NCJ Number
208471
Journal
Journal of Criminal Justice Volume: 33 Issue: 1 Dated: January/February 2005 Pages: 31-41
Editor(s)
Kent B. Joscelyn
Date Published
January 2005
Length
11 pages
Annotation
This study examined the types of actions residents from a small rural community in Pennsylvania believed warranted law enforcement assistance.
Abstract
To examine the types of activities citizens from rural communities thought warranted a law enforcement response, a rural community’s crime report published in the community’s local weekly newspaper was used as a database. The rural community, for this study called Small Town, was located in an isolated part of northeastern Pennsylvania with about 2,500 residents. Manifest and latent content analysis was conducted on 948 police calls to determine whether certain patterns and themes were present in the data. The analysis examined several types of consistent police responses in Small Town: dogs or animals, drunks, dysfunction, and disorder. The study suggested that rural policing tended to rely heavily on informal mechanisms both of reporting crime and unwanted behaviors, as well as rectifying the situations. It was suggested that rural policing requires officers who are trained as generalists and able to respond to an assortment of departmental and social or community needs. References