Abstract
Early police ethnographies suggest that officers are shaped by the colleagues around them. Officers’ workplace networks, including friendships, and routine day-to-day interactions are theorized to serve as key channels through which behaviors such as use of force spread. Yet, few studies have directly traced how these networks transmit force-related behaviors. To address this gap, we mapped the workplace friendship ties of more than 1,500 officers in a large US police department. We then asked whether officers’ firearm use is shaped by the colleagues they consider close friends. Longitudinal network models show that officers tend to adopt similar levels of firearm use to that of their workplace friends, even when accounting for individual characteristics and situational variables. These findings indicate that firearm behavior is shaped not only by personal attributes and work environments, but also by officers’ friendships.
Marie Ouellet
Principal Investigator
Dr. Marie Ouellet’s research focuses on delinquent groups, including how they emerge and evolve, and how networks structure this process. She is currently leading a longitudinal study on police networks to better understand the informal structure of policing, including organizational cohesion and fragmentation within departments, and the consequences of these network structures on the diffusion of behaviors and attitudes. Ouellet’s work has been published in Criminology, Criminology & Public Policy, Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, and Justice Quarterly.
Sadaf Hashimi
Assistant Professor
Dr. Hashimi’s research centers on issues pertaining to policing and policy, peer influence and crime, and violence prevention efforts. Specifically, Dr. Hashimi employs social network analysis and various other research designs to uncover patterns of criminal and non-criminal behaviors that relate to co-offending, police misconduct, police use of force, and gang involvement.
Jason Gravel
Assistant Professor
Dr. Gravel’s research focuses on the application of social network analysis in many areas of criminology and criminal justice research, most notably in the study of street gangs, co-offending, gun violence, and police misconduct.
Dean Dabney
Professor
Dean Dabney is a Professor in the Department of Criminal Justice and Criminology at Georgia State University. He received his doctorate in sociology from the University of Florida in 1997 and has been on faculty at GSU since then. His research agenda is principally focused on the study of police culture and their efforts to combat violent crime. In recent years, he has studied the operation of homicide units, the use of confidential informants, police response to gun violence, and officer use of discretion.