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Data reported by police agencies were at the core of most analyses of Driving While Black in the 1990s and 2000s. There is, however, no previous macro-level research directed exclusively at the accuracy of the Driving While Black traffic stop data reported by police agencies. This article remedies that omission by reaching back across a little more than 10 years to examine data reported by 308 Massachusetts police agencies during April and May of 2001, a time when collection of driver race and ethnicity data was still relatively new. The baseline data show that race and ethnicity missingness is nonrandom on several important dimensions. The article concludes that the Driving While Black data reported by most of the 308 Massachusetts police agencies during April and May of 2001 appear to underestimate the frequency with which police stopped Black and African American drivers for traffic law violations.

There is agreement in the literature on policing that demeanor and other extralegal variables help determine police decisions. A recent challenge to that agreement has been issued, however. Klinger (1994) has asserted that nearly all previous quantitative analyses of the effects of demeanor and other extralegal variables are fatally pawed because they failed to limit demeanor to spoken words and failed to control for crime. He concluded that all previous research is suspect until additional analyses of the data sets used in previous research and new observational research are presented. This research starts the first of these tasks by reporting additional analyses of data from three previously published papers based on the Midwest City Police‐Citizen Encounters Study. With demeanor limited to spoken words and crime partially controlled, the reanalyzed data suggest that the effects of demeanor depend on how demeanor is represented and, to a lesser extent, model specification. Consequently, caution with respect to existing reports of the effects of demeanor and other extralegal variables remains necessary. In addition, carefully controlling for crime and limiting demeanor to spoken words may not be the only problems surrounding efforts to assess the effects of demeanor. This research suggests that multiple representations of demeanor and more fully specified models may be important as well.

AbstractThis essay explores the issues involved in designing public policies. It suggests that those programs not well designed will generate inappropriate expectations for success. This lack of design sophistication may not lead to well‐conceived methods for achieving stated objectives. Taking the Low Enforcement Assistance Administration's Community Anti‐Crime Program as an example, the paper analyzes the implicit sociological theory which guided the development of this new and important program. The essay concludes by highlighting some of the important contributions the Community Anti‐Crime Program can make in the criminal justice policy arena despite its conceptual shortcomings. While design problems may hinder the implementation of programs, they do not necessarily have to cripple them.

The aim of this paper is to extend and clarify the organizational deviance perspective by focusing on police misconduct. Toward that end the paper defines organizational deviance and police misconduct, illustrates the linkages between natural persons and deviant departments, and considers the public policy implications of viewing police misconduct as organizational deviance.

Are African‐American men, compared with white men, more likely to report being stopped by police for traffic law violations? Are African‐American men and Hispanic drivers less likely to report that police had a legitimate reason for the stop and less likely to report that police acted properly? This study answers these questions using citizen self‐reports of their traffic stop encounters with the police. Net of other important explanatory variables, the data indicate that police make traffic stops for Driving While Black and male. In addition, African‐American and Hispanic drivers are less likely to report that police had a legitimate reason for the stop and are less likely to report that police acted properly. The study also discusses the validity of citizen self‐report data and outlines an agenda for future research.

ABSTRACTAmong the reasons common corporate crimes such as price‐fixing lack the "brimstone smell" of common street crimes such as burglary is that newspapers fail to provide frequent, prominent, or criminally oriented coverage of corporate crime. This certainly was true of newspaper coverage of the heavy electrical equipment antitrust cases of 1961. Replicative analysis reveals that this also was true of newspaper coverage of the folding‐carton industry antitrust cases of 1976. Reasons for this continued lack of coverage are discussed, including the diffuse harm characteristic of price‐fixing, the general lack of recognition that corporations are juristic persons capable of criminal deviance, and the disinclination of large organizations to link other large organizations with criminality.

Abstract This paper explores certain of the general problems associated with maintaining research access in police organizations. Among the problems researchers are likely to encounter are difficulties in communicating and winning the acceptance of street‐level patrol officers, problems in developing a mutually acceptable field role, and threats of premature termination. The solutions suggested include specific and repeated efforts to inform patrol‐level officers of the research, emphasis of the occupational features of the traditional participant‐as‐observer role, and making specific plans to deal with attempts at premature termination.