Why policing can't be an adversarial relationship
2013-08-02 20:47:52.619845+02 by Dan Lyke 0 comments
Freakonomics: How Does Stop-and-Frisk Change Attitudes?. Looks at The Effect of Police Contact: Does Official Intervention Result in Deviance Amplification? Stephanie A. Wiley, Finn-Aage Esbensen. Conclusion: Not in a good direction.
The key finding is that with participants matched for propensity, those who had contact with the police at time two (compared with those who didn't) said at time three that they'd feel less guilt if they committed various offences from theft to violence; they expressed more agreement with various "neutralisation" scenarios (e.g. it's OK to lie to keep yourself out of trouble); they were more committed to their deviant peers (e.g. they planned to continue hanging out with friends who'd been arrested); and finally, they said they'd engaged in more offending behaviour, from skipping classes to taking drugs or being violent. This pattern of results differed little whether police contact involved being arrested or merely being stopped.
How's your local police department doing?