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This paper attempts to identify and empirically test the important factors broadly assumed to be associated with the noteworthy increase in African American officers in U.S. municipal police agencies. Using data collected on a representative sample of police departments serving populations of 25,000 + residents across the country (N = 281), a path analysis statistical method was employed in order to assess both the direct and indirect influences of these hypothesized explanatory variables. The primary finding is that the size of the African American population is the predominant contributor to a statistical model accounting for substantial variation in the representation of African American officers in U.S. cities. Other hypothesized factors are far less important than generally believed.

Competing models of prison rule violation exist in criminology. The deprivation model proposes that inmate rule infraction is the product of the stressful and oppressive conditions within the prison itself. In contrast, the importation model argues that characteristics of individuals that predate confinement, such as race and gender, are critical factors in determining modes of inmate adjustment. Individual-level data from the Ohio correctional bureau are used to evaluate the efficacy of these two models. The results of analyses support the importation model over the relative deprivation model. The implications of the study are discussed within the limitations of the data. [C] 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd