Book Review: Understanding Police Use of Force: Officers, Suspects, and Reciprocity

• Date: 01 May 2005
• Author: Nebi Cetinkaya
• DOI: 10.1177/0734016805275684
• Published date: 01 May 2005
• Subject Matter: Articles

10.1177/0734016805275684Criminal Justice ReviewBook Reviews

Understanding PoliceUse of Force:Officers, Suspects, and Reciprocity,

by Geoffrey P. Alpert and Roger G. Dunham. Cambridge, UK: Cam-

bridge University Press, 2004, 191 pp.

DOI: 10.1177/0734016805275684

In democratic societies, people hand over their right to seek justice to legally established

institutions, including law enforcement agencies. For the privatecitizen, the agencies assume

the responsibility of distributing justice and assuring public order. In Understanding Police

Use of Force: Officers, Suspects, and Reciprocity, Alpert and Dunham focus on police use

and abuse of force. They argue that police use of force should be demystifiedand analyzed in

order to reestablish and strengthen the trust between the institution of law enforcement and

the community.

Although abuse of force is a rare event, it causes public unrest and raises doubt about the

credibility of law enforcement. The authors provide readers with very important arguments

that result in increased understanding of police use of force. They meticulously analyze the

concept, use of force, and examine definitions varying between police agencies across three

distinct periods of police history. These periods are characterized by nonregulation, profes-

sionalism, and contemporary practices.

One of the major difficulties in understanding use of force results from the lack of ade-

quate data. The authors categorize data sources into three types: (a) official records, repre-

senting the police standpoint, (b) researchers’ observations, and (c) citizens’ complaints and

attitudes. They then discuss each source’s advantages,shortcomings, and reliabilities in rela-

tion to contributing to a better understanding of the use and abuse of force. Besides discus-

sion of these main data sources, factors affecting the interpretation of major surveys about the

use of force are analyzed from the standpoint of different parties. Suggestions and measures

to improve the response rate, the quality of data, and accurate interpretation are included in

the first chapter.

Alpert and Dunham’s approach is to dismantle and interpret police reports of interactions

between police and suspects, to identify patterns of interaction, and to use this information to

prevent or at least reduce abuse of force in the future. They bring to their task their ownper-

spectives in analyzing police-suspect interaction in data gathered from the Miami Dade,

Florida, and the Prince George’s County, Maryland, police departments.

Data for the original research described in the book are based on reports prepared by law

enforcement officers after their encounters with suspects. Alpert and Dunham acknowledge

that there are discrepancies in the accounts of the interactions depending on the standpoints

of the parties and on differences between police jurisdictions. They therefore used a new

approach to evaluate discrepancies. To reveal the interaction and sequencing of the use of

force, they created new data reflecting three versions for each police-suspect encounter.First,

the police department’s official “control of persons report” served as a benchmark. The sec-

ond source of information was the suspect’s testimonial about his or her interaction with the

police. The third was data collected through a telephone interview with the former suspect 1

year after his or her release.

90

Book Reviews Criminal Justice Review

Volume 30 Number 1

May 2005 90-132

© 2005 Georgia State University

Research Foundation, Inc.

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