Scott W Phillips
Biographic Data
| ID | 185871 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Scott W Phillips |
| GIVEN NAMES | Scott W |
| FAMILY NAME | Phillips |
| SIGNATURE | PHILLIPS S W |
| AFFILIATIONS | Buffalo State University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-0731-7612 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 33 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 183 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 33 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1986 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
The Views of Police Officers Toward Gun Legislation and Public Health Policies Driven by Firearm Safety Concerns
Hiring police applicants who support far-left or far-right organizations: A qualitative exploration of New York State chiefs’ and administrators’ viewpoint
This study is a qualitative exploration of the thoughts of police chiefs and upper-level police administrators in New York State regarding the hiring of applicants who hold left-wing or right-wing ideological perspectives. A near equal number of respondents indicated little hesitancy to hire, while others stating they should not hire such an applicant. Some respondents offered non-committal viewpoints. Most respondents provided a more thoughtful …
Exploring Officer-Involved Shootings With Interaction Effects: A Deeper Understanding of How Race/Ethnicity Interacts With Other Factors in the Use of Deadly Force
There has been a substantial body of research examining the reasons behind the police officers’ use of deadly force. Little research has been done to examine how race and ethnicity interact with other factors in the use of deadly force. With data collected in Dallas, Texas, the present study examines the influence of individual, situational, and neighborhood characteristics on officers’ decision to use deadly force. The present study also provide…
A historical examination of police firearms
This study provides a historical examination of firearms in policing to understand how weapons have evolved within the American field. A search was conducted of historical newspaper databases and a small number of books and journal articles for information on the different firearms used in policing since their inception. The evidence demonstrates that US police officers have been using revolvers since the Civil War, but there were no agency stand…
Total recall: A quasi-experimental study of officer’s recollection in shoot – don’t shoot simulators
Using a quasi-experimental design, the present work seeks to answer whether officer recollection is more precise if they are interviewed moments after a stressful incident (experimental group), compared to officers who are questioned three days after the event (control group). Police officers were exposed to a video simulation of a suspicious male that required either a shoot or don’t shoot outcome. The scenario lasted less than 30 seconds. The t…
Further Mitigating the Academic-Law Enforcement Research Divide
Since the 1960s, there has been well-documented incidents of the scholar-practitioner tension within policing research. Though there has been maturation in the professional partnership over the years, hindrances persist. The current study aims to advance collaborative efforts between the academic and law enforcement communities. Data for the current study derived from written documents and interviews. Results indicate that one individual, who pos…
When Covid-19 and guns meet: A rise in shootings
Irremedial Work and Act‐Person Merger: Constructing Irredeemable Selves in Death Penalty Trials
Irremedial work is an interpretive practice aimed at establishing a vital connection between a person's untoward behavior and his true self. Fifteen death penalty trial transcripts are employed as strategic research materials to examine how an individual's transgressions and the thoughts and feelings purportedly associated with his misconduct are merged with his self. A qualitative content analysis of these data identifies four recurring themes i…
When Will Academics Contest Intellectual Conflict
Academics have conflicts over ideas with some regularity, yet they contest only some of them. When will they do so? We draw on a theory of conflict management developed by Donald Black and others to explain the response to intellectual conflict. Drawing on interviews with 70 professors at two universities, we find that the contestation of intellectual conflicts is predicted by their social geometry. Academics are more likely to contest conflicts …
Military-Style Weapons in Policing: A Limited Test of Diffusion Theory
This limited examination of policy diffusion mechanisms provides some support for learning as a mechanism for diffusing patrol rifles across police agencies. Policy diffusion is generally defined as a government making policy choices based on the policies existing in other governments. A contemporary law enforcement concern for police agencies is the “active-shooter” incident. Many police agencies now have policies that allow their street officer…
Donut time: The Use of Humor Across the Police Work Environment
Purpose- The purpose of this research is to examine ritualistic humor or joking that exists in a small, rural police department in Western New York.Design/methodology/approach- Data were collected through participatory observations and interviews during the summer of 2014. Both authors worked in tandem to capitalize on individual expertise to maximize data collection and analyses.Findings- Results suggest that humor is leveraged by officers to so…
Police Discretion and Boredom: What Officers Do When There Is Nothing to Do
Police work is boring, involves a substantial amount of "down time," and can have negative consequences for police officer performance, contributing to occupational stress and turnover. Research argued that workers reduced their boredom by engaging in "none-work" activities. Police officer autonomy, however, provides them the opportunity to reduce their boredom by working in a way that makes their behavior meaningful and interesting. Most policin…
Police recruit attitudes toward the use of unnecessary force
This study examined the attitudes of police recruits toward the use of unnecessary force. Police recruits from a single regional police academy served as the population for this study. They were provided a survey on the first day of academy training; a vignettes research design was used to measure their view of the use of unnecessary force by another officer and their likelihood of reporting such behavior. The type of unnecessary force plays a ro…
The attitudes and goals of police supervisors: Results from a national sample
There is little research examining the general attitudes or goals of police supervisors. In this study, a survey instrument was provided to a sample of over 400 police supervisors in attendance at the FBI’s National Academy. Respondents work in law enforcement agencies that range from very large to very small. Findings indicate that police supervisors having aggressive law enforcement attitudes were related to two goals: making arrests, and seizi…
Social geometry and the success of moral ideas: The case of capital punishment
The Electronic Pillory: Social Time and Hostility Toward Capital Murderers
In early modern Europe, popular hostility toward criminals could be expressed through the use of the pillory (a device in which offenders were restrained and publicly displayed). Modern electronic communications have facilitated the emergence of contemporary versions of the pillory. One such example is prodeathpenalty.com, a Web site created by supporters of capital punishment that permits members to post comments about particular executions. Mos…
Myths, militarism and the police patrol rifle
Violence and force have played an important role in the establishment and defence of democratic values, and myths are used to justify the violence. The use of state-sanctioned violence by the police has a long history in the defence of those values, and myths have played a significant role in justifying their ability to use force to protect those values. This article reviews policing myths, the development of Police Paramilitary Units, the role o…
Implementing Intelligence-Led Policing: An Application of Loose-Coupling Theory
Intelligence-led policing and forces of organisational change in the USA
The intent of this study is to explore organisational factors that, both conceptually and operationally, facilitate or inhibit a police agency from adopting intelligence-led policing (ILP). Research to date is yet to explore organisational factors related to ILP among American law enforcement agencies. Drawing from original survey data of national law enforcement agencies as part of a 2009 US Department of Justice, National Institute of Justice-f…
With God on One's Side: The Social Geometry of Death Row Apologies
Apology is an increasingly prominent form of conflict management in many areas of social life. Yet there are few systematic studies of apology as a dependent variable. Analyzing the last statements of Texas death row prisoners, we find that the best predictor of apology is affiliation with God. Under traditional Western conceptions, God is an actor endowed with extraordinarily high status. Drawing on the theoretical paradigm known as pure sociolo…
Disentangling Victim Gender and Capital Punishment: The Role of Media
For decades, scholars have documented disparities in the administration of capital punishment. Yet explanations remain largely elusive. One area in which the shift from documentation to explanation has occurred is victim gender. Williams, Demuth, and Holcomb (2007) demonstrate that the death penalty is more likely to be imposed on behalf of women and girls because such victims are more apt to be sexually degraded. We ask the next logical question…
Police officers’ opinions of the use of unnecessary force by other officers
This study examined the assumptions that the use of unnecessary force is acceptable to police officers and they are unlikely to report its use to a supervisor. Suspect characteristics, situational aspects, and examples of force were integrated into vignettes. Officers from three small departments responded to two vignettes. Officers accept unnecessary force if a suspect flees, but not the use of physical force. Police officers are doubtful that a…
A comparison of Chinese and the U.S. police cadets’ occupational attitudes
Status Disparities in the Capital of Capital Punishment
Numerous studies have examined the influence of victim race on capital punishment, with a smaller number focused on victim gender. But death penalty scholars have largely ignored victim social status. Drawing on Black's (1976) multidimensional theoretical concept, the current research examines the impact of victim social status on the district attorney's decision to seek the death penalty and the jury's decision to impose a death sentence. The da…
Border Blunders: The Unanticipated Human and Economic Costs of the U.S. Approach to Immigration Control, 1986‐2007
Aiding Peace, Abetting Violence: Third Parties and the Management of Conflict
When and how will third parties intervene in the conflicts of others? When will third parties further violence, and when will they foster peace? These are questions addressed by Black's theory of the third party. The authors conducted the first systematic test of the theory, drawing on quantitative and qualitative data from in-depth interviews with 100 men imprisoned for assault or homicide. Specifically, they tested Cooney's elaboration of Black…
Judicial Rhetoric, Meaning-Making, and the Institutionalization of Hate Crime Law
In this article we examine how the concept of hate crime has been transformed in judicial discourse from a broad ambiguous category, which generated substantial controversy and opposition, to a focused determinate legal construct, which has been largely accepted as a legitimate legal practice. We track changes in judicial rhetoric across 38 appellate court opinions that consider the constitutionality of hate crime cases (1984-1999), and we propos…
The Social Structure of Vengeance: A Test of Black's Model
The current research tests Black's (1990) model of vengeance through interviews with prison inmates. Drawing on a case‐control method, each respondent describes a matched pair of conflicts: the crime of vengeance and a similar nonviolent conflict from the same time period. The quantitative data are used to estimate the impact of conflict structure on conflict management. Conditional logistic regression models offer mixed support: relational dista…
Status Disparities in the Capital of Capital Punishment
Numerous studies have examined the influence of victim race on capital punishment, with a smaller number focused on victim gender. But death penalty scholars have largely ignored victim social status. Drawing on Black's (1976) multidimensional theoretical concept, the current research examines the impact of victim social status on the district attorney's decision to seek the death penalty and the jury's decision to impose a death sentence. The da…
When Covid-19 and guns meet: A rise in shootings
Myths, militarism and the police patrol rifle
Violence and force have played an important role in the establishment and defence of democratic values, and myths are used to justify the violence. The use of state-sanctioned violence by the police has a long history in the defence of those values, and myths have played a significant role in justifying their ability to use force to protect those values. This article reviews policing myths, the development of Police Paramilitary Units, the role o…
With God on One's Side: The Social Geometry of Death Row Apologies
Apology is an increasingly prominent form of conflict management in many areas of social life. Yet there are few systematic studies of apology as a dependent variable. Analyzing the last statements of Texas death row prisoners, we find that the best predictor of apology is affiliation with God. Under traditional Western conceptions, God is an actor endowed with extraordinarily high status. Drawing on the theoretical paradigm known as pure sociolo…
Police Discretion and Boredom: What Officers Do When There Is Nothing to Do
Police work is boring, involves a substantial amount of "down time," and can have negative consequences for police officer performance, contributing to occupational stress and turnover. Research argued that workers reduced their boredom by engaging in "none-work" activities. Police officer autonomy, however, provides them the opportunity to reduce their boredom by working in a way that makes their behavior meaningful and interesting. Most policin…
Border Blunders: The Unanticipated Human and Economic Costs of the U.S. Approach to Immigration Control, 1986‐2007
Police criminal charging decisions: An examination of post-arrest decision-making
Donut time: The Use of Humor Across the Police Work Environment
Purpose- The purpose of this research is to examine ritualistic humor or joking that exists in a small, rural police department in Western New York.Design/methodology/approach- Data were collected through participatory observations and interviews during the summer of 2014. Both authors worked in tandem to capitalize on individual expertise to maximize data collection and analyses.Findings- Results suggest that humor is leveraged by officers to so…
A comparison of Chinese and the U.S. police cadets’ occupational attitudes
The Electronic Pillory: Social Time and Hostility Toward Capital Murderers
In early modern Europe, popular hostility toward criminals could be expressed through the use of the pillory (a device in which offenders were restrained and publicly displayed). Modern electronic communications have facilitated the emergence of contemporary versions of the pillory. One such example is prodeathpenalty.com, a Web site created by supporters of capital punishment that permits members to post comments about particular executions. Mos…
Intelligence-led policing and forces of organisational change in the USA
The intent of this study is to explore organisational factors that, both conceptually and operationally, facilitate or inhibit a police agency from adopting intelligence-led policing (ILP). Research to date is yet to explore organisational factors related to ILP among American law enforcement agencies. Drawing from original survey data of national law enforcement agencies as part of a 2009 US Department of Justice, National Institute of Justice-f…
Brutality at the border? Use of force in the arrest of immigrants in the United States
Military-Style Weapons in Policing: A Limited Test of Diffusion Theory
This limited examination of policy diffusion mechanisms provides some support for learning as a mechanism for diffusing patrol rifles across police agencies. Policy diffusion is generally defined as a government making policy choices based on the policies existing in other governments. A contemporary law enforcement concern for police agencies is the “active-shooter” incident. Many police agencies now have policies that allow their street officer…
Disentangling Victim Gender and Capital Punishment: The Role of Media
For decades, scholars have documented disparities in the administration of capital punishment. Yet explanations remain largely elusive. One area in which the shift from documentation to explanation has occurred is victim gender. Williams, Demuth, and Holcomb (2007) demonstrate that the death penalty is more likely to be imposed on behalf of women and girls because such victims are more apt to be sexually degraded. We ask the next logical question…
When Will Academics Contest Intellectual Conflict
Academics have conflicts over ideas with some regularity, yet they contest only some of them. When will they do so? We draw on a theory of conflict management developed by Donald Black and others to explain the response to intellectual conflict. Drawing on interviews with 70 professors at two universities, we find that the contestation of intellectual conflicts is predicted by their social geometry. Academics are more likely to contest conflicts …
A decade of research with dyslexic college students: A summary of findings
Judicial Rhetoric, Meaning-Making, and the Institutionalization of Hate Crime Law
In this article we examine how the concept of hate crime has been transformed in judicial discourse from a broad ambiguous category, which generated substantial controversy and opposition, to a focused determinate legal construct, which has been largely accepted as a legitimate legal practice. We track changes in judicial rhetoric across 38 appellate court opinions that consider the constitutionality of hate crime cases (1984-1999), and we propos…
Brutality at the border? Use of force in the arrest of immigrants in the United States
Race and the Death Penalty: Including Asian Americans and Exploring the Desocialization of Law
Scholars have learned a great deal about race and the death penalty. Yet the field has limitations: (1) prior research focuses on African Americans and Hispanics but ignores Asian Americans; (2) researchers have not explored Donald Black's (1989) plan to eliminate discrimination called the “desocialization of law.” Black notes that jurors who do not know the race of the offender and victim cannot discriminate. Black then outlines proposals aimed …
Driving While Black: The Role of Race, Sex, and Social Status
The phenomenon of "driving while black" has ignited a heated debate: Do the police use race to target drivers? Most research on the topic compares the number of police stops and searches for a racial group to that group's distribution in the population. This approach ignores sociological theories of law, the driver's social status, the combined influence of race and sex, and whether the driver carries drugs in the car. In addition, the police are…
The Social Structure of Vengeance: A Test of Black's Model
The current research tests Black's (1990) model of vengeance through interviews with prison inmates. Drawing on a case‐control method, each respondent describes a matched pair of conflicts: the crime of vengeance and a similar nonviolent conflict from the same time period. The quantitative data are used to estimate the impact of conflict structure on conflict management. Conditional logistic regression models offer mixed support: relational dista…
Aiding Peace, Abetting Violence: Third Parties and the Management of Conflict
When and how will third parties intervene in the conflicts of others? When will third parties further violence, and when will they foster peace? These are questions addressed by Black's theory of the third party. The authors conducted the first systematic test of the theory, drawing on quantitative and qualitative data from in-depth interviews with 100 men imprisoned for assault or homicide. Specifically, they tested Cooney's elaboration of Black…
Border Blunders: The Unanticipated Human and Economic Costs of the U.S. Approach to Immigration Control, 1986‐2007
Police criminal charging decisions: An examination of post-arrest decision-making
Status Disparities in the Capital of Capital Punishment
Numerous studies have examined the influence of victim race on capital punishment, with a smaller number focused on victim gender. But death penalty scholars have largely ignored victim social status. Drawing on Black's (1976) multidimensional theoretical concept, the current research examines the impact of victim social status on the district attorney's decision to seek the death penalty and the jury's decision to impose a death sentence. The da…
Police officers’ opinions of the use of unnecessary force by other officers
This study examined the assumptions that the use of unnecessary force is acceptable to police officers and they are unlikely to report its use to a supervisor. Suspect characteristics, situational aspects, and examples of force were integrated into vignettes. Officers from three small departments responded to two vignettes. Officers accept unnecessary force if a suspect flees, but not the use of physical force. Police officers are doubtful that a…
A comparison of Chinese and the U.S. police cadets’ occupational attitudes
Disentangling Victim Gender and Capital Punishment: The Role of Media
For decades, scholars have documented disparities in the administration of capital punishment. Yet explanations remain largely elusive. One area in which the shift from documentation to explanation has occurred is victim gender. Williams, Demuth, and Holcomb (2007) demonstrate that the death penalty is more likely to be imposed on behalf of women and girls because such victims are more apt to be sexually degraded. We ask the next logical question…
Intelligence-led policing and forces of organisational change in the USA
The intent of this study is to explore organisational factors that, both conceptually and operationally, facilitate or inhibit a police agency from adopting intelligence-led policing (ILP). Research to date is yet to explore organisational factors related to ILP among American law enforcement agencies. Drawing from original survey data of national law enforcement agencies as part of a 2009 US Department of Justice, National Institute of Justice-f…
With God on One's Side: The Social Geometry of Death Row Apologies
Apology is an increasingly prominent form of conflict management in many areas of social life. Yet there are few systematic studies of apology as a dependent variable. Analyzing the last statements of Texas death row prisoners, we find that the best predictor of apology is affiliation with God. Under traditional Western conceptions, God is an actor endowed with extraordinarily high status. Drawing on the theoretical paradigm known as pure sociolo…
Myths, militarism and the police patrol rifle
Violence and force have played an important role in the establishment and defence of democratic values, and myths are used to justify the violence. The use of state-sanctioned violence by the police has a long history in the defence of those values, and myths have played a significant role in justifying their ability to use force to protect those values. This article reviews policing myths, the development of Police Paramilitary Units, the role o…
Implementing Intelligence-Led Policing: An Application of Loose-Coupling Theory
Police recruit attitudes toward the use of unnecessary force
This study examined the attitudes of police recruits toward the use of unnecessary force. Police recruits from a single regional police academy served as the population for this study. They were provided a survey on the first day of academy training; a vignettes research design was used to measure their view of the use of unnecessary force by another officer and their likelihood of reporting such behavior. The type of unnecessary force plays a ro…
The attitudes and goals of police supervisors: Results from a national sample
There is little research examining the general attitudes or goals of police supervisors. In this study, a survey instrument was provided to a sample of over 400 police supervisors in attendance at the FBI’s National Academy. Respondents work in law enforcement agencies that range from very large to very small. Findings indicate that police supervisors having aggressive law enforcement attitudes were related to two goals: making arrests, and seizi…
Social geometry and the success of moral ideas: The case of capital punishment
The Electronic Pillory: Social Time and Hostility Toward Capital Murderers
In early modern Europe, popular hostility toward criminals could be expressed through the use of the pillory (a device in which offenders were restrained and publicly displayed). Modern electronic communications have facilitated the emergence of contemporary versions of the pillory. One such example is prodeathpenalty.com, a Web site created by supporters of capital punishment that permits members to post comments about particular executions. Mos…
Military-Style Weapons in Policing: A Limited Test of Diffusion Theory
This limited examination of policy diffusion mechanisms provides some support for learning as a mechanism for diffusing patrol rifles across police agencies. Policy diffusion is generally defined as a government making policy choices based on the policies existing in other governments. A contemporary law enforcement concern for police agencies is the “active-shooter” incident. Many police agencies now have policies that allow their street officer…
Donut time: The Use of Humor Across the Police Work Environment
Purpose- The purpose of this research is to examine ritualistic humor or joking that exists in a small, rural police department in Western New York.Design/methodology/approach- Data were collected through participatory observations and interviews during the summer of 2014. Both authors worked in tandem to capitalize on individual expertise to maximize data collection and analyses.Findings- Results suggest that humor is leveraged by officers to so…
Police Discretion and Boredom: What Officers Do When There Is Nothing to Do
Police work is boring, involves a substantial amount of "down time," and can have negative consequences for police officer performance, contributing to occupational stress and turnover. Research argued that workers reduced their boredom by engaging in "none-work" activities. Police officer autonomy, however, provides them the opportunity to reduce their boredom by working in a way that makes their behavior meaningful and interesting. Most policin…
When Will Academics Contest Intellectual Conflict
Academics have conflicts over ideas with some regularity, yet they contest only some of them. When will they do so? We draw on a theory of conflict management developed by Donald Black and others to explain the response to intellectual conflict. Drawing on interviews with 70 professors at two universities, we find that the contestation of intellectual conflicts is predicted by their social geometry. Academics are more likely to contest conflicts …
Political science (27 works) · Psychology (25 works) · Criminology (24 works) · Law (24 works) · Sociology (21 works) · Policing Practices and Perceptions (18 works) · Social Psychology (18 works) · Crime Patterns and Interventions (17 works) · Law (15 works) · Social Psychology (13 works)