Since its original publication in 1968, James Wilson's Varieties of Police Behavior and the introduction of political culture has dominated the policing literature as an explanation of the relationship between community characteristics and police behavior. Three archetypal styles were identified: legalistic, watchman, and service. Wilson posited that a community's policing style can be predicted by their form of local government. While support was found in his initial test, subsequent tests have been unable to garner support. This dissertation starts by using Wilson variables with data from a systematic social observation (SSO) study and measures policing style by frequency and formality of contacts rather than arrests. The study was conducted in 20 suburban communities in southwest Ohio. Alternative variables were introduced and their hypothesized relationship with frequency and formality discussed. The data on encounters were broken out into three subgroups: number of all, full and full encounters with probable cause and each were analyzed accordingly. Associations were found for crime indicator, non-residential land use and assessed value per capita in the alternative models using chi-square. There was no overwhelming support for either the Wilson or alternative variables to predict style. Next, variables representing both Wilson and alternatives were used to predict ratio level measures of frequency and formality. The Formality/Frequency Index represents the amount of formality exhibited in each respective community. In the end, political culture was not found to support the frequency of contacts (# of encounters) or formality (# arrests and/or citations). Crime indicator was the only variable to be a significant predictor of the Formality/Frequency Index (full encounter model) in any of the alternative models presented. This relationship is tenuous at best due to the small sample size. It is important to note that this dissertation was not centered on testing Wilson's theory of political culture -- the focus was on explaining the relationship between community characteristics and police behavior. However, it did use the theory as a benchmark, as a point of reference in the quest to identify these characteristics. This dissertation also discussed the state of the research which has addressed Wilson. It also has given plausible explanation as to why political culture may have been an appropriate measure in its day, but may no longer have explanatory power. Alternative community-level variables were presented that were hypothesized to explain variation in police behavior vis-à-vis frequency and formality of police-citizen encounters in suburbs. Some support for these alternative hypotheses was found, though the effect was not consistent. Ultimately these hypothesized relationships did not hold utilizing higher level statistical analyses. There is work to be done in addressing the variation found in police-citizen contacts between communities. The challenge for future research is to tie the acknowledgement that policing varies by community with characteristics that explain why.

This newly revised edition includes two new chapters exploring events in policing since the death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, MO in 2014. More than summarizing historical events, Cooper contextualizes the subsequent riots in light of classic sociological theory and political philosophy, and offers a potential and compelling new direction for improving both police use of force and the relationship between police and communities.

In the United States, some populations suffer from far greater disparities in health than others. Those disparities are caused not only by fundamental differences in health status across segments of the population, but also because of inequities in factors that impact health status, so-called determinants of health. Only part of an individual's health status depends on his or her behavior and choice; community-wide problems like poverty, unemployment, poor education, inadequate housing, poor public transportation, interpersonal violence, and decaying neighborhoods also contribute to health inequities, as well as the historic and ongoing interplay of structures, policies, and norms that shape lives. When these factors are not optimal in a community, it does not mean they are intractable: such inequities can be mitigated by social policies that can shape health in powerful ways. Communities in Action: Pathways to Health Equity seeks to delineate the causes of and the solutions to health inequities in the United States. This report focuses on what communities can do to promote health equity, what actions are needed by the many and varied stakeholders that are part of communities or support them, as well as the root causes and structural barriers that need to be overcome.

CSA Sociological Abstracts abstracts and indexes the international literature in sociology and related disciplines in the social and behavioral sciences. The database provides abstracts of journal articles and citations to book reviews drawn from over 1,800+ serials publications, and also provides abstracts of books, book chapters, dissertations, and conference papers.