Mandatory arrest: loosely coupled organisations, situational variables, and the arrest decision Scott W. Phillips Buffalo State College, 1300 Elmwood Ave., Buffalo, NY 14222. Tel: +1 716 878-3154; email: phillisw@buffalostate.edu Received 21 July 2007; accepted 2 January 2008 Keywords: loose decision theory, police decision-making, discretion Scott W. Phillips is an assistant professor in the Criminal Justice Department at Buffalo State College. He worked as a police officer in Houston, Texas and as a grant advisor for the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services within the US Justice Department. He received a PhD from SUNY at Albany, and his research interests include police behaviour and police organisation issues. ABSTRACT Police officer decision-making is thought to be a function of organisation size and situational vari- ables. Large organisations are assumed to have gaps between administrators and street-level workers, allowing officers in large agencies to exercise discretion in their decision-making, whereas officers in small agencies are closely connected to, and more easily monitored by, administrators. Situational variables are the legal and extralegal aspects of an incident that might influence decision-making. Loose-coupling theory provides a framework to examine the impact of organisation size on officer decision-making. This study examined the arrest decisions of officers when handling domestic violence incidents. A factorial research design integrated four situational variables into vignettes describing a domestic viol- ence incident. Police officers in four departments, one large and three small, indicated the likelihood of making an arrest based on cases described in the vignettes. 917 vignettes were analysed, with results showing that most officers would arrest the offender. Victim injury, an order of protection, a victim’s preference for an arrest, and an unco- operative offender were significant in the arrest decision. Agency size, however, was not sig- nificant in the arrest decision. The impacts of the findings are discussed, as is the utility of loose- coupling theory. INTRODUCTION Police officer decision-making is thought to be a function of organisational structures and the situational characteristics of an incident. The organisational structure of a police agency is assumed to influence an officer’s behaviour through formal policies and the influence of administrators (Mastrofski, Ritti, & Hoffmaster, 1987). In larger police agencies there are multiple bureaucratic layers that separate a street- level officer from the policies or direct influences of the upper-level administrators. These layers cause a gap between admin- istrative control and street-level behaviour. In larger organisations it would be common for a street-level officer to have no inter- action with the police chief. The gaps between street-level officers and the admin- istration make larger organisations ‘loosely coupled’ (Stojkovic, Kalinich, & Klofas, International Journal of Police Science and Management, Vol. 10 No. 4, 2008, pp. 374–387. DOI: 10.1350/ijps.2008.10.4.093 International Journal of Police Science & Management Volume 10 Number 4 Page 374