Tzuwei Cheng
Biographic Data
| ID | 245244 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Tzuwei Cheng |
| GIVEN NAMES | Tzuwei |
| FAMILY NAME | Cheng |
| SIGNATURE | CHENG T |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of California, Irvine |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-1710-1436 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 17 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 80 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 17 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1995 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
Strategies of Police Legitimation
The concept of police legitimacy has become central to the study of policing, yet scholarly attention has concentrated on legitimacy as an attitude measured among publics, rather than on the activities that produce legitimacy. This article reframes the problem as one of legitimation: the ongoing process through which police institutions seek to render their authority ordinary, necessary, and taken for granted. This shift in perspective highlights…
Making Progress in the Chicago Police Department, 1862–2024
Claims to have made progress are a mainstay of organizational reputation management. However, confusing and contradictory performance expectations can make progress difficult to locate among a police department’s priorities. A case study of the Chicago Police Department’s front-facing pronouncements over more than a century and a half clarifies how a bureaucracy works, stretches, and repackages “progress” to resolve those confusions and contradic…
State Actors as Hard-to-Reach Populations
Intersectional Burdens: How Social Location Shapes Interactions with the Administrative State
Administrative decisions mediate whether the millions who turn to the state for social services annually can access the assistance they need. We introduce the concept of intersectional burdens —which describes how a person’s social location (including race, class, gender, age, and ability) shapes their access and use of state benefits and programs—to account for the ways mutually reinforcing systems structure experiences with the state and to bet…
Settling institutional uncertainty: Policing Chicago and New York, 1877–1923
We show how both the Chicago Police Department and the New York Police Department sought to settle uncertainty about their propriety and purpose during a period when abrupt transformations destabilized urban order and called the police mandate into question. By comparing annual reports that the Chicago Police Department and the New York Police Department published from 1877 to 1923, we observe two techniques in how the police enacted that settlem…
Expected Experiences: The Predictive Mind in an Uncertain World
Regulatory intermediaries and the challenge of democratic policing
Research summary This study examines a model for achieving democratic governance over police departments: regulatory intermediaries, where non‐state actors are empowered with regulatory authority over public institutions. Drawing on a decade of transcripts from monthly public meetings held by the Chicago Police Board (September 2009–February 2021), this study finds, however, that regulatory intermediaries can regulate the public as much as it doe…
The Cumulative Discretion of Police over Community Complaints
Many policing practices that scholars have identified as deeply flawed are precisely those demanded in police-community meetings. How do initiatives intended for police reform become dominated by demands for more policing? I analyze 1.5 years of ethnographic data on the New York Police Department’s neighborhood policing meetings. Amid highly publicized police violence, America’s largest police force is curating the public’s complaints—not ignorin…
The Epistemic Role of Consciousness
In the era of specialisation or even hyper-specialisation, it is common for epistemology and philosophy of mind to neglect each other. Famous exceptions include Fred Dretske, Alvin Goldman and John McDowell, more recently there have been Susanna Siegel, Nico Silins and Susanna Schellenberg—and now Declan Smithies. Smithies’ new monograph is difficult to summarise, given the richness of its contribution to epistemology and philosophy of mind. The …
Social media, socialization, and pursuing legitimation of police violence
Every day, police departments across America are executing stops, summonses, arrests, and increasingly, tweeting. Although scholarship has focused on how social media democratizes news production and information sharing for activist movements, it has yet to explore how police leverage these attributes to advance institutional interests. I argue that, beyond digital surveillance or community engagement, social media provides police with the techno…
Input without Influence: The Silence and Scripts of Police and Community Relations
Since its establishment in 1993, the Department of Justice’s Office of Community-Oriented Policing Services has invested $14 billion into local police departments’ efforts to improve community relations. Yet in 2015, the public’s confidence in police reached its lowest point since 1993. Drawing on seven years of Chicago Police Board meeting transcripts, this article identifies one mechanism why, despite police investment, community relations can …
Understanding the Crime Gap: Violence and Inequality in an American City
The United States has experienced an unprecedented decline in violent crime over the last two decades. Throughout this decline, however, violent crime continued to concentrate in socially and economically disadvantaged urban neighborhoods. Using detailed homicide records from 1990 to 2010, this study examines the spatial patterning of violent crime in Chicago to determine whether or not all neighborhoods experienced decreases in violence. We find…
Recruitment through Rule Breaking: Establishing Social Ties with Gang Members
Many contemporary violence prevention programs direct concentrated law enforcement, social service, or educational attention toward individuals engaged in violence, and yet, this population is often avoiding this precise attention. Drawing on 18 months of ethnographic data, this case study asks: How do street outreach workers form social ties with active gang members? This study identifies three key mechanisms of social tie formation that break o…
Service Cynicism: How Civic Disengagement Develops
How does civic disengagement develop? This article examines the theory that the dissatisfaction and disengagement citizens develop toward one government agency can extend to an alternative agency. Leveraging police precinct-level data on 311 calls and criminal complaints from 2004 to 2012 in New York City, it investigates whether government responsiveness to municipal issues predicts citizens' willingness to submit criminal complaints to the poli…
Violence Prevention and Targeting the Elusive Gang Member
Who do violence preventers target to achieve violence prevention? This fundamental question of selection is typically associated with law enforcement, yet gang labeling is critical in another context: nonprofit violence prevention. Eighteen months of fieldwork in a gang outreach organization find that (a) workers operationalize gang violence prevention as social service provision, but (b) services are only offered to those deemed "ready" for life…
Regression Analysis of Multivariate Binary Response Variables Using Rasch-Type Models and Finite-Mixture Methods
A model is considered for the regression analysis of multivariate binary data such as repeated-measures data (for example, panel data) or multiple-indicators with measures of some underlying characteristic such as attitude or ability (for example, surveys or tests). The model is related to the usual Rasch model, the usual latent-class model, and other familiar models such as logistic regression. In addition to a regression specification, the mode…
Reply to Allison: More on Comparing Regression Coefficients
Social media, socialization, and pursuing legitimation of police violence
Every day, police departments across America are executing stops, summonses, arrests, and increasingly, tweeting. Although scholarship has focused on how social media democratizes news production and information sharing for activist movements, it has yet to explore how police leverage these attributes to advance institutional interests. I argue that, beyond digital surveillance or community engagement, social media provides police with the techno…
Understanding the Crime Gap: Violence and Inequality in an American City
The United States has experienced an unprecedented decline in violent crime over the last two decades. Throughout this decline, however, violent crime continued to concentrate in socially and economically disadvantaged urban neighborhoods. Using detailed homicide records from 1990 to 2010, this study examines the spatial patterning of violent crime in Chicago to determine whether or not all neighborhoods experienced decreases in violence. We find…
Violence Prevention and Targeting the Elusive Gang Member
Who do violence preventers target to achieve violence prevention? This fundamental question of selection is typically associated with law enforcement, yet gang labeling is critical in another context: nonprofit violence prevention. Eighteen months of fieldwork in a gang outreach organization find that (a) workers operationalize gang violence prevention as social service provision, but (b) services are only offered to those deemed "ready" for life…
Service Cynicism: How Civic Disengagement Develops
How does civic disengagement develop? This article examines the theory that the dissatisfaction and disengagement citizens develop toward one government agency can extend to an alternative agency. Leveraging police precinct-level data on 311 calls and criminal complaints from 2004 to 2012 in New York City, it investigates whether government responsiveness to municipal issues predicts citizens' willingness to submit criminal complaints to the poli…
Reply to Allison: More on Comparing Regression Coefficients
Recruitment through Rule Breaking: Establishing Social Ties with Gang Members
Many contemporary violence prevention programs direct concentrated law enforcement, social service, or educational attention toward individuals engaged in violence, and yet, this population is often avoiding this precise attention. Drawing on 18 months of ethnographic data, this case study asks: How do street outreach workers form social ties with active gang members? This study identifies three key mechanisms of social tie formation that break o…
Intersectional Burdens: How Social Location Shapes Interactions with the Administrative State
Administrative decisions mediate whether the millions who turn to the state for social services annually can access the assistance they need. We introduce the concept of intersectional burdens —which describes how a person’s social location (including race, class, gender, age, and ability) shapes their access and use of state benefits and programs—to account for the ways mutually reinforcing systems structure experiences with the state and to bet…
The Cumulative Discretion of Police over Community Complaints
Many policing practices that scholars have identified as deeply flawed are precisely those demanded in police-community meetings. How do initiatives intended for police reform become dominated by demands for more policing? I analyze 1.5 years of ethnographic data on the New York Police Department’s neighborhood policing meetings. Amid highly publicized police violence, America’s largest police force is curating the public’s complaints—not ignorin…
Settling institutional uncertainty: Policing Chicago and New York, 1877–1923
We show how both the Chicago Police Department and the New York Police Department sought to settle uncertainty about their propriety and purpose during a period when abrupt transformations destabilized urban order and called the police mandate into question. By comparing annual reports that the Chicago Police Department and the New York Police Department published from 1877 to 1923, we observe two techniques in how the police enacted that settlem…
Regulatory intermediaries and the challenge of democratic policing
Research summary This study examines a model for achieving democratic governance over police departments: regulatory intermediaries, where non‐state actors are empowered with regulatory authority over public institutions. Drawing on a decade of transcripts from monthly public meetings held by the Chicago Police Board (September 2009–February 2021), this study finds, however, that regulatory intermediaries can regulate the public as much as it doe…
Expected Experiences: The Predictive Mind in an Uncertain World
State Actors as Hard-to-Reach Populations
Input without Influence: The Silence and Scripts of Police and Community Relations
Since its establishment in 1993, the Department of Justice’s Office of Community-Oriented Policing Services has invested $14 billion into local police departments’ efforts to improve community relations. Yet in 2015, the public’s confidence in police reached its lowest point since 1993. Drawing on seven years of Chicago Police Board meeting transcripts, this article identifies one mechanism why, despite police investment, community relations can …
Regression Analysis of Multivariate Binary Response Variables Using Rasch-Type Models and Finite-Mixture Methods
A model is considered for the regression analysis of multivariate binary data such as repeated-measures data (for example, panel data) or multiple-indicators with measures of some underlying characteristic such as attitude or ability (for example, surveys or tests). The model is related to the usual Rasch model, the usual latent-class model, and other familiar models such as logistic regression. In addition to a regression specification, the mode…
Reply to Allison: More on Comparing Regression Coefficients
Regression Analysis of Multivariate Binary Response Variables Using Rasch-Type Models and Finite-Mixture Methods
A model is considered for the regression analysis of multivariate binary data such as repeated-measures data (for example, panel data) or multiple-indicators with measures of some underlying characteristic such as attitude or ability (for example, surveys or tests). The model is related to the usual Rasch model, the usual latent-class model, and other familiar models such as logistic regression. In addition to a regression specification, the mode…
Violence Prevention and Targeting the Elusive Gang Member
Who do violence preventers target to achieve violence prevention? This fundamental question of selection is typically associated with law enforcement, yet gang labeling is critical in another context: nonprofit violence prevention. Eighteen months of fieldwork in a gang outreach organization find that (a) workers operationalize gang violence prevention as social service provision, but (b) services are only offered to those deemed "ready" for life…
Understanding the Crime Gap: Violence and Inequality in an American City
The United States has experienced an unprecedented decline in violent crime over the last two decades. Throughout this decline, however, violent crime continued to concentrate in socially and economically disadvantaged urban neighborhoods. Using detailed homicide records from 1990 to 2010, this study examines the spatial patterning of violent crime in Chicago to determine whether or not all neighborhoods experienced decreases in violence. We find…
Recruitment through Rule Breaking: Establishing Social Ties with Gang Members
Many contemporary violence prevention programs direct concentrated law enforcement, social service, or educational attention toward individuals engaged in violence, and yet, this population is often avoiding this precise attention. Drawing on 18 months of ethnographic data, this case study asks: How do street outreach workers form social ties with active gang members? This study identifies three key mechanisms of social tie formation that break o…
Service Cynicism: How Civic Disengagement Develops
How does civic disengagement develop? This article examines the theory that the dissatisfaction and disengagement citizens develop toward one government agency can extend to an alternative agency. Leveraging police precinct-level data on 311 calls and criminal complaints from 2004 to 2012 in New York City, it investigates whether government responsiveness to municipal issues predicts citizens' willingness to submit criminal complaints to the poli…
Input without Influence: The Silence and Scripts of Police and Community Relations
Since its establishment in 1993, the Department of Justice’s Office of Community-Oriented Policing Services has invested $14 billion into local police departments’ efforts to improve community relations. Yet in 2015, the public’s confidence in police reached its lowest point since 1993. Drawing on seven years of Chicago Police Board meeting transcripts, this article identifies one mechanism why, despite police investment, community relations can …
The Epistemic Role of Consciousness
In the era of specialisation or even hyper-specialisation, it is common for epistemology and philosophy of mind to neglect each other. Famous exceptions include Fred Dretske, Alvin Goldman and John McDowell, more recently there have been Susanna Siegel, Nico Silins and Susanna Schellenberg—and now Declan Smithies. Smithies’ new monograph is difficult to summarise, given the richness of its contribution to epistemology and philosophy of mind. The …
Social media, socialization, and pursuing legitimation of police violence
Every day, police departments across America are executing stops, summonses, arrests, and increasingly, tweeting. Although scholarship has focused on how social media democratizes news production and information sharing for activist movements, it has yet to explore how police leverage these attributes to advance institutional interests. I argue that, beyond digital surveillance or community engagement, social media provides police with the techno…
Regulatory intermediaries and the challenge of democratic policing
Research summary This study examines a model for achieving democratic governance over police departments: regulatory intermediaries, where non‐state actors are empowered with regulatory authority over public institutions. Drawing on a decade of transcripts from monthly public meetings held by the Chicago Police Board (September 2009–February 2021), this study finds, however, that regulatory intermediaries can regulate the public as much as it doe…
The Cumulative Discretion of Police over Community Complaints
Many policing practices that scholars have identified as deeply flawed are precisely those demanded in police-community meetings. How do initiatives intended for police reform become dominated by demands for more policing? I analyze 1.5 years of ethnographic data on the New York Police Department’s neighborhood policing meetings. Amid highly publicized police violence, America’s largest police force is curating the public’s complaints—not ignorin…
Settling institutional uncertainty: Policing Chicago and New York, 1877–1923
We show how both the Chicago Police Department and the New York Police Department sought to settle uncertainty about their propriety and purpose during a period when abrupt transformations destabilized urban order and called the police mandate into question. By comparing annual reports that the Chicago Police Department and the New York Police Department published from 1877 to 1923, we observe two techniques in how the police enacted that settlem…
Expected Experiences: The Predictive Mind in an Uncertain World
Intersectional Burdens: How Social Location Shapes Interactions with the Administrative State
Administrative decisions mediate whether the millions who turn to the state for social services annually can access the assistance they need. We introduce the concept of intersectional burdens —which describes how a person’s social location (including race, class, gender, age, and ability) shapes their access and use of state benefits and programs—to account for the ways mutually reinforcing systems structure experiences with the state and to bet…
State Actors as Hard-to-Reach Populations
Strategies of Police Legitimation
The concept of police legitimacy has become central to the study of policing, yet scholarly attention has concentrated on legitimacy as an attitude measured among publics, rather than on the activities that produce legitimacy. This article reframes the problem as one of legitimation: the ongoing process through which police institutions seek to render their authority ordinary, necessary, and taken for granted. This shift in perspective highlights…
Making Progress in the Chicago Police Department, 1862–2024
Claims to have made progress are a mainstay of organizational reputation management. However, confusing and contradictory performance expectations can make progress difficult to locate among a police department’s priorities. A case study of the Chicago Police Department’s front-facing pronouncements over more than a century and a half clarifies how a bureaucracy works, stretches, and repackages “progress” to resolve those confusions and contradic…
Political science (11 works) · Sociology (10 works) · Crime Patterns and Interventions (9 works) · Criminology (9 works) · Law (9 works) · Policing Practices and Perceptions (8 works) · Law (7 works) · Business (5 works) · Computer Science (5 works) · Public relations (5 works)