Discretion and gender disproportionality in police disciplinary systems

Police supervisor decision making with regard to disciplinary action has re ceived scant empirical study in general, and has yet to be examined across gender in this paper we use official departmental disciplinary data from th e Philadelphia Police Department for the period 1991-1998 to study the exte nt to which gender parity exists in the formal disciplinary system. Three q uestions are investigated: (1) Is there an observable gender disproportiona lity in the police discipline punishment rates? (2) Is any observed gender disproportionality attributable to gender discrimination in the police disc iplinary process or some earlier decision stage? (3) If any observed dispro portionality is not attributable to the police disciplinary process, does t he aggregate finding mask variation within offense categories Three finding s emanate from our effort. First, the results suggest that there is a minim al observed gender disproportionality. Second, with roughly 100 per cent qi the observed gender disproportionality attributable to differential involv ement in charging, it appears that the observed disparity can not be attach ed to rite police 'disciplinary process. Third the aggregate analysis masks offense-specific variation in the percentage disproportionality unexplaine d by differential involvement in charging Implications for police disciplin ary practices and directions for future research are addressed.