An approach from the Theory of Situational Action to the excessive use of force by members of the police
Main Article Content
Keywords
Situational Action Theory, the use of excessive force/policy brutality, personal morals, moral education, the Colombian National Policy, protests
Abstract
The use of excessive force by police officers can be explained by the Situational Action Theory. This theory posits that crime results from the interaction between criminal propensity and criminogenic environment. This interaction occurs in the perception-choice process, in which a moral filter emerges determining intentional action or omission options perceived by people as viable and acceptable. This filter has as its essential basis personal morals that depend on moral education. This article outlines basic aspects of the Theory and applies them to understand police education, especially in the Colombian National Police. Finally, it shows how this education may have influenced personal morals and, thus, the filter that determined the perception-selection process’ outcome of the police officers involved in homicides during the 9S protests.
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References
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Armacost, Barbara E. “Organizational Culture and Police Misconduct”. George Washington Law Review 72, n°3, (2003): 453 – 545.
Badrán, Farid y Niño, Cesar. “Seguridad nacional de Colombia: aproximación crítica a los contrasentidos misionales”. Pensamiento propio 51, (2020): 103-118.
Barton-Crosby, Jennifer. “The nature and role of morality in situational action theory”. European Journal of Criminology 19, n°4, (2020): 1421-1437.
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Bouhana, Noémie y Per-Olof H.Wikström. Al Qa’ida-influenced radicalisation: A rapid evidence assessment guided by Situational Action Theory. London: Home Office, 2011. Recuperado de https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/116724/occ97.pdf
Bover, Tomás y Mariana Chaves. “Vivir a los tumbos o vivir (de) uniforme: Biografías de jóvenes policías en Argentina”. Revista Última Década 19, n°34, (2011): 121-138.
Campbell, Donald y Kathleen Campbell. “Soldiers as Police Officers/ Police Officers as Soldiers: Role Evolution and Revolution in the United States”. Armed Forces & Society, Vol. 36, Nº 2, (2010): 327 - 350.
Castano, Emanuele. “On the Perils of Glorifying the In-group: Intergroup Violence, In-group Glorification, and Moral Disengagement”. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, Vol. 2, Nº. 1, (2007): 154 - 170.
Comisión Interamericana de Derechos Humanos. Tercer Informe sobre la Situación de Derechos Humanos en Colombia, 1999.
Cooper, Hanna. “War on Drugs Policing and Police Brutality”. Substance Use & Misuse 50, n°8-9, (2015): 1188-1194.
Corte Constitucional, Auto 1529/2022, M.P. Natalia Ángel Cabo, 2022. Recuperado de: dhttps://www.corteconstitucional.gov.co/Relatoria/autos/2022/A1529-22.htm
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Demirkol, Ismail Cenk y Mahesh Nalla. “How does police culture shape officers’ support for community policing?”. Policing and Society 29, n°6, (2019).
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Díaz C., Jefferson, “Policías, manifestación pública y protesta social: coherencia curricular de la educación en derechos humanos y transformación pacífica de conflictos en la Policía Nacional de Colombia. Un aporte a las recomendaciones 12 y 13 de la CIDH-2021”, Tesis de maestría. Universidad de los Andes, 2023.
González, Yanilda María. Authoritarian police in democracy: contested security in Latin America. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021.
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Iturralde, Manuel. Ser duros o ser justos. Uso de la fuerza y su impacto sobre la eficacia y la legitimidad de la policía en el control de la protesta Bogotá: Grupo de Trabajo FIP – FESCOL, 2021.
Iturralde, Manuel. “The Weight of Empire: Crime, Violence, and Social Control y Latin America —and the Promise of Southern Criminology”. Decolonizing the Criminal Question: Colonial Legacies, Contemporary Problems, 1ª ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2023.
Kleinewiese, Julia. “Situational Action Theory and the particular case of settings including a group”. European Journal of Criminology 19, n°5, 2020.
La Silla Vacía, "La Silla Vacía reconstruye cómo policías mataron a los tres jóvenes de Verbenal", La Silla Vacía, 2020. Recuperado de https://www.lasillavacia.com/historias/silla-nacional/la-silla-reconstruye-como-policias-mataron-a-los-tres-jovenes-de-verbenal/
Lawton, Brian. “Levels of Nonlethal Force: An Examination of Individual, Situational, and Contextual Factors”. Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency 44, n°2, 2007.
Loftus, Bethan. “Police occupational culture: classic themes, altered times”. Policing and Society 20, n°1, (2010): 1-20.
Paoline, Eugene y Jacinta Gau. “Police Occupational Culture: Testing the Monolithic Model”. Justice Quarterly 35, n°4, (2018): 670-698.
Perkins, James, y Martin Bourgeois. “Perceptions of Police Use of Deadly Force”. Journal of Applied Social Psychology 36, n°1, (2006): 161-177.
Policía Nacional de Colombia, "Funciones de los Escuadrones Móviles Antidisturbios de la Policía. Nacional". Recuperado el 22 de marzo de 2022 de https://www.policia.gov.co/especializados/antidisturbios/funciones
Policía Nacional de Colombia, “Resolución 02903 por la cual se expide el reglamento para el uso de la fuerza y el empleo de armas, municiones y dispositivo menos letales por la Policía Nacional”, 2017.
Policía Nacional de Colombia. Manual para el comando de atención inmediata, CAI. Bogotá: Policía Nacional de Colombia, 2009.
Ruiz Vásquez, Juan Carlos. “Colombian police under fire: image, corruption and controls”. Policing: An International Journal 36, n°2, (2013): 399-420.
Sirimarco, Mariana. “Una antropóloga en la Policía: una reflexión sobre actuación de género y relaciones de poder en el campo”. Cadernos Pagu 59, n°11, (2020): e205918.
Sozzo, Máximo. “Policing after Dictatorship in South America”, en The Sage Handbook of Global Policing. London: Sage, 2016;
Tankebe, Justice. "Rightful Authority: Exploring the Structure of Police Self-Legitimacy”. SSRN Electronic Journal, (2014).
Trinkner, Rick, Erin M. Kerrison y Phillip A. Goff. “The force of fear: Police stereotype threat, self-legitimacy, and support for excessive force”. Law and Human Behavior 43, n°5, (2019): 421 - 435.
Twersky-Glasner, Aviva. “Police personality: What is it and why are they like that?”. Journal of Police and Criminal Psychology 20, n°1, (2005): 56-67.
Waddington, Peter A. J. “Police (canteen) sub-culture: An Appreciation”. The British Journal of Criminology 39, n°2, (1999): 287-309.
Werb, Dan, Greg Rowell, Gordon Guyatt, Thomas Kerr, Julio Montaner y Evan Wood. “Effect of drug law enforcement on drug market violence: A systematic review”. International Journal of Drug Policy 22, n°2, (2011): 87-94.
Wikström, Per-Olof H. “Explaining Crime as Moral Action”. En Handbook of the Sociology of Morality, 1ª ed. New York: Springer verlag, 2010,
Wikström, Per-Olof H., "Does Everything Matter? Addressing the Problem of Causation and Explanation in the Study of Crime". En When Crime Appears: The Role of Emergence. Editado por McGloin J M, Sullivan C. J & Kennedy L. W. London: Routledge, 2011.
Wikström, Per-Olof H., “Character, circumstances, and the causes of crime: towards an analytical criminology”. The Oxford Handbook of Criminology, 6ª ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017.
Wikström, Per-Olof H., “Explaining Crime and Criminal Careers: the DEA Model of Situational Action Theory”. Journal of Developmental and Life-Course Criminology 6, n°2, (2019a): 188-203.
Wikström, Per-Olof H. “Situational Action Theory: A General, Dynamic and Mechanism-Based Theory of Crime and Its Causes”. En Handbooks of Sociology and Social Research. Springer, Cham, 2019b.
Wisktröm, Per-Olof H. “Situational Action Theory: Toward a Dynamic Theory of Crime and Its Causes”. En Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Criminology and Criminal Justice. Switzerland: Springer International, 2019c.
Wikström, Per-Olof H. y Noémie Bouhana. “Analyzing Radicalization and Terrorism”. The Handbook of the Criminology of Terrorism. John Wiley & Sons, 2016.
Wikström, Per-Olof H., Dietrich Oberwittler, Kyle Treiber y Beth Hardie. Breaking Rules: The Social and Situational Dynamics of Young People’s Urban Crime. Oxford: OUP Oxford, 2012.
Wikström, Per-Olof H. y Kyle Treiber. “Violence as Situational Action”. International Journal of Conflict and Violence. IJCV 3, n°1, (2009): 75-96.
Wikström, Per-Olof H. y Kyle Treiber. “Situational Theory: The Importance of Interactions and Action Mechanisms in the Explanation of Crime”. The Handbook of Criminological Theory, 4. John Wiley & Sons, 2015.
Wikström, Per-Olof H., Kyle Treiber y Gabriela Roman. Character, Circumstances and Criminal Careers: Towards a Dynamic Developmental and Life-Course Criminology (en proceso de publicación). Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2023.
Worden, Robert E., “The “Causes” of Police Brutality: Theory and Evidence on Police Use of Force”. En Criminal Justice Theory, Explaining the Nature and Behavior of Criminal Justice, 2º ed. New York: Routhledge, 2005.
Armacost, Barbara E. “Organizational Culture and Police Misconduct”. George Washington Law Review 72, n°3, (2003): 453 – 545.
Badrán, Farid y Niño, Cesar. “Seguridad nacional de Colombia: aproximación crítica a los contrasentidos misionales”. Pensamiento propio 51, (2020): 103-118.
Barton-Crosby, Jennifer. “The nature and role of morality in situational action theory”. European Journal of Criminology 19, n°4, (2020): 1421-1437.
BBC News, "Colombia protests: Death of man tasered by police sparks deadly clashes’", BBC News, 10 de septiembre de 2020. Recuperado de https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-54078852
BBC News Mundo, "La indignación en Colombia por la muerte de un hombre tras una violenta detención de la policía por violar la cuarentena", BBC News, 09 de septiembre de 2020. Recuperado de https://www.bbc.com/mundo/noticias-america-latina-54095677
Bouhana, Noémie y Per-Olof H.Wikström. Al Qa’ida-influenced radicalisation: A rapid evidence assessment guided by Situational Action Theory. London: Home Office, 2011. Recuperado de https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/116724/occ97.pdf
Bover, Tomás y Mariana Chaves. “Vivir a los tumbos o vivir (de) uniforme: Biografías de jóvenes policías en Argentina”. Revista Última Década 19, n°34, (2011): 121-138.
Campbell, Donald y Kathleen Campbell. “Soldiers as Police Officers/ Police Officers as Soldiers: Role Evolution and Revolution in the United States”. Armed Forces & Society, Vol. 36, Nº 2, (2010): 327 - 350.
Castano, Emanuele. “On the Perils of Glorifying the In-group: Intergroup Violence, In-group Glorification, and Moral Disengagement”. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, Vol. 2, Nº. 1, (2007): 154 - 170.
Comisión Interamericana de Derechos Humanos. Tercer Informe sobre la Situación de Derechos Humanos en Colombia, 1999.
Cooper, Hanna. “War on Drugs Policing and Police Brutality”. Substance Use & Misuse 50, n°8-9, (2015): 1188-1194.
Corte Constitucional, Auto 1529/2022, M.P. Natalia Ángel Cabo, 2022. Recuperado de: dhttps://www.corteconstitucional.gov.co/Relatoria/autos/2022/A1529-22.htm
Corte Interamericana de Derecho Humano, Sentencia del 11 de mayo de 2007, Caso de la Masacre de la Rochela vs Colombia, 2007 Recuperado de: https://www.corteidh.or.cr/docs/casos/articulos/seriec_163_esp.pdf
Demirkol, Ismail Cenk y Mahesh Nalla. “How does police culture shape officers’ support for community policing?”. Policing and Society 29, n°6, (2019).
DhColombia, "Juicio oral contra ex patrullero de la policía nacional por masacre del 9 de septiembre de 2020, dh Colombia, 2023. Recuperado de: https://dhcolombia.com/2023/06/01/juicio-oral-contra-ex-patrullero-de-la-policia-nacional-por-masacre-del-9-septiembre-del-2020/.
Díaz C., Jefferson, “Policías, manifestación pública y protesta social: coherencia curricular de la educación en derechos humanos y transformación pacífica de conflictos en la Policía Nacional de Colombia. Un aporte a las recomendaciones 12 y 13 de la CIDH-2021”, Tesis de maestría. Universidad de los Andes, 2023.
González, Yanilda María. Authoritarian police in democracy: contested security in Latin America. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021.
Human Rights Watch, "Colombia: Abusos policiales en el contexto de manifestaciones multitudinarias. Golpizas, expulsiones de venezolanos y detenciones arbitrarias", HRW, 2020. Recuperado de: https://www.hrw.org/es/news/2020/03/10/colombia-abusos-policiales-en-el-contexto-de-manifestaciones-multitudinarias.
Iturralde, Manuel. Ser duros o ser justos. Uso de la fuerza y su impacto sobre la eficacia y la legitimidad de la policía en el control de la protesta Bogotá: Grupo de Trabajo FIP – FESCOL, 2021.
Iturralde, Manuel. “The Weight of Empire: Crime, Violence, and Social Control y Latin America —and the Promise of Southern Criminology”. Decolonizing the Criminal Question: Colonial Legacies, Contemporary Problems, 1ª ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2023.
Kleinewiese, Julia. “Situational Action Theory and the particular case of settings including a group”. European Journal of Criminology 19, n°5, 2020.
La Silla Vacía, "La Silla Vacía reconstruye cómo policías mataron a los tres jóvenes de Verbenal", La Silla Vacía, 2020. Recuperado de https://www.lasillavacia.com/historias/silla-nacional/la-silla-reconstruye-como-policias-mataron-a-los-tres-jovenes-de-verbenal/
Lawton, Brian. “Levels of Nonlethal Force: An Examination of Individual, Situational, and Contextual Factors”. Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency 44, n°2, 2007.
Loftus, Bethan. “Police occupational culture: classic themes, altered times”. Policing and Society 20, n°1, (2010): 1-20.
Paoline, Eugene y Jacinta Gau. “Police Occupational Culture: Testing the Monolithic Model”. Justice Quarterly 35, n°4, (2018): 670-698.
Perkins, James, y Martin Bourgeois. “Perceptions of Police Use of Deadly Force”. Journal of Applied Social Psychology 36, n°1, (2006): 161-177.
Policía Nacional de Colombia, "Funciones de los Escuadrones Móviles Antidisturbios de la Policía. Nacional". Recuperado el 22 de marzo de 2022 de https://www.policia.gov.co/especializados/antidisturbios/funciones
Policía Nacional de Colombia, “Resolución 02903 por la cual se expide el reglamento para el uso de la fuerza y el empleo de armas, municiones y dispositivo menos letales por la Policía Nacional”, 2017.
Policía Nacional de Colombia. Manual para el comando de atención inmediata, CAI. Bogotá: Policía Nacional de Colombia, 2009.
Ruiz Vásquez, Juan Carlos. “Colombian police under fire: image, corruption and controls”. Policing: An International Journal 36, n°2, (2013): 399-420.
Sirimarco, Mariana. “Una antropóloga en la Policía: una reflexión sobre actuación de género y relaciones de poder en el campo”. Cadernos Pagu 59, n°11, (2020): e205918.
Sozzo, Máximo. “Policing after Dictatorship in South America”, en The Sage Handbook of Global Policing. London: Sage, 2016;
Tankebe, Justice. "Rightful Authority: Exploring the Structure of Police Self-Legitimacy”. SSRN Electronic Journal, (2014).
Trinkner, Rick, Erin M. Kerrison y Phillip A. Goff. “The force of fear: Police stereotype threat, self-legitimacy, and support for excessive force”. Law and Human Behavior 43, n°5, (2019): 421 - 435.
Twersky-Glasner, Aviva. “Police personality: What is it and why are they like that?”. Journal of Police and Criminal Psychology 20, n°1, (2005): 56-67.
Waddington, Peter A. J. “Police (canteen) sub-culture: An Appreciation”. The British Journal of Criminology 39, n°2, (1999): 287-309.
Werb, Dan, Greg Rowell, Gordon Guyatt, Thomas Kerr, Julio Montaner y Evan Wood. “Effect of drug law enforcement on drug market violence: A systematic review”. International Journal of Drug Policy 22, n°2, (2011): 87-94.
Wikström, Per-Olof H. “Explaining Crime as Moral Action”. En Handbook of the Sociology of Morality, 1ª ed. New York: Springer verlag, 2010,
Wikström, Per-Olof H., "Does Everything Matter? Addressing the Problem of Causation and Explanation in the Study of Crime". En When Crime Appears: The Role of Emergence. Editado por McGloin J M, Sullivan C. J & Kennedy L. W. London: Routledge, 2011.
Wikström, Per-Olof H., “Character, circumstances, and the causes of crime: towards an analytical criminology”. The Oxford Handbook of Criminology, 6ª ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017.
Wikström, Per-Olof H., “Explaining Crime and Criminal Careers: the DEA Model of Situational Action Theory”. Journal of Developmental and Life-Course Criminology 6, n°2, (2019a): 188-203.
Wikström, Per-Olof H. “Situational Action Theory: A General, Dynamic and Mechanism-Based Theory of Crime and Its Causes”. En Handbooks of Sociology and Social Research. Springer, Cham, 2019b.
Wisktröm, Per-Olof H. “Situational Action Theory: Toward a Dynamic Theory of Crime and Its Causes”. En Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Criminology and Criminal Justice. Switzerland: Springer International, 2019c.
Wikström, Per-Olof H. y Noémie Bouhana. “Analyzing Radicalization and Terrorism”. The Handbook of the Criminology of Terrorism. John Wiley & Sons, 2016.
Wikström, Per-Olof H., Dietrich Oberwittler, Kyle Treiber y Beth Hardie. Breaking Rules: The Social and Situational Dynamics of Young People’s Urban Crime. Oxford: OUP Oxford, 2012.
Wikström, Per-Olof H. y Kyle Treiber. “Violence as Situational Action”. International Journal of Conflict and Violence. IJCV 3, n°1, (2009): 75-96.
Wikström, Per-Olof H. y Kyle Treiber. “Situational Theory: The Importance of Interactions and Action Mechanisms in the Explanation of Crime”. The Handbook of Criminological Theory, 4. John Wiley & Sons, 2015.
Wikström, Per-Olof H., Kyle Treiber y Gabriela Roman. Character, Circumstances and Criminal Careers: Towards a Dynamic Developmental and Life-Course Criminology (en proceso de publicación). Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2023.
Worden, Robert E., “The “Causes” of Police Brutality: Theory and Evidence on Police Use of Force”. En Criminal Justice Theory, Explaining the Nature and Behavior of Criminal Justice, 2º ed. New York: Routhledge, 2005.
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Published
Dec 26, 2023
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How to Cite
Vera Giraldo, S. (2023). An approach from the Theory of Situational Action to the excessive use of force by members of the police. Nuevo Foro Penal, 19(101), 214–237. https://doi.org/10.17230/nfp19.101.6
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