Abstract
Policing research and use of force policies have been guided by the continuum model for the past several decades. The continuum specifies a relationship between the amount of resistance a suspect presents and the amount of force that an officer should use to respond to or overcome a given level of resistance. In this paper, we show that resistance alone is an insufficient indicator of the necessity and level of force to be used both conceptually and empirically. We argue for the inclusion of considerations of perceived threat in the analysis of use of force incidents—both in policy and in research. Our analysis also reiterates the importance of police culture in understanding use of force decisions.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
Supplementary Material
Please find the following supplemental material available below.
For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.
For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.
