10.1177/0093854805282509
CRIMINAL JUSTICE AND BEHAVIOR
Mendias, Kehoe / ENGAGEMENT OF POLICING IDEALS
ENGAGEMENT OF POLICING
IDEALS AND THEIR RELATIONSHIP
TO THE EXERCISE OF
DISCRETIONARY POWERS
CLAUDIA MENDIAS
E. JAMES KEHOE
The University of New South Wales
For four vignettes that described minor criminal incidents, police officers indicated whether they
would make an arrest and ranked the importance of four policing ideals in justifying their decision. These ideals were law enforcement, peace maintenance, procedural compliance, and
assessing whether the protagonist accepted responsibility. Although an arrest was always warranted, the overall arrest rate was 56%, and only 10% of the officers always indicated an arrest. In
justifying an arrest, law enforcement was ranked first on only 31% of occasions. Across arrests
and nonarrests, the officers justified 66% of their actions using two combinations of ideals: lawprocedure and peace-procedure. Hence, the officers appeared to exercise their discretionary
powers using one of two cognitive schemas to appraise each incident.
Keywords: police; discretion; arrest; decision making; schema
P
olice officers are the gatekeepers of the criminal justice system
(Bryett, Harrison, & Shaw, 1994; Friedrich, 1980; Gottfredson &
Gottfredson, 1988; Konec#ni & Ebbesen, 1982). They introduce people into the system through their decisions whether or not to arrest a
person involved in a criminal incident. Except in a “zero tolerance”
environment, police officers are commonly allowed discretion in
dealing with low-level criminal incidents by either making an arrest or
AUTHOR NOTE: This research was supported by an Australian Postgraduate
Research Award to the first author. Please address correspondence to E. James
Kehoe, School of Psychology, The University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW 2052,
Australia; e-mail: j.kehoe@unsw.edu.au.
CRIMINAL JUSTICE AND BEHAVIOR, Vol. 33 No. 1, February 2006 70-92
DOI: 10.1177/0093854805282509
© 2006 American Association for Correctional and Forensic Psychology
70
Mendias, Kehoe / ENGAGEMENT OF POLICING IDEALS 71
taking an alternative action, such as a warning (Novak, Frank, Smith,
& Engel, 2002; Wortley, 2003). In the interest of “community policing,” some officers are being explicitly trained to mediate disputes
between two people or refer them to a mediation service, rather than
arresting one or both as offenders (Moore, 1992; Novak et al., 2002;
Yeats, 1997). However, the availability of alternative actions can create a dilemma when officers are confronted with an ambiguous situation, for example, a domestic dispute in which it is unclear whether or
not physical violence has occurred.
In the face of ambiguous situations, police officers could legitimately adopt a relatively fixed strategy (cf. Gilboy, 1991; Konec#ni &
Ebbesen, 1984; Kunin, Ebbesen, & Konec#ni, 1992). That is, whenever
faced with sufficient evidence for an infraction of the law, police officers could justify arresting a suspect and letting a further stage in the
criminal justice system make the final disposition. However, as mentioned above, police officers often operate under policies that mix law
enforcement with other forms of conflict resolution. Thus, officers are
required to exercise their discretion in a way that satisfies a number of
ideals1 that originate in departmental policy, training, and broader
organizational socialization.
The literature reveals three theoretical approaches to the relationship between police officers’ discretionary actions and their ideals
(Albonetti, 1991; Brewer, Wilson, & Braithwaite, 1995; Morgan &
Smith, 1989; Robinson, 2000; Yarmey, 1990). One approach attempts
to predict the actions of officers from objective characteristics of the
officers (e.g., Riksheim & Chermak, 1993; Wilson & Braithwaite,
1995). Presumably, these characteristics are associated with underlying attitudes that guide the officers’actions, but this approach does not
attempt to directly measure these underlying attitudes. The characteristics most commonly studied have included an officer’s age, years of
service, socioeconomic background, gender, and even height (Lundman, 1994; Sherman, 1980; Smith & Klein, 1983). Among these, the
only factor consistently found to predict officers’ decisions has been
their level of experience (e.g., Finn & Stalans, 2002; Mastrofski,
Snipes, Parks, & Maxwell, 2000). More experienced officers tend to
resolve incidents more often without making an arrest than less
experienced officers (Finckenauer, 1976; Friedrich, 1980; Wilson &
Gross, 1994; but see Finn & Stalans, 2002).
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CRIMINAL JUSTICE AND BEHAVIOR
A second approach has more directly addressed the intervening
variables between a situation and an officer’s response (Broderick,
1987; Brown, 1988; Skolnick, 1966; Smith & Davidson, 1984; Walsh,
1986; Wortley, 2003). This approach has attempted to explain variability in officers’ actions according to trait-like “operational styles”
that combine different ideals about policing. The main ideals commonly identified are (a) adherence to established legal procedures, (b)
enforcement of laws, and (c) maintenance of the peace (Avery, 1981;
Hancock, 1978; Lipsky, 1980). According to this approach, differences among the officers in their emphasis on different ideals explains
why, when responding to similar incidents, one officer makes an arrest
whereas another uses an alternative action.
At its core, an operational-styles theory predicts that individual
officers will show a stable tendency to either arrest or take an alternative action, according to their particular style. However, research has
so far not revealed a consistent relationship between the attitudes of
officers and their actions across the range of situations they encounter
(Meyers, Heeren, & Hingson, 1989; Smith & Klein, 1983; Snipes &
Mastrofski, 1990; Stith, 1990; Worden, 1989). Among the clearer
results, Mastrofski, Worden, and Snipes (1995) found that officers
with a positive attitude toward community policing made fewer
arrests (5% in all public encounters) than officers with a negative
attitude (17%).
The third theoretical approach, interactionist theory, is more cognitive in its flavor. Each officer is thought to have acquired several
schemas that can be used as alternative ways to filter and categorize
the incoming information about an incident (Finn & Stalans, 2002;
Lurigio & Carroll, 1985; Novak et al., 2002; Robinson, 2000; Stalans
& Finn, 1995; Wortley, 2003). Each officer’s schemas can be differentially engaged across incidents, which leads to variability in an officer’s actions from one time to another. The variables included in a
schema may include both concrete situational features (e.g., the
degree of injury to a victim) and psychological variables (including an
officer’s policing ideals).
This interactionist approach has fostered studies that compared
officers’ arrest decisions in specific situations with their answers to
questions intended to identify the schemas engaged in those situations. Field investigations adopting this approach have observed offi-
Mendias, Kehoe / ENGAGEMENT OF POLICING IDEALS 73
cers’ actions within particular criminal contexts, including traffic
enforcement (Worden, 1989), drunk driving (Meyers et al., 1989),
domestic disputes (Robinson, 2000; Worden & Pollitz, 1984), juvenile crime (Hancock, 1978), and peace disturbances (Mastrofski et al.,
1995). However, these studies have produced promising but not definitive outcomes. For example, Worden and Pollitz (1984) found that
only 17% of the variability in the officers’ actions (arrest versus
nonarrest) could be explained by differences among the officers’ attitudes concerning, for example, the degree of enforcement for different laws, adherence to procedure, and perceived support from the
community.
Laboratory studies, in which officers are presented with written
vignettes describing criminal incidents, have had more success than
field studies (Finn & Stalans, 2002; Stalans & Finn, 1995; Wortley,
1997). Most notably, Stalans and Finn (1995) presented police officers with a written vignette describing a domestic dispute. The officers were asked what action they would take and to provide an explanation of their action. The results suggested that the officers used one
of two schemas. One schema, entitled the “efficiency frame,” entailed
pragmatic considerations, including adherence to required procedure.
In the other schema, entitled the “normative frame,” the officers
focused on whether the protagonists accepted responsibility for the
dispute (Finn & Stalans, 1995). Officers who used the efficiency
frame tended to make fewer arrests than officers using the normative
frame.
Although the available field and laboratory studies have yielded
some interesting data, they do not distinguish the interactionist theory
from the operational-styles theory. In fact, from the wider perspective
of a schema theory, the two theories differ in degree rather than in
kind. Specifically, in its simplest form, the operational-styles theory
essentially contends that each officer has a single predominant schema
for responding to criminal incidents. Hence, across incidents, each
officer will tend to take the same action and tend to give priority to the
same ideals. In contrast, the interactionist theory contends that each
officer has several schemas and that, across incidents, each officer will
vary in his or her action and in the associated ideals that are given priority. However, the available studies have used between-subject
designs, in which each officer is given only one vignette (Finn &
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CRIMINAL JUSTICE AND BEHAVIOR
Stalans, 1995, 2002; Stalans & Finn, 1995; Worden & Pollitz, 1984).
From officers’ reactions to a single situation, it is impossible to tell
whether these reactions reflect a single dominant schema or just one
of several schemas possessed by each officer. Hence, the first aim of
this study was to ascertain the degree of variability in both the actions
and ideals indicated by officers across a set of criminal incidents.
A second aim of this study was to determine the specific ideals
given priority by the officers in justifying their actions, and the third
aim was to determine the strength of the associations, if any, between
those ideals and the actions indicated by the officers. As yet, there is
no agreed list of policing ideals, but looking across the operationalstyles and interactionist literature, there are four ideals that are more
prominent than others (Brooks, 1993; Mastrofski, Parks, & Worden,
1998; Stalans & Finn, 1995; Worden, 1989; Wortley, 2003).
First and perhaps most obviously is the ideal of enforcing the law.
On a naive basis, one could hypothesize that officers would use this
ideal as ample justification for any arrest. However, there are other
plausible hypotheses as to why an officer may make a legal arrest
without law enforcement per se being the main justification. For
example, in disputes between family members or neighbors, arresting
the offender may be seen as a means for restoring peace and preventing potential violence (Kane, 2000; Rigakos, 1997). In addition, some
models of community policing advocate differential enforcement of
the law—and hence the use of arrest—contingent on community values and norms (Novak et al., 2002). In these terms, an arrest might be
justified primarily in terms of community values about keeping the
peace. In statistical terms, the conditional probability of using law
enforcement as the justification for an arrest may be less than 1.00.
Conversely, where officers do have discretion in responding to lowlevel violations of the law, they are not obliged to arrest every
offender. Anyone who has ever been “let off” with a warning for a
driving offense will appreciate this aspect of police discretion. Hence,
the conditional probability of arrest given that law enforcement is the
chief priority may also be less than 1.00.
A second prominent ideal is keeping the peace. In the context of
community policing models, this ideal might be strongly associated
with the use of tactics such as mediation and warnings. However, as
discussed in the previous paragraph, arrest may also be seen as a
Mendias, Kehoe / ENGAGEMENT OF POLICING IDEALS 75
worthwhile action in some circumstances where keeping the peace is
the chief priority.
The third ideal is adherence to required procedure and ensuring due
process. This ideal was a key component of Stalans and Finn’s (1995)
efficiency frame. They reported that officers who used this schema
tended to be less likely to make an arrest than officers who used the
normative frame. However, to the extent that this ideal reflects an officer’s sense of professionalism (Wortley, 1997), it is not clear whether
this ideal would always be associated with a low likelihood of arrest.
Stalans and Finn’s (1995) findings were limited to a nonviolent
domestic dispute. In other situations, however, adherence to procedure could be associated with a high likelihood of arrest.
The fourth ideal derived from the literature is assessing whether the
offender accepts responsibility for the incident. This ideal was a key
component of Stalans and Finn’s (1995) normative frame, which was
associated with a relatively high likelihood of arrest, at least in nonviolent domestic disputes.
To achieve our three aims, we adopted a vignette technique. On the
basis of information from interviews with police officers and official
crime statistics, four types of incidents frequently encountered by
local police officers were identified and a vignette for each type of
incident was written. All the vignettes entailed incidents of low criminality to allow officers the most freedom to exercise their discretion
(Thomas, 1986). Among other things, the incidents had little or no
risk of violence, which often triggers an arrest regardless of other considerations (Finn & Stalans, 2002; Kane, 2000; Rigakos, 1997).
For each vignette, the officers were asked two key questions. First,
they were asked what action they would take in response to the incident. For this question, the officers were given a choice among several
alternatives that were legally available to them. Second, the officers
were asked which of the four identified ideals they regarded as most
important in deciding their action. To do so, the officers were asked to
rank a set of propositions that reflected these ideals. The forcedchoice nature of the ranking task presented the officers with a dilemma similar to the one that they face when deciding what action to take
with regard to a criminal incident (Brooks, 1993; Robinson, 2000).
That is, if policing ideals do influence officers’actions, or at least their
after-the-fact justifications, then officers may need to give one or more
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CRIMINAL JUSTICE AND BEHAVIOR
of the ideals priority over the rest, even though all could have a positive value if rated individually. Hence, by defining the relative importance of the underlying ideals, rather than their absolute importance,
the ranking procedure was intended to capture any conflict among
policing ideals that officers must resolve.
To reduce any demand characteristics, an attempt was made to
divert the attention of the participants away from the linkage between
their actions and their ideals by inserting two additional questions
between the two key questions. These inserted questions concerned
features of the suspect’s behavior that could plausibly influence the
officers’ actions (e.g., Finn & Stalans, 2002; Lundman, 1994; Riksheim & Chermak, 1993; Sherman, 1980; Wortley, 2003). To give
these questions face validity across the four criminal vignettes read by
each officer, one or more features of the suspect were randomly varied
within each vignette (namely, their demeanor, their statement to the
police, and/or their criminal history).
METHOD
PARTICIPANTS
The participants were 173 officers from 12 police stations in Sydney, Australia. The officers’ rank varied from probationary constable
to senior constable, and their years of service ranged from 4 months to
35 years (M = 8.5 years, SD = 8.2). However, 20% of the officers failed
to answer this question. Agreements with both the police service and
police union prevented the collection of demographic information,
including the officers’ gender and location of their station.
PROCEDURE
Police officers were recruited in their stations. The officers were
asked to read five vignettes in a randomized order and answer the
questions as if they were responding to a real incident. Data collection
sessions lasted about 20 minutes.
The Appendix shows each of the five vignettes, including the variations in phrasing with regard to the suspects’ behavior. Manipulations
Mendias, Kehoe / ENGAGEMENT OF POLICING IDEALS 77
of the suspect variables were randomized across the vignettes given to
each officer. Four vignettes described incidents of low-level but definite criminality, namely, a minor assault during a dispute between
patrons in a public bar, malicious damage to a neighbor’s property,
shoplifting in a record shop, and a nonviolent dispute between a husband and wife. The fifth vignette described disruptive but noncriminal
behavior at a football game. This fifth vignette was included for two
methodological reasons. First, it allowed us to determine whether or
not the vignette method produced any unrealistic bias to indicate an
arrest. In fact, only 1% of the officers indicated an arrest for this
vignette. Second, intermixing this noncriminal vignette among the
criminal vignettes was intended to reduce any tendency by the participants either to indicate an arrest without paying attention to the
vignette or to vary their response to the criminal vignettes if they felt
that it was socially desirable to do so.
After reading each vignette, the officers were given the following
choice of actions: (a) caution only, (b) caution and log a report, (c) take
to station for inquiries, (d) arrest with conditional bail, (e) arrest with
unconditional bail, and (f) “other,” which allowed officers to detail an
alternative action. For the statistical analyses, these indicated actions
were grouped into two categories: “arrest” versus “nonarrest.” The
arrest category included “arrest with conditional bail” and “arrest with
unconditional bail.” The category of nonarrest included all other specified actions. For 217 of the original 865 responses, the officers used
the “other” option. Based on the details provided by the officers, 130
of these responses were reclassified by two independent raters. Specifically, 38% were recoded as indicated arrests and 62% as nonarrests.
The remaining 87 “other” statements were not included in subsequent
analyses because the observers failed to agree on a classification.
The second and third questions concerned two of the suspect variables. These items asked officers to rate the degree to which they agreed,
on a 5-point scale, with statements using details of the vignette. For
example, for the assault vignette, the question concerning the suspect’s demeanor was, “The man who swung at the other cooperated
with the police officers.” Analyses of the officers’ answers revealed
that they attended to the details of the vignettes. For example, when
presented with vignettes describing a suspect as cooperative, the officers agreed more strongly with the relevant question (Ms ! 3.6) than
78
CRIMINAL JUSTICE AND BEHAVIOR
when presented with a vignette in which the suspect was uncooperative
(Ms " 1.8). A similar difference was found for all the manipulationcheck questions (ps < .01).
Log-linear analyses were conducted to determine whether the suspect variables influenced the likelihood of officers’ indicating an
arrest (Elliott, 1988; Everitt, 1977; Norusis, 1993). The only manipulation that had a significant effect in more than one vignette was the
suspect’s statement, namely, whether or not the suspect confessed
guilt. Specifically, in the malicious damage vignette, a confession
attracted an indicated arrest from 75% of the officers, but a
nonconfession attracted an indicated arrest from only 9% of the officers, t(113) = 6.22, p < .01. In the assault vignette, a far smaller difference was seen, with a confession attracting arrests from 41% of the
officers versus 20% when there was no confession, t(123) = 2.50, p <
.01. The only other significant effect was criminal history in the shoplifting vignette, in which suspects with a reported criminal involvement attracted an indicated arrest from 80% of the officers versus 61%
when no prior criminal involvement was reported, t(127) = 2.32, p <
.01.
The fourth and last question asked the officers to rank four propositions with regard to the importance of each of them in deciding their
intended action. The specific propositions were as follows (in order of
presentation): (a) “Strictly enforce the law regulating this type of incident,” (b) “Follow the appropriate procedures for this type of incident,” (c) “Resolve the dispute and maintain the peace,” and (d) “Verify whether suspects accept responsibility for their actions.” For
descriptive purposes, these four propositions were labeled as “law,”
“procedure,” “peace,” and “responsibility,” respectively.
To conduct a coherent analysis of the officers’ indicated actions,
especially their consistency across vignettes and the relationship of
the indicated actions to the officers’ ranking of the four propositions,
the final sample included only officers who provided a complete set of
data (i.e., coded actions and rankings for all five vignettes). From the
original sample of 173 officers, the data from 91 (53%) met the inclusion criteria. Among the excluded participants, the data from 30 officers were discarded because they failed to rank the propositions but
instead gave absolute ratings. A further 52 participants were excluded
because the officers either failed to provide any indicated action or
Mendias, Kehoe / ENGAGEMENT OF POLICING IDEALS 79
gave an unclassifiable “other” response for one or more vignettes. The
final sample and excluded participants did not appear to differ. Specifically, their respective levels of indicated arrests and their length of
service failed to differ significantly (ps > .15).
RESULTS
According to the operational-styles approach, the distribution of
actions and ideals should be relatively constant across criminal incidents for a given group of officers. Conversely, the interactionist
approach predicts that officers may vary in their actions and in which
ideals they view as most important from one incident to another. In
fact, the officers showed significant variability in their indicated
actions across the criminal vignettes. Only 10% of the officers indicated an arrest in all four vignettes, and conversely, only 5% never
indicated an arrest. The full distribution was as follows: 10%, 32%,
35%, 18%, and 5% of the officers made 4, 3, 2, 1, and 0 indicated
arrests, respectively. Although this distribution differed significantly
from a uniform distribution, #2(4, N = 91) = 17.03, p < .01, it shows no
evidence of bimodality that would indicate two groups of officers with
distinct arrest strategies. Conversely, among the separate vignettes,
none of them elicited an indicated arrest from all the officers. Specifically, for the assault, malicious damage, shoplifting, and domestic dispute vignettes, the proportion of officers indicating an arrest was 32%,
44%, 73%, and 75%, respectively, #2(3, N = 364) = 49.84, p < .01. The
overall likelihood of an indicated arrest was 56%, and a subsidiary
analysis did not reveal any correlation with the officers’ length of service (r = –.12, n = 75, p > .10). The officers also varied in the range of
propositions they used to justify their actions. Only 16% of the
officers gave any proposition the first rank in all four vignettes.
The relationship between indicated actions and the rankings of the
propositions was examined using spectral analysis (Diaconis, 1988,
1989). There were 24 possible rank-ordered combinations formed by
the four propositions. Spectral analysis decomposes a data set into its
principal components and estimates the proportion of variability
explained by each component. In the case of rank-ordered data, this
analysis identifies the relative contribution made by different-sized
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CRIMINAL JUSTICE AND BEHAVIOR
groupings of the propositions, which are analogous to the main effects
and interactions in an analysis of variance (Speed, 1987). For the 24
possible rank-orderings, the spectral analysis yields a maximum of
four components of variability: (a) first order, (b) unordered pairs, (c)
ordered pairs, and (d) unordered triplets. The first-order component
represents how frequently the officers ranked each individual proposition in a given position. The unordered-pairs component reflects the
number of officers who assigned any two propositions a given pair of
ranks, regardless of the order. The ordered-pairs component assumes
a fixed order. Finally, the unordered triplets include propositions in
the top three ranks in any order.
Spectral analysis does not have a provision for repeated measures.
Hence, a separate analysis was conducted for each vignette: One
subanalysis described the distribution of rank-orders regardless of the
action, and a second subanalysis described the association of rankorders with the indicated action of arrest versus nonarrest.
In the subanalysis for the ranking of the propositions, the first-order
component explained an average of 71% of the variance in the rankings across vignettes (range = 64-78%). The two second-order components—the unordered pairs and ordered pairs—together explained
virtually all of the remaining variance. Across vignettes, the unorderedpairs explained an average of 13% of the variance (range = 7-20%),
and the ordered-pairs explained an average of 15% of the variance
(range = 10-24%). Together, the first- and second-order components
explained 99% of the variance.
The second subanalysis yielded a strong first-order component in
the association of indicated actions with the rankings of the propositions. An average 64% of the variance in the officers’ actions could be
associated with their rankings of individual propositions (range = 5476%), the unordered pairs explained an additional 14% of the variance
(range = 8-26%), and the ordered pairs explained another 21% of the
variance (range = 13-32%). In total, 99% of the total variance was
explained by the first- and second-order components together.
Table 1 shows three sets of likelihoods, expressed as whole percentages. The left column shows the likelihoods that the officers
ranked each of the propositions (or pair of propositions) in the top
ranks. For example, the peace proposition was ranked first on 33% of
all occasions regardless of the action the officers indicated. Examina-
Mendias, Kehoe / ENGAGEMENT OF POLICING IDEALS 81
TABLE 1: Proportion of Propositions in Top Ranks (in percentages)
Proposition
Peace
Procedure
Law
Responsibility
Peace-Law
Peace-Procedure
Peace-Responsibility
Law-Procedure
Law-Responsibility
Procedure-Responsibility
N
All Actions
33
35
20
13
9
33
10
33
2
12
364
Arrest
20
40
31
9
11
22
3
49
3
12
203
Nonarrest
50
28
6
17
7
47
19
14
2
12
161
tion of the table reveals that the officers used procedure (35%) slightly
more often than peace (33%) as the primary justification for their
actions. The law proposition was only used as the primary justification on 20% of all occasions, and the responsibility proposition was
used infrequently (13%). This overall pattern of likelihoods differed
significantly from a uniform distribution, #2(3, N = 364) = 27.14, p <
.001.
Examination of the center and right columns reveals that the relative frequencies with which different propositions received the first
rank differed significantly depending on which action had been indicated by officers, #2(3, N = 364) = 59.76, p < .001. Specifically, when
an arrest was indicated, procedure was most often used as the primary
justification (40%), whereas about a third of the indicated arrests
(31%) were justified by law in the first rank. The propositions for
peace (20%) and responsibility (9%) were of lesser importance to the
officers in justifying an arrest. This pattern of likelihoods differed significantly from a uniform distribution, #2(3, N = 203) = 23.60, p <
.001.
The pattern of rankings for indicated nonarrests differed dramatically from that generated by arrests. Overall, peace was ranked first in
50% of all instances of nonarrest, and procedure was ranked first for
28%. The propositions for law (6%) and responsibility (17%) were
ranked first only infrequently. This pattern of likelihoods differed significantly from a uniform distribution, #2(3, N = 161) = 35.84, p <
.001.
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CRIMINAL JUSTICE AND BEHAVIOR
On the basis of the first ranking, it appears that procedure rather
than law was the modal justification for an indicated arrest, whereas
peace was the predominate justification for a nonarrest. However,
when unordered pairs are considered, a different picture emerges, particularly with regard to the usage of procedure. Examination of the left
column reveals that peace-procedure and law-procedure combinations each accounted for 33% of all justifications. Among the remaining pairs, none accounted for more than 12% of the justifications.
Among the final sample of 91 officers, only 14 (15%) consistently
used a single pair of propositions to justify their indicated action.
However, 36 of the officers (40%) used a combination of the peaceprocedure and law-procedure pairs to justify their actions. Further
examination revealed that these officers did not neatly divide their
indicated actions between these two pairs. Among the 36 officers, only
16 (44%) justified all their indicated arrests using the law-procedure
pair and all their nonarrests with the peace-procedure pair.
The relative frequencies with which the different pairs were used to
justify an arrest versus nonarrest differed significantly, #2(5, N =
364) = 73.86, p < .001. Further examination of Table 1 reveals two
complementary features. Nearly half of the indicated arrests were justified by the law-procedure pair (49%), but it was used only infrequently to justify a nonarrest (14%). Conversely, the peace-procedure
pair predominated in the justification of nonarrests (47%) and was
only moderately prominent in justifying arrests (22%).
The likelihoods shown in Table 1 can be viewed as the predictive
value of arrest versus nonarrest for alternative justifications. If, however,
the propositions do in fact reflect ideals that are a part of the schemas
used by officers to decide on their action, the ability of the proposition
rankings to postdict the action may provide some insight—albeit
correlational in nature—into how these schemas are structured. Hence,
Table 2 shows the conditional likelihoods of arrest given that individual propositions were placed in the first rank or that a pair of propositions appeared in the first two ranks. In Table 2, the left column lists
the propositions, the middle column lists the number of times that the
propositions appeared in the top ranks (i.e., first rank for individual
propositions and top two ranks for pairs), and the right column lists
the proportion of times the propositions were accompanied by an indicated arrest.2
Mendias, Kehoe / ENGAGEMENT OF POLICING IDEALS 83
TABLE 2: Conditional Likelihood of an Arrest Given Top Ranking of Individual
and Pairs of Propositions
Proposition
Peace
Procedure
Law
Responsibility
Peace-Law
Peace-Procedure
Peace-Responsibility
Law-Procedure
Law-Responsibility
Procedure-Responsibility
N
P(Arrest)
121
126
71
46
33
120
36
121
9
45
34
64
87
41
67
38
17
82
67
56
NOTE: N = Number of occasions on which the proposition(s) occupied the first rank or
top two ranks. P(Arrest) is the proportion of arrests, in percentages.
Examination of Table 2 reveals that ranking law in the first position
was highly postdictive of an arrest. Specifically, in 87% of the
instances in which law was ranked first, there was an indicated arrest.
The procedure proposition in the first rank also postdicted an arrest in
64% of occasions. In contrast, peace (34%) and responsibility (41%)
were less postdictive of arrest and hence were postdictive of nonarrest.
A chi-square test confirmed that the distribution of arrests versus
nonarrests differed significantly as a function of first-ranked propositions, #2(3, N = 364) = 59.76, p < .001. Post-hoc tests indicated that the
relative frequency of arrests versus nonarrests for each proposition
differed significantly for the peace, procedure, and law propositions
(ps < .01), but not for responsibility (p > .10).
Examination of the lower portion of Table 2 suggests that the
postdictive value of the propositions moderated each other when they
were paired in the first and second ranks. In fact, the postdictive likelihood of an indicated arrest for a pair could be explained by an additive
combination based on the conditional likelihoods for the individual
propositions. Specifically, the conditional likelihoods for peace, procedure, law, and responsibility deviated from the overall likelihood of
arrest (56%) by –22%, 8%, 31%, and –15%, respectively. The postdictive likelihood for a given pair of propositions could be well
approximated by the algebraic sum of the two appropriate deviations
plus the overall likelihood of an arrest. For example, for the peace-law
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CRIMINAL JUSTICE AND BEHAVIOR
combination, the computed likelihood was equal to 65% = –22% +
31% + 56%. This computed likelihood compares favorably with the
actual conditional likelihood of an arrest for the peace-law combination
(67%). For the peace-procedure, peace-responsibility, law-procedure,
law-responsibility, and procedure-responsibility combinations, the
computed likelihoods were 42%, 19%, 96%, 73%, and 50%, respectively. The corresponding actual likelihoods were 38%, 17%, 82%,
67%, and 56%. The overall agreement between computed and actual
conditional likelihoods was excellent. Across the six pairs, the correlation coefficient (df = 4) was .98, p < .01. When the computed likelihoods were regressed on the actual likelihoods, the slope was 1.06 and
the intercept was .01.
DISCUSSION
This study had three empirical aims: (a) to determine the degree of
variability in both the indicated actions and rankings of ideals by officers across a set of low-level criminal incidents, (b) to determine the
specific ideals given priority by the officers in justifying their actions,
and (c) to determine the associations, if any, between those ideals and
the actions indicated by the officers. At a theoretical level, this study
was aimed at assessing whether the pattern of variability in actions,
ideals, and their associations agreed more closely with the expectations from an operational-styles theory or from an interactionist theory. In more quantitative terms, the theoretical aim was to identify the
number and type of schemas that the individual officers used across
criminal incidents.
For all four criminal vignettes, the officers would have been completely entitled to indicate an arrest and to justify it in terms of law
enforcement. In fact, the officers exercised their discretion in a more
complex way. There was considerable variability in both the choice of
actions by the officers and their justification for those actions, individually and across incidents. However, the officers were not entirely random. They used a small set of schemas as revealed by the association
between the officers’ actions and their justifications. Specifically, the
major findings of this study are as follows:
Mendias, Kehoe / ENGAGEMENT OF POLICING IDEALS 85
1. With regard to the first aim, individual officers commonly varied in
their indicated actions across the criminal vignettes, with only 10%
indicating an arrest in all four vignettes. The officers also varied individually in the range of propositions they used to justify their actions.
Across all propositions, only 16% of the officers gave the same proposition the first rank in all four vignettes. Likewise, only 15% of the
officers consistently used a single pair of propositions to justify all
their indicated actions.
2. When an arrest was indicated, the law proposition (“Strictly enforce
the law regulating this type of incident”) was only invoked as the primary justification about one third of the time (31%). If all the unordered pairs from Table 1 in which law was in either of the top two
ranks are added together—namely, peace-law (11%), law-procedure
(49%), and law-responsibility (3%)—the law proposition was used in
the justification of an arrest on only about two thirds of occasions
(63%). However, law was highly diagnostic of arrest. That is, it was
almost never used as the primary justification for a nonarrest (6%) and
was used only moderately in the top two ranks to justify a nonarrest
(22%). On a postdictive basis, the use of law in the first rank was associated with an 87% likelihood of an arrest.
3. The peace proposition (“Resolve the dispute and maintain the peace”)
was not a mirror image of the law proposition. Whereas law was used
almost exclusively as a justification for arrest, peace appeared as a justification for both arrest and nonarrest, albeit not in a completely symmetric fashion. Specifically, peace was used moderately often as the
justification for an arrest in either the first rank (20%) or the top two
ranks (36%). With regard to nonarrest, peace appeared frequently as
the justification in the first rank (50%) and in the top two ranks (72%).
On a postdictive basis, the peace proposition was negatively diagnostic of arrest (34%), which was well below the overall arrest rate (56%).
4. The procedure proposition (“Follow the appropriate procedures for
this type of incident”) was used as the prime justification for an arrest
more often than law in both the first rank (40%) and the top two ranks
(83%). Nevertheless, the procedure proposition was not particularly
diagnostic of an arrest. That is, procedure was also used moderately
often as the prime justification for a nonarrest (28%) and appeared
almost as often in the top two ranks for nonarrest (73%) as it did for
arrest. On a postdictive basis, the use of procedure was associated with
a 64% likelihood of arrest, which was only slightly higher than the
overall arrest rate (56%).
5. The proposition for responsibility (“Verify whether suspects accept
responsibility for their actions”) was rarely used as the primary justification for either an arrest (9%) or nonarrrest (17%). Responsibility
appeared infrequently in the first two ranks for an arrest (18%) but
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CRIMINAL JUSTICE AND BEHAVIOR
moderately often for nonarrest (33%). On a postdictive basis, responsibility was moderately diagnostic of nonarrest, being associated with
a 41% likelihood of arrest, which was below the base rate for arrest
(56%).
As may now be apparent, these results did not reveal evidence for
trait-like operational styles. That is, the officers did not cluster into
groups that showed distinct patterns of actions and justifications
for them. Instead, the results revealed evidence for an interactionist
theory. Specifically, officers appear to have two main overlapping
schemas. As Table 1 shows, the law-procedure pair was used to justify
the officers’ actions on 33% of all occasions, and the peace-procedure
pair was used on another 33%. Among the individual officers, 40%
exclusively used these two pairs to justify their indicated actions.
In these two possible schemas, the adherence to appropriate procedure is the common denominator. This adherence to procedure was
clearly not a mere mechanical compliance with some recipe that led
inevitably to the same action. The attention to procedure was combined with the officer’s judgment as to whether the ideals reflected in
the law and peace propositions were more salient in deciding what
action to take. In this respect, adherence to procedure may be an
expression of the officer’s overall professionalism.
The schemas identified in this research refine the picture described
by Stalans and Finn (1995). In their research using vignettes describing nonviolent domestic disputes, they found that an arrest action was
indicated less often by officers adopting an efficiency frame, and
arrest was indicated more often by officers adopting a normative frame.
In Stalans and Finn’s depiction of the efficiency frame, they emphasized procedure and due process. In their depiction of the normative
frame, they emphasized ascertaining whether the protagonists accepted
responsibility for the dispute. In these findings, the idea of the efficiency frame is perhaps best captured by the peace-procedure pair. On
a postdictive basis, this pair was associated with a moderately low
likelihood of arrest (38%), whereas procedure by itself was associated
with a moderately high likelihood of arrest (64%). In contrast, the idea
of the normative frame is best captured by the law-responsibility pair
that, postdictively, was associated with a 67% likelihood of arrest. The
responsibility proposition by itself was associated with only a 41%
Mendias, Kehoe / ENGAGEMENT OF POLICING IDEALS 87
likelihood of arrest. However, in our overall results, responsibility was
used rarely to justify either an arrest (9%) or nonarrest (17%). Even
when considering only our domestic dispute vignette, responsibility
was also used rarely as the first-rank justification for an arrest (6%) or
nonarrest (13%). Hence, the efficiency frame as conceptualized by
Stalans and Finn may exist but was not engaged in response to our particular vignettes.
These results flesh out past and recent thinking with regard to the
role of different ideals in policing schemas (Novak et al., 2002; Robinson, 2000; Wortley, 2003). The high rankings given by the officers to
the law, procedure, and peace propositions lend support to hypotheses
that policing ideals include not only law enforcement but also adherence to due process and the maintenance of peace (Avery, 1981;
Broderick, 1987; Brown, 1988; Hancock, 1978; Lipsky, 1980;
Skolnick, 1966; Smith, 1984). The pattern of linkages between the
propositions and indicated arrests is consistent with the main thrust of
schema theory as used in the interactionist approach (Finn & Stalans,
2002; Lurigio & Carroll, 1985; Robinson, 2000; Stalans & Finn,
1995), namely, that officers have multiple cognitive structures for
interpreting incoming information and deciding on a course of action.
In this case, the ideals reflected in the propositions may provide superstructures that transcend situation-specific schemas and help the
police officers frame their tactical options to the complexities of both
familiar and novel incidents.
APPENDIX
Text of Vignettes
VIGNETTE 1: COMMON ASSAULT
You and your partner are walking by the local hotel on Friday night and hear loud
shouting coming from inside. You go in and see a man take a swing at another and
push him onto the floor. You approach the men and ask them to tell you why they were
arguing. At this point, the man who had swung at the other says,
Uncooperative: “It’s none of your business, can’t we just sit and talk without the
police butting in?”
Cooperative: “I was just sitting here and he came up to me and told me to leave.”
The other man calmly starts explaining how he had come back from the bar and
found this man sitting with his date. He had asked him to leave her alone, but
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CRIMINAL JUSTICE AND BEHAVIOR
he got angry and started swinging at him. You turn to the other man and ask
him if this was true. Still agitated, he says,
Confession: “I guess I might’ve hit him, but you can’t just come up and tell someone to leave like that.”
No confession: “I didn’t do anything, she was just sitting alone and I kept her
company. Nothing else happened!!”
VIGNETTE 2: MALICIOUS DAMAGE
You are called to a dispute between neighbors. The dispatch tells you that
Prior: the police had been called to that address before for similar disputes.
No prior: there’s no prior record of problems at that address.
When you arrive, you are greeted by a man who introduces himself as Mr. Russell.
He tells you about a series of confrontations with his neighbor, Mr. Peterson. He says,
“I’ve never been particularly friendly with him. We’re basically polite, but he’s
always complaining about my kids playing in the front yard. The real trouble started
last month when we put up a basketball hoop at the front of the house. Peterson started
harassing my kids when they played. He complains that they make too much noise.
Now, around an hour ago I heard a loud crash from the front. I came out, saw the hoop
lying on the ground, and Peterson going into his house.”
You then walk next door to Mr. Peterson’s home. He answers the door and after
identifying yourself you tell him of the complaint against him. You ask if he was
responsible for the damage to Mr. Russell’s property. He says,
Confession: “Yes, I did it, got sick of the noise and knew he wasn’t going to make
the kids be quiet.”
No confession: “I don’t know what happened. I’ve been inside all day.”
VIGNETTE 3: SHOPLIFTING
You are walking with your partner by the local mall when the owner of the record
shop comes up to you and tells you that a woman just walked out of his store without
paying for a couple of CDs. He also tells you that he got a good look at her and gives
you a very good description of the woman. You walk around the mall and see a woman
matching the description. You approach her, identify yourself, and ask her if she could
come back to the store with you.
Uncooperative: She gets agitated and says, “I’m not going anywhere with you.
Who do you think you are telling me what to do?”
Cooperative: She is polite and says, “Yes, whatever you say. Let’s just clear this
up.”
You take her back to the store and the owner immediately identifies the woman.
Your partner also recognizes her as
Mendias, Kehoe / ENGAGEMENT OF POLICING IDEALS 89
Prior: the person he arrested sometime back after a complaint from the mall’s
security guard.
No prior: a local he knows has never been in trouble with the police before.
VIGNETTE 4: DOMESTIC DISPUTE
You are dispatched to a block of apartments. The neighbors were worried about the
loud shouting coming from the apartment next to them and called the police. You
arrive at the apartment and are greeted by a man. After identifying yourself, you
inform him about the neighbor’s complaint and ask to come into the apartment. He
says,
Uncooperative: “Why do you need to come in? Nobody here asked for your help.
Go bother someone else,” and he goes to close the door.
Cooperative: “Yes, I guess so. If you really have to.”
You tell him that you need to come in and talk to his wife. He opens the door and
lets you in. As you and your partner come in, you see the wife sitting at the kitchen
table. She looks like she’s been crying and is still somewhat upset. You approach her
and ask if she’s OK. She nods, but doesn’t say anything. You turn to the husband and
ask him if he knows why his wife was upset. He says, “I got back from work and she
started on about how I’m never here.”
Confession: I guess I lost it and I might’ve grabbed her a bit too hard.”
No confession: I didn’t hit her or anything. I just told her to leave me alone.”
The wife then says, “I was just mad at him for always staying back. He didn’t have
to push me so hard.” You ask her if this has ever happened before. She answers,
Prior: “Every now and then he loses it. The police have been here before.”
No prior: “We fight like normal, but the police have never been here before.”
VIGNETTE 5: DISRUPTIVE BEHAVIOR
You are working at a football game. After the first half of the game, you notice a
group of males being extremely loud and shouting obscenities at the opposing side.
You approach them and ask them to get down from their seats and not yell so loud.
They do as you said. A short time later, you see them again shouting and making it difficult for the people next to them to enjoy the game.
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NOTES
1. The use of ideal is intended to be a generic label that encompasses a large set of psychological constructs that have been used by researchers to denote, among other things, the values,
goals, and attitudes of police officers. Hence, ideal is used here to mean the ultimate aim of an
endeavor, rather than meaning a model of perfection.
2. The conditional likelihood of a nonarrest in each case is not shown, because it is equal to 1
minus the conditional likelihood of arrest.
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