15)
(.13)
(.16)
(.18)
(.09)
(.21)
(.26)
(.15)
(.19)
(.29)

(.28)

2945.03**
(14)
.6^

2356.118

Odds

1.38
2.11
2.19
2.30
7.28

10.86
3.13

80.30
72.97
63.02
49.59
10.62

Model 2
b(se)

2.01**
2.39**
1.14**
4.43**
4.32**
4.15**
3.97**
2.43**

.22
1.28**
1.10**
1.98**

1.46**
1.82**
1.15**
l . U * *
1.60**

.98**
1.15**
-8.28**

2956.34**
(21)
.64

(.16)
(.18)
(.09)
(.21)
(.26)
(-16)
(.19)
(.29)
(.30)
(.31)
(.34)
(.34)

(.31)
(.32)
(.41)
(.42)
(.54)

(.37)
(.42)
(.36)

2344.806

Odds

7.50
10.84
3.12

83.60
75.22
63.72
52.76
11.33

1.25
3.61
3.00
7.22

4.30
6.17
3.17
3.04
4.97

2.68
3.15

•p<0.05; **p

the main and combined effects of legal and extralegal variables
on fine amounts. Multivariate logistic regression analyses were used to
assess rnain and combined effects of legal and extralegal variables on
whether an individual received a fine only, or a fine and/or some other
disposition.

48 JOURNAL OF ETHNICITY IN CRIMINAL JUSTICE

OLS regression results are shown in Table 4. The main effects of le-
gal and extralegal variables in Model 1 significantly explained 36% of
the variance in fine amounts. When considering the extralegal vari-
ables’ influence on the amount of fine, mixed effects appeared. Males
($3.23; p < .01) received slightly higher fines than females. Supporting previous research (Feeley, 1979; Munoz & Martinez, 2001; Nelson 1994), there were no significant differences between racial/ethnic groups in the amount of the fine. Both young adults ($3.07; p < .05) and adults ($4.73; p < .01) received slightly higher fines than young misdemeanants, which is contradictory to our expectations, and to pre- vious findings in felony sentencing decisions that show younger felons receiving harsher sentences than older felons (Steffensmeier, Ulmer, & Kramer, 1998).

The variables that seemed to have the greatest effect on fine amount
were county of disposition, the total number offenses, and the type of
offense. As predicted, individuals in both Dakota (b = $28.08; beta =
.207; p < .01) and Madison (b = $11.27; beta = . 100; p < .01) counties re- ceived higher fines than those in Scottsbluff County. Furthermore, as the total number of offenses increased, the fine received grew by $21.63 (beta = .220; p < .01). The type of offense was also extremely influential on fine amount. Fines for all offenses except property were significantly different than traffic. Those individuals convicted for alcohol/drug of- fenses received a fine of almost $70 more than traffic offenders. Fur- thermore, this variable (beta = .390; p < .01), along with total offenses (beta = .220; p < .01), had the strongest explanation effect on fine amount. While not as dramatic, fines for resisting/disturbing were also more than traffic ($13.92; p < .01). Interestingly, fines for assault ($9.30) and other offenses ($6.16) were significantly less than fines for traffic offenses.

Model 2 examined the same relationships as Model 1; however, it
also explored whether various age, gender, and racial/ethnic character-
istics had any explanation power for the amount of Fme given for a mis-
demeanor offense. While the model was significant, including the
interactive terms provided a negligible difference in the variance ex-
plained. All the main effects from Mode! 1 remained with the legal and
contextual variables (county, total offenses, and alcohol/drug offenses)
having the greatest effects on fine amount. However, of interest in this
model was how the various groups differed from young. White females
(reference group). Contrary to our predictions, the fmes of young males,
regardless of race, did not differ significantly from young, White fe-
males. Young adult and adult males regardless of racial/ethnic group

Ed A. Mufioz and Adrienne B. Freng 49

differed significantly from the reference group, with adult. White males
receiving fines about $9 (beta = .065; p > .01) more than young, White
females and ail other groups receiving fines about $6 more. When fur-
ther examining the data within these particular age/male categories, it
appears that older. White males may be the recipients of higher fines
when ccnvicted for misdemeanor criminal offenses. This observation is
reinforced by the data showing that regardless of racial/ethnic status,
females were treated fairly similar. None of the females except for adult,
racial/ethnic minority females (beta = .020; p < .05) differed significantly from ycung. White females. Adult, racial/ethnic minority females paid about $8.00 more in fmes than young. White females.

Also of interest in this research was whether or not legal and extrale-
gal variables impacted the decision for misdemeanants to receive a fine
only, or a fine and/or some other disposition. Logistic regression was
utilized to further examine this question through main and combined
models detailed in Table 5. The legal and extralegal variables explained
more of the variance (64%) for disposition than they did for fine
amount. The extralegal variabies had significant effects in predicting
the likelihood of receiving the disposition of a fine, or a fine and/or
some oi.her disposition. Males (Odds = 1.38; p < .05) had greater odds than females for receiving a fine and/or some other disposition. Con- trary to the findings of no significant racial/ethnic differences for fine amount, racial/ethnic minority misdemeanants (Odds = 2.11; p < .01) had twice the odds of White misdemeanants for receiving a fine and/or some olher disposition. Also contrary to what was predicted, but consis- tent with the findings for fine amount, young adults (Odds = 2.19; p < .01) and adults (Odds = 2.30; p < .01) had about twice the odds of young individuals for receiving a fine and/or some other disposition.

As ejtpected, individuals in both Dakota (Odds = 7.28; p < .0!) and Madison (Odds = 10.86; p < .01) counties had greater odds of experi- encing harsher punishment than individuals in Scottsbluff County. Dif- ferent iTom fine amounts, Madison County misdemeanants were at most risk for harsher punishment as their odds for receiving a fine and/or some other punishment were about ten times higher than for Scottsbluff misdemeanants. The legal variables also played a signifi- cant role in explaining the misdemeanor disposition, but offense types rather than total number of offenses had the larger impact for type of disposition. For each additional offense, the odds of receiving a fine and/or >omething else increased three times (Odds = 3.13; p < .01). All examined offense categories differed significantly from traffic offenses with increased odds for receiving a fme and/or some other disposition

50 JOURNAL OF ETHNICITY IN CRIMINAL JUSTICE

ranging from about 80 times greater for assault (Odds = 80.30; p < .01) and close to 11 times greater for other offenses (Odds = 10.62;p<.01).

As seen with fine amount. Model 2 for disposition, although signifi-
cant, did not improve the explanation power. The legal and extralegal
variables remained significant with county and offense type having the
largest effects on the odds of receiving a fine and/or other disposition.
However, the effect of extralegal interaction terms on the type of dispo-
sition received differed from the effects on fine amounts. Overall, ra-
cial/ethnic minority mates and females fared worse than their respective
age and gender counterparts when the type of disposition was consid-
ered. More specifically, the odds of receiving a fine and/or something
else significantly differed from young. White females for all groups
except young, White males. The significant difference in odds for re-
ceiving a fine and/or something else in compari.son to young. White
females ranged from about three times greater for adult. White fe-
males (Odds = 2.68; p < .01) to more than six and seven times greater for adult, racial/ethnic minority males (Odds = 6.17; p < .01) and young, adult racial/ethnic minority males (Odds = 7.22; p < .01) respec- tively. Examination of specific age, race/ethnicity, and gender catego- ries show that racial/ethnic minority males and females are consistently more at risk for receiving a fine and/or some other disposition than their White counterparts.

DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION

Overall, the data do support both theoretical concepts of contextual
discrimination and focal concerns. Racial/ethnic misdemeanor sentenc-
ing disparity was present, but variable in nature and scope (HI). Main
effects showed no significant racial/ethnic differences in fine amounts,
but racial/ethnic minority offenders were at a greater risk for receiving a
fine and/or some other disposition rather than just a fine for the convic-
tion of a misdemeanor criminal offense. In addition, the combined ef-
fects of age, racial/ethnic minority status, and gender showed that adult.
White males received the harshest fine amount than any other group
when compared to young. White females. But when comparing sen-
tencing dispositions, adult and older adult, racial/ethnic minority males
were more likely to receive a sentence of a fine and/or something else.
Although results for females were more variable, racial/ethnic minority
females fared worse than their White counterparts. This variability in
findings supports the concept of contextual discrimination in that

Ed A. MuHoz and Adrienne B. Freng 51

sentencing disparities are not always worst for non-White racial/ethnic
minority groups.

Not surprising, males were sentenced harsher than females, but unex-
pectedly, young misdemeanants were the recipients of more lenient
misdemeanor sentencing (H2). It could very well be that lower criminal
court judges view young misdemeanor criminal activity as foolish, imp-
ish behavior that will cease with increasing age and not as blameworthy
as misdemeanor criminal activity by older misdemeanants who should
have learned by now to desist from this type of behavior. This observed
age and gender pattern held true in models testing for age, race/ethnic-
ity, and gender combined effects, but differed somewhat from previous
work on felony sentencing patterns (Spohn & HoUeran, 2000; Steffens-
meier, Ulmer, & Kramer, 1998).

While racial/ethnic minority males and females generally did fare
worse than their White counterparts, older, rather than younger, ra-
cial/ethnic minority males and females were most at risk for harsher
punishment (H3). Age, race/ethnicity, and gender disparities in eco-
nomic resources favoring older. White males could be the driving factor
in higher fine amounts for this particular group, and for the higher odds
in recei ving a fine and/or some other disposition for racial/ethnic minor-
ity males and females. However, the consistent, significant racial/ethnic
minority status effect net of controls for legal variables in both main and
combined models measuring the odds of receiving a fine and/or some
other disposition, supports the notion that racial/ethnic minority males
and females are viewed as more of a risk to the protection of the
community.

As in previous research, legal variables rather than extralegal vari-
ables do have a greater impact on blameworthiness and sentencing
outcomes (H4). The type and number of offenses both mattered, but in
different sentencing contexts. The number of offenses mattered more
in determining fine amounts, while type of offense mattered more in
determining whether a convicted misdemeanant received a fine and/or
some other disposition. These differences are highlighted particularly
through sentencing differences for assault and property offenders. As-
sault misdemeanants received significantly lower fines, yet had a
greater risk for a fine and/or some other disposition (i.e., jail) than traf-
fic misdemeanants. Similarly, there were no significant differences in
fine amounts between property and traffic misdemeanants, but property
misdemeanants were at a higher risk for receiving a fine and/or some
other disposition (i.e., restitution).

52 JOURNAL OF ETHNICITY IN CRIMINAL JUSTICE •

The expected finding that Dakota and Madison misdemeanants were
sentenced more harshly than Scottsbluff misdemeanants provides sup-
port to the claim that county contextual factors may infiuence judges’
evaluations of the practical constraints and consequences of sentencing
outcomes (H5). In particular, higher fines in Dakota County and in-
creased odds of receiving a fine and/or some other disposition in Madison
County may be an indication of differences in incarceration and rehabili-
tation resources between the two counties. In terms of sentencing conse-
quences, there is evidence of heightened political organization and
resistance to injustice in Scottsbluff County by both Latinos (Valdes,
1990) and Native Americans (Matthiessen, 1983). Alternatively, the high
degree of racial/ethnic change in Dakota and Madison counties fueled
primarily by Latino immigrant labor (Stull, Broadway, & Griffith, 1995)
may have exacerbated historically bad relations between Whites and Na-
tive Americans in the selected regions (Wishart, 1994).

Future research with more comprehensive data can better untangle
the impact of extralegal and legal variables on sentencing outcomes.
Such analyses might reveal young, racial/ethnic minority males and fe-
males receive harsher sentencing for less serious misdemeanor crimes
(i.e., drug/alcohol), and that adult. White males receive harsher sentenc-
ing for more serious misdemeanors (i.e., assault). In any case, it is clear
that criminal justice is fraught with racially/ethnically biased discretion in
all aspects of dec is ion-making, including misdemeanor criminal justice
decisions. Hence, future sentencing research needs to weigh better the
implications ofracial/ethnic bias in misdemeanor sentencing, particularly
when previous misdemeanor decisions are taken into account in criminal
sentencing decisions through seemingly legal variables such as prior
record (HoUeran & Spohn, 2004; Johnson, 2003; Lubitz & Ross, 2001;
Spohn, 2000; Ulmer & Johnson, 2004; Zatz, 2000). As it appears now,
the uncritical use of misdemeanor sentencing decisions as part of the
criteria used in evaluating prior criminal histories is but yet another
manifestation of the cumulative disadvantage in the administration of
justice faced by socially, economically, and politically underprivileged
populations (Zatz, 1987).

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Submitted: August 2006
Revised: March 2007
Accepted: April 2007

doi: 10.1300/J222v05n04_02

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