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This study examines the administration of capital punishment in Kentucky. Comparing execution and death to life commutation cases from 1901–2019, we consider the purpose of the commutation process and its utilization considering offender-victim relationships and the severity of the homicide as determined by the Barnett Scale. While a higher score on the Barnett Scale predicted execution, there remained a pattern of racial discrimination between the two decisions.

PurposeThe main objective of the study is to identify the effects of various sources of job-related strains on police managers' turnover intentions.Design/methodology/approachData from a sample of American police managers (N = 179) were used to construct a path model that estimated the direct and indirect effect of environmental and organizational stressors on turnover intentions while considering the mediating role of negative emotionality.FindingsAlthough most of the surveyed police managers (61%) did not report turnover intentions, those who did were more likely to have experienced burnout, frustration and/or emotional drain. Strenuous relationships with police supervisors and work–life imbalances were the main sources of these negative emotions. Turnover intentions were expressed by managers at the operational/technical level (sergeants) and by those who perceived a lack of procedural justice at the agency level. Highly educated managers were significantly less likely to report burnout and turnover intent.Research limitations/implicationsSince this analysis is based on a relatively small convenience sample of police managers, readers should interpret the results cautiously.Practical implicationsTo reduce turnover in police organizations, police administrators should implement and follow policies and procedures to ensure a fair, consistent and just treatment of all employees.Originality/valueThis is one of the few recent studies that focused exclusively on police managers' turnover intentions.

This study examines the issue of prosecutorial discretion and the decision to offer a plea of life without parole (LWOP) in Kentucky death-eligible homicide cases (2000–2016). Using focal concerns ...

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to draw a better understanding of the potential impact of daylight in officer decision making. In order to this, the authors test the veil of darkness hypothesis, which theorizes that racial bias in traffic stops can be tested by controlling for the impact of daylight, while operating under the assumption that driver patterns remain constant across race.Design/methodology/approachPublicly available traffic-stop records from the Louisville Metro Police Department for January 2010–2019. The analysis includes both propensity score matching to examine the impact of daylight in similarly situated stops and coefficients testing to analyze how VOD may vary in citation-specific models.FindingsThe results show that using PSM following the VOD hypothesis does show evidence of racial bias, with Black drivers more likely to be stopped. Moreover, the effects of daylight significantly varied across citation-specific models.Research limitations/implicationsThe data are self-reported from the officer and do not contain information on the vehicle make or model.Practical implicationsThis paper shows that utilizing PSM and coefficients testing provides for a better analysis following the VOD hypothesis and does a better job of understanding the impact of daylight and the officer decision-making on traffic stops.Social implicationsBased on the quality of the data, the findings show that the use of VOD allows for the performance of more rigorous analyses of traffic stop data – giving police departments a better way to examine if racial profiling is evident.Originality/valueThis is the first study (to the researchers' knowledge) that applies the statistical analyses of PSM to the confines of the veil of darkness hypothesis.

The findings of this study outline the racial differences in stop and frisk decisions by Illinois officers in consent searches and those based upon reasonable suspicion within the context of the elements of focal concerns theory. The analysis for this study was performed using propensity score matching (PSM) and allowed the researchers to create a quasi-experimental design to examine the race of the citizen and police decision making. According to our analysis of official Illinois law enforcement data, Black citizens, particularly males, were less likely to give their consent to a stop and frisk search. Black male citizens were also more likely to be stopped and searched due to an assessment of reasonable suspicion by the officer. Elements of focal concerns theory were also factors in pedestrian stops under conditions of consent and reasonable suspicion. Citizens judged as blameworthy were more likely to be stopped and frisked under conditions of consent and reasonable suspicion. The effect of a verbal threat and the officer’s prior knowledge about the citizen had even more significant impacts.

In comparison with research on the private sector, organizational commitment within the police has been rarely examined. Moreover, the leadership styles of police officials are not equal in all police studies across the world. Using data collected in 2009 from 236 Korean police officers, the purpose of this study is twofold: (a) to determine if the scale (multifactor leadership questionnaire, form 6-S [MLQ-6 S]) is applicable to police agencies internationally; and (b) to examine if leadership influences organizational commitment in law enforcement agencies. Results indicate that transformational leadership is positively linked to organizational commitment in Korean police agencies. However, the applicability of MLQ-6 S is controversial. Future research is required to examine comprehensively whether MLQ-6 S is a valid instrument for various types of organizations across the world.

Citizens’ attitudes toward the death penalty have been effected by the availability of life without parole (LWOP). Our analysis focuses upon data from a representative sample of Kentuckians on death penalty attitudes. The factors influencing and related to death penalty support and compared to support for LWOP are considered along with a review of Kentucky survey findings from 1989–2016. The results reveal consistent support for LWOP over the death penalty. Male Kentucky residents with a college education were most likely to support life without parole over capital punishment while male conservatives did not.

This study presents findings on the community release performance of prisoners incarcerated for a drug offense and released over a 30-month period (July 2002 – December 2004). Within this sample, propensity score matching was used to construct comparable groups of parolees and offenders released unconditionally into the community. The authors find that drug offenders released from prison are highly likely to be returned to prison postrelease and drug offenders released on parole are more likely than their counterparts to be returned to prison. In addition, drug offenders on parole are substantially more likely than drug offenders released without supervision to be reincarcerated within 5 years after release.

This study describes how prescription drug monitoring programs (PDMPs) are used and identifies the strengths and weakness found in the four PDMPs studied. Focus groups were conducted with law enforcement officers in four states. The results indicate that making it easier to obtain information from the systems in other states or establishing a regional (or national) system would improve and speed investigations. The study also found that officers felt that PDMP systems should be made more proactive to “red flag” offenders and provide evidence of “doctor shopping” by those who may fall outside the normal range of prescription patterns.

Developed and implemented by the New York City Police Department, Compstat is a managerial accountability system developed to identify and solve crime problems. It has been adopted police departments throughout the world. This manuscript compares the attitudes of police chiefs with those of other ranks of police administrators through the use of a survey conducted by the Police Executive Research Forum. We replicated the study and surveyed graduates of the Administrative Officer’s Course at the Southern Police Institute. The findings suggest that the views of PERF chiefs and AOC graduates are diverse and that some of the fundamental Compstat practices could be changed to better accomplish their purpose. While the AOC graduates were in agreement with the PERF chiefs with the basic principles of Compstat such as purpose, meeting formats, diagnosis of crime issues, and the operational responses, conflicting views were identified pertaining to communications, a demeaning atmosphere in the Compstat bri...

Purpose – One of the most popular texts on his subject, Donald T. Phillips’ Lincoln on Leadership – Executive Strategies for Tough Times, offers a superb examination of the President’s views on how to lead an organization. The purpose of this paper is to outline Lincoln’s leadership principles (15 chapters, 126 principles), illustrated and supported by 14 stories that narrated by Lincoln himself. This analysis is based upon papers submitted by police managers who analyzed Lincoln on Leadership that considered his examples through the lenses of their personal and professional experiences in policing. These police managers attended the Administrative Officer’s Course at the Southern Police Institute at the University of Louisville. In their assignment, these students identified three principles and three stories they felt were most significant to police leadership. Design/methodology/approach – The authors conducted a content analysis of police student responses to questions about Lincoln on Leadership. Findings – These police leaders made specific reference to the following leadership methods as practiced by Lincoln. It is best to get out among the troops from time to time to show your support, make direct observations and get relevant information about conditions and experiences. Honesty and integrity are crucial foundations for leadership that are irreplaceable. Give credit where credit is due. It is one of the best ways to establish credibility and loyalty. Sometimes leaders must do things they would rather not do but it is best to handle things quickly before disaster results. Yet, it is also often best to avoid conflict and difficulties when you can so you do not create problems for yourself – if there is another acceptable way to get the job done. When something needs to be done, leaders do not wait for others to do it for them. They strike when the time is right and the situation demands it. Research limitations/implications – These respondents represent a non-random, convenience sample and may not represent the population of police managers. These officers are selected by their departments to attend the AOC. Thus, they are interested in career development and their views may not be typical of the population of police managers. Practical implications – The research findings support leadership conclusions in the research literature on leadership in general and police leadership in particular. Social implications – The findings indicate that these police leaders are open to the use of methods that would be more acceptable to the community and members of the police organization. Originality/value – The study provides a glimpse into the views of police leaders and the methods that they endorse.

Recent years have seen increasing concerns about the importance of offender reentry and how to best facilitate ex-offenders remaining crimefree. Common responses have been to enhance punitiveness, and to decrease resources and support services for ex-offenders. Results have been consistently high levels of recidivism, and consequently increasingly punitive responses. The present study examines whether a cohort of offenders released to the community in Kentucky either under parole supervision or at the expiration of their sentences are more likely to be reincarcerated within a 5-year period. The participants of each cohort were constructed into two groups using propensity score matching to control for differences between them.

The origins and structure of the administrative officer’s course (AOC) at the Southern Police Institute at the University of Louisville is presented. The focus is upon combining the teaching and research functions faced by criminal justice professors. Published research findings conducted on the assignments of AOC police manager students are reviewed and presented.

In an effort to address the problem of prescription drug abuse and diversion in the USA, States have implemented prescription drug monitoring programmes (PDMPs) to track the prescribing and dispensing of controlled substances. For PDMPs to meet their objectives, law enforcement officials must be able to access the information contained within reports. This study provides a descriptive analysis of opinions held by Kentucky law enforcement officials regarding the Kentucky All Schedule Prescription Electronic Reporting (KASPER) system, the State's PDMP. Surveys designed to elicit perceptions regarding the effectiveness of KASPER were emailed to all 1,119 Kentucky law enforcement officials with a KASPER account; responses were received from 340 (response rate 30.4 per cent). Of these, 306 responses were included in the analysis. Most (65 per cent) respondents indicated that they had utilised a KASPER report in the month prior to survey participation with a median of three reports utilised (interquartile range...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine three different structural models the Leadership Challenge model to determine if they best capture transactional or transformational leadership. The three models are derived from the literature. Design/methodology/approach – The data for this study come from self-report surveys of middle managers that are attending the Administrative Officers Course at the Southern Police Institute. The managers completed the 30-item 360° leadership challenge measure. Because the leadership challenge measure is a 360° evaluation of leadership, up to five observers provided data about their manager. The authors use the data from the observer in this study. Using structural equation modeling, the authors examine the aims. Findings – The findings show two important advances. First, the leadership challenge model may capture both transformational and transactional leadership. Second, the findings support the view that the really captures transformational leadership. Originality/value – To the authors’ knowledge, no study has performed this type of examination in the policing literature. The value of this type examination is high.

The current study attempts to build upon previous analyses of capital sentencing in Kentucky and other states. Using data compiled from official court records compiled by the Kentucky Department of Public Advocacy, we examined death eligible homicide cases for the years 2000–2010 for the state (N = 359). Multivariate analysis determined that the death penalty in Kentucky was sought 3.17 times or 217 % more when the victim is female. It also found that cases featuring a black defendant and a white victim were 56 % less likely to result in a plea than cases featuring other defendant/victim racial combinations. Despite legal requirements, Kentucky fails to collect data to assess the factors that influence the seeking and imposition of the death penalty.

Historically, police departments have been modelled both structurally and operationally on quasi-military lines. This paper presents reactions of police managers who attended the Administrative Officers Course at the Southern Police Institute at the University of Louisville, who analysed David Freedman's book, Corps Business. This work presents 30 management principles practised by the US Marine Corps. Students were asked to rate the five best and five worst practices as they applied to police management. Their responses provide a timely analysis of the status of the linkage between police management and the military model.

In 1998, Kentucky’s adopted the Racial Justice Act (RJA). The key sponsor of the law, Kentucky Senator Gerald Neal asserted that it was not a result of whether you were for or against the death penalty but “whether the death penalty should be subject to the same standards of nondiscrimination as any other institution in our state.” However, one noted negative effect of the RJA is that prosecutors have adopted policies to seek the death penalty in every eligible case, rather than making this decision on a case-by-case basis. This study examines the outcome of such policies in Jefferson County, Kentucky from 2000 to 2010.

The purpose of this study was to examine the validity of the four-factor structure from a job satisfaction instrument. Dantzker’s job satisfaction instrument was designed to capture information on four factors: general administration, extras, job, and equipment. Using data from police officers that are middle management (n = 136), we performed confirmatory factor analysis via structural equation modeling to validate that the four factors are actually capturing job satisfaction. The results of the study show that the four-factor solution fit the model satisfactorily. All of the factor loadings were large expect for one. The results suggest that the four-factor solution has proper validity to use with middle manager police officers. Post hoc simulation analyses (n = 1000 replications) show that no bias in the factor loadings or standard errors was present in this analysis, and the study had sufficient statistical power.

The purpose of the present study is to examine traffic stop data—in particular data on searches—to better understand racial profiling. We use a measure of capriciousness to understand whether the decision to search occurs at random. Using data from more than 40,000 traffic stops from Louisville, Kentucky, the present study finds that race is one of many factors that are used in the determination of a search. For the overall, White, and Black samples, we find that the decision to search occurs at random, suggesting that racial profiling is not occurring in these data.

The present study examines the research productivity of criminal justice scholars with a declared specialisation in law enforcement. Focus is on distinguishing and comparing the productivity, measured as publications, citations and grant dollars received, for law enforcement scholars who do and do not have a minimum of 5 years of practical experience in law enforcement. Using the membership of the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences' Policing Section, data are drawn from members' curriculum vitae to assess total publications, publication of refereed articles, books, textbooks and grant dollars received. When looking at the research productivity — measured as publications, citations and receipt of grant dollars — the results suggest that law enforcement scholars with significant, real-world experience are research productive, but in different ways and at different levels than law enforcement scholars who do not bring significant real-world law enforcement experience to their work.

Michael Lewis’ book Moneyball demonstrates how Oakland A’s General Manager Billy Beane used research evidence to improve his team’s performance in a cost-effective manner. This presentation focuses upon the responses of police managers attending the Administrative Officer’s Course in the Southern Police Institute at the University of Louisville. The respondents identified three elements of Moneyball that could be applied to police management: 1) using statistical analysis to guide operations, 2) challenging the status quo, and 3) doing more with less.

Racial profiling is an important issue in contemporary policing. Research in this area, especially in the decision to search, has relied on an outcomes test and correlates that are largely devoid of theory. Thus, the research is unable to provide a clear understanding of police decision making during a traffic stop. The purpose of the present study was to examine this process. Using data from more than 36,000 traffic stops from Louisville, KY, the present study applies the focal concerns theory to this decision-making process. The research results indicate that blameworthiness is the primary reason that searches are performed for the entire sample of traffic stops as well as those for the Black and White subsamples.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to determine the opinion of 126 police managers from 23 US states regarding their ideal leadership style as expressed under the items of the leader behavior description questionnaire (LBDQ).Design/methodology/approachPolice managers attending a management course – the Administrative Officer's Course at the Southern Police Institute during the academic year 2007‐2008 – were surveyed regarding their opinions of ideal leadership styles. They responded to items on the leadership behavior questionnaire. The analysis is based on this survey.FindingsItem analysis of their responses revealed the existence of three subscales (servant, autocratic, and laissez‐faire leadership), ANOVA revealed a strong preference for the style of servant leadership. These results indicate that these police managers believe that leaders should follow the tenets of servant leadership. They rejected the creeds of both the autocratic, command and control method and the hands‐off, detached style of laissez‐faire leadership. Policing has been long considered an autocratic, quasi‐military organization, yet these police managers expressed a decided preference for servant leadership.Research limitations/implicationsTaking into account the limitations of the data set used in current analyses, the sample characteristics and the sample size, results should be interpreted cautiously. The sample used in this analysis is not a probability sample and cannot be considered representative for the entire population of American police officers. Because this is only an exploratory analysis, the sample used was relatively small. In addition, the LBDQ may not be the most appropriate scale to assess levels of servant leadership. Future studies on this subject and population should take heed of these limitations. However, due to the positive responses received from this sample concerning the applicability of servant leadership in police organizations, justification for further research on this subject is warranted.Originality/valueThe results indicate this sample of police managers believe that leaders should follow the tenets of servant leadership as expressed under the items of the leader behavior description questionnaire. Compared to these values, they rejected the creeds of both the autocratic, command and control method and the hands‐off, detached style of laissez‐faire leadership. Policing has been long considered an autocratic, quasi‐military organization, yet these police managers expressed a decided preference for the style of servant leadership. Perhaps a new wave of leaders is coming to policing with different ways of thinking about how the organization should operate.

Nisbett and Cohen contended that consistently higher argument-related homicide rates in the South are a result of early historical and economic circumstances of the frontier that contributed to the development of a persistent ‘‘culture of honor,’’ which legitimized violence in response to provocations. Using 1990—1992 argument-related homicide data for Appalachian counties and considering the effect of the religious culture, this study attempts to reexamine Cohen’s finding that social stability increased honor/argument-related homicide rates in the American South but had the opposite effect in the North. Although results show that interregional differences in homicide rate exist in Appalachia and could be explained by an existing ‘‘culture of honor’’ reinforced by certain religious beliefs, this analysis did not find support for Cohen’s hypotheses. Family stability appears to be a crime deterrent in both subregions, though the relationship is not significant. Community stability is positively related to homicide rates in both subregions, but the effect is significant in the North and not in the South, as Cohen predicted. In addition, when controlling for relevant structural covariates, the authors found that counties where most adherents belonged to a conservative Protestant denomination had on average significantly higher argument-related homicide rates, whereas counties with most Roman Catholic adherents had significantly lower murder rates.

This study examines the perceived ideal leadership behaviour in police organisations. It is based on a survey of 126 police managers from 23 US States who attended the Administrative Officers Course at the Southern Police Institute during the academic year 2007–2008. The questionnaire used in this investigation includes the Leader Behaviour Description Questionnaire Form XII (Stodgill, 1963). The main objectives of this exploratory analysis are to rank the importance of leadership characteristics based on police officers' perceptions, to create a typology of leadership styles preferred, and to identify the demographic factors that are most likely to influence variations in opinions regarding the behaviour of an ideal police leader. This research shows that individual characteristics can influence not only managerial styles, but also leadership preferences. In particular, results imply that gender and race play an important role in structuring leadership preferences. Female police officers do not appear to differ from men in their preferences for a predominantly task-centred and structured leadership. However, women seem to favour more than men do: (1) a type of leader who can be considered ‘transformational’; or (2) a more democratic, worker-oriented leader, who would allow subordinates freedom of action and would respond well to the followers' concerns. Compared with Whites and other racial minorities, African American police officers tend to favour more a structured task-centred leadership orientation or a leadership style described as transformational.

The purpose of this study is to examine the validity of the Leadership Practices Inventory. Previous research has used exploratory factor analysis and internal consistency for this sort of analysis without specifying the validity for a specific group or sample. We propose to use confirmatory factor analysis — via structural equation modelling — of responses from police officers from around the country. This type of analysis will allow us to determine if the factors of the Leadership Practices Inventory provide valid measures of police leadership performance as an assessment tool. We determined that the measures were indeed valid and that differences of opinion existed between the police managers assessed and their observers regarding their perceived performance under the Leadership Challenge Model.