Police in the Laboratory of Criminal Justice (From Violent Crime in America, P 26-43, 1983, Kenneth R Feinberg, ed. - See NCJ-93158)

• NCJ Number: 93161
• Author(s): L W Sherman
• Date Published: 1983
• Length: 18 pages
• Sale Source: National Policy Exchange
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America
• Note: *This document is currently unavailable from NCJRS.

Annotation

Traditional police thinking about crime has tried to make crime problems respond to police strategies, but should focus on preventing violent crime in three highly specific areas: violent or potentially violent relationships among people, locations with a high potential for violence, and violent attacks with weapons recruiting in injuries.

Abstract

A sensible approach to policing violent crime would consist of the following steps: mapping out the nature of the problems, classifying them into categories; determining the possible causes of each category and identifying those which the police can affect and ones beyond police control; listing police strategies that could impact any of the causes and developing an overall strategy; and conducting field experiments to test the strategy's effectiveness. Current police strategies are often ineffective because of organizational problems. Police are deterred from widespread reassignment of personnel to foot patrol by a strong public demand for rapid response to requests for emergency assistance, even though such calls are rarely reports of serious crime. Police also frequently fail to target crime prevention information for citizens' groups to local problems and they may use little analysis to guide investigations. Strategies to prevent violent crime caused by relationships among people could could concentrate on domestic violence, child abuse, youth gangs, threats among acquaintances, acquaintance rape, and stranger violence. Police would gain considerably by focusing their enforcement efforts on violence-prone locations, such as bars, cash repositories, and disorderly neighborhoods. The most promising approach to preventing stranger attacks in homes is organizing citizens to watch each other's houses for suspicious circumstances. Police can also reduce crime by controlling firearm use and drunken drivers. Finally, police need to develop better ways of identifying and apprehending violent criminals, as well as developing the evidentiary basis needed for conviction. The article provides an agenda for police action and 14 footnotes.