A Theory of Deference Exchange in Police-Civilian Encounters

Abstract

The authors suggest an explanation of police-civilian behavior based on a normative and interpersonal construct rather than on a psychological construct. Police behavior must be explained in terms of the rules which order their relations with civilians and which are usually mutually acknowledged by both. Among these rules the authors posit that in a typical encounter relations are governed by ansymmetrical status norm when deference exchange is involved. This norm effects various statuses in defferent ways. Data from an extesive study of police-civilianencounters in which the process of interaction was coded using a special interaction process analysis category system are used to test hypotheses derived from the theory.