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Follow-up Analysis of Police Judgements

NCJ Number
124493
Journal
Journal of Police Science and Administration Volume: 17 Issue: 2 Dated: (June 1990) Pages: 95-104
Author(s)
R J Holzworth; C W Brown
Date Published
1990
Length
10 pages
Annotation
This article discusses two follow-up investigations of a recent study on police judgment.
Abstract
There were several reasons for conducting the follow-up investigations. After the initial study, several officers were involved in a shooting during an emergency response force action that resulted in a fatality. The authors were interested in determining whether this incident had any noticeable effects on those officer's judgments concerning use of deadly force. The authors also wanted to use a new judgment task which provided more response alternatives, and they wanted to examine possible effects of some additional information on officers' judgments. Two judgment tasks were used in the follow-up investigations. The first was identical to that used in the earlier study, and the second used fifty new judgment situations and officers were asked to choose among seven response alternatives. The results showed very little evidence indicating changes in judgment policies following a fatal shooting. The results from the other task showed that although judgment tasks were different in some significant respects, results were quite similar. 1 endnote, 11 references, 5 tables, 1 figure.