Essays on Law Enforcement Misconduct and Social Network Analysis

Deviance amongst law enforcement officers is shaped by both the ethical culture of their agency and their relationships with their peers. This dissertation uses tools from the intersection of social network analysis and organisational justice theory to examine the settings of, causes of, and responses to law enforcement misconduct. It comprises four essays, connected by their common focus on the social organisation of law enforcement as a lens to understand misconduct. The first essay disentangles how common understandings about the networked structure of police misconduct might differ across types of misconduct. This paper applies descriptive social network analysis and exponential random graph models to data on civilian complaints against NYPD officers; it examines how network properties like centrality distribution, density, and homophily vary between types of misconduct. I find structural differences between the co-involvement networks based on misconduct severity and type, such as force or discourtesy. The second essay uses original survey data from a UK police force to predict officers’ attitudes towards misconduct based upon their personal friendships with other officers and perceptions of organisational justice. I first present descriptive results on officers’ friendship ties, with most officers having a small network within the force and a significant, though not majority, share of their social contacts being other officers. Using structural equation modelling and regression analyses, I find that while organisational justice and social connections predict reporting or challenging misconduct in some specifications, perceived peer disapproval of misconduct is the most robust predictor of acting against misconduct. The next paper leverages original ethnographic observations of misconduct hearings in the Metropolitan Police Service. Drawing on Bottoms and Tankebe’s notion of the legitimacy dialogue, I argue that these hearings need to legitimise the Met as a powerholder to both its own officers and the public at large. These hearings fall short, though, at being full legitimacy dialogues, which I connect to the shortcomings of a quasi-judicial, individualised process at promoting an organisationally just internal culture and improving broader public confidence. The final essay extends the social network analysis frame from police misconduct to examine excessive use of force by correctional officers (COs). Using data on lawsuits against the NYC Department of Correction, I find that there is a networked structure to CO use of force, that certain COs can be identified as force brokers in the network, and that clusters of force-prone COs can also be located. I conclude with implications for policymakers about how to fragment the use of force network most effectively. Taken together, these essays identify both structural and individual contributors to law enforcement misconduct, as well as potential policies for mitigating its harms through both vectors.

Name dc:type.qualificationname

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Level dc:type.qualificationlevel

Doctoral

Grantor dc:publisher.institution

University of Cambridge

Year dc:date.issued

2024

Author dc:creator

• Goldrosen, Nicholas

Advisors dc:contributor.advisor

• Campana, Paolo
• Tankebe, Justice

• police misconduct
• policing
• social network analysis

Licence

• https://apollo8-f-pro.lib.cam.ac.uk/bitstreams/193eeb3f-9864-4834-9b0f-4d799e3c41a3/download
• https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Language dc:language

eng

DOI dc:identifier.doi

https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.110873

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.repository.cam.ac.uk:1810/371794