"Study sponsored and funded through the 2007-2008 National Institute of Justice W.E.B. DuBois Fellowship (2007-IJ-CX-0032)". Resumo inserto no próprio documento. Ficheiro de 1,36 Mb em formato pdf (76 p.). Também disponível em: https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/231931.pdf.Acedido a 08 de Abril de 2011.

“Research on factors which influence police decision making usually focuses on individual or situational characteristics (e.g., an officer or citizen’s age, race or gender, or the seriousness of the incident). In contrast, this study examines whether characteristics of places influence the police decisions. Earlier research is expanded in three ways: First, the series of chronological decisions within an incident or the “decision-making pathway”, rather than an isolated decision within that pathway, are derived and analyzed. Second, multiple categories of racial and ethnic composition of places and their influence on police decision-making pathways are examined rather than just a dichotomous comparison of Black and White racial composition. Third, decision pathways of all incidents (except for traffic incidents) across an entire jurisdiction are compared at a small geographic level rather than only specific incident. Findings indicate that even when controlling for the level of violence and interaction effects, places with a greater proportion of Black residents or wealthy residents significantly influences officers’ decisions to downgrade crime classification and actions taken on incidents reported to the police. Similar consistent findings for other racial groups were not discovered, although for individual decision points along the pathway, Asian or Hispanic-dominated places can also have unique effects.”