DEMEANOR OR CRIME? WHY “HOSTILE” CITIZENS ARE MORE LIKELY TO BE ARRESTED*

TLDR

Criminological theory and decades of observational research suggest that hostile displays by citizens toward police increase arrest odds, yet demeanor measures often conflate hostility with criminal conduct. This study questions whether citizen hostility independently influences arrest decisions by scrutinizing measurement and control of criminal conduct. The authors employed a demeanor metric that excludes criminal conduct and incorporated comprehensive crime controls in their analysis. The analysis shows that legally permissible hostile displays do not independently raise arrest likelihood when crime is properly controlled.

Abstract

It is a criminological axiom that displays of hostility by citizens towards police officers directly increase the odds of arrest in police‐citizen encounters. This axiom rests on nearly three decades of observational research of interactions between police officers and citizens. Two features of this work, however, raise questions about the validity of findings that citizen demeanor independently affects police arrest decisions. First, although demeanor is conceptually defined as legally permissible behavior, measures of demeanor often include criminal conduct. Second, criminal conduct is not controlled adequately when the effects of demeanor on arrest are estimated. In an analysis employing a demeanor measure that does not confound crime and that controls for crime more comprehensively, it is found that displays of hostility which violate no laws do not increase the likelihood of arrest in and of themselves. The implications of this finding are discussed.