NCJ Number
223335
Journal
Justice Quarterly Volume: 25 Issue: 2 Dated: June 2008 Pages: 223-251
Date Published
June 2008
Length
29 pages
Annotation
This research examined the influence of community-oriented policing (COP) on citizens' crime-reporting behaviors.
Abstract
The findings reveal that some facets of police involvement in community-oriented policing (COP) influence the nature of citizens’ crime-reporting behaviors. Multinomial logistic regression analyses indicate that although third-party police notification is more likely in cities with large numbers of full-time COP officers, victims residing in such cities are significantly less likely to report to the police than they are to report to nonpolice officials. However, in cities where the training of police officers in COP is relatively extensive, victims demonstrate a preference for police notification (relative to both nonpolice notification and nonreporting). Lastly, multiplicative models indicate that police involvement in COP has less of an influence on the reporting behaviors of residentially unstable victims who likely lack strong social ties to the communities in which they reside. The study used five city-level indicators of the extent and nature of police involvement, to include: logs of proportion of full-time COP officers; proportion of COP trained recruits; proportion of current COP trained officers; proportion of citizens served by a force that trained citizens in COP; and proportion of citizens served by a force that formed problem solving partnerships with the community. The study's data consisted of incidents of violence obtained from the Area-Identified National Crime Victimization Survey that were linked to city-level measures of police involvement in COP. Tables, references, appendix