Detective Effort Among Complainant and Suspect Racial and Ethnic Dyads: An Exploration

Racial Disparity in Police–Citizen Contacts

Racial disparity in the criminal justice system has been explored in a number of ways, but policing scholars have been primarily drawn to bias that may exist in traffic enforcement. Engel and Calnon (2004), in their analysis of 7,054 traffic stops with police during a 6-month period, reported that queries of this nature are rooted in a belief that targeting minorities for routine traffic stops is an “effective policing tactic” to uncover drug crimes (p. 50). The “War on Drugs,” in many ways, prompted this belief, which explains why research finds that racial and ethnic minorities are more likely to be stopped by law enforcement during their traffic encounters with police (Lamberth, 1994; Novak, 2004; Weisel, 2012). Several researchers, however, have been critical of studies evaluating automobile stop outcomes because officers can rarely identify the racial identity of the driver prior to initiating a stop (Alpert, Dunham, & Smith, 2007; Fallik, 2018; Warren, Tomaskovic-Devey, Smith, Zingraff, & Mason, 2006).

In an exploration of a poststop disposition (where the race/ethnicity of the driver would be known to the officer), Lundman (2004) explored how driver race and ethnicity related to vehicle searches using national data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics on Contacts Between Police and the Public. He observed that officers are significantly more likely to conduct a search when a vehicle is driven by a minority but found no difference in the likelihood of an officer uncovering illegal activities. Lundman (2004) concluded from these results that the use of race and/or ethnicity by police to search the driver, passenger, vehicle, or a combination of some or all three entities is “unproductive” (p. 337). Similarly, Kochel, Wilson, and Mastrofski (2011) conducted a meta-analysis of arrest dispositional research and reported that minority suspects were 30% more likely to be arrested than White suspects. Kochel et al., however, were quick to note the limitations of meta-analyses, which include publication selection bias.

In addition to being stopped, searched, and sanctioned during automobile encounters, several studies have found racial and ethnic minorities to be disproportionately stopped, questioned, and frisked (SQF) in street-level contacts. In New York City, for example, Blacks were SQF by police at a rate more than 10 times the rate of Whites (Rosenfeld & Fornango, 2014; see also Main, 2015). Furthermore, this disproportionality, according to the researchers, had no effect on burglaries or robberies, which called into question the efficacy of targeting minorities for additional police scrutiny (see Weisburd, Wooditch, Weisburd, & Yang, 2016, for contrary results).

Researchers believe that disparities are influenced by a constellation of factors, only one of which is individual officer racial animus (see Fallik, 2018, for a complete list of potential exogenous influences). In a 2009 study of the Washington State Patrol, for example, Pickerill, Mosher, and Pratt suggested that racial disparities are grounded in the legal circumstances of the encounter (see also Fallik & Novak, 2012). There may be behavioral difference, they proffered, in the driving activities of racial and ethnic groups that result in disproportionate contacts and poststop dispositional outcomes. Officer decision-making, therefore, in many police–citizen encounters may not be intentionally biased but confounded in legal factors.

Other research finds that officers may be motivated by extralegal influences such as departmental, environmental, and situational aspects of the stop. Relating to the former, Antonovics and Knight (2009), in their 2-year analysis of the Boston (MA) police department, indicated that officers are more likely to conduct an automobile search when the driver’s racial identity differs from their own. To this point, Tillyer, Klahm, and Engel (2011), in a hierarchical model assessing the relationship between officer discretion and 857 vehicle searches, speculated that law enforcement decision-making during traffic encounters may be rooted in an officers’ experiences. Experiential social conditioning and preconceived biases, of this sort, are equally likely to exist in other aspects of policing including detective work.

In any case, racial profiling and racial disparities in police–citizen encounters are inconsistent with the tenants of procedural justice. This philosophy of fairness encourages law enforcement to treat people with dignity and respect, give voice to citizens during their encounters, be neutral in their decision-making, and conveying honest motives (Bradford, 2014). Research reports that these principles are associated with community trust and confidence in the police (Myhill & Bradford, 2012), an obligation to follow the law and orders from law enforcement (Tyler & Fagan, 2008), and a sense that the community, whereby the public and police have common interests and values (Kochel, 2012). Substantively, procedural justice finds that the differential treatment of racial and ethnic minorities in any setting is inconsistent with American democratic values.

Detective Discretion

Although the impact of citizen race and ethnicity is well-documented among traffic stop dispositions, very little is known about its impact on criminal investigations. What is known is that investigations are often self-directed, and detective autonomy is often not scrutinized by internal or external oversight (Eck, 1983; Greenwood, Chaiken, & Petersilia, 1977; Waegel, 1981, 1982). In fact, detective activities are typically only monitored through informal contact with investigative administrators whose primary interests are on the timeliness and completeness of investigative reports (Horvath, Meesig, & Lee, 2001; Waegel, 1982). Detective discretion, however, is not unabridged, as they often must balance heavy caseloads. In a nationwide survey of investigative units, Ward (1971) found that detectives were given 51 cases per month, which amounted to one case every two “working” hours. Furthermore, the number of cases detectives work is different from the number of cases assigned. Greenwood, Chaiken, and Petersilia (1977), for example, noted that “although most investigators will have twenty or thirty open cases on their desk at any time, only two or three are really considered active” (p. 10). Liederbach, Fritsch, and Womack (2011), in their analysis of 351 cases worked by 21 detectives with the Richardson (TX) police department, suggested that detectives could become more efficient and productive if their agencies better managed how cases are assigned, allowing detectives the time they need to investigate crimes.

Unfortunately, detective work has remained relatively unchanged since the 1970s, according to a nationally representative survey of 3,123 law enforcement agencies (Horvath et al., 2001), causing the initiation of many criminal investigations to be delayed. Fallik (2017), in his analysis of criminal cases assigned to detectives in the HPD, estimated that detectives are 3–5 days delayed in working index crimes once they were assigned. Perhaps even more concerning is the number of cases that never receive investigative attention. Of all the assigned cases with the Kansas City (MO) police department during a year period of observation (n = 5,647), only 32% of cases were actually worked (Greenwood et al., 1977). More recently, Fallik (2016), in his analysis of 564 index crimes, observed that 25% of cases did not receive any investigative attention from detectives during a 30-day observational period. The cases that are worked by detectives, therefore, often do not receive the attention they need to be solved. Bynum, Cordner, and Green (1982), for example, found that reviewing the initial report and making a few phone calls was done in 82% of 1,688 burglary and larceny cases that were assigned in a medium-sized Midwestern police department. Likewise, 73% of investigations were suspended after 1 day according to Greenwood et al. (1977; see also Fallik & Victory, 2018). Essentially, detectives do not have the time necessary to dedicate the amount of effort needed to fully investigate the cases that are assigned to them.

This has not stopped citizens, however, from overestimating the abilities of detectives. In fact, the crime scene investigation (CSI) effect, as it is more commonly known, has created several empirically documented issues in the criminal justice system. Derived from the popular television series (CSI: Crime Scene Investigation on CBS and various spin-off and similar imitation shows), the CSI effect inflates public expectations of law enforcement’s ability to solve crimes (Schweiter & Saks, 2007). For detective work, this includes the overestimation of the utility of forensic evidence in criminal investigations and promptness of detective work. The overconsumption of CSI-type shows has created somewhat impossible expectations from the public that often lead to citizen perceptions that police are underperforming or even incompetent (Reiner, 2008). Overlaid against the aforementioned procedural justice issues, the CSI effect has also contributed to a crisis of legitimacy for law enforcement (La Vigne et al., 2017; Newport, 2016).

Investigative Effort Hypotheses and the Empirical Limits to Our Existing Knowledge

The reality of where detective effort is prioritized has been theorized by two scholars. The first, the “skimming” hypothesis, was proposed by Waegel (1981, 1982). It suggests that detective decision-making is rooted in potential case outcomes, whereby detectives only work cases that require the least amount of effort to be resolved. Waegel (1981, 1982) indicated that investigative administrators support this skimming approach to caseload management “even though they recognize that it ensures that a majority of ordinary cases will never receive a thorough investigation” (pp. 267, 268). A few years prior to Waegel’s (1981) publications, Greenwood et al. (1977) found support for the assertion. They wrote that the “cases that get cleared are primarily the easy ones to solve, and that most of a detective’s work is a consequence of the fact that an arrest has been made” during the patrol officer’s preliminary investigation (p. 112). Investigative outcomes, according to the skimming hypothesis, can be ascribed to the complexity of a case rather than the prospect of an arrest or prosecution.

As an alternative, Eck (1983) put for the “triage” hypothesis. In his analysis of 149 burglary and robbery detectives in DeKalb County (GA), St. Petersburg (FL), and Wichita (KS), he pointed out that detectives generally start their investigations with a number of routine activities such as reading the responding patrol officer’s account of the incident and contacting people named in the preliminary report (see also Bynum, Cordner, & Green, 1982). Subsequent investigative activities tend to be less predictable and more complainant oriented at the onset of a case, with the focus on getting information that is outside of the agencies control. As investigations advance, they shift toward a more suspect-oriented approach that is directed at internal sources of information, Eck (1983) reported. This occurs, in part, as new leads are developed and old leads are exhausted. Determining which investigations will be pursued, according to Eck (1983), is based on a detective’s subjective evaluations of cases into three categories: (1) easily solvable cases, (2) unsolvable cases, and (3) potentially solvable cases requiring great detective effort. Eck (1983) indicated that easy to solve cases are afforded the most investigative attention, whereas all other cases are wholly abandoned. According to Fallik (2016), a lack of attention to potentially solvable cases (i.e., the third category of cases) is problematic because their outcomes are principally dependent on a detective’s investigative effort, whereas Greenwood et al. (1977) found that easy to solve cases will likely be solved regardless of the detective’s effort. Although functionally similar, Eck’s (1983) triage hypothesis differs from Waegel’s (1981, 1982) skimming hypothesis because detective effort is guided by practical constraints as opposed to self-interest.

For more than three decades, the skimming and triage hypotheses have guided our thinking about how detectives direct their investigative efforts. The empirical limits of these hypotheses have been challenged by several studies. Concurrent with the triage approach, for example, Eck (1983) proposed that there are “chance events” outside the control of a detective that could have some bearing on investigative outcomes (p. 16). The circumstances of a case, as it has been discussed in the extant literature, have received a lot of attention from researchers. Similar to racial profiling research, extralegal factors, such as the complainant and suspect’s race, age, and gender (when known), have drawn close scrutiny from scholars as they predict investigative outcomes. Among these studies, however, race has been found to have mixed results. As it relates to homicides, for example, Puckett and Lundman (2003) reported that homicides in African American neighborhoods have the lowest chance of being cleared in their multivariate analysis of 802 homicides in Columbus (OH) between 1984 and 1992. Alternatively, Regoeczi, Kennedy, and Silverman (2000) reported that minority complainants’ cases were more likely to be cleared in their comparison of American and Canadian homicide investigations. In yet another exploration, Wellford et al. (1999) in their analysis of 789 homicides in 1994 and 1995 in four large cities found that the complainant’s race had no effect on clearance rates. Similar inconsistencies are common among other offenses and case dispositions.

Substantively, circumstance-centric research has resulted in little knowledge of the investigative process or how case circumstances impact detective efforts. To the latter point, Fallik and Victory (2018) explored the order of investigative activities in burglaries and robberies across varying periods of investigations but failed to observe an activity pattern among cases. This finding prompted them to conclude that criminal investigations are “much more nuanced than prior empirical research has suggested” and encouraged future research to explore unobserved but “important within-case difference” (p. 19 and 18, respectively). Research finds, for example, that cases with an identified suspect are more likely to be solved (Brandl & Frank, 1994; Greenwood et al., 1977; Waegel, 1981). Brandl and Frank (1994) exemplified this conclusion in their analysis of 609 burglary and robbery cases investigated in a Midwestern police department when they found that cases with a moderate amount of suspect information benefited the most from greater investigative effort (see also Fallik, 2016).

From this research, we can deduce that some case outcomes are beyond a detectives control; however, investigations are not purely chance events as Eck (1983) reported. In fact, investigative outcomes are likely mediated by detective effort, especially as it relates to extralegal influences such as race or ethnicity. This supposition is inconsistent with circumstance-centric research and the skimming and triage hypotheses. Nevertheless, race is at the forefront of American discourse, especially in policing, and detective work is not exempt from scrutiny within a procedural justice framework. Accordingly, these analyses seek to explore whether detectives are racially and ethnically neutral in their decision-making to work the cases they are assigned. Likewise, these analyses seek to understand where (if anywhere) detective efforts are prioritized among complaint and suspect racial/ethnic dyads.

Policy and Theoretical Implications

These results lend mixed credibility to perceptions that racial and ethnic minorities are disproportionately targeted by police. That is not to say that agencies would not benefit from fairness, diversity, and cultural sensitivity training. Moreover, this type of education should be continuous, throughout an officer’s career, and be mandatory for personnel assigned to specialized, administrative, and patrol alike. The HPD, for example, receives 40 hr of training biennially, which includes legislatively mandated courses on racial profiling, cultural diversity, and civilian interactions. This may indirectly be responsible for the race/ethnicity neutrality observed at the front end of an investigation among complainants but shows room for improvement with the disparity observed among suspect-related outcomes. Research, for example, has found that classroom training in procedural justice can have lasting positive effects on officers giving voice, granting dignity/respect, and demonstrating neutrality in in their decision-making (Skogan, Van Craen, & Hennessy, 2015).

The front line to overseeing these changes should be investigative administrators who should seek greater involvement in the cases they assign to the detectives under their leadership. Although this will likely encroach on detective autonomy, research has suggested that case clearances may be associated with greater investigative supervision (Bloch & Bell, 1976; Eck, 1983). This can be formalized by adopting process-related measures as part of audits, early warning systems, or annual evaluations. Furthermore, neutral decision-making can be reinforced with incentives and adopted as part of promotional criteria (i.e., the carrot rather than the stick approach). Likewise, law enforcement agencies can do themselves a favor at the front end of the hiring process by seeking candidates into the agency who embrace procedural justice tenants. These analyses, for example, suggest a lack of fairness in attention given to cases with a minority suspect. If this disparity is motivated by biases, it can and should be screened for during the hiring process. In doing so, the matriculation of procedural justice ideals into specialized units and leadership positions will be a foregone conclusion.

It is equally important, however, for agencies to mold their public image based on the realities of police work, especially in a society with waning public support. For too long, law enforcement has modestly concealed their accomplishments behind sentiments like “it’s part of the job” and only sought to prompt their positive impact during crisis events. This humility has likely contributed to the previously discussed misunderstandings of detective work. In the age of social media and the 24-hr news cycle, there is no need for law enforcement agencies to feel as though they should wait to communicate with their constituents. Public relations specialists are nice in the post–Ferguson era (see Deuchar, Fallik, & Crichlow, 2018), but law enforcement agencies can cheaply and easily prompt their positive impact through other means. Agency-sponsored Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter pages, for example, are important and free information platforms law enforcement agencies should be including in their community engagement portfolios.

Finally, to advance our understandings of detective work, the broader landscape of American socioculture discourse needs to be adopted into our theoretical understandings of detective decision-making. This is not to say that the skimming or triage hypotheses are wrong, but they certainly need to be expanded. These theories, in light of current data, seem to be underdeveloped with regard to how prioritizing a suspect based on their race or ethnicity serves a detectives investigative self-interests or informs a cases’ practical constraints (as our existing theoretical framework proposes). Fallik (2016) and Fallik and Victory (2018), for example, suggest that detective effort may mediate case outcomes and that case features have a direct impact on detective effort and case outcomes. These analyses lend credibility to the importance of parsing the relationship between case features and detective effort in developing a theoretical understanding of detective decision-making.

Limitations and Areas of Future Research

Nevertheless, it is important to note the limits of these suppositions and, in doing so, guide the next generation of scholarship in this area. First, the confounding influence of within-unit differences is not observed in these analyses. To this point, Withrow (2006) noted that bivariate analyses, such as these, “cannot be used to infer or predict and generally cannot account for intervening causes of police behavior” (p. 193). As it relates to detective work, there are several potentially exogenous factors that subsequent research should look to explore, such as impact of detective experience and training, the legal features of cases (e.g., suspect prior record and seriousness of the crime), and other demographic characteristics of the complainant and suspect. Evidence of these omissions can be found in the nonnormal standard deviation observed in Table 4, indicating that these results may be sensitive to outliers. A larger sample drawn from a wider variety of measures will likely overcome this issue in subsequent studies.

Additionally, replication research should look to address unobserved between-unit difference in these analyses. The exclusion of nonindex-related crimes and proactive criminal investigations limits the generalizability of these findings to those phenomenon. Similarly, the HPD likely varies in investigative procedures, processing, and prioritization from other agencies. This underlies the importance for empirically based research to guide detectives and investigative administrators toward evidence-based practices. In doing so, future scholarship should explore multiple sites and/or nationally representative samples to increase external validity. Additionally, researchers should model the mediating and direct effects of case features and detective efforts on a verity of investigative dispositions including the execution of warrants. These types of endeavors will give a clearer understanding of detective decision-making on the criminal justice system.