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Police sexual assault investigation training, impulsivity, and officer intentions to arrest and use procedural justice: a randomized experiment

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Abstract

Objectives

Examine the effect of a 40-h police sexual assault training and individual-level impulsivity on officers’ intention to make an arrest and the importance placed on using procedural justice when interacting with victims.

Methods

Training courses were randomly assigned to the treatment and control groups. Vignettes depicting sexual assault reports were randomly assigned to participants (N=318) in each group. Vignette manipulations were randomized by victim-offender relationship (stranger/non-stranger) and rape myth acceptance (present/not present/ambiguous).

Results

Training increased officers’ intentions to arrest. Training and lower impulsivity increased the importance officers placed on using procedural justice. Vignette manipulations were not significantly correlated with either outcome. Impulsivity did not moderate—or change—training effects.

Conclusions

Sexual assault training can increase officers’ self-reported intentions to arrest and the perceived importance placed on using procedural justice in interactions with victims. This finding is important as prior research demonstrated that using procedural justice principles can improve victim engagement with investigators.

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Notes

  1. Specifically, the SAFE Act required that agencies with fewer than 5 officers send at least 1 representative to the training, agencies with 5 to 30 officers send at least 2 officers, and agencies with more than 30 officers send at least 4 officers.

  2. Pearson’s r correlations were used as effect sizes. Based on Gignac and Szodorai’s (2016) recommendations for interpreting the magnitude of r, .10 is interpreted as a small effect, .20 represents a medium effect, and .30 is considered a large effect (see also Hemphill, 2003).

  3. Because the arrest variable was ordinal, an ordinal logistic regression model was also estimated. The results mirrored findings from the OLS regression results. Specifically, training (b = .88, p = .00) significantly increased the likelihood of arrest, while impulsivity (b = −.21, p = .12), stranger case (b = .27, p = .28), and rape myths case (b = .33, p = .20) were not significantly related to arrest.

  4. The interaction term Training×Impulsivity was included because of the significant relationship between impulsivity and procedural justice in the direct effects model. Because the measures of stranger case and rape myths case were not correlated with either outcome, interactions between these variables and training were not included in the analyses.

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank our research partners at the KYDOCJT (James Root, Frank Kubala, and John Schwartz) for their assistance in facilitating this evaluation. We also thank the members of the Kentucky Association of Sexual Assault Programs, the Kentucky SART Advisory Committee, and the Kentucky Office of the Attorney General for their helpful insights on the study. Finally, we thank the officers who participated in the KYDOCJT training programs for their participation.

Funding

This project was supported by Grant No. 2017-AK-BX-009 by the Bureau of Justice Assistance. The Bureau of Justice Assistance is a component of the Department of Justice’s Office of Justice Programs, which also includes the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the National Institute of Justice, the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, the Office for Victims of Crime, and the SMART Office. Points of view or opinions in this document are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the official position or polices of the US Department of Justice.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Criminal Justice, University of Louisville, 2311 S. 3rd Street, Brigman Hall #223, Louisville, KY, 40292, USA

    Bradley A. Campbell

  2. Indiana University Southeast, New Albany, IN, USA

    David S. Lapsey Jr

  3. University of Idaho, Moscow, ID, USA

    Cortney A. Franklin

  4. University of Houston-Downtown, Houston, TX, USA

    Alondra D. Garza

  5. University of Texas at El Paso, El Paso, TX, USA

    Amanda Goodson

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Correspondence to Bradley A. Campbell.

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This project was approved by the University of Louisville’s Institutional Review Board.

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Appendix

Appendix

Table 5 KYDOCJT 40-h sexual assault investigation training course topics and time allocations
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Table 6 Full text of vignettes
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Table 7 Factor analysis results for importance of using procedural justice and impulsivity scales
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Campbell, B.A., Lapsey, D.S., Franklin, C.A. et al. Police sexual assault investigation training, impulsivity, and officer intentions to arrest and use procedural justice: a randomized experiment. J Exp Criminol (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11292-023-09572-y

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