A Police Probation Partnership: One City\u27s Response to Serious Habitual Juvenile Offending

The purpose of this study is to explore a police/probation collaboration in a large Western police department. While many of these collaborative approaches to crime and disorder have been formed, there has been scant empirical research conducted on their effectiveness. As such, this study explores the implementation and impact of a formal collaboration on both the police and probation departments, the juveniles targeted by the collaboration and the local juvenile justice system. In addition, this thesis addresses whether police and probation departments can maintain coordinating relationships to equitably, efficiently and effectively control delinquency in one Western city. This study is mainly qualitative in that observations and unstructured interviews provide most of the data. This qualitative analysis is based on 105 hours of fieldwork and 34 unstructured interviews between January 26, 2000 and February 10, 2000. Quantitative agency data were also collected for descriptive analyses of the program’s selection process, as well as the types of juveniles participating in the program. The findings from this study suggest that the police/probation collaboration in Doggington operates inside an exchange system. As such, the collaboration has mended strained relationships between the police and probation departments. In addition, the collaboration is impacting both the juveniles participating in the program, as well as the local juvenile justice system. The analysis of Doggington’s police/probation collaboration provides an excellent example of how two interdependent criminal justice agencies dealt with their conflicting ideologies and effectively coordinated in order to produce what appear to be equitable, efficient, and, possibly, effective results

Strength in numbers? A test of Kanter's theory of tokenism

Kanter's tokenism theory argues that once tokens reach a tipping point of 15 percent representation in the work place, they begin to experience fewer work place problems. This study tested this assertion using a survey of eighty-seven officers in a midwestern municipal police agency, where female officers constituted over 17 percent of the total sworn patrol officers. The three dimensions of tokenism were examined quantitatively to ascertain differences between male and female officers. On two of the dimensions, there were no differences between male and female officers, but the third dimension showed that female officers still perceived their work place differently from male officers. Only partial support of Kanter's theory was found. It was evident that even in this department, however, females still felt like they stood out and were underestimated by their peers. The findings also suggested that tokenism is more complex than a "numbers game," and that quantitative examinations alone might not fully explain the myriad aspects of tokenism.