The social context of police discretion with young offenders: an ecological analysis.

• Author: Schulenberg, Jennifer L.

Introduction

Previous research has established the general importance of the effects of police discretion on official rates of delinquency. When the police lay a charge, they publicly define what kind of youth problems are official and what kind are absorbed back into the community. Essentially, discretion involves deciding whether a body of rules should be applied in a given situation. "Many encounters involve not a question of 'crime' and 'non-crime,' but whether the police officer finds it necessary to use the criminal law to handle trouble" (Ericson 1982: 38). Thus official rates of delinquency reflect the characteristics and dynamics of the departments and officers that produce them.

Criminologists have measured police response to crime in several ways. A considerable body of literature has investigated the situational characteristics of police-citizen encounters, such as age, sex, race, seriousness of offence, prior police contact, prior arrest record, demeanour, and the dispositional preference of complainants (Black and Reiss 1970; Cicourel 1968; Doob and Chan 1995; Ericson 1982; Lundman, Sykes, and Clark 1978; Meehan 1993; Morash 1984; Piliavin and Scott 1964; Schissel 1992; Wilson 1968). Other researchers have examined the effect of organizational constraints and demands on police use of formal and informal social control (Crank 1990, 1992; Fisk 1974; Jayewardene 1975, 1982; Klinger 1997; Riksheim and Chermak 1993; Wilson 1968). This organizational perspective emphasizes that a clear understanding of police behaviour must be situated within the social context where that behaviour occurs. Despite understanding that the police play an integral role in social control, there is very little research that explores the social context of discretion and police behaviour across physical space (Klinger).

Ecological studies offer a better understanding of the social context associated with rates of crime and delinquency. Social ecology theory posits that community and demographic characteristics are correlated with crime and arrest rates. However, "it is not agreed whether the neighbourhood itself has an independent effect on crime" (Ouimet 2000: 136). The objective of this study is to further our understanding of police operations in local communities by trying to determine whether community and police force characteristics affect police action (2) across Canada. Specifically, this research explores urbanization theory, social disorganization theory, opportunity theory, and the overload hypothesis as theoretical explanations of police behaviour. Previous ecological analyses of crime and delinquency analysed variation among neighbourhoods within a single metropolitan area (the classic approach of Shaw and McKay [1942/1969] in Chicago), or variation across several cities, states, or provinces. This study extends prior analyses by including most of the municipal police jurisdictions in Canada. The analysis that follows describes the four theoretical perspectives, the sample and data, the results from regression analyses, the theoretical conclusions, and areas for further research on social control.

Theoretical perspectives and related research

For many years criminological research has explored the association between community characteristics and crime (Hartnagel and Lee 1990). Despite this unifying focus, there are still considerable differences of opinion within ecological research and no theoretical consensus. The Durkheimian-Modernization perspective has influenced ecological research by offering explanations in terms of urbanization, industrialization, division of labour, social disorganization, and anomie (Neuman and Berger 1988: 282-283). Durkheim's work is a cornerstone of ecological theory; he suggested that "poorly integrated communities will have higher rates of crime as urbanization leads to a breakdown of informal and formal control" (Kennedy, Silverman, and Forde 1991: 399).

Urbanization theory

There is a general consensus that urbanization influences crime rates (Fischer 1975; Hagan 1977; McCarthy 1991; Wirth 1938). Urbanization increases the number of people living in a community, which fosters a stronger reliance on formal social control. This occurs as "cities are disproportionately the locale of invention, crime, and behaviors and attitudes which contravene standard morality" (Fischer: 1321-1322). However, as Hagan points out, despite an increasing reliance on formal social control in urbanized communities, there is little research that focuses on the effects of urbanization on "official modes of response to crime" (597).

As developed by Wirth (1938), urbanization theory argues that the consequences of urbanism are social disorganization and individual alienation. Wirth suggested that "normative consensus and primary group controls were undermined by the increasing size, density, and heterogeneity characteristics of urban locations" (Hartnagel and Lee 1990: 591). Thus urban areas will exhibit weakened informal social control due to a lack of normative consensus and to the weakness of interpersonal ties among the inhabitants. In other words, population size, density, and social heterogeneity have independent effects on reducing the quality of interpersonal relationships (Wilson 1985: 141).

As stated earlier, Wirth (1938) suggested that, when looking at population, population density, and heterogeneity, one finds characteristics that are unique to urban areas (even when other demographic variables are controlled). Gans (1962) challenged Wirth's propositions and argued that there are no particular significant social effects that can be attributed to urbanism. In opposition to Gans, Fischer (1975) argued in favour of Wirth's propositions that "urbanism increases distrust of others and estrangement from unfamiliar others even when demographic characteristics are controlled for" (Wilson 1985: 140). Fischer also extended urbanization theory, by asserting that the higher rates of deviance and disorganization are the result of a "critical mass" of people that allows for the maintenance of subcultures that challenge normative consensus (1320). As population density and city size increase, it is no longer possible to know everyone, and urbanites begin to treat each other with indifference, creating an environment where informal social control is ineffective. Consequently, the necessity of formal social control will increase recorded crime rates and arrest rates. This was confirmed when McCarthy found that structural variables had a "direct effect on arrest patterns in multivariate analyses when crime rate was controlled" (1991: 19). However, Hartnagel and Lee (1990) reported that they found little support for urbanization theory, except for a positive relationship between the crime rate and population size. They suggested that the very structure of urban life "indexed by urbanity" (3) provides opportunities for crime due to the "absence of (informal) guardians capable of preventing the violation" (602).

Social disorganization theory

The Chicago School made major theoretical and methodological contributions to the study of crime and ecology. Its members viewed major social problems as a result of massive migration from rural to urban areas disrupting "the social fabric" (Osgood and Chambers 2000: 83). As levels of social disorganization rise, due to "economic deprivation and structural deterioration" (Hale 1992: 17), social disorganization theorists suggest that crime and arrest rates also increase, as the community cannot maintain effective informal social control (Kennedy et al. 1991; Sampson and Groves 1989). The condition where a community cannot realize its residents' common values is seen as "social disorganization." In other words, social disorganization theory focuses on the inability of community members to solve communally experienced problems through shared values. The dynamics of this inability lead to variations in the crime rate across neighbourhoods. Thus social disorganization theory can be seen as an elaboration of urbanization theory, which elucidates the mechanisms and processes through which urbanization leads to increased crime and formal social control.

The theoretical linkages between community, crime, and social control were first explored by Shaw and McKay (1942/1969), who argued that differences in the economic status, residential stability, and population composition of urban neighbourhoods lead to differences in the ability of communities to self-regulate deviance. When links among community institutions are weak, the capacity of a community to defend its local interests is weakened (184-185). According to Shaw and McKay, the distribution of delinquency across physical space within a city is the result of "larger economic and social processes characterizing the history and growth of the city and of the local communities which comprise it" (14). Consequently, social disorganization theory incorporates not only the ability of a community to exercise informal social control through common values but also the degree to which processes in the community (and city) can produce offenders (Sampson and Groves 1989).

With increased population and frequent population change, the number and strength of community networks decrease. Subcultural and extra-local ties among city dwellers may be high (Fischer 1975), but the strength of these associations does not translate into effective community-level social control (Shaw and McKay 1942/1969: 185). Shaw and McKay did not directly associate low economic status with high levels of crime.

Rather, areas characterized by economic deprivation tended to have high rates of population turnover (they were abandoned as soon as it was economically feasible) and population heterogeneity (the rapid changes in composition made it very difficult for those communities to mount concerted resistance against the influx of new groups). (Bursik 1988...