Data analysis was accomplished by way of triangulating the data. The authors note that story data-especially stories
personally selected by and edited by respondents-does not suffice alone for an understanding of state actor discretion.
Because their study is an interpretive one, they recognize that they needed to use other sources of information,
such as interviews, document review, and participant observation data to interpret stories. Field notes, for example,
allowed the investigators to compare the deliberate attempt of one police officer to tell "exciting"
stories to the mundane reality of his job which generally involved "routine visits to local apartment complexes,
making a pitch for the managers to cooperate with the police in the community partnership" (p. 46).
This method of collecting state actors' stories produced some rich and interesting data indeed. The interpretation
of the data, however, may leave the reader confused as to what might be learned from the study. Chapter five,
which contains the core of the research findings, begins with the following statement: "State agents' work
is riddled with moral decision making" (p. 67). This is a straightforward and fairly non-controversial point
of view-we all draw from a menu of personal values and cultural expectations when making important decisions.
An important question, then, is "what are the social patterns of discretion used by those in power?"
If, as the authors say, some notions of what is right are given more credence than others, then how are culturally
diverse assessments of morality socially
distributed across occupational categories and positions of power?
Although this question is never directly confronted, there are some themes developed in the data analysis chapters
(chapters 5 and 6). One theme is that police officers project their own sense of justice and morality onto those
they are meant to serve and protect. One of the centerpiece stories in the book involves a police officer that
"sets up" a drunken, pregnant prostitute to be arrested on a public indecency charge because she fails
to meet his personal expectation of what a "mother should be." The authors contend that he draws from
his
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own identity as "good family man" and compares unfavorably the intoxicated, pregnant woman to his own
wife as a way of constructing wrong from right. "The arrestee has committed no major violation of the law,
yet Hinkley goes out of his way to arrest her.. By arresting, Officer Hinkley articulates an identity for himself
that is different from hers, and enforces his 'good' identity through a moralizing politics of prosecution"
(p. 71). The ideological implication here is that the police officer uses his privileged, hegemonic standpoint
to judge the different cultural standards of a disadvantaged woman. In other words, "who is HE to judge HER?"
At this point, it seemed as if the analysis would take a critical perspective on the way that race, class, and
gender shapes decision-making (i.e., white, middle-class males in power thrust their values onto those they police).
Instead, the authors suggest that there aren't ideological patterns at all. In fact, the authors argue, "the
identities of state agents, as for other political subjects are fractured. Race, gender, class, and occupation
and any number of other social orderings mix, mesh, and combine and contradict each other to create a heterogeneous,
fractured body of individuals bound by a shared identity as 'state agents' whose moral intentions are complex,
diverse and riddled with the traces of a whole host of other identities" (p. 72). Are we to assume, then,
that race, class, gender, sexual orientation, and ideology are equally distributed throughout state occupations?
The empirical evidence on the characteristics of American police officers would suggest otherwise. It is on this
point, that the investigators miss an opportunity to discuss the possibility that moral decision-making is not
just an extension of one's individual identity, but a
collective phenomenon that exists within particular occupations. Because of the overrepresentation of white males
in police work, do most police officers, by and large, share a particular moral agenda that results in patterned
biased responses to the general public?
Although this question is not addressed, Oberweis and Musheno do suggest that state actor discretion is often driven
by the social memberships of decision-makers. In one story, for example, a lesbian police supervisor creatively
interprets family leave policy to accommodate another lesbian officer requesting leave to attend to her partner
who is undergoing surgery. Although Officer Marker (the lesbian officer) is described as "conscientious"
and willing to expand notions of family to accommodate someone who shares a common characteristic, Officer Hinkley
is described as constricting the meaning of family in order to "better match his own moral identity and to
delegitimate a person who is not like him and his family" (p. 75). The message, here, is that some moral
standpoints (i.e., equity for same-sex
relationships) are preferable to others (i.e., negative attitudes toward drinking while pregnant). The policy
implication is that a more diverse workforce would result in more tolerance and fairness in the street-level decisions
of state actors. This is a reasonable objective, however, the authors say very little about the ways in which
state agencies might systematically recruit to serve the interests of diversity or any other ways that varieties
of moral standpoints might be incorporated into the public
workforce.
The stories of vocational rehabilitation specialists are also used to demonstrate that individual moral perspectives
play an important part in discretionary decision-making. Although
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the study suggests that police officers use discretion to accommodate what is fair to them, rehabilitation specialists
are shown to use discretion based on what they think is fair to their clients. One hearing-impaired specialist,
for example, sometimes uses her authority to advocate for her hearing- impaired clients against the wishes of their
parents. As a representative of deaf-culture, the specialist "believes that she has the right, or is 'right,'
to disrupt the family relationships that interfere with what she, the state agent, wants them to be" (p. 77).
Again, a state actor draws from her social membership as a hearing impaired person to make discretionary decisions
that, from her point of view, represent the "right" thing to do. As with police decisions, this suggests
that patterns in state actor discretion owe much to
the social demographic composition of the workforce. Although the book talks a lot about the importance of individual
identity, the data suggest that the social and cultural structure of the workforce is what matters most.
The social and cultural environments of these worksites are, in fact, discussed in some detail. The authors provide
an excellent history of the police department and state rehabilitation services administration. These histories
suggest the importance of ideological movements, policy trends (community policing), and administrative turnover.
The historical analysis demonstrates that discretion waxes and wanes and changes form depending upon larger social
structures and cultural ideas. Yet this part of the analysis is very brief and too subtle. There is an excellent
but brief discussion of the tension between macho motives for fighting crime and the more public-friendly orientation
of community policing.
Finally, scholars who use qualitative research methods to understand culture, identity, and law in practice will
find this study illuminating. The sections on methodology and the conceptualization of identity are detailed and
insightful and offer convincing critiques of mainstream scholarship.
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Copyright 2002 by the author, Thomas Vander Ven.