NCJ Number
114012
Date Published
1988
Length
12 pages
Annotation
The director of NIJ discusses the impacts of NIJ research on traditional police practices, with emphasis on the longstanding views that random patrol deters crime and that rapid response is essential both to deal with crime and to build public support.
Abstract
Police practices rested on these two concepts for a long time. However, extensive experimentation over the last 15 years has shown both of these concepts to be invalid and even counterproductive. NIJ-funded experiments conducted in Kansas City, St. Louis, and Minneapolis tested the practice of preventive patrol and found that it had no effect on the crime rate or the public's perception of safety. Similarly, research on the effects of rapid response time found that police response time is unrelated to the probability of making an arrest or locating a witness. The critical factor was the time it took citizens to report a crime. Further research focused on differentiated police responses to different types of calls. This research showed a substantial savings in resources with no decrease in public satisfaction. Other projects suggest that some productive uses of the police resources not needed for random patrol or rapid response are efforts to form closer bonds between police and neighborhoods and the use of problem-oriented policing to analyze groups of incidents and to draw on a variety of public and private resources to help solve the problem. These examples show that police must be willing to test tradition and break from it if necessary to maintain efficient law enforcement.