Police
Quarterly
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Wilson Redux : Another Look at Varieties of Police Behavior
John Liederbach and Lawrence F. Travis III
Police Quarterly 2008 11: 447 originally published online 29 February 2008
DOI: 10.1177/1098611108314567
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Wilson Redux
Another Look at Varieties
of Police Behavior
Police Quarterly
Volume 11 Number 4
December 2008 447-467
© 2008 Sage Publications
10.1177/1098611108314567
http://pqx.sagepub.com
hosted at
http://online.sagepub.com
John Liederbach
Bowling Green State University
Lawrence F. Travis III
University of Cincinnati
Since the publication of Varieties of Police Behavior more than four decades ago,
Wilson’s theory concerning the link between local political culture and police styles has
had a significant and enduring impact on police scholarship. However, there have been
surprisingly few empirical tests of Wilson’s assertions, and of those limited number of
studies, only a small number provide even partial support for the model. The current study
provides a test of Wilson’s theory using a unique measure of police style derived from
observational data rather than official arrest/citation statistics. Perhaps more important,
we discuss our findings within the context of previous research that has failed to support
Wilson’s theory and present a critical assessment of the requirements of a valid test of this
theory. We argue that Wilson’s model retains an intuitive appeal to those interested in
explaining the relationship between local community context and police behavior.
Keywords: James Q. Wilson; varieties of police behavior; police styles; police and
community variation; systematic social observation
I
n 1968, James Q. Wilson published Varieties of Police Behavior: The Management of
Law and Order in Eight Communities. This book is a classic of the policing literature and is widely known and studied. In Varieties, Wilson sets out to investigate
some of the core issues associated with understanding the police including (a) how
police organizations influence the street-level actions of officers, (b) the factors that
limit organizational control of individual officer behavior, and (c) how the contextual influences of community and political culture contribute to defining certain
“organizational styles” exhibited by local police agencies. In Wilson’s (1968) words,
The purpose of this book is to describe how the police patrolman behaves with respect
to the more frequently applied laws; to analyze the problems facing the police administrator both in deciding what the patrolman ought to do and in getting him to do it; to
Authors’ Note: Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to John Liederbach,
Department of Human Services, Criminal Justice Program, 236 Health Center, Bowling Green State
University, Bowling Green, OH 43403-0148; e-mail: jlieder@bgsu.edu.
447
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448 Police Quarterly
discover how, if at all, patrolmen in various cities differ in performing their functions;
and finally to inquire whether—or under what circumstances—such differences as exist
are based on explicit community decisions. (p. 4)
In the pursuit of these goals, Wilson identified the primary functions of the local
police as law enforcement, order maintenance, and service delivery. He studied how
police officers in different departments interacted with citizens noting that these
interactions varied in terms of frequency and formality. In some communities the
police interacted with citizens often, whereas in other places police rarely dealt with
citizens. In some communities, police interactions with citizens typically involved
the application of the law through arrests and/or citations, and in other places these
interactions were more informal and law enforcement outcomes were rare.
Ultimately, Wilson identified what he described as three distinct “operational styles”
of policing based on the frequency and formality of police–citizen interactions.
Where police interacted frequently with citizens, and in a formal manner, Wilson
identified a Legalistic style. In communities where police dealt with citizens
frequently, but were typically more informal and did not invoke the law, he identified
a Service style. Finally, Wilson said a Watchman style characterized communities
where the police infrequently encountered citizens.
Four decades after the publication of Varieties, Wilson’s conceptualization and
description of the police in the United States has become part of what might be
called the “common knowledge” of policing. As Hassell, Zhao, and Maguire (2003)
note, almost every textbook on American policing provides an overview of Wilson’s
three operational styles, and Wilson’s contributions have been routinely described as
“classic,” or encompassing “perhaps the most important” or “prevailing view” concerning
the organizational influences on police behavior (Carter, 2002, p. 129; Roberg, Novak,
& Cordner, 2005, p. 277; Walker & Katz, 2008, p. 369). Moreover, the ideas put
forth in Varieties appear to have had a “deep and broad impact,” so much so that the
book still ranks among the most commonly cited works in the police studies literature,
and it has obviously contributed to Wilson’s stature among the most influential policing
scholars (Cohn, Farrington, & Wright, 1998; Wright & Miller, 1998, p. 249). In short,
“everyone” knows that there are three different styles of policing in America.
The question that remains, of course, is what explains these differences? Wilson
observed that police styles appeared to be related to the characteristics of the
community within which the department operated, including the form of local government. He argued that police departments were constrained by what he called the
“local political culture.” Police activity, according to Wilson, was rarely directed by
conscious choices and direct political intervention. Rather, “the prevailing political
culture creates a ‘zone of indifference’ within which the police are free to act as they
see fit” (Wilson, 1968, p. 233). Wilson found support for the notion that police style
was a function of local political culture using city and official arrest statistics from
1960 for 146 cities with populations ranging from 25,000 to 100,000.
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Liederbach, Travis / Wilson Redux 449
Given the significant and enduring impact of Varieties, as well as the limitations
associated with what Wilson characterized as his own “crude and inadequate” test,
there have been surprisingly few studies designed to test Wilson’s assertions, and of
those limited number of studies, only a few provide even partial support for the model
(Crank, 1990, 1992; Langworthy, 1985; Pursley, 1976). For example, on the basis of
his analysis, Langworthy (1985) concluded that Wilson’s theory was more one of
central tendency than of constraint. Likewise, Crank’s (1990) test provided only
qualified support for the notion that local political culture influences the street-level
behavior of officers. Perhaps even more disconcerting is the fact that the more recent
tests to confirm Wilson’s theory have failed (Hassell et al., 2003; Zhao & Hassell,
2005; Zhao, He, & Lovrich, 2006). Indeed, Zhao and Hassell (2005) characterized
their null findings as indicative of a more general “move toward a falsification of
Wilson’s seminal work” (p. 423).
This situation has created an obvious contradiction; that is, the huge imprint that has
been left by Wilson’s theory on police scholarship can scarcely be justified by the
somewhat tepid support it has thus far garnered in the empirical literature (Slovak,
1996; Zhao et al., 2006). Certainly, there may be valid explanations for the general lack
of existing empirical support. For example, the general state of knowledge concerning
the relationship between officer behavior, organizational factors, and the wider community context has been characterized by some as “not well developed” (National
Research Council, 2004, p. 156). Others have pointed to a variety of factors that have
worked to alter policing since the publication of Varieties, including the movement
toward police professionalism and the increasing influence of the federal government
in local policing (Hassell et al., 2003; Zhao & Hassell, 2005; Zhao et al., 2006).
These explanations probably have some merit given both the time elapsed since
Varieties’ publication and the enormous changes that have occurred in policing over
the course of that time; however, the relative lack of empirical support for Wilson’s
model may also be due in part to the manner in which existing tests have operationalized his conceptualization of police style. Specifically, previous studies designed to test
for community and/or organizational correlates of police style have exclusively used
official arrest/citation statistics as the indicator of police style (see, e.g., Crank, 1990,
1992; Langworthy, 1985; Zhao et al., 2006). Though Wilson (1968) himself used official statistics in his own test, he recognized the inadequacy of the measure:
It must be emphasized, however, that police style is not always best measured by arrest
rates, even for high discretion offenses. Albany and Oakland both arrest a lot of drunks,
as we have seen, but for quite different reasons, and those reasons are relevant to the
likelihood that any given drunk will be arrested. (p. 272)
This exercise has also confirmed the judgment offered in the beginning of this
study—that a full explanation of police style requires first hand observation of the
behavior of the police in order to discover what that style is. (p. 277)
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450 Police Quarterly
Wilson realized that official statistics fail to capture a range of officer behaviors
that are indicative of different styles of policing. For example, official statistics will not
provide information regarding citizens who the police encounter outside the traditional
law enforcement realm, including disputants or other types of criminal suspects who are
not arrested and/or cited, service recipients, witnesses or third parties not contained
in official reports, and citizens who encounter officers on a casual and/or personal
basis. In short, official statistics cannot directly measure the frequency and formality
of police–citizen interactions because they provide information only on the relatively
small percentage of encounters in which an officer formally invokes the law.
One objective of the current study is to provide a test of Wilson using a more
direct measure of police style based on data derived from the systematic social
observation (SSO) of police officers in 20 suburban and small-town agencies. SSO
allows for the collection of data that are difficult or impossible to collect through
official statistics, especially information that pertains to police–citizen encounters
that would otherwise be of low visibility to the researcher. We are aware of no existing
tests of Wilson’s theory that incorporate a measure of police style other than those
derived exclusively from official statistics.
A second and perhaps more important goal of our research is to present a critical
assessment of the requirements of a valid test of Wilson’s model. Such an assessment
appears to be long overdue given the enduring impact of Varieties and the scant level
of existing empirical support for the model. This discussion could be used not only
to identify the shortcomings of existing tests but also to provide a “roadmap” for
future research designed to test Wilson’s seminal ideas. In this way, police scholars
could more accurately evaluate the relative merits of one of the most influential theories
of police behavior and begin to formulate ongoing judgments as to whether the theory
should continue to hold sway. Before describing the methods used in the current
study, we begin with an overview of Wilson’s theory of police style and the studies
designed to test its basic assumptions.
Wilson’s Theory and Previous Tests
In Varieties, Wilson established that local police agencies differ among themselves
in terms of the ways in which they approach the tasks of policing, and he identified
and defined three distinct police styles: legalistic, service, and watchman. The differences
among these styles are not based on the different activities performed by the agency
because every police agency must serve the three functions of law enforcement, service
delivery, and peacekeeping. Rather, police agencies differ in terms of the ways in
which officers employed by the agency approach police problems. Thus, the distinction is not so much what they do but how they do it (Travis & Langworthy, 2008).
Wilson arrived at these styles using a 2 × 2 typology based on the frequency and
formality of police–citizen interactions. For example, officers in a legalistic agency
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Liederbach, Travis / Wilson Redux 451
intervene frequently and formally with citizens. Employees of a legalistic style agency
rely on the formal criminal law as a definition of not only what situations merit their
attention but also in what manner they should intervene. Hence, a legalistic department
is characterized by officers who issue many citations and make many arrests. Officers
in a service style agency also intervene frequently with citizens, but they do so informally. The officers in a service style department treat every citizen complaint as
requiring a police response; they do not rely on the criminal code to define police
issues. As the label suggests, these agencies stress the service delivery function of
police. Officers in a watchman style agency do not interact with citizens frequently.
These agencies stress the peacekeeping function of policing. Officers in a watchman
style department exercise considerable discretion in defining whether a situation
requires a police response and what that response should be; therefore Wilson did
not specifically describe the formality of police–citizen interactions within these
departments (Travis & Langworthy, 2008).
Wilson theorized that these styles were related to the characteristics of the population and the form of local government existing within the city. For his test, Wilson used
data from 146 cities with between 25,000 and 100,000 residents for which he could
obtain measures of government type as well as Uniform Crime Report data. Wilson
eliminated cities that were either very rich or very poor, or had a non-White population
in excess of 5% of the total. By eliminating these cities he hoped to control for the effect
of actual crime rates. His measure of political culture included type of local government,
professionalism of the manager, and form of local elections. Local political culture was
ultimately classified in terms of four categories: partisan mayor-council (or “traditional”), nonpartisan mayor-council, council-manager with professional managers (or
“professional”), and council-manager with low levels of professionalism. He operationalized police style using official arrest data for larceny, drunkenness, driving while
intoxicated (DWI), disorderly conduct, and simple assault.
Wilson found support for the theory when the analysis showed higher levels of
arrest for larceny, drunkenness, and DWI for “professional” government cities and
higher levels of arrest for disorderly conduct in partisan government cities. In general,
professional government cities demonstrated legalistic styles and partisan cities
showed watchman styles. In what he called intermediate cities (those with managers
who did not score on measures of professionalism or places with nonpartisan
elections) the arrest rates were mixed. These cities demonstrated high rates of arrest
for drunkenness and larceny, and all manager cities (regardless of level of professionalism) showed higher rates of arrest for DWI.
Previous Tests
Studies designed to test Wilson (1968) have focused on the relationship between
local political culture and (a) organizational characteristics and structures, and (b)
police style. In terms of tests concerning influences on police organizations, Pursley
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452 Police Quarterly
(1976) found that the number of police departments with “reform” police chiefs was
significantly higher in communities with professional governments than in those having
traditional mayor-council governments. Langworthy (1986) tested the relationship
between local political culture and the organizational arrangements of police organizations. His findings did not support Wilson’s theory that police organizations are
constrained by type of local government. More recently, Hassell et al. (2003) found
that local political culture had no significant impact on the organizational structures
of a sample of 401 large police agencies.
More closely related to our purposes, a few existing studies have specifically
tested Wilson’s hypotheses regarding the relationship between local political culture
and police style (Crank, 1990, 1992; Langworthy, 1985; Zhao & Hassell, 2005; Zhao
et al., 2006). As noted previously, all these tests use a measure of style derived from
official arrest/citation statistics. Langworthy (1985) used data on 152 large cities
(population > 100,000) and found that local government type and police style (DWI
and disorderly conduct arrests) are correlated, but that political culture is not sufficient
to explain agency style. That is, cities with professional forms of government tend
to display legalistic policing, and cities with traditional forms of government tend to
display a watchman style; however, within group variation was substantial such that
“city options tend to be congruent with a particular political culture, but do not
appear to be constrained to do so” (p. 98).
Crank (1990) tested the influence of organizational factors, local government, and
selected community structural characteristics on the arrest rates for minor crimes
(disorderly conduct, trespass, cannabis control, motor vehicle offenses). He found that
the presence of professional local governments was associated with more legalistic
police styles. Moreover, environmental factors (e.g., local government type, racial/
cultural heterogeneity, economic conditions) appeared to exert more influence on the
style of “rural” rather than “urban” departments. Similar to his earlier test, Crank (1992)
found that local government structure (city manager form) was associated with legalism
in terms of the arrest rates for more serious crimes such as aggravated assault, burglary,
and theft. As Zhao et al. (2006) point out, however, these tests did not employ Wilson’s
(1968) original measure of political culture that includes election type (partisan or
nonpartisan).
More recently, Zhao and Hassell (2005) studied the style of approximately 500
police agencies that employed 100 or more officers similar to Langworthy (1985).
They trichotomized local government type into good government, traditional, and
mixed. They concluded that their analysis showed “little support” for a relationship
between local political culture and police practices (p. 411). Zhao et al. (2006) tested
the relationship between local political culture and police practices in 281 municipalities with populations of more than 25,000 using a three-wave panel survey and
official arrest statistics. Specifically, they tested for a relationship between form of
local government and the official arrest rates for larceny/DWI (legalistic style) and
drunkenness/disorderly conduct (watchman style). They found no evidence of an
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Liederbach, Travis / Wilson Redux 453
effect of local government on police practices, and they identified a need for additional tests of Wilson since their analyses revealed “little evidence” to support the
application of Wilson’s theory to contemporary policing (p. 577).
The Present Study
The research reported here relies on data collected during direct observations of
police officers conducted by a research team from the University of Cincinnati,
Division of Criminal Justice, as part of a larger project funded by the National
Institute of Justice.1 The police departments included in the present study are located
in Southwestern Ohio within the greater Cincinnati Metropolitan area, but not the
city of Cincinnati (see Table 1). The departments employ an average of fewer than
20 sworn officers (386 total) and serve a combined population of approximately
219,000. The jurisdictions include 15 suburban communities located in Hamilton
County (Ohio) and four communities located in Clermont County, which borders
Hamilton County to the east and is more geographically isolated from Cincinnati’s
urban core. The remaining study site straddles the borders of three adjacent counties
(Hamilton, Clermont, and Warren counties).
The study sites are all small in terms of their population compared with more
urbanized central cities and most are homogeneous in terms of their racial composition (more than 90% White on average); however, they are fairly diverse in terms of
the other demographic and structural characteristics listed in Table 1. In purely
descriptive terms, these sites include two affluent residential suburbs (Amberley
Village, Terrace Park), five middle-class residential suburbs (Colerain Twp., Delhi
Twp., Loveland, Milford, and Forest Park), two middle-class suburbs that are highly
commercialized (Blue Ash and Sharonville), six working-class suburbs (Cheviot,
Deer Park, Reading, Arlington Hts., Fairfax, and Lockland), and five small towns
that are more sparsely populated and rural in character than the suburban jurisdictions (Amelia Village, Goshen Twp., Harrison, Felicity, and Williamsburg).
Data and Methods
The methodology used in the field was systematic social observation (Mastrofski
et al., 1998). The main procedures used in SSO include the development of instruments to collect and record observations systematically, and the subsequent investigation of those activities through direct observation (Reiss, 1971). SSO differs from
the qualitative and ethnographic methodologies used by researchers to study patrol
officers in the 1960s and 1970s in terms of (a) the use of predesigned protocols and
data collection instruments, (b) the employment of a large number of observers, and
(c) the inclusion of large samples of officers (National Research Council, 2004).
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454
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15
4
13
34
23
24
11
32
12
2
40
7
21
18
23
14
18
56
14
5
3,425
2,752
899
12,513
9,015
60,144
5,982
30,104
1,938
922
19,463
13,663
7,487
3,707
11,677
6,284
11,292
13,804
2,273
2,358
$81,492
$44,900
$30,288
$61,591
$35,150
$49,960
$39,692
$55,052
$41,418
$20,781
$49,298
$46,314
$46,107
$28,292
$52,738
$31,923
$39,140
$47,055
$95,530
$37,115
60.6
29.0
14.9
53.2
27.4
29.2
29.1
31.9
31.8
22.1
34.3
18.6
25.5
17.8
38.5
31.7
25.1
40.8
59.9
20.1
98.0
54.4
56.5
74.3
61.6
81.3
71.9
84.9
80.8
44.8
62.5
87.2
72.0
47.9
74.6
49.8
59.2
63.6
95.0
60.0
10.2
49.8
–17.1
5.5
–6.2
n/a
–3.2
n/a
–4.5
7.7
4.6
n/a
–0.4
–14.9
16.9
11.0
–6.2
4.9
6.6
1.6
13.1
3.7
8.1
13.6
3.7
12.2
3.9
2.3
3.6
3.1
63.9
1.8
2.2
30.1
5.1
5.5
8.6
12.5
1.8
1.4
75.2
58.1
44.9
59.6
50.2
58.5
50.5
62.4
52.5
48.2
52.1
63.8
57.9
40.5
61.2
50.2
49.8
53.2
73.5
51.5
91
n/a
49
42
75
77
78
86
45
n/a
55
n/a
n/a
47
82
n/a
63
38
97
n/a
48.2
29.1
34.6
39.4
35.5
35.8
38.0
36.7
36.3
31.1
33.9
34.2
32.4
35.6
35.8
39.1
37.6
39.1
38.7
33.4
(%)
(%)
Population (%)
(%) Land
White
Owner
Change
Non(%)
Use
Median
Collar Occupied 1990-2000 White Married Residential
Age
Source: 2000 U.S. Census: HUD State of the Cities Data Systems (SOCDS).
n/a = not applicable.
Amberley Village
Amelia
Arlington Hts.
Blue Ash
Cheviot
Colerain Twp.
Deer Park
Delhi Twp.
Fairfax
Felicity
Forest Park
Goshen Twp.
Harrison
Lockland
Loveland
Milford
Reading
Sharonville
Terrace Park
Williamsburg
Median
Sworn
Household
Officers Population
Income
Table 1
The Study Sites
24.6
32.3
30.1
28.2
25.6
31.0
24.4
32.7
30.8
34.9
30.7
32.5
35.1
28.0
32.4
25.7
26.7
23.6
38.0
31.2
(%) Age
< 21
24.4
7.6
12.2
14.2
17.8
11.9
20.3
14.7
14.7
12.3
9.1
8.4
9.3
11.9
11.0
21.3
16.0
17.1
12.4
10.9
(%) Age
> 65
63.5
13.8
4.6
48.7
16.4
18.8
16.9
23.7
15.7
6.7
26.2
8.4
11.9
8.6
35.0
23.9
15.9
33.8
71.0
10.4
(%) College
Graduate
5.3
16.5
31.8
9.2
22.8
16.4
20.0
11.3
26.1
42.9
11.7
24.1
22.0
28.6
10.4
22.1
21.0
12.2
1.5
26.8
(%) No
H.S.
Degree
Liederbach, Travis / Wilson Redux 455
Observed officers were accompanied by trained observers who recorded everything the officers did during their entire shift, including the activities that the officers
performed and information regarding the nature of their interactions with citizens.2
The present study uses a framework similar to that outlined by Mastrofski et al.
(1998) to systematically organize and record the observer’s field notes into reliable
coded data. Coding instruments were developed to record information regarding the
officer’s interactions with citizens including (a) the encounter/activity instrument
and (b) the citizen instrument.
The encounter/activity instrument accounted for every minute of the observed
officer’s shift time, whether they were in direct contact with citizens or performing
tasks that did not include citizens, such as motor patrol, report writing, or driving en
route to and from locations. A citizen instrument was completed for every citizen
encountered by the observed officers. The citizen instrument provided information
concerning the nature and character of the interaction including the citizen’s demographic characteristics, demeanor, offenses (if any), types of problems encountered,
and other situational factors related to each encounter. These situational factors
included requests made by citizens to the officer, police law enforcement actions
(e.g., arrests, citations, searches, use of force), officer requests made to citizens, and
factors surrounding any disputes that occurred among citizens.
Data were collected over a 14-month period between April 1999 and May 2000.
The research team randomly selected shifts to be observed within the 20 agencies to
complete 2.5 observations per month per department over the course of the 14-month
project.3 Observations were made with 213 individual officers employed by the
sampled agencies. A total of 583 observations were completed encompassing 4,813 hr
of observation, or the equivalent of over 611 8-hr shifts.
Advantages and Disadvantages of Observational Data
In terms of the present study, the primary advantage of observational data is that
it allows the researcher to collect information on citizens who interact with the
police and who are not arrested and/or cited, including criminal suspects/disputants
who were not arrested and/or cited, witnesses and/or third parties, victims, service
recipients, and citizens who encounter police on a casual basis or as friends. The
inclusion of these citizens improves on existing methodologies that have used
official arrest/citation records as an indicator of police style in at least two ways.
First, the observational data provide a more valid measure of “frequency” since
information on police–citizen encounters that fall outside the realm of traditional law
enforcement are included. This advantage is especially evident in cases in which
police interact with citizens informally and/or those encounters that involve citizens
who are primarily recipients of police services rather than criminal suspects. Second,
the observational data allow for a measure of “formality” that is relative to all other
observed police–citizen interactions, and hence controls for frequency of interaction.
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456 Police Quarterly
In contrast, official arrest/citation statistics cannot provide this type of measure
because they do not contain information on situations wherein officers choose not to
arrest and/or cite citizens who have violated the law.
Although observational data can be an especially effective means to garner information on citizen encounters that would otherwise be of low visibility to the researcher, the
method does lend itself to the danger of reactivity. An officer and/or citizen may change
his or her behavior simply because of the presence of the observer. The research team
endeavored to limit the danger of reactivity by several means: (a) The research team
promised confidentiality to individual officers who were observed as is required by the
federal sponsoring agency. Confidentiality agreements were signed by all observers in
accordance with these requirements. (b) A certain level of confidence and familiarity
between the observers and the officers was established. All observers were instructed to
outline the confidential nature of the information they obtained to the officer at the
beginning of each shift, and they told officers that they were free to view the observer’s
notes at any time during the observation. (c) Observers were instructed to avoid taking
notes while in the presence of citizens, so as to avoid citizen inquiries and/or influencing the events that were observed. If necessary, observers would record information
immediately after the encounter occurred, or while the officer performed routine patrol.
Observers were instructed to indicate whether or not they believed observed officers
and/or citizens had altered their behavior because of the observer’s presence. Indications
of reactivity on the part of either the observed officer and/or citizens that were apparent
to the observer occurred very infrequently. Observers indicated that some sort of reactivity occurred in 34 of the 17,480 observed officer activities and citizen interactions
recorded over the course of the study.
Observational data also have a potential problem with reliability in terms of maintaining consistent coding procedures across observers. The research team endeavored to limit these concerns through observer training courses conducted prior to and
during the study period. As Reiss (1971) suggests, observers viewed videotapes to
practice coding typical police activities. In addition to these training sessions,
observer data were reviewed and cleaned on an ongoing basis during the length of
the project to ensure that all observers were following the coding standards set forth
during the training sessions, thus providing a continuing check on the reliability of
the observation data.
Measure of Police Style: The Frequency and
Formality of Police–Citizen Interaction
We developed a measure of police style based on the observed frequency and
formality of police–citizen interaction in the 20 jurisdictions (see Table 2). We initially
calculated frequency as the total number of police–citizen encounters within each
jurisdiction per standardized 8-hr shift.4 This measure of frequency includes not only
those encounters that included an arrest and/or citation, but also all other types of
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Liederbach, Travis / Wilson Redux 457
police–citizen encounters that occurred during the observed shift. Following Wilson’s
2 × 2 conceptualization of police style, we subsequently calculated the average
number of citizen interactions across the 20 sites. Jurisdictions in which police–citizen
encounters exceeded the median were ranked “high” on frequency with the remainder
being ranked “low.”
Similarly, we calculated formality in terms of the number of encounters that
involved an arrest and/or citation in the 20 jurisdictions per standardized 8-hr shift.
To obtain a measure of formality that was standardized relative to frequency, we
divided the number of encounters with an arrest and/or citation per shift by total
encounters per shift for each department. Once again following Wilson’s 2 × 2
scheme, we ranked the study sites relative to the median in terms of “high” and
“low.” Table 2 presents the rankings of the 20 study sites in terms of frequency/formality and corresponding police style, including five “legalistic” agencies (high frequency/high formality) and five service agencies (high frequency/low formality).
The remaining 10 agencies were defined as “watchman” because they exhibited
infrequent citizen interaction relative to the other agencies; however because we had
a measure of formality based on outcomes of citizen encounters, we were able to
identify two different types of “watchman”: (a) a traditional Wilsonian “watchman”
with low frequency and low formality and (b) a “formal watchman” where interactions with citizens were infrequent, but tended toward formal outcomes.
Findings
We sought to identify correlates of police–citizen interaction based on our classification of the agencies in terms of frequency and formality. Initially, we investigated
for any association between the local political culture of the 20 communities and
police style. We collected information pertaining to the local political culture of each
of the communities including form of local government and type of local election.
Table 3 presents a classification of the 20 communities in terms of local political culture.5 As Table 3 indicates, four communities conform to Wilson’s professional type
of local political culture with council-manager forms of government and nonpartisan
elections (Amberley Village, Forest Park, Loveland, and Milford). Likewise, six
communities conform to Wilson’s traditional type of local political culture with
mayor-council forms of government and partisan elections (Cheviot, Deer Park,
Harrison, Lockland, Reading, and Sharonville). Of the remaining communities, six
exhibited a “mixed” political culture with mayor-council forms of government and
nonpartisan elections (Amelia, Arlington Hts., Felicity, Fairfax, Terrace Park, and
Williamsburg). There were four communities that did not readily fit Wilson’s
scheme. The city of Blue Ash has a council-manager form of local government with
partisan elections. Colerain, Delhi, and Goshen are townships that are governed by
either a professional administrator or a township trustee.6
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458
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33.00
32.42
22.31
30.79
32.64
29.89
33.63
21.27
32.06
32.36
28.47
30.40
30.51
32.74
28.95
31.97
30.22
32.91
32.02
33.27
230
184
146
202
205
166
199
156
200
207
93
125
168
157
143
123
159
161
156
150
Total
Encounters
6.96
5.67
6.54
6.56
6.28
5.55
5.91
7.33
6.23
6.39
3.26
4.11
5.50
4.79
4.93
3.84
5.26
4.89
4.87
4.50
Frequencyb
HIGH
HIGH
HIGH
HIGH
HIGH
HIGH
HIGH
HIGH
HIGH
HIGH
LOW
LOW
LOW
LOW
LOW
LOW
LOW
LOW
LOW
LOW
Frequency
Rank
46
40
38
66
43
24
34
10
34
39
7
17
32
20
21
28
31
63
43
37
Encounters
w/arrest/cite
1.3939
1.2338
1.7032
2.1435
1.3174
0.8029
1.0110
0.4701
1.0605
1.2051
0.2458
0.5592
1.0488
0.6108
0.7253
0.8758
1.0258
1.9143
1.3429
1.1121
Encounters
w/arrest/cite
per Shift
.2002
.2176
.2604
.3267
.2097
.1446
.1710
.0641
.1702
.1885
.0753
.1360
.1906
.1275
.1471
.2280
.1950
.3914
.2757
.2471
Formalityc
HIGH
HIGH
HIGH
HIGH
HIGH
LOW
LOW
LOW
LOW
LOW
LOW
LOW
LOW
LOW
LOW
HIGH
HIGH
HIGH
HIGH
HIGH
Formality
Rank
LEGALISTIC
LEGALISTIC
LEGALISTIC
LEGALISTIC
LEGALISTIC
SERVICE
SERVICE
SERVICE
SERVICE
SERVICE
WATCH
WATCH
WATCH
WATCH
WATCH
WATCH (formal)
WATCH (formal)
WATCH (formal)
WATCH (formal)
WATCH (formal)
Style
a. 8-hr shift equivalent.
b. Encounters per standardized 8-hr shift.
c. Encounters resulting in an arrest and/or cite per standardized shift / Encounters per standardized 8-hr shift (percentage of encounters resulting in formal action).
Colerain Twp.
Forest Park
Goshen Twp.
Harrison
Sharonville
Deer Park
Delhi Twp.
Felicity
Loveland
Reading
Amberley Village
Arlington Hts.
Blue Ash
Milford
Williamsburg
Amelia
Cheviot
Fairfax
Lockland
Terrace Park
Observed
Shiftsa
Table 2
Police Style: Frequency and Formality of Citizen Interactions
Liederbach, Travis / Wilson Redux 459
Table 3
Police Style and Political Culture
Amberley Village
Forest Park
Loveland
Milford
Cheviot
Deer Park
Harrison
Lockland
Reading
Sharonville
Amelia
Arlington Hts.
Fairfax
Felicity
Terrace Park
Williamsburg
Blue Ash
Colerain Twp.
Delhi Twp.
Goshen Twp.
Government Type
Election Type
Political Culture
Style
Council-manager
Council-manager
Council-manager
Council-manager
Mayor-council
Mayor-council
Mayor-council
Mayor-council
Mayor-council
Mayor-council
Mayor-council
Mayor-council
Mayor-council
Mayor-council
Mayor-council
Mayor-council
Council-manager
Professional administrator
Professional administrator
Township trustee
Nonpartisan
Nonpartisan
Nonpartisan
Nonpartisan
Partisan
Partisan
Partisan
Partisan
Partisan
Partisan
Nonpartisan
Nonpartisan
Nonpartisan
Nonpartisan
Nonpartisan
Nonpartisan
Partisan
Nonpartisan
Nonpartisan
Nonpartisan
PROFESSIONAL
PROFESSIONAL
PROFESSIONAL
PROFESSIONAL
TRADITIONAL
TRADITIONAL
TRADITIONAL
TRADITIONAL
TRADITIONAL
TRADITIONAL
MIXED
MIXED
MIXED
MIXED
MIXED
MIXED
OTHER
OTHER
OTHER
OTHER
WATCH
LEGALISTIC
SERVICE
WATCH
WATCH (formal)
SERVICE
LEGALISTIC
WATCH (formal)
SERVICE
LEGALISTIC
WATCH (formal)
WATCH
WATCH (formal)
SERVICE
WATCH (formal)
WATCH
WATCH
LEGALISTIC
SERVICE
LEGALISTIC
The right-most column of Table 3 lists the previously identified style of the agencies and can be used to provide a crude examination as to whether or not the styles
are related to political culture in our sample. For example, Wilson suggests that a
professional local political culture tends to be correlated with either a legalistic or
service style; however, in our sample two of the four communities with a professional local political culture exhibited a watchman style, one agency was legalistic,
and the remaining agency exhibited a service style. Likewise, Wilson suggests that
a traditional local political culture tends to be correlated with the watchman style,
but only two of the six communities with a traditional political culture in our sample exhibited a watchman style, two were legalistic, and the remaining two agencies
exhibited a service style. Wilson found no consistent patterns for cities with a mixed
or intermediate local political culture in his test. In our sample, these communities
tended to be “low” in terms of police–citizen interaction, and hence watchman.
There were no patterns in terms of formality, as three of the six mixed communities
were “formal” watchman, two were low formality Wilsonian watchman, and one
exhibited a service style. The four communities that did not fit Wilson’s political culture scheme evidenced no pattern in terms of police style.
We next sought to identify correlates of police style using local political culture
and its indicators (election type, type of local government), as well as the general
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460 Police Quarterly
Table 4
Community Characteristics and Police Style*
Population
Median household income
Number of sworn officers
Median age
Political culture
Greater than 65 (%)
Married (%)
Residential (%)
Type of election
Owner occupied (%)
No h.s. diploma (%)
College grad. (%)
Less than 21 (%)
Non-White (%)
White-collar (%)
Population change (1990-2000)
Type of local government
df
Na
χ2
p
2
2
2
2
4
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
20
20
20
20
16
20
20
20
20
20
20
20
20
20
20
17
17
8.800
6.800
3.600
3.600
3.593
2.400
2.400
2.400
0.952
0.800
0.800
0.800
0.800
0.400
0.400
0.275
0.234
.012*
.033*
.165
.165
.464
.301
.301
.301
.621
.670
.670
.670
.670
.819
.819
.871
.889
a. Table incorporates “formal watchman” into the “watchman” category.
*p < .05.
community characteristics presented in Table 1 for the 20 communities. Chi-square
analyses were performed on the data to discern the degree of association between
police style and these community characteristics (see Table 4). As Table 4 shows,
type of election (partisan or nonpartisan), type of government (council-manager or
mayor-council), and local political culture (professional, traditional, or mixed) were
not significantly associated with police style (legalistic, service, watchman).
Of the remaining 13 community characteristics, only population (χ2 = 8.800,
p < .05) and median household income (χ2 = 6.800, p < .05) were significantly associated
with police style. In terms of population, all five legalistic departments (frequent
police–citizen interaction) were above the median for population, and 8 of the 10
watchman departments (infrequent police–citizen interaction) were below the median
for population. In terms of median household income, all five legalistic departments
were above the median, and 7 of the 10 watchman departments were below the median.
As these findings indicate, population and median household income were highly
correlated in our sample, with 8 of the 10 largest communities in terms of population
having higher than median incomes. An additional chi-square analysis was performed
using “formal” watchman as a fourth distinct style, which resulted in population being
the only community factor significantly associated with style.
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Liederbach, Travis / Wilson Redux 461
Discussion
For almost 40 years, one conception of local policing has dominated thinking about
what police agencies do and how they do it. Few empirical tests of this conceptualization have been reported, and of those none completely supports the dominant
model. This article adds to that body of work reporting a test of the model derived from
the observation of officers from a sample of small-town and suburban police departments. In contrast to previous tests, the present study uses a unique measure of style
derived from the observational data. Our results, like those of earlier tests of Wilson’s
(1968) model, failed to provide support for the hypotheses that local political culture
is related to police style. Local government characteristics such as partisan elections
and type of local government were not correlated with either frequency of interaction,
formality of interaction, or police style.
We did identify variation in the frequency and formality of police–citizen interactions
suggesting the existence of different police styles. We found a significant relationship
between population size and style of policing. The larger communities tended toward
the legalistic style whereas smaller communities tended toward the watchman style.
Since population and median household income were highly correlated in our sample,
the less wealthy communities—which also tended to be among the smallest in our
sample—were more likely to exhibit a watchman style.
In his description of the various styles, Wilson describes expected links between
organizational characteristics and police style. He suggests that police style will be
associated with specialization in the department and with the level of pay and benefits
offered to officers. In short, the ability of the organization to reward or punish officer
behavior influences the ability of the police administrator to direct that behavior. While
we did not have the data required to test for this relationship, anecdotal information
suggests that the smaller, poorer agencies had little specialization and paid relatively
low police salaries. It is interesting to note that larger communities (and normally
larger police agencies with more specialization) tended toward the legalistic style of
policing. Unfortunately we were unable to directly assess these issues with the data
available.
Still, overall our findings mean that once again, Wilson’s model was not supported
by an attempt to replicate his original test of the theory. There are several possible
explanations for this, including the possibility that Wilson’s explanation of police
organizational styles is wrong. In fact, others who have recently conducted tests that
have failed to support Wilson’s work have intimated that the accumulation of mostly
negative findings in the existing literature has moved us closer to a falsification of
Wilson’s ideas (Zhao et al., 2006; Zhao & Hassell, 2005). Certainly, findings from
this study could be used as additional evidence in favor of abandoning what has been
one of the most influential theories of police behavior.
We would argue, however, that a summary dismissal of Wilson (1968) based on the
evidence provided by existing tests would be premature on several grounds. First, we
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462 Police Quarterly
believe that no one, ourselves included, has managed to faithfully replicate Wilson’s
original test. When Wilson first subjected his theory to an empirical test, he recognized that his observations might be limited to the eight communities that had been
studied in depth for the book (p. 271). He suggested that measuring political culture
would require extensive surveys of the public and that measures of police policies
would be even more difficult. He stated that police agency style is not always best
measured by arrests since what matters is not the number or rate of arrests, but
rather, the reasons that such arrests are made (p. 273). Nonetheless, arrest rates for
offenses that allowed high levels of police discretion were his measure of agency
style. Wilson attempted to control for differences in the true crime rate by limiting
his sample to medium-sized, middle class, predominantly White cities. He used a
four-category scheme to operationalize local government type.
Given these parameters, no one has fully replicated the original test. For instance,
Langworthy (1985) studied cities with a population of 100,000 or more and was
unable to measure the professionalism of city managers. He did not control for
median family income or for percentage non-White. Zhao and Hassell (2005) studied
police agencies (not cities) employing 100 or more officers. These agencies tend to
serve municipalities with populations of 50,000 or more. They, like Langworthy (1985),
trichotomized local government type into good government, traditional, and mixed.
In this study, we examined police styles in midwestern towns and suburbs with comparatively small populations and police organizations that employed relatively few
officers. Owing to the constraints associated with conducting large-scale observational studies, there were only 20 communities in our sample, and it could be argued
that all of them lack the cultural and racial heterogeneity needed to discern substantive
differences in police styles. Though we believe our measure of police style more
directly indicates the frequency and formality of police–citizen interaction, it is not
the measure that was used by Wilson.
Each of these studies contained important departures from Wilson (1968),
whether in the selection of communities, sampled agencies, or in the measurement
of key variables. It may well be that structural characteristics such as population, the
percentage of non-White residents, and aggregate income levels are not simply correlates
of crime rates as originally hypothesized by Wilson, but also correlates of political
culture as well. Beyond that, Wilson’s original description of political culture and
how it influenced police style included discussions of population homogeneity in
race, class, and income as well as police organizational characteristics such as officer
salary, specialization, centralization, and civilianization. Neither Wilson nor any of
those following his first empirical test has included these factors in the analysis.
Though the absence of any true replications of Wilson (1968) makes us hesitant to
support notions of a movement toward falsification, we would also argue that negative
judgments as to the original validity of Wilson’s work seem misplaced given the time
that has elapsed since the initial publication of Varieties. As others have already
noted, large-scale changes have occurred within the political, social, and occupational
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Liederbach, Travis / Wilson Redux 463
context surrounding policing (Hassell et al., 2003; Zhao & Hassell, 2005; Zhao et al.,
2006). These changes have probably altered the manner in which policing is accomplished since the 1960s, so much so that our ability to “recapture” what Wilson
observed four decades ago has probably been irrevocably lost.
For example, Hassell et al. (2003, p. 244) highlight changes that have occurred in the
relationship between police and the local political culture, whereby progressive-era
reforms designed to limit political influences on police organizations have clearly
solidified since the 1960s. It may also be that Wilson’s (1968) measurement of local
political culture is too simplistic for the study of contemporary political arrangements
(Hassell et al., 2003). In terms of the social context, it is likely that public expectations
of the police have become more homogenized with the advent of mass culture depictions
of policing and their wide-scale dissemination through television, movies, and other
forms of media. Likewise, the advent of the “information age” and associated growth in
communications technologies may have reduced the isolation, and hence uniqueness,
of many smaller police agencies. DWI, for example, is probably not the “highly discretionary” situation that it was in earlier years because changes to the sociolegal
definition of DWI appear to have altered public perceptions concerning the relative
seriousness of the offense. Finally, police styles have almost certainly been altered
by changes to the occupation itself, including (a) growth in the number of woman
and minority officers, (b) more demanding educational and training requirements,
(c) the advent of nationwide recruitment of officers, and (d) the steadily expanding
influence of state and federal governments through funding incentive programs and
the spread of “unfunded mandates.”
The development and spread of higher education for law enforcement personnel
and the standardization of police training curricula also work to reduce variation in
police behavior across jurisdictions. Contemporary police officers are likely to be
recruited from outside the jurisdiction in which they will serve and be trained under
a statewide curriculum. When Varieties was published, it was more common for
police agencies to recruit locally and to provide agency-specific, idiosyncratic training.
So too, changes in the preparation of city officials, especially the growth in the number
of “professional (college trained)” city managers has greatly reduced the likelihood
of finding variation in types of local government structure. Jurisdictions that have
manager-council forms of government overwhelmingly employ what Wilson defined
in 1968 as “professional” managers.
Given these and countless other shifts within the context that surrounds police work,
it is probably too much to expect that Wilson’s conceptualization would survive the
test of time unscathed. Nor should it be surprising that a 40-year-old model cannot
adequately explain policing styles in contemporary American society. In this respect,
current failures to replicate Wilson (1968) should probably not be interpreted as
additional fodder toward the ultimate falsification of his theory, but rather, as evidence
attesting to the fact that things have indeed changed, and as a call to action for contemporary police scholars to set on the task of updating Wilson’s theory and explaining how
these changes impact the behavior of today’s police.
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464 Police Quarterly
To this end, Wilson’s broad ideas should retain an intuitive—albeit quantitatively
challenged—appeal. Wilson himself recognized the complexities associated with
studying the relationship between political culture and police style, as well as the
crudity of his own measures. In describing the connection between local political
culture and police styles, Wilson (1968) had this say,
The most important way in which political culture affects police behavior is through the
choice of police administrator and the molding of the expectations that govern his role.
Just as the most important decision a school board makes it its choice of superintendent,
so the most important police decision a city council makes (or approves) is the selection
of chief. In some communities, it is expected that he will be the “best man available”; in
others it is that he will be the “deserving local fellow” or the man “closest to the party.”
And once in office, the chief will confront a zone of community indifference to his
polices of varying dimensions . . . the political culture acts as a filter, different for each
community, that screens out certain complaints and demands, leaving the chief free to
ignore them, and passes through (or even amplifies) others. (pp. 233-324)
Thus, it is likely that this “filtering” process—whereby local community norms
and values are distilled in a manner that is unique to each community—makes it
exceedingly difficult to understand the connection between communities, political
culture, and police behavior in purely quantitative terms. The study of local political
culture, Wilson (1968, p. 277) wrote, requires “firsthand” knowledge of the community
and a full understanding of police style requires “firsthand observation.” In short,
Wilson described a qualitative phenomenon best studied with qualitative methods.
Attempts to test or validate Wilson’s theory with limited quantitative measures are
not likely to capture the nuanced nature of local political culture and the links
between that culture and police practice.
One of the important limits of the extant research is the failure, as in our own case,
to measure the mechanisms through which local political culture can be transmitted
to individual officers. Wilson devoted considerable attention to the organizational
and structural characteristics of the different types of police departments. His model
specifically states that the link between local political culture and police style is indirect.
Future research should attempt to specify the paths through which local political
culture influences police behavior.
Laura Huey recently studied police practices on “skid row” in three locations:
Edinburgh, Scotland; San Francisco, California; and Vancouver, British Columbia.
Her ethnographic study involved observation and interview techniques and revealed
important differences in how the police dealt with citizens on skid row in the three
locations. Huey (2007) concludes that “perhaps the most important conclusion that
I took away from this research: the idea that communities articulate their values
through their policing practices” (p. 210). Forty years after the publication of
Varieties, Huey’s research indicates that local variation in police practice remains.
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Liederbach, Travis / Wilson Redux 465
In our own study, anecdotal and experiential knowledge of the local communities
helps to explain the differences in style. For instance: the palpable suspicion of an
affluent suburb; the busy transience of commercial hubs; the emptiness of some rural
towns. Likewise, so does firsthand knowledge of the activities officers typically perform
in different agencies, like controlling weekend crowds of unruly juveniles, enforcing
traffic codes along a local stretch of interstate highway, or the casual greeting of
familiar citizens along a main street. This firsthand knowledge can often provide more
powerful explanations than correlational analyses. Of course, these explanations are
colored by our understanding of Wilson’s original model and may reflect more of
our application of Wilson’s theory than an independent confirmation of the theory.
At the end of the day what remains are two observations. First, whether the product
of local political culture or some other factor, most observers of police, and the American
police in particular, accept that there is variation between local police departments.
Second, both the understanding of that variation and its explanation are likely to be
qualitative phenomena for which we have not yet developed sufficiently precise
measures to enable sophisticated quantitative analyses. To understand variation in
local policing, we may need to devote more time to the refinement of the theory
before we can accomplish empirical testing.
Notes
1. “Policing in a Community Context: An Observational Study of Suburban, Rural, and Urban
Policing” (Grant #98-IJ-0063) included 21 police agencies in the Greater Cincinnati area. Data collected
during observations of the Clermont Co. Sheriff’s Office are not included in this study.
2. A total of 43 observers participated in the project. All observers were affiliated with the University
of Cincinnati either pursuing their PhD degree (27.9%), masters degree (41.8%), or undergraduate
degrees (30.2%).
3. The observation schedules were constructed on a monthly basis. Agencies that used a standard 8-hr
shift were randomly assigned ride dates and shift times to complete the goal of 2.5 observations per month.
Agencies that did not employ a standard 8-hr shift (e.g., 10- or 12-hr shifts) were randomly scheduled for
either one or two observations per month on a rotating basis to obtain the 8-hr shift equivalent of 2.5 shifts
per month. The choice to randomly select shifts to be observed (rather than officers) was primarily driven
by practical concerns. The observed agencies routinely employed only a few officers on patrol during any
given shift, and these assignments were often made no more than 1 week in advance. Thus, observations
were conducted with officers who were assigned to patrol on randomly selected dates and shifts, and the
research team reviewed the observation data on an ongoing basis to ensure that a representative sample of
officers were observed within each sampled agency.
4. Encounters often involve multiple citizens. Table 2 discusses encounters as a whole, rather than
individual citizens.
5. Wilson’s measure of political culture included indicators of the “professionalism” of the city manager
in terms of (a) attainment of a college degree and (b) ICMA membership. In consideration of earlier
findings indicating that virtually all city administrators today possess a college degree (see, e.g., Zhao, 1996)
and consistent with Zhao et al.’s (2006) recent test of Wilson, we excluded college degree attainment from our
measure of political culture. Likewise, there was no variability in our sample in terms of ICMA membership,
as all of the city managers in our sample were members.
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466 Police Quarterly
6. Township jurisdictions include all municipalities and unincorporated areas in a given township
lying within a particular county. This is a popular policing arrangement in several midwestern states,
including Ohio, Michigan, and Wisconsin (Falcone, Wells, & Weisheit, 2002).
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Liederbach, Travis / Wilson Redux 467
John Liederbach is an associate professor in the Criminal Justice Program at Bowling Green State
University. His primary research interests include the study of police behavior across community types, suburban and rural policing, and medical crime. He has published in numerous professional journals, including
Justice Quarterly, Policing: An International Journal of Police Strategies and Management, Criminal Justice
Review, and the American Journal of Criminal Justice. He is also coauthor of the forthcoming book Police
Patrol Allocation & Deployment (Prentice Hall).
Lawrence F. Travis III is a professor of criminal justice and director of the Center for Criminal Justice
Research in the Division of Criminal Justice at the University of Cincinnati. He formally worked as the
research director of the Oregon State Board of Parole, and as a research analyst with the National
Parole Institutes. He is the author of Introduction to Criminal Justice (Cincinnati, OH: Anderson),
coauthor with Robert Langworthy of Policing in America (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall), and editor
of Policing: An International Journal of Police Strategies and Management. He has published on a variety
of criminal justice topics.
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