The article “Beyond false positives” by Taylor analyses one of the errors occurring in the US criminal justice system. The key question the author is addressing is the nature and probable typology of officer-involved shootings. The main theoretical point of view presented in the article is that of Kahneman, who claims that the blunders that people make follow specific patterns, becoming biases and systemic mistakes (Taylor, 2019). These errors could be given diagnostic names to further their prediction, recognition, and comprehension. The key concepts one needs to understand are human errors and the inappropriate police use of deadly force. By the idea of human errors, the author means “occasions in which … mental or physical activities fail to achieve their intended outcome, … [without] the … chance agency” (Taylor, 2019, p. 8). In turn, police use of deadly force refers to police shooting errors relating to defenseless people.
The main assumption about the human nature underlying the article is about human errors. Namely, the author believes that systematic mistakes, rather than being illogical or maladaptive tendencies, should be considered an unwelcome consequence of otherwise beneficial psychological mechanisms (Taylor, 2019). Moreover, Taylor (2019) assumes that typology of errors has value in criminological research. The data the author uses are several cases of police shootings in the US and existing typologies of the consequences of these actions, specifically in Scharf and Binder’s research. The method of the study is the qualitative approach to the comparison of the inappropriate police use of deadly force based on the theories of human errors and mentioned typologies (Taylor, 2019). Although the sample size is not large, it is representative of different instances of mistakes made by police.
Through the use of the described earlier data and method, the author makes generalizations about the types of errors in the application of firearms. The main inference in work is that the mistakes that police regularly make in their use and management of lethal force guns give insight into policing and decision-making techniques (Taylor, 2019). Moreover, the author distinguishes the following classification of the errors: misdiagnosis, misses, misapplication, and unintentional discharges (Taylor, 2019). If one takes this line of reasoning seriously, the implications are a new research on the reasons for particular systematic errors of the officers. These studies, consequently, could lay the foundation for new educational programs and training for police aimed at preventing fatal cases of unarmed citizens. However, if these conclusions are not implemented, the study of the officers’ errors might be delayed since they would not have a reasonable theoretical basis, which means that more lethal accidents are to follow.
Yet, the article has particular limitations that might be discussed, as well as its application. The weakness of the research lies in the size of the sample, which is appropriate for the outline of the theory but not enough for the implementation of the proposed conclusion. Each of the examples presented in this article, as well as the shootings they represent, may be arbitrarily pooled with all other accessible cases that fall under the category of police use of fatal force and then statistically evaluated for causative relationships. Hence, more research needs to be done in this area to confirm or disprove the inference of the author and to investigate the causal relationships between the mistakes and their impact. The information from this article can be applied to criminology study journals, such as Criminology & Public Policy, so that other scholars examine the theory and make it evidence-based.
Reference
Taylor, P. L. (2019). Beyond false positives. Criminology & Public Policy, 18(4), 807–822. Web.