Abstract

Police researchers have largely ignored the role that organizational and environmental factors play in deter-mining how officers behave during interactions with citi-zens. This has resulted in a body of policing knowledge that contains little information about how and why police practices are affected by features of the agencies officers work for and forces outside police departments. This article points out the consequences of this dearth of knowledge for understanding what the police do and why they do it, reviews the limited literature on organi-zational and environmental determinants of police activ-ity, and calls for a research program that views interface between police organizations and their environments as a central question.