Yinthe Feys - Worldwide Views on Police Discretion: A Scoping Review Regarding Police Decision-Making

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This book is the result of an interactive course at Ghent University in which bachelors and masters students of criminology and law performed a scoping review assignment in group. By dividing the larger field of (empirical) police decision-making research in different parts, this scoping review allows us to give a substantive overview of the state of the art on police decision-making studies throughout the world. In total, 15,193 titles were assessed in terms of relevance for this scoping review. This resulted in 1,563 potentially relevant publications, of which 526 met all the inclusion and exclusion criteria. These 526 publications are included in the analyses.

We summarize the characteristics and content of these publications in different chapters. On the one hand, we summarize these studies in terms of literature characteristics, which helps to get a view on the research tradition and trends. For instance, these analyses demonstrate that a majority of the research on police decision-making is performed in the United States, that lots of these studies are quantitative in nature, and that there is a growing attention for police decision-making research. We also found a couple of crime phenomena (i.e. domestic violence and sexual offenses) and types of decisions (i.e. arrest and use of force) that are more frequently studied. These analyses therefore allow us to define gaps in the current literature and define future research efforts.

On the other hand, we summarize the available empirical literature in terms of factors that affect police decision-making. We distinguish between five groups of factors: police officer characteristics, civilian characteristics, organizational characteristics, situational characteristics, and neighborhood characteristics. By discussing the factors that do (not) have an impact on police decisions, we are not only able to further define research recommendations (e.g. factors of which the impact on police decision-making is still unclear or factors that are understudied) but also discuss the practical implications of these findings. As such, we reflect on how these findings are relevant to police practice, both for the police organization and individual police officers.

Overall, we believe this book is an added value to the current literature as there are no such systematic overviews of police decision-making literature yet.

This book could not have been accomplished without the help of the students participating in the course. I would sincerely like to thank them for their willingness to participate in the course and their cooperation throughout the assignment. I also wish to thank Prof. dr. Antoinette Verhage, lecturer of the course, for giving me the ability to incorporate the scoping review project in the policing course. Furthermore, a special thanks goes to Stef Vandeneijnde and Wendy Denissen for their help with the analyses and verifications of all the numbers and calculations.

I wish to thank Prof. dr. Antoinette Verhage, lecturer of the course Public Police Studies at Ghent University, for allowing this assignment to take place. I also wish to thank all students participating in the course, who are listed alphabetically: Amber Crommelynck, Aurlie Van der Leene, Boris Constales, Cline Soetaert, Charlotte Desseyn, Charlotte Scheirlynck, Charlotte Van Hecke, Dries Carpentier, Emmeline Forrier, Florian De Turck, Gert-Jan Van de Walle, Helena Vanmarcke, Ianthe Marivoet, Indira Impens, Jackie De Coker, Jolien Zwaan, Julie De Bock, Julie Lauwyck, Justine Vlaeminck, Kendra Baetens, Laure Van den Bossche, Len Dejaegher, Leni Verreth, Linsey Crapoen, Lisa keten, Mare Kiekens, Mathieu Brackenier, Merel Desmadryl, Natascha Schmid, Otis Lasonder, Rani Everaerts, Sarah Decorte, Sarah Denaeyer, Sean Mylle, and Talou Maenhaut van Lemberge.

This book gives an overview of the empirical research regarding police discretionary decision-making worldwide (until the beginning of 2022) by means of a scoping review. In total, 11 databases were searched and 15,193 publications have been assessed in terms of relevance for this topic. Of these, 1563 were found to be potentially relevant and assessed more thoroughly, of which 526 publications met all the inclusion and exclusion criteria and were thus analyzed in terms of content.