Toward an Analytical Framework for the Study of Race and Police Violence

• Author: Mario A. Rivera,James D. Ward
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/puar.12748
• Published date: 01 March 2017
• Date: 01 March 2017

242 Public Administration Review • March | April 2017

Public Administration Review,

Vol. 77, Iss. 2, pp. 242–250. © 2017 by

The American Society for Public Administration.

DOI: 10.1111/puar.12748.

James D. Ward teaches in the School of

Public Affairs and Administration at Rutgers

University-Newark. He has published

extensively on issues of social justice,

racial profiling, and local government

reforms. A former National Council

member of the American Society for Public

Administration (2011–14), he is a founding

member of ASPA ’ s Ethics and Standards

Implementation Committee and was chief

organizer and chair of the Mini-Conference

on Policing and Race (January 29–30, 2016,

in Cincinnati, Ohio).

E-mail: james.ward@rutgers.edu

Mario A. Rivera is the Regents’

Professor at the University of New Mexico,

teaching comparative public administration,

research design, and organization theory

in the School of Public Administration. A

specialist in program evaluation, he has

published in the areas of policy innovation,

public ethics, social equity, and diversity.

Dr. Rivera is recognized for his civil rights

advocacy and scholarship, including the

2014 text coauthored with James D. Ward

titled

Institutional Racism, Organizations

and Public Policy

(Peter Lang).

E-mail: marivera@unm.edu

Abstract : Treatments of race and police violence in the fields of public administration and policy have drawn eclecti-

cally from many disciplinary sources in historical, political, and managerial analysis. From an institutional perspec-

tive, emphasis has been on how organizational practices, rules, norms, and values, along with role socialization,

shape germane behavior. Of particular interest to the authors is the phenomenon of race-related police violence in its

systemic but also attitudinal and behavioral manifestations in the policing role. How does an academic or practitioner

researcher specify evaluative perspectives applicable to this policy and administrative challenge? There is a prior need

for defined analytical and ethical positions drawing closely from public administration and policy sources. This article

suggests ways to develop such grounded frameworks, built on these distinctive traditions but also going beyond them, so

as to allow for an integrative approach to evaluative analysis and action on this grave and contentious issue.

Mario A. Rivera

University of New Mexico

James D. Wa rd

Rutgers University-Newark

Toward an Analytical Framework for the

Study of Race and Police Violence

T he gravity and contentiousness of social

issues such as those connected to the violence

suffered by African Americans at the hands of

police demand an informed policy response, based on

adequate evaluative frameworks, so that there may be

some movement toward their resolution. A first step

might be consideration of what is known about the

phenomenon of race-related police violence as well

as of the options available for an effective response

(Axtell 2000 ; Raadschelders 2011 ). In an effort at a

closely tailored research synthesis, the authors will

specify the public administration and policy sources

on which they rely, as well as other essential sources,

ranging from social and behavioral theory to public

and professional ethics.

As Frederickson suggests, it is public administration

that is “[distinctly] responding to the modern

challenges of high fragmentation and the

disarticulation of the state” (1999, 710), including

problems of disorder, inequity, and instability

resulting in violence. For Frederickson, distinctly

public administration research represents a break

with political science in connection with the liberal

state, with its premises and promises of social equity,

as these are often violated, particularly when it

comes to the enacting of racism by public officials

(Frederickson 1990 ). Police violence against African

American and other communities of color in the

United States may be seen as a form of state failure,

given its virulence and persistence (L. Miller 2015).

Because of its systemic quality, it may in fact be cast

as “racialized state violence” (Amar 2010 ), and it is

certainly resistant to easy analysis. Because of their

interdisciplinary nature and insistence on evidence-

based action, the joined fields of public administration

and policy may offer unique insights into this difficult

subject.

Public administration scholars have drawn on social

theory to account for the kind of police violence

considered here. For instance, it is proposed

that police may come to identify with their law

enforcement roles to such an extent that they are

blind to their aggressive responses to citizens of color

(Wilkins and Williams 2008 ). Distorted forms of

professional identification may help account for

instances of police violence perpetrated against African

Americans by African American police officers and

other officers of color. Although it has been shown

that the vast majority of fatal police shootings of

unarmed African Americans are committed by non–

African American police officers (Menifield 2015 ),

law enforcement racial profiling occurs virtually

irrespective of the race or ethnicity of the police officer

who is involved (Ward 2002 ; Wilkins and Williams

2008 ). Instead, police-involved violence seems to be

principally attributable to the organizational cultures

and institutional norms and roles found in law

enforcement agencies, particularly in a police officer ’ s

own department (Harmon 2016 ). Other researchers

have extended the range of contextual influences

from police departments to the communities,

neighborhoods, and the larger society in which police

officers are socialized long before they enter a police

academy (Gaines and Kappeler 2011 ).