The Juvenile Force Perception (JFP) survey tool is based on the Response to Resistance Survey (RTR) which is an organization that is a pioneer in attempting to understand reasonable force in specific situations (Faulkner, 1991). The RTR survey has been taken by over 60,000 participants and is developing a standard to determine what is considered reasonable in use-of-force situations. RTR has a nine-part survey that gathers basic biographical information, and then escorts the participants through multiple situations where force decisions are determined. The participant answers “yes” or “no” regarding the reasonableness of the use-of-force scenario. If the participant selects “no” then they are prompted to select which of the use-of-force options they consider to be excessive. This information about what is considered to be excessive is information used only to determine if a pattern exist to determine if a policy change should be employed.
Using the Response to Resistance Survey in its entirety will not be possible as the survey is focused on adult suspects. The Juvenile Force Perception Survey was designed in order to bridge the gap between a juvenile suspect and an adult suspect in the scenarios being evaluated. The Response to Resistance Survey uses adult suspects in the scenarios. In order to obtain an unbiased and pure response it was decided to recreate the Response to Resistance Survey with a juvenile suspect, which has been named the Juvenile Force Perception Survey.
The questions within the survey will remain the same in order to allow for future possible comparison to the adult version of Response to Resistance. The Juvenile Force Perception Survey will use the same validated questions used in the Response to Resistance Survey. However, the visual pictures in the current study will be replaced with a juvenile suspect. The demographic questions along will all questions relative to excessive force and reasonableness will also be taken from the Response to Resistance Survey.
The one area where the Juvenile Force Perception differs from RTR is in the measuring of perceptions. The JFP as civilian and law enforcement officers five additional questions used to evaluate social interactions and the influence they have on a person’s determination of reasonableness.
