The effectiveness of affirmative action: The case of women in policing

Although the legal bases of affirmative action plans have been debated widely, empirical examination of their effectiveness has been limited. This paper examines the impact of affirmative action on the hiring and promotion of women in policing. A survey of municipal departments serving populations of more than 50,000 found that women still constitute less than 10 percent of all police officers. Nevertheless, multivariate analyses show that both court-ordered and voluntary affirmative action policies have had a statistically significant impact on the hiring but not the promotion of female officers. In addition, case study data from five agencies show that affirmative action policies have widened women's opportunities to receive specialized assignments. These findings suggest the importance of continuing affirmative action policies despite recent legal setbacks.     

The pluralization of policing and the rise of private policing in China

Policing in China has undergone tremendous change during the economic transformation of the past three decades. This paper describes the plural policing bodies that have existed during pre- and post-reform periods in China. In the pre-reform period the policing bodies were generally public in nature with the public security police playing an important role in providing professional guidance to the other policing bodies. In the post-reform period, there has been a transition from a monopoly of public policing to an integration of public/private policing, with the public security police still playing a leading role in the policing network. Apart from the emergence of private policing (the security service industry), there is also a trend towards privatizing some previously public policing bodies in line with the movement toward strengthening the rule of law and towards privatization in general.     

The inchoate nature of community policing: Differences between community policing and traditional police officers

Over the past 20 years, police departments across America have adopted a community—or problem-oriented—policing philosophy. Community policing has not been implemented wholesale, however. Most departments have assigned some officers to community policing roles but kept the majority in traditional motorized patrol assignments. Pertinent literature suggests that these two groups do not see eye to eye on their respective roles and duties. In this study, work-redesign theory is used as a conceptual framework to explain officer functioning in both community policing and traditional motorized policing settings. Findings indicate key similarities between community policing officers and officers assigned to traditional motorized patrol, despite differences in job satisfaction, perception of impact, and policing style.     

The power of policing partnerships: sustaining the gains

Objectives

Third Party Policing (TPP) involves partnerships between police and third parties where the legal powers of third parties are harnessed to prevent or control crime problems. This paper explores the characteristics and mechanisms of TPP as a crime control strategy, focusing on how the partnership approach in policing can help sustain crime control gains over the long run. Using the ABILITY Truancy Trial as an example, I examine how policing can contribute to long-term social change for high-risk young people living in poor-performing school districts and high-risk communities.

Methods

The ABILITY Trial includes 102 young truants randomly allocated to a control (business-as-usual) or an experimental condition. The experimental condition activates the key theoretical components of Third Party Policing (TPP): a partnership between police and participating schools that activates and escalates (where needed) jurisdictional truanting laws (the legal lever).

Results

The paper presents a theoretical discussion of TPP and uses the ABILITY Trial to highlight the way TPP works in practice. Baseline data are presented for the ABILITY Trial. Outcome results are not presented.

Conclusions

Third Party Policing partnerships rest on the capacity of police to build relationships with third parties who have a stake in the crime problem, who possess responsive regulation legal levers, and who have a clear mandate to offer long-term solutions and help sustain the crime control gains. Partnerships, I argue, offer long-term solutions for police because they activate latent mechanisms, building the capacity for third parties to both maintain short-term gains and sustain the crime control gains beyond the lifespan of the initial police intervention.     

The changing landscape of policing: the Metro-LEC approach

Profound changes are being made in the way police organize and collaborate. Many of these changes are due to economic times, as well as changes that occurred after September 11th. Small- and medium-size agencies are finding new and innovative ways to mobilize for critical events and large-scale operations. The mechanisms for collaboration vary and few studies have examined the effectiveness of these different types of interagency cooperative ventures. The Metropolitan Law Enforcement Council is a non-profit organization and pools resources from 43 law enforcement agencies. This study found the approach to be successful in accomplishing its primary mission of providing needed services to the member agencies. Lastly, this type of collaborative approach is changing the landscape of policing through the use of multijurisdictional special operational units available to respond to a host of situations from public and private requests.     

The virtuosos of policing

This paper reports the findings of a nationwide survey undertaken in order to address the issue of who the experts are in the field of law enforcement management. The results reflect the opinion of the leadership of the nation’s most prominent practitioner and academic professional criminal justice and law enforcement organizations. Thirty-seven individuals emerge as the leading law enforcement management experts-the virtuosos. Of these, eight are characterized as the nation’s elite.     

The co-implementation of Compstat and community policing

Over the last twenty-five years Compstat and community policing have emerged as powerful movements in U.S. police reform. Despite their importance, there are virtually no studies on how they interact when implemented in the same police organization. Based on field work in seven police agencies, this article provides the first systematic research on this co-implementation issue. In doing so it examines the reform literature to illuminate and clarify the key doctrinal elements of Compstat and community policing, including where they are similar and where they differ. Next it describes the patterns of co-implementation that emerged across different sites, including the finding that these reforms operated largely independently. This leads us to consider a broader theoretical explanation for why this should be the case and to provide a basis for enriching future research on the co-implementation of these reforms.     

The changing character of criminality and policing in post-socialist Lithuania: From fighting organized crime to policing marginal populations?

This paper argues that the character ofcriminality in post-socialist Lithuania isundergoing a significant change. Up untilthe mid 1990s criminality was defined bythe conflict between the state and criminalgroups who challenged the state's authorityin the re-distribution of state property.Criminal groups used violence to challengethe state's rules and regulations regardingthe process and outcomes of privatization. The state responded by legal andinstitutional reforms leading tomilitarization and centralization of thepolice force.Successful legal and police reformsinitiated during the early 1990s led to adramatic decline in organized crimeactivities. Crime rates also began tostabilize because of the improvingsocio-economic situation in the country. As a result, by the mid 1990s the characterof criminality began to change. There aresigns that it is increasingly associatedwith the growing social and economicmarginalization of those segments of thepopulation, which did not (or could not)adapt to the introduction of competitivemarkets. The situation was aggravated by arapid decline of employment within theLithuanian economy and significantcurtailment of social welfare provided bythe state. A growing number ofindividuals, especially males with poorskills and education whose employmentopportunities were severely restricted withthe decline in manufacturing industries,were dropping out from the labor force evenin the presence of jobs; were not marrying;and were increasingly plagued by a varietyof social pathologies and health problemsincluding crime, alcoholism, drug abuse,and depression. New forms of entrenchedpoverty unknown during the socialist erasuch as vagabonds and homelessness,including homeless children, has nowdeveloped and is associated with itsapparently inevitable concomitant increasedpetty criminality.     

The Commissioner cometh: The challenge for democratic policing in England and Wales

Public policing in England and Wales is currently undergoing and will undergo substantial changes to the way it delivers its services in the future. Consideration of the different proposals for change when viewed in isolation appears to produce uncertainty in terms of organisational structure. However, when considered as interdependent they provide a more clear and problematic issue that could undermine the current democratic model of policing utilised in this country. This article considers the ideas of the function of the public police within a democratic policing model and how changes such as the introduction of Police and Crime Commissioners, an apparent lack of engagement by the public with the democratic process, as well as the possibility of privatisation and outsourcing currently in vogue, may have a detrimental effect upon the policing philosophy that has underpinned policing in England and Wales for nearly 200 years.     

Technology and the internationalization of policing: A comparative-historical perspective

This article analyzes theoretical and empirical aspects of the role of technology in the internationalization of the police function from the mid-19th century until World War II. The findings indicate that technological advances in communication, transportation, and criminal identification significantly facilitated the internationalization of police operations. At the same time, police institutions also held technological developments accountable for an increase in opportunities for cross-border criminality, which, in turn, justified the planning and implementation of international police strategies. The article concludes with theoretical reflections on the relative autonomy of technology as a facilitating factor in the internationalization of policing.     

The politics of the selective gaze: Closed Circuit Television and the policing of public space

This paper gives first an explanation for therapid development of Closed Circuit Television (CCTV)throughout Britain. This considers the implicationsof its rapid proliferation on the geographies ofpublic space and highlights the selectivity of thegaze of the surveillance cameras and the consequentpotential for the exclusion of certain groups frompublic space. The paper then extends this by usingresearch from two rural towns to address three basicquestions: how the cameras are used for direct lawenforcement; how this use is governed; and how thepublic react to the use of CCTV. It concludes that bystressing the selectivity of the surveillance anddrawing the implications of this for enforcement andgovernance, and also stressing the extent to which theplacing and timing of the use of the cameras fails toreflect the revealed preferences of the communitiesinvolved.     

The transfer of property rights by theft: an economic analysis

This article studies the voluntary transfer of property that had been stolen—a topic almost unexplored in the law and economics literature. The question is whether a buyer of a stolen good should obtain title to the good if he/she has purchased it in good faith. As described in the article different jurisdictions treat this issue differently. The traditional theory suggests that there is a trade-off between the costs of protecting the good and the costs of verifying the ownership. However, as shown, the rule of law concerning this issue significantly affects parties’ incentives. Specifically, it is shown that a rule of law where good faith is irrelevant in determining the issue of property rights Pareto dominates a rule where good faith may protect an innocent buyer. Thus, an owner of an asset will spend more resources on protecting his property and potential buyers will incur higher costs in order to verify the ownership when good faith is decisive for the transfer of property rights.     

Corrections: The state of the art

The failure of the correctional system to rehabilitate the criminal is discussed in terms of the controversy over external and internal issues that has inhibited the establishment of goals. External problems include: (1) the possibility that crime and the criminal serve a purpose in society, (2) the latent functions of correctional functions, and (3) the crime themes that pervade our society. Internal problems include: (1) the absence of a theoretical framework, (2) the lack of negative feedback, and (3) the inappropriate use of the medical model. If the correctional system fails to develop goals for rehabilitation and prevention of recidivism, then political pressures for a punitive justice will prevail.     

Problem-oriented policing in public housing: The Jersey City evaluation

This paper examines the impact of a problem-oriented policing project on serious crime problems in six public housing sites in Jersey City, New Jersey. Representatives from the police department and the local housing authority, social service providers, and public housing tenants formed six problem-solving teams. Using systematic documentation of the teams' activities and calls for police service, we examine changes in serious crime both across and within the six sites over a 2 1/2-year period. We find that problem-oriented policing, as compared with traditional policing strategies used before the problem-oriented policing project, led to fewer serious crime calls for service over time and that two public housing sites in particular succeeded in reducing violent, property, and vehicle-related crimes.