The geographic concentration of use of force incidents at subway stations mimics the law of crime concentration bandwidths: A research note
| Published date | 01 September 2021 |
| Author | Carla Lewandowski,Kimberly A Houser,Natalie Schell-Busey,Evan T Sorg |
| Date | 01 September 2021 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0032258X20928096 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
2021, Vol. 94(3) 316 –332
Article
The geographic
concentration of use of
force incidents at subway
stations mimics the law
of crime concentration
bandwidths: A research note
Evan T Sorg ,
Kimberly A Houser,
Carla Lewandowski and Natalie Schell-Busey
Law and Justice Studies, Rowan University, Glassboro, NJ, USA
Abstract
The Law of Crime Concentration states that a small percent of microplaces will account
for large portions of crime. In this research, we demonstrate that police use of force
incidents likewise occur at a small percentage of subway stations in Philadelphia, a
category of ‘risky facilities’, where crime concentration is also expected. Those per-
centages mimic the bandwidths of the Law of Crime Concentration. We sketch perti-
nent data collection needs and future research questions that should be explored if a
crime and place perspective is to play a role in understanding and informing policies
geared toward reducing the extent to which police use force against the public.
Keywords
Use of force, law of crime concentration, hot spots, police, crime and place
The degree of cooperation of the public that can be secured diminishes, proportionately, to
the necessity for the use of physical force and compulsion in achieving police objectives.—
Peelian Principal number four
Corresponding author:
Evan T Sorg, Law and Justice Studies, Rowan University, 201 Mullica Hill Road, Campbell Library, Glassboro, NJ
08028, USA.
Email: sorg@rowan.edu
The Police Journal:
Theory, Practice and Principles
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DOI: 10.1177/0032258X20928096
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Sorg et al. 317
Introduction
Law enforcement agencies are increasingly ‘under fire’ (Weitzer, 2015: 475) for the
sometimes controversial application of lethal and nonlethal force in American commu-
nities—particularly in communities of color. It is nevertheless challenging to argue that
we have seen increases in the application of force by police in recent years, excessive or
otherwise, despite the examples of controversial video aired on our nightly news and
spread on our social media feeds. We do a poor job of recording, compiling, and
releasing data on coercive police actions in the United States (Kane, 2007; Klinger,
2008)—this is a problem that has been on the radar of American criminologists for
decades (Fyfe, 1988).
This is not to say that there is a scarcity of academic research examining the correlates
of police use of force. A steady stream of research was charted into the 1970s (Gold-
kamp, 1976; Harring et al., 1977), 1980s (Fyfe, 1980, 1988), 1990s (Alpert and Smith,
1994; Alpert et al., 1997), and 2000s (Terrill, 2003; Terrill and Reisig, 2003), and this
attention has certainly not waned in recent years (Morrow et al., 2017; Terrill and Pao-
line III, 2017). A great deal of this research models individual officer and suspect
characteristics as explanatory variables predicting both lethal and nonlethal force appli-
cations. As we discuss in the following, the results of such studies are oftentimes mixed
(Klahm and Tillyer, 2010). Other lines of research consider organizational, situational,
and neighborhood-level variables and their impact on the application of force. Whereas
research examining individual officer characteristics oftentimes applies psychological
frameworks to guide examination—‘is there something about particular officers that
help explain why they use force’ (Terrill and Reisig, 2003: 293)—these lines of research
posit that police use of force is influenced by the broader context in which these
encounters occur. In other words, they examine whether sociological, organizational,
and ecological constructs influence an officer’s application of force. The most robust
research in this area treats these factors as nested and appropriately applies multilevel
analyses to parse out the importance of individual and macrolevel factors (and their
cross-level interactions) in influencing police decisions to take coercive actions.
In this research note, we explore whether a crime and place perspective can play a role
in further understanding police use of force. To do so, we examine police use of force
through the lens of the ‘Law of Crime Concentration’ (Weisburd, 2015: 133) to discern
whether the use of force incidents exhibit similar patterns of spatial concentration as
crime incidents. When viewed from a crime and place perspective, one might argue that
the literature examining police use of force has relied too heavily on a ‘macro’ vantage
point.
1
In the context of crime, for example, though some neighborhoods might be
labeled as being high crime, decades of research have demonstrated that even in neigh-
borhoods bestowed such a label, very few places account for large portions of crime and
that many places within such neighborhoods are crime-free. Is the same true for the
concentration of police use of force incidents? If so, (1) why might this be and (2) can
steps be taken to reduce the use of force incidents at these places with this knowledge in
hand? The first step to answering these two questions is to move down ‘the cone of
resolution’ (Brantingham et al., 1976: 261) and to examine the geographic distribution of
police use of force incidents at a finer geographic scale. We take a first step here and
2The Police Journal: Theory, Practice and Principles XX(X)
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