Annotated bibliography:1 paragraph for each article and this is what the paragraph for each article need to include- How the data was collected and from whom- small and straight forward summary- finds/ result (Everything need to be more focus in gender please)
DRIVING WHILE BLACK: EFFECTS OF RACE, ETHNICITY, AND GENDER ON CITIZEN SELF-REPORTS OF TRAFFIC STOPS AND POLICE ACTIONS. Explaining Leniency Crime & Delinquency 2015, Vol. 61(4) 509 –537 © 2011 SAGE Publications Reprints and permissions: sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/0011128711420108 cad.sagepub.com 420108 CAD61410.1177/0011128 711420108FarrellCrime & Delinquency © 2011 SAGE Publications 1Northeastern University, Boston, MA, USA Corresponding Author: Amy Farrell, School of Criminology and Criminal Justice, College of Social Science and Humanities, Northeastern University, 400 Churchill Hall, Boston, MA 02115, USA. Email:
[email protected] Explaining Leniency: Organizational Predictors of the Differential Treatment of Men and Women in Traffic Stops Amy Farrell1 Abstract Scholars have devoted significant attention to measuring the degree to which a driver’s personal characteristics affect police decisions to stop and sanction motorists. Following the pattern of research on gender and enforcement practices more broadly, traffic stop studies show that female drivers are less likely to receive formal sanctions such as a citation following routine traffic stops. Despite the consistency of these findings across places and times, we know little about the conditions under which female traffic violators are granted leniency. This article extends research on the effect of driver and stop characteristics on gender disparities in traffic enforcement decisions by examining 149,888 stops from across 37 communities in Rhode Island with different local needs and variation in police organizational culture and structure. The findings confirm that although women are less likely to be cited than men, community-level variation in police agency culture and structure, particularly the proportion of female officers in an agency, moder- ates the effect of driver sex on stop outcomes. Article http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.1177%2F0011128711420108&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2011-11-08 510 Crime & Delinquency 61(4) Keywords police discretion, traffic stops, gender, police organizations Policing scholars have long suggested the importance of context on police behavior (D. Smith, 1986), but research on disparities in traffic enforcement is not adequately informed by organizational- or institutional-level theories. Stops occur in communities that share common problems and have adopted various organizational structures to promote different enforcement responses. Officers who make traffic stops also operate under different institutional struc- tures (Crank & Langworthy, 1992; Manning, 1978) and organizational cultures (Brown, 1988; Manning, 1997; Van Maanen, 1974) that affect enforcement practices and shape the enforcement patterns within their agency that can result in the differential treatment of groups of motorists. Lenient treatment of female offenders by the police is well documented (Steffensmeier & Allen, 1988; Stolzenberg & D’Alessio, 2004; Visher, 1983; Worden & Shepard, 1996), but recent research on traffic stops suggests inconsis- tent patterns of gender disparities in the issuance of citations across communities (Blalock, DeVaro, Leventhal, & Simon, 2007). Although gender disparity in traffic enforcement may not be universal, no studies have examined the fac- tors across communities that explain gender differences in patterns of formal sanction. This study examines how driver sex1 affects officer decisions to issue citations across to male and female traffic violators across 37 different communities in Rhode Island. Gender Disparities in Police Enforcement Women constitute a much smaller proportion of the people processed by the criminal justice system than their representation in the population. Despite being nearly half of the population, women represent only 23% of arrestees, 18% of criminal defendants convicted, and 7% of inmates housed in prisons or jails in the United States (Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2005). Criminology scholars have long debated whether the underrepresentation of women in the criminal justice system is a function of lower rates of offending or a reflec- tion of biases of criminal justice officials. It is nearly impossible to system- atically observe men and women participating in criminal acts to determine the probability of their interdiction. As a result, researchers rely primarily on indirect methods, such as analyzing the treatment of men and women who are already in the criminal justice system. Farrell 511 Few studies have specifically examined gender differences in the most common form of police–public interaction—the traffic stop. Traffic stops are the most common type of contact most citizens will have with the police (Durose, Schmitt, & Langan, 2005) and as a result, abuses in enforcement practices have wide sweeping effects on citizen trust and confidence in the police to enforce the law fairly (Engel, 2005). Traffic citations also have significant consequences for motorists, resulting in fines and increased insur- ance premiums as well as an official record of traffic infractions that may affect officers’ decisions in future encounters with the motorist (Dedman & Latour, 2003). Observational research by Lundman (1979) in a midwestern city found that men were more likely to be cited in routine traffic stops than were women. More recent data on traffic enforcement collected primarily for the purposes of assessing racial disparities in stops demonstrate that women are less likely than men to be cited (Engel, Calnon, Lin, & Johnson, 2004; Engel, Calnon, & Smith, 2008; Farrell, McDevitt, Bailey, Andresen, & Pierce, 2004; Makowsky & Stratmann, 2009; Schafer, Carter, Katz-Bannister, & Wells, 2006; Schellenberg, 2000) or subject to search and/or arrest follow- ing a stop (Engel et al., 2004, 2008; Farrell et al., 2004; M. Smith, Makarios, & Alpert, 2006). Self-report data also confirm that women report fewer instances of being stopped and cited for traffic offenses than men (Engel & Calnon, 2004; Lundman & Kaufman, 2003). Despite patterns of gender leniency in traffic enforcement, there is remarkably little research attempting to explain why these differences exist in some communities. Explaining Disparities in Traffic Enforcement Significant scholarly attention has been devoted to understanding the causes and consequences of disparate enforcement practices. Of particular concern is the possibility that groups are more likely to be stopped, sanctioned, and detained for various crimes based in part on personal characteristics such as race, sex, and age. This research has primarily focused on offender and stop- level explanations within individual communities. These studies suggest a multitude of factors that predict officer decisions, including demographic characteristics of suspects and information about the context of the encounter (Ericson, 1982; FitzGerald & Sibbit, 1997; Gardiner, 1968; Schafer, 2005; Schafer & Mastrosfki, 2005). The degree to which offender and stop characteristics affect enforcement decisions is anticipated to vary across police agencies. In Wilson’s (1968) seminal work Varieties of Police Behavior, he delineated differences between agencies where officers uniformly apply the law regardless of context and 512 Crime & Delinquency 61(4) agencies where officers follow a model of distributive justice. Research on policing since then suggests a complex interplay between culture, organiza- tional structure, and community context to explain variation in how officers in different police agencies enforce the law (Klinger, 2004). Unfortunately, few studies of traffic stop disparities examine differences across police orga- nizations. Limited research suggests different levels of racial disparity between state police and municipal agencies (Warren, Tomaskovic-Devey, Smith, Zingraff, & Mason, 2006), but no studies to date have examined the causes of disparate treatment in traffic enforcement practices across various types of agencies. The following discussion examines disparate enforcement as a product of officer biases that emerge from patriarchal police cultures and institutional structures and practices that guide discretionary decision mak- ing. A series of research hypotheses are posited to assess gender disparities in traffic enforcement within these frameworks. Enforcement as a Product of Bias Police make decisions about whether to sanction traffic violators quickly and often with a limited amount of information. To do this efficiently, police unconsciously employ stereotyping mechanisms that help them classify people into groups and make assessments about the most appropriate sanc- tions to punish and deter violators within such groups (Tomaskovic-Devey, Mason, & Zingraff, 2004). Commonly, such classifications are based on the most visible personal characteristics such as gender, race, and age (Brewer, 1988). Although there is disagreement about the degree to which classifica- tions based on group stereotypes are justified in traffic enforcement con- texts,2 feminist theory about the treatment of women in the criminal justice system is useful for helping us understand how unconscious biases may affect officers during traffic stops. Paternalism (or “chivalry”) is the most commonly asserted explanation for the lenient treatment of female offenders by justice officials. Based on the premise that officials rely on stereotypes about women as helpless or passive, paternalism theories predict that officials are more lenient to women out of a duty to protect them from the harshness of criminal justice sanctions (Chesney-Lind, 1977; Crew, 1991) and because women are perceived as less threatening (Chilton & Datesman, 1987; Friedrich, 1977). In the traffic stop context, research by Sykes, Fox, and Clark (1976) found male officers responded to female motorist with deference, even when women were rude or verbally abusive. Furthermore, M. Smith and colleagues (2006) suggested that because officers develop more generalized suspicion of male drivers, Farrell 513 men are more likely to be subject to records checks and subsequently arrested than women. Without information about the degree to which individual officers hold paternalistic views (or ideally data on when officers employ such biases dur- ing enforcement decision making), researchers have instead relied on mea- sures of sex composition of workers within an organizations ranks as a proxy for paternalistic attitudes (see Britton, 2000, for discussion). Although factors outside of the organization may reinforce attitudes, paternalism theory assumes that criminal justices actors behave in biased ways because male-dominated institutions support their actions. Until the early 1970s, policing in the United States was nearly exclusively a White, male profession (Martin, 1980). The few women employed in police agencies primarily served in unsworn posi- tions, as police matrons who took care of complaints involving children and female offenders who necessitated a “woman’s touch” (Martin, 1992). Although changes in federal employment laws and the movement of women into the workforce increased the number of women in policing, the profession remains dominated by men. Today, 13% of all sworn officers are women (Hickman & Reaves, 2006). Although women remain a minority in most police agencies, there is variation across agencies in representation of women. The integration of women and racial minorities into criminal justice work- forces has been suggested as a tool to help alleviate biases in organizations perceived to cause disparate