HUMAN BEHAVIOR AND POLICE WORK

Human Behavior and Police Work

Human Behavior and Police Work

Law officers are human, and just like everyone else, they make mistakes. An up-and-coming officer could get in a skirmish at the local bar and be charged with Domestic Abuse. This same officer could become one of the most effective law enforcers in the country. With this law, this officer would not be allowed to continue his services for his county and his fellow police officers. Many people feel that this officer is being done a great injustice and should be allowed to continue his otherwise flawless career as an officer of the law.

One simple conviction could ruin the lives of every cop in the country. Hard working, one-time offensive policemen and women would be barred from police work forever. Many people think that this is entirely too harsh for a poke in the chest or a slap to the face of a spouse. Many people think that the law was produced in haste and that the solution is simple-make the judgment of each officer's career jurisdictional and personalize each case.

The main argument is that recent criminal justice research is seen by the policing community as both irrelevant to their actual work and derogatory toward police work in general. In making this argument, Chief Bratton claims that for the last half of the 20th century, crime researchers and practitioners disagreed about the causes of crime and how to control it. While most researchers claim that crime is caused by a combination of different factors such as poverty, economic disparities, and racism, most law enforcement practitioners view the main cause of crime as human behavior. Moreover, while most research seems to play down the role of police officers in controlling crime, Chief Bratton argues that his experience has shown him that police officers can control and change behavior, even within the confines of contributing factors to crime, like poverty and neighborhood disadvantage.

Chief Bratton in his article does not mention specific data sources, but is writing from his experience as an executive manager of six different police agencies in the United States. These agencies include major cities like New York, Boston, and now the city of Los Angeles. Chief Bratton challenges all researchers to collaborate between practitioners and academics. Researchers of law enforcement agencies will get their information from crime statistics from all areas of research. Chief Bratton discussed the sometimes rocky relationship between criminal justice practitioners (police) and criminal justice researchers.

Many sociological studies of crime and deviance are based on a large extent on official statistics which are produced annually by the police, courts, and the probation service. The United States Justice System has several different ways of reporting crimes. The main way is the Uniform Crime Report, but there are also two smaller methods that are Victim Surveys and Self-Reported. All of these methods have their advantages, yet each of them also have their disadvantages. With Victim Surveys, the victims of crimes are asked about the wrong that was ...