The Relationship Between Individual Police Officer Work Habits and the Stated Reasons Prosecutors Reject Their Domestic Violence Investigations

Eric L. Nelson

SAGE Open, 2013, vol. 3, issue 4, 2158244013511826

Abstract: In the United States, 70% of all non-arrest domestic violence (DV) police investigations are rejected by prosecutors. Using DV investigation data, the routine work habits of two groups of police officers were compared across six measures. Cases submitted by routinely lower effort (RLE) officers are rejected 270% more often, sustaining an average of 4.00 criticisms each, compared to 2.21 for routinely greater effort (RGE) officers. RLE officers submit ambiguous investigations (58% v. 0%), and cases with insufficient evidence (74% vs. 36%). The Proficiency Score ( P Score) quantitative monitoring method is presented and validated. This method identifies RLE officers, and also specific areas of deficient individual investigative practice in need of improvement. With improvement, rates of prosecution and conviction for DV crime should increase substantially.

Keywords: police; domestic violence; prosecutor; investigation; rejection (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/2158244013511826 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:sagope:v:3:y:2013:i:4:p:2158244013511826

DOI: 10.1177/2158244013511826

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in SAGE Open
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().