Examining the sources of police use of force in South Korea

Abstract

Objective

The goal of this study is to investigate what factors shape police use of force in the South Korean context.

Methods

The study draws on systematic observational data collected in 97 police substations across South Korea to examine the extent to which police use of force is influenced by a range of legal and extra-legal factors related to situational, suspect, and officer characteristics of police-suspect encounters.

Results

Multinomial logistic regression analyses of 427 police-suspect encounters show that encounters involving suspects assaulting an officer and situations involving the conflict between the suspect and another individual at the beginning of an encounter result in physical restraints and impact methods. The study also found that encounters involving older suspects were more likely to result in verbal force, and encounters involving situations in which an increased number of citizens are present on the scene of the interaction were more likely to result in physical restraints.

Conclusions

Our findings are consistent with the extant literature that officers often respond to legal stimuli when using force, though they also use force on the basis of extra-legal factors. This finding demonstrates the need for de-escalation training for police in South Korea as a means to reduce instances in which officers use force based on extra-legal factors.