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Police discretion in encounters with people who use drugs: operationalizing the theory of planned behavior

BACKGROUND: Policing shapes the health risks of people who use drugs (PWUD), but little is understood about interventions that can align officer practices with PWUD health. This study deploys the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) to understand what influences police intentions to make discretionary r...

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Autores principales: del Pozo, Brandon, Sightes, Emily, Goulka, Jeremiah, Ray, Brad, Wood, Claire A., Siddiqui, Saad, Beletsky, Leo A.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8675297/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34915910
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12954-021-00583-4
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author del Pozo, Brandon
Sightes, Emily
Goulka, Jeremiah
Ray, Brad
Wood, Claire A.
Siddiqui, Saad
Beletsky, Leo A.
author_facet del Pozo, Brandon
Sightes, Emily
Goulka, Jeremiah
Ray, Brad
Wood, Claire A.
Siddiqui, Saad
Beletsky, Leo A.
author_sort del Pozo, Brandon
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Policing shapes the health risks of people who use drugs (PWUD), but little is understood about interventions that can align officer practices with PWUD health. This study deploys the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) to understand what influences police intentions to make discretionary referrals to treatment and harm reduction resources rather than arrest on less serious charges. METHODS: On-line surveys integrating TPB constructs and adapting an instrument measuring police intentions to make mental health treatment referrals were completed by police employees in Indiana, Massachusetts, and Missouri. They also included items about stigma towards PWUD and attitudes and beliefs about opioid addiction, treatment, and recovery. FINDINGS: Across the sites, 259 respondents perceived control over their decision to arrest for misdemeanors (69%) and confiscate items such as syringes (56%). Beliefs about others’ approval of referrals to treatment, its ability to reduce future arrests, and to increase trust in police were associated with stated practices of nonarrest for drug and possession and making referrals (p ≤ .001), and nonarrest for syringe possession (p ≤ .05). Stigma a towards PWUD was negatively associated with stated practices of nonarrest (p ≤ .05). Respondents identified supervisors as having the most influence over use of discretion, seriousness of the offense as the most influential value, and attitude of the suspect as the most important situational factor. The 17 Likert scale items analyzed had a Cronbach’s alpha of 0.81. CONCLUSION: The TPB offers untapped potential to better understand and modify police practices. In designing interventions to improve the health outcomes of police encounters with PWUD, further research should validate instruments that measure the relationship between these variables and discretionary intentions, and that measure role-relevant police stigma towards PWUD.
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spelling pubmed-86752972021-12-16 Police discretion in encounters with people who use drugs: operationalizing the theory of planned behavior del Pozo, Brandon Sightes, Emily Goulka, Jeremiah Ray, Brad Wood, Claire A. Siddiqui, Saad Beletsky, Leo A. Harm Reduct J Research BACKGROUND: Policing shapes the health risks of people who use drugs (PWUD), but little is understood about interventions that can align officer practices with PWUD health. This study deploys the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) to understand what influences police intentions to make discretionary referrals to treatment and harm reduction resources rather than arrest on less serious charges. METHODS: On-line surveys integrating TPB constructs and adapting an instrument measuring police intentions to make mental health treatment referrals were completed by police employees in Indiana, Massachusetts, and Missouri. They also included items about stigma towards PWUD and attitudes and beliefs about opioid addiction, treatment, and recovery. FINDINGS: Across the sites, 259 respondents perceived control over their decision to arrest for misdemeanors (69%) and confiscate items such as syringes (56%). Beliefs about others’ approval of referrals to treatment, its ability to reduce future arrests, and to increase trust in police were associated with stated practices of nonarrest for drug and possession and making referrals (p ≤ .001), and nonarrest for syringe possession (p ≤ .05). Stigma a towards PWUD was negatively associated with stated practices of nonarrest (p ≤ .05). Respondents identified supervisors as having the most influence over use of discretion, seriousness of the offense as the most influential value, and attitude of the suspect as the most important situational factor. The 17 Likert scale items analyzed had a Cronbach’s alpha of 0.81. CONCLUSION: The TPB offers untapped potential to better understand and modify police practices. In designing interventions to improve the health outcomes of police encounters with PWUD, further research should validate instruments that measure the relationship between these variables and discretionary intentions, and that measure role-relevant police stigma towards PWUD. BioMed Central 2021-12-16 /pmc/articles/PMC8675297/ /pubmed/34915910 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12954-021-00583-4 Text en © The Author(s) 2021 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) ) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.
spellingShingle Research
del Pozo, Brandon
Sightes, Emily
Goulka, Jeremiah
Ray, Brad
Wood, Claire A.
Siddiqui, Saad
Beletsky, Leo A.
Police discretion in encounters with people who use drugs: operationalizing the theory of planned behavior
title Police discretion in encounters with people who use drugs: operationalizing the theory of planned behavior
title_full Police discretion in encounters with people who use drugs: operationalizing the theory of planned behavior
title_fullStr Police discretion in encounters with people who use drugs: operationalizing the theory of planned behavior
title_full_unstemmed Police discretion in encounters with people who use drugs: operationalizing the theory of planned behavior
title_short Police discretion in encounters with people who use drugs: operationalizing the theory of planned behavior
title_sort police discretion in encounters with people who use drugs: operationalizing the theory of planned behavior
topic Research
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8675297/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34915910
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12954-021-00583-4
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