Name:​ Steven Giles

Class:​ Intro to Criminal Justice

Date Submitted:​ 11/20/2020
Bibliography ​– Ozkan, T., Worrall, J. L., & Piquero, A. R. (2016). Does minority representation
in police agencies reduce assaults on the police? American Journal of Criminal Justice : AJCJ,
41(3), 402-423. doi:​http://dx.doi.org.grcc.idm.oclc.org/10.1007/s12103-016-9338-6
Your Word Count: ​586

SUMMARY:
The article starts out by bringing up the numerous high profile deaths at the hand of the police
over the years. A proposed solution of which is to have more representation in the police, which
would then decrease the amount of police related incidents. However this article decides to then
reverse the question and ask if representation would also lower the amount of assaults that
occur on the police. They dive into research pertaining to minority representation in the police
precincts. However no conclusive evidence was found that would prove that it indeed either
reduces or even increases assaults on police officers. Then they go into other aspects of
research that could tie into this topic. For example, they go into detail about how the use of
body armor is linked to higher death and injury. They then go into theories as to why these
problems arise in the first place, which is followed by a dump of a lot of data gotten from the
research.

COMMENTARY:
I chose this article because of the recent events that unfolded earlier in the year that shaked the
entire nation to its core. A popular idea of fixing these problems has been to increase the
minority representation in the police force. I thought It’d be interesting to flip the question on its
head and see if it also affects the violence on the police; something we saw a lot of this year.
This article surprised me by giving the answer to that question surprisingly quick. However there
are things about the article that I didn’t think were done right or would change. For example the
way they completely focused on other information that went back to data on the first topic felt
jarring and confusing. At one point the authors are writing about how black mayors affect police
violence, then they go back to data on the original topic. If I feel like if the article is talking about
a certain topic it shouldn’t jump around to multiple topics as that will only make the reader feel
lost in a train of thought. I feel like they should have just focused on the research, data, and how
that data flowed into the research question. That would have made the article a lot easier to
read and understand. One thing that I think they did a fantastic job on is how the data pertains
to the information they are talking about. They show the data clear and organized so you can
read it and clearly understand what it is they pertain to. They also then themselves explain how
the data works which is also very helpful. Overall I think the article was great, It just needs to cut
out unnecessary information that didn’t really relate to the rest of the article. I think if they
wanted to use that information they could have put it at the end or published a separate article
on the other data they discovered.

CONCLUSION:
In summary I believe that the article was straight in concise in its point in answering the question
to answer. It then spends in adequate enough time showing the proof of that answer. I
recommend however if you are reading this to skip some of the information in the middle if you
are only looking for what the title of the article is asking. As they do go off in a tangent on some
adjacent questions which is still important information, but it doesn’t exactly have to do with the
main question.