Stephen D Mastrofski
Biographic Data
| ID | 259124 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Stephen D Mastrofski |
| GIVEN NAMES | Stephen D |
| FAMILY NAME | Mastrofski |
| SIGNATURE | MASTROFSKI S D |
| AFFILIATIONS | George Mason University |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 30 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 611 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 30 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1981 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2018 |
| H-INDEX | 12 |
The effects of body-worn cameras on police organisation and practice: A theory-based analysis
This study applies the technical/rational model of organisations to help explain the effects of body-worn cameras on police organisation and practice in a single police agency in the United States. Consistent with the technical/rational model, cameras had enhanced those people-processing and environment-changing features of the police organisation which had tangible goals and well understood means for their accomplishment. In comparison, body-wor…
Improving policing by integrating craft and science: What can patrol officers teach us about good police work
Evidence-based policing is one of the latest attempts to change what the police do and how they do it. Within this context the craft of policing is acknowledged but generally undervalued. Neglecting what craft can contribute to science is an overlooked opportunity. This paper examines the insights that officers’ experiences can offer into the kinds of reforms that are both pressing and possible. To do so, we conducted in-depth interviews with 38 …
Measuring Procedural Justice in Police-Citizen Encounters
Procedural justice has dominated recent discussions of police interactions with the public. It has mostly been measured from the perspective of citizens (using surveys or interviews), but several important questions about predictors and outcomes of fair police treatment are best answered using direct observations of police-citizen interactions. Building on prior observational studies, we develop and validate an instrument for measuring procedural…
Examining Police Effectiveness as a Precursor to Legitimacy and Cooperation with Police
Numerous studies by Tyler and colleagues, as well as other scholars, support a normative, process model to account for variation in the public’s cooperation with police in the USA and other developed nations. However, a recent study in Ghana suggests that in developing countries fraught with high levels of violent crime and corruption, cooperation may instead be accounted for by a utilitarian, rational-choice model. Our study examines whether pub…
Race, Policing, and Equity
Compstat and The New Penology: A Paradigm Shift in Policing
James J. Willis* and Stephen D. MastrofskiUsingfieldworkdatacollectedatsevenpoliceagencies intheUnitedStates,thisstudyasks‘Towhatextent is the operation of Compstat, a recent and highly touted police management and account-abilitysystem,consistentwiththenewpenology?’.Examiningamultidimensionalreforminanarea(police innovation) that has been relatively neglected helps illuminate to what degree Compstat ispart of a new trend in criminal justice, and…
Innovations in Policing: Meanings, Structures, and Processes
Research on organizational innovation is challenging given its complex nature. Using Wolfe's (1994) review and critique of the vast innovation literature, we identify some of the key conceptual and theoretical issues within three separate research streams: diffusion, organizational innovativeness, and innovation process. In doing so, we suggest that police researchers should pay more attention to defining and conceptualizing innovation; to testin…
Effect of Suspect Race on Officers’ Arrest Decisions
Many respondents to opinion surveys say that the citizen's race influences how police officers treat the public, yet recent expert social‐science panels have declared that research findings are too contradictory to form a conclusion on whether American police are biased against racial minorities. We perform a meta‐analysis of quantitative research that estimates the effect of race on the police decision to arrest. Screening nearly 4,500 potential…
Police Organization Continuity and Change: Into the Twenty‐first Century
American policing demonstrates both continuity and change. A high degree of decentralization persists, as do bureaucratic structures of larger police agencies. The structures and practices of the nation’s numerous small agencies remain underexamined. The potential growth of professional structures inside and outside the police organization is largely unexplored. The core police patrol technology has remained essentially unchanged for decades, and…
The co-implementation of Compstat and community policing
Making Sense of COMPSTAT: A Theory-Based Analysis of Organizational Change in Three Police Departments
COMPSTAT, the latest innovation in American policing, has been widely heralded as a management and technological system whose elements work together to transform police organizations radically. Skeptical observers suggest that COMPSTAT merely reinforces existing structures and practices. However, in trying to assess how much COMPSTAT has altered police organizations, research has failed to provide a broader theoretical basis for explaining how CO…
Police Innovation: Contrasting Perspectives
Over the last three decades American policing has gone through a period of significant change and innovation. In what is a relatively short historical time frame the police began to reconsider their fundamental mission, the nature of the core strategies of policing, and the character of their relationships with the communities that they serve. This volume brings together leading police scholars to examine eight major innovations which emerged dur…
Police leniency in traffic enforcement encounters: Exploratory findings from observations and interviews
Suspect disrespect toward the police
Research shows that suspects' behavior influences police officers' decisions. Those who are disrespectful to the police are more likely to have that behavior reciprocated. To date, the factors influencing whether suspects will show deference remain largely unexamined. Guided by social interactionist theory and recent developments in urban sociology, we use systematic social observations and census data to investigate. We find that elevated levels…
Suspect Searches: Assessing Police Behavior Under the U.S. Constitution
Research Summary: This study examines police conformity to the law by evaluating direct observations of police searches in a medium‐sized American city against the applicable constitutional standards. Other researchers have investigated police misconduct, but the present study uses direct observations of police behavior. The research asks three questions: How frequently do patrol officers engage in searches? How often do their searches meet const…
Controlling Street-Level Police Discretion
The Committee to Review Research on Police Policyand Practices' Fairness and Effectiveness in Policing:The Evidenceprovides a review of research on thecauses of street-level police behavior, but the reportoffers little insight into how to control that discretioneffectively. This is not due to deficiencies in the reportbut rather to limitations of the available research. Thisarticle discusses four problems with that research:underdeveloped theory,…
Reforming to Preserve: Compstat and Strategic Problem Solving in American Policing
Research Summary: This paper provides the first national description of Compstat programs, considered in the framework of strategic problem solving. Relying on a survey of American police departments conducted by the Police Foundation, we examine the diffusion of Compstat programs and the nature of Compstat models throughout the United States. We also assess the penetration of models of strategic problem solving more generally into American polic…
Situational and officer-based determinants of police coercion
Using data collected as part of an observational study of the police in Indianapolis, Indiana, and St. Petersburg, Florida, this article examines police use of force to gain a better understanding of why the police resort to force. Like analyses from previous observational studies, the present inquiry borrows from both sociological and psychological theoretical orientations to explore various determinants of force. Unlike previous examinations, t…
Police Disrespect Toward the Public: An Encounter‐based Analysis
We use observations of police encounters with 3,130 suspects in Indianapolis and St. Petersburg to estimate three influences on police disrespect: how suspects behave, their personal characteristics, and the location of the encounter. Logistic regression models show that suspects' behaviors were the most powerful predictors, but the suspect's sex, age, income, and degree of neighborhood disadvantage were also significant. Minority suspects experi…
The Helping Hand of the Law: Police Control of Citizens on Request
This study examines how patrol officers respond to citizens' requests that officers control another citizen—by advising or persuading them, warning or threatening them, making them leave someone alone or leave the scene, or arresting them. Data are drawn from field observations conducted in Indianapolis, Indiana, in 1996 and St. Petersburg, Florida, in 1997. Officers granted the request for the most restrictive form of control requested by the ci…
To Acquiesce or Rebel: Predicting Citizen Compliance with Police Requests
This article explores a variety of predictors of citizens' compliance with police requests to cease misbehavior. Where possible, the authors attempt to closely replicate the 1996 model formulated by Mastrofski, Snipes, and Supina to explain citizen compliance in Richmond, Virginia. Data on police-citizen encounters (N = 989) are drawn from the Project on Policing Neighbor hoods, conducted in Indianapolis, Indiana, and St. Petersburg, Florida. The…
Sociology
Compliance on Demand: The Public's Response to Specific Police Requests
Police often attempt to restore order and prevent illegal activity by calling on citizens to alter their behavior. Achieving compliance in these circumstances is an important test of officers' skills and an essential element of effective governance. This article assesses citizen compliance with specific police requests for orderly, legal behavior in 346 encounters observed in Richmond, Virginia. Citizens were compliant in 78% of the encounters. T…
Law Enforcement in a Time of Community Policing
Community policing creates the expectation that oficers will become more selective in making arrests and that those decisions will be influenced more by extralegal considerations and less by legal ones. Data on 451 nontraffic police‐suspect encounters were drawn from ridealong observations in Richmond, Virginia, where the police department was implementing community policing. The arrest/no arrest decision is regressed on variables representing le…
Expectancy Theory and Police Productivity in DUI Enforcement
This article drew on expectancy theory in industrial/organizational psychology to explain arrest productivity for driving under the influence (DUI) in a sample of Pennsylvania police officers. Expectancy theory is a cognitive model of motivation and performance based on workers' perceptions of their situation. Its major elements are estimated in a regression model: the officer's capability and opportunity for DUI enforcement (performance-reward e…
Effect of Suspect Race on Officers’ Arrest Decisions
Many respondents to opinion surveys say that the citizen's race influences how police officers treat the public, yet recent expert social‐science panels have declared that research findings are too contradictory to form a conclusion on whether American police are biased against racial minorities. We perform a meta‐analysis of quantitative research that estimates the effect of race on the police decision to arrest. Screening nearly 4,500 potential…
Police Disrespect Toward the Public: An Encounter‐based Analysis
We use observations of police encounters with 3,130 suspects in Indianapolis and St. Petersburg to estimate three influences on police disrespect: how suspects behave, their personal characteristics, and the location of the encounter. Logistic regression models show that suspects' behaviors were the most powerful predictors, but the suspect's sex, age, income, and degree of neighborhood disadvantage were also significant. Minority suspects experi…
Reforming to Preserve: Compstat and Strategic Problem Solving in American Policing
Research Summary: This paper provides the first national description of Compstat programs, considered in the framework of strategic problem solving. Relying on a survey of American police departments conducted by the Police Foundation, we examine the diffusion of Compstat programs and the nature of Compstat models throughout the United States. We also assess the penetration of models of strategic problem solving more generally into American polic…
Law Enforcement in a Time of Community Policing
Community policing creates the expectation that oficers will become more selective in making arrests and that those decisions will be influenced more by extralegal considerations and less by legal ones. Data on 451 nontraffic police‐suspect encounters were drawn from ridealong observations in Richmond, Virginia, where the police department was implementing community policing. The arrest/no arrest decision is regressed on variables representing le…
Controlling Street-Level Police Discretion
The Committee to Review Research on Police Policyand Practices' Fairness and Effectiveness in Policing:The Evidenceprovides a review of research on thecauses of street-level police behavior, but the reportoffers little insight into how to control that discretioneffectively. This is not due to deficiencies in the reportbut rather to limitations of the available research. Thisarticle discusses four problems with that research:underdeveloped theory,…
Making Sense of COMPSTAT: A Theory-Based Analysis of Organizational Change in Three Police Departments
COMPSTAT, the latest innovation in American policing, has been widely heralded as a management and technological system whose elements work together to transform police organizations radically. Skeptical observers suggest that COMPSTAT merely reinforces existing structures and practices. However, in trying to assess how much COMPSTAT has altered police organizations, research has failed to provide a broader theoretical basis for explaining how CO…
The Helping Hand of the Law: Police Control of Citizens on Request
This study examines how patrol officers respond to citizens' requests that officers control another citizen—by advising or persuading them, warning or threatening them, making them leave someone alone or leave the scene, or arresting them. Data are drawn from field observations conducted in Indianapolis, Indiana, in 1996 and St. Petersburg, Florida, in 1997. Officers granted the request for the most restrictive form of control requested by the ci…
Improving Observational Studies of Police
Despite advances in measurement and the sophistication of statistical technique, quantitative studies of police behavior seems to have reached the limits of their capacity to explain variance, develop and test theory, and inform policy choices. This paper suggests that further advances in observational studies of police behavior require that researchers account for the cognitive decision processes police use in exercising their discretion. A meth…
Suspect Searches: Assessing Police Behavior Under the U.S. Constitution
Research Summary: This study examines police conformity to the law by evaluating direct observations of police searches in a medium‐sized American city against the applicable constitutional standards. Other researchers have investigated police misconduct, but the present study uses direct observations of police behavior. The research asks three questions: How frequently do patrol officers engage in searches? How often do their searches meet const…
Organizational determinants of police discretion: The case of drinking-driving
Police leniency in traffic enforcement encounters: Exploratory findings from observations and interviews
Expectancy Theory and Police Productivity in DUI Enforcement
This article drew on expectancy theory in industrial/organizational psychology to explain arrest productivity for driving under the influence (DUI) in a sample of Pennsylvania police officers. Expectancy theory is a cognitive model of motivation and performance based on workers' perceptions of their situation. Its major elements are estimated in a regression model: the officer's capability and opportunity for DUI enforcement (performance-reward e…
The effects of body-worn cameras on police organisation and practice: A theory-based analysis
This study applies the technical/rational model of organisations to help explain the effects of body-worn cameras on police organisation and practice in a single police agency in the United States. Consistent with the technical/rational model, cameras had enhanced those people-processing and environment-changing features of the police organisation which had tangible goals and well understood means for their accomplishment. In comparison, body-wor…
Police Organization Continuity and Change: Into the Twenty‐first Century
American policing demonstrates both continuity and change. A high degree of decentralization persists, as do bureaucratic structures of larger police agencies. The structures and practices of the nation’s numerous small agencies remain underexamined. The potential growth of professional structures inside and outside the police organization is largely unexplored. The core police patrol technology has remained essentially unchanged for decades, and…
The co-implementation of Compstat and community policing
Policing the beat: The impact of organizational scale on patrol officer behavior in urban residential neighborhoods
Improving policing by integrating craft and science: What can patrol officers teach us about good police work
Evidence-based policing is one of the latest attempts to change what the police do and how they do it. Within this context the craft of policing is acknowledged but generally undervalued. Neglecting what craft can contribute to science is an overlooked opportunity. This paper examines the insights that officers’ experiences can offer into the kinds of reforms that are both pressing and possible. To do so, we conducted in-depth interviews with 38 …
Innovations in Policing: Meanings, Structures, and Processes
Research on organizational innovation is challenging given its complex nature. Using Wolfe's (1994) review and critique of the vast innovation literature, we identify some of the key conceptual and theoretical issues within three separate research streams: diffusion, organizational innovativeness, and innovation process. In doing so, we suggest that police researchers should pay more attention to defining and conceptualizing innovation; to testin…
Race, Policing, and Equity
Compstat and The New Penology: A Paradigm Shift in Policing
James J. Willis* and Stephen D. MastrofskiUsingfieldworkdatacollectedatsevenpoliceagencies intheUnitedStates,thisstudyasks‘Towhatextent is the operation of Compstat, a recent and highly touted police management and account-abilitysystem,consistentwiththenewpenology?’.Examiningamultidimensionalreforminanarea(police innovation) that has been relatively neglected helps illuminate to what degree Compstat ispart of a new trend in criminal justice, and…
Policing the beat: The impact of organizational scale on patrol officer behavior in urban residential neighborhoods
Evaluating Law Enforcement Efforts to Control Organized Crime: The Pennsylvania Crime Commission as a Case Study
Organizational determinants of police discretion: The case of drinking-driving
Styles of urban policing: Organization, environment, and police styles in selected American cities
Improving Observational Studies of Police
Despite advances in measurement and the sophistication of statistical technique, quantitative studies of police behavior seems to have reached the limits of their capacity to explain variance, develop and test theory, and inform policy choices. This paper suggests that further advances in observational studies of police behavior require that researchers account for the cognitive decision processes police use in exercising their discretion. A meth…
Expectancy Theory and Police Productivity in DUI Enforcement
This article drew on expectancy theory in industrial/organizational psychology to explain arrest productivity for driving under the influence (DUI) in a sample of Pennsylvania police officers. Expectancy theory is a cognitive model of motivation and performance based on workers' perceptions of their situation. Its major elements are estimated in a regression model: the officer's capability and opportunity for DUI enforcement (performance-reward e…
Law Enforcement in a Time of Community Policing
Community policing creates the expectation that oficers will become more selective in making arrests and that those decisions will be influenced more by extralegal considerations and less by legal ones. Data on 451 nontraffic police‐suspect encounters were drawn from ridealong observations in Richmond, Virginia, where the police department was implementing community policing. The arrest/no arrest decision is regressed on variables representing le…
Compliance on Demand: The Public's Response to Specific Police Requests
Police often attempt to restore order and prevent illegal activity by calling on citizens to alter their behavior. Achieving compliance in these circumstances is an important test of officers' skills and an essential element of effective governance. This article assesses citizen compliance with specific police requests for orderly, legal behavior in 346 encounters observed in Richmond, Virginia. Citizens were compliant in 78% of the encounters. T…
Sociology
To Acquiesce or Rebel: Predicting Citizen Compliance with Police Requests
This article explores a variety of predictors of citizens' compliance with police requests to cease misbehavior. Where possible, the authors attempt to closely replicate the 1996 model formulated by Mastrofski, Snipes, and Supina to explain citizen compliance in Richmond, Virginia. Data on police-citizen encounters (N = 989) are drawn from the Project on Policing Neighbor hoods, conducted in Indianapolis, Indiana, and St. Petersburg, Florida. The…
The Helping Hand of the Law: Police Control of Citizens on Request
This study examines how patrol officers respond to citizens' requests that officers control another citizen—by advising or persuading them, warning or threatening them, making them leave someone alone or leave the scene, or arresting them. Data are drawn from field observations conducted in Indianapolis, Indiana, in 1996 and St. Petersburg, Florida, in 1997. Officers granted the request for the most restrictive form of control requested by the ci…
Situational and officer-based determinants of police coercion
Using data collected as part of an observational study of the police in Indianapolis, Indiana, and St. Petersburg, Florida, this article examines police use of force to gain a better understanding of why the police resort to force. Like analyses from previous observational studies, the present inquiry borrows from both sociological and psychological theoretical orientations to explore various determinants of force. Unlike previous examinations, t…
Police Disrespect Toward the Public: An Encounter‐based Analysis
We use observations of police encounters with 3,130 suspects in Indianapolis and St. Petersburg to estimate three influences on police disrespect: how suspects behave, their personal characteristics, and the location of the encounter. Logistic regression models show that suspects' behaviors were the most powerful predictors, but the suspect's sex, age, income, and degree of neighborhood disadvantage were also significant. Minority suspects experi…
Reforming to Preserve: Compstat and Strategic Problem Solving in American Policing
Research Summary: This paper provides the first national description of Compstat programs, considered in the framework of strategic problem solving. Relying on a survey of American police departments conducted by the Police Foundation, we examine the diffusion of Compstat programs and the nature of Compstat models throughout the United States. We also assess the penetration of models of strategic problem solving more generally into American polic…
Suspect disrespect toward the police
Research shows that suspects' behavior influences police officers' decisions. Those who are disrespectful to the police are more likely to have that behavior reciprocated. To date, the factors influencing whether suspects will show deference remain largely unexamined. Guided by social interactionist theory and recent developments in urban sociology, we use systematic social observations and census data to investigate. We find that elevated levels…
Suspect Searches: Assessing Police Behavior Under the U.S. Constitution
Research Summary: This study examines police conformity to the law by evaluating direct observations of police searches in a medium‐sized American city against the applicable constitutional standards. Other researchers have investigated police misconduct, but the present study uses direct observations of police behavior. The research asks three questions: How frequently do patrol officers engage in searches? How often do their searches meet const…
Controlling Street-Level Police Discretion
The Committee to Review Research on Police Policyand Practices' Fairness and Effectiveness in Policing:The Evidenceprovides a review of research on thecauses of street-level police behavior, but the reportoffers little insight into how to control that discretioneffectively. This is not due to deficiencies in the reportbut rather to limitations of the available research. Thisarticle discusses four problems with that research:underdeveloped theory,…
Police leniency in traffic enforcement encounters: Exploratory findings from observations and interviews
Police Innovation: Contrasting Perspectives
Over the last three decades American policing has gone through a period of significant change and innovation. In what is a relatively short historical time frame the police began to reconsider their fundamental mission, the nature of the core strategies of policing, and the character of their relationships with the communities that they serve. This volume brings together leading police scholars to examine eight major innovations which emerged dur…
Making Sense of COMPSTAT: A Theory-Based Analysis of Organizational Change in Three Police Departments
COMPSTAT, the latest innovation in American policing, has been widely heralded as a management and technological system whose elements work together to transform police organizations radically. Skeptical observers suggest that COMPSTAT merely reinforces existing structures and practices. However, in trying to assess how much COMPSTAT has altered police organizations, research has failed to provide a broader theoretical basis for explaining how CO…
Police Organization Continuity and Change: Into the Twenty‐first Century
American policing demonstrates both continuity and change. A high degree of decentralization persists, as do bureaucratic structures of larger police agencies. The structures and practices of the nation’s numerous small agencies remain underexamined. The potential growth of professional structures inside and outside the police organization is largely unexplored. The core police patrol technology has remained essentially unchanged for decades, and…
The co-implementation of Compstat and community policing
Innovations in Policing: Meanings, Structures, and Processes
Research on organizational innovation is challenging given its complex nature. Using Wolfe's (1994) review and critique of the vast innovation literature, we identify some of the key conceptual and theoretical issues within three separate research streams: diffusion, organizational innovativeness, and innovation process. In doing so, we suggest that police researchers should pay more attention to defining and conceptualizing innovation; to testin…
Effect of Suspect Race on Officers’ Arrest Decisions
Many respondents to opinion surveys say that the citizen's race influences how police officers treat the public, yet recent expert social‐science panels have declared that research findings are too contradictory to form a conclusion on whether American police are biased against racial minorities. We perform a meta‐analysis of quantitative research that estimates the effect of race on the police decision to arrest. Screening nearly 4,500 potential…
Race, Policing, and Equity
Crime Patterns and Interventions (26 works) · Policing Practices and Perceptions (26 works) · Political science (24 works) · Criminology (22 works) · Law (22 works) · Psychology (19 works) · Sociology (17 works) · Law (14 works) · Public relations (11 works) · Social Psychology (11 works)