Worldwide Views on Police Discretion: A Scoping Review Regarding Police Decision-Making

ISBN-13: 9783031222801 / Angielski / Miękka / 2023 / 130 str.

Yinthe Feys

Opis

This book gives an overview of the empirical research regarding police discretionary decision-making worldwide through 2022 by means of a scoping review. In total, eleven databases were searched and 15,193 publications have been assessed in terms of relevance for this topic, with 1,563 of these being assessed more thoroughly. The shortlist consists of 526 publications. It answers the following questions:

• What is the amount of available research concerning police decision-making and what are its characteristics?
• How and where is police decision-making studied?
• Which crime phenomena are studied?
• Which types of decisions are studied?
• Which factors impact police discretion?

Overall, the scoping review summarizes the available empirical research on police discretion and helps understand police decision-making processes. These findings are then used to discuss the current scholarship and give recommendations concerning research (e.g. which decision-making processes/decisions are currently lacking in research, which factors need to be explored further, which research methods can be utilized more frequently) and police practice (i.e. how to support police officers in their decision-making and optimize these decision-making processes).

Spis treści

PART 1. Introduction and methodology

Chapter 1. Introduction.- 

Chapter 2. Scoping review regarding police decision-making: Methodological outline.- 

PART 2. Findings

Chapter 3. Characteristics empirical research on police decision-making. 

Chapter 4. Characteristics police officer. 

Chapter 5. Characteristics civilians.- 

Chapter 6. Organizational characteristics.- 

Chapter 7. Situational characteristics.- 

Chapter 8. Neighborhood characteristics.- 

PART 3. Discussion and conclusions

Chapter 9. Discussion and conclusions: Knowledge gaps and future research.- 

Appendices

O autorze

Yinthe graduated in 2016 as Master Criminology at Ghent University. She then performed a systematic review concerning police accountability for a short-term project at that same university. From 2017 until January 2018, she worked at the Flemish Government on policy-related research regarding ethnicity. In February, she started her PhD on Belgian police officers' (ethical) decision-making processes, again at Ghent University. It concerns a mixed-methods research project combining surveys, interviews, systematic social observations, focus groups and a scoping review. The latter is reported in this book.

Yinthe’s research interests among others include police decision-making, police organizations, victimization, ethics and methodological issues. She is interested in both qualitative and quantitative research methods.