chapter 4 Flashcards
(14 cards)
Patrol Strategies
Motorized patrol (vehicles)
Foot patrol
Bike patrol (can access places cars cannot)
Air patrol (helicopter, provides aerial view)
Marine patrol (boats)
Mountain patrol (horses)
ATV patrol (beaches)
Routine Activities Theory
When 3 elements converge in space and time crime is more likely to occur:
Motivated Offender: there must be a person who is willing and wanting to commit a crime
Suitable target: Anything or any person that crime can be committed against (person assault, rob a laptop)
Absence of a capable guardian: No person or nothing that can prevent the crime from occuring (security guard, house alarm, etc.)
How Does the Routine Activities Theory Apply To Policing?
Police Officers act as capable guardians, and therefore eliminate one of the three elements of this theory
Deterrence theory
We as people are rational minded and we don’t commit crime because the cost of committing crime outweighs the benefit.
If we speed, we will get caught and punished (ticket outweighs the benefit of getting to destination faster
2 ways to displace crime
Spatial Displacement (move it elsewhere)
Temporal Displacement (Crime shifts to a different time but remains in the same place.
4 Forms of data and what they aim to measure for EXAM
Survey Data
Crime Data
Arrest Data
Observation Data
S.A.R.A
Scanning: What is the problem?
Analysis: What is contributing to the problem?
Response: What can we do to improve the problem?
Assessment: Did the response work?
Three Theories about Patrol strategies
Kansas City Preventive Patrol Experiment (1972) (George L. Kelling)
Minneapolis Hot Spots Policing Experiment (Focused Patrol) Sherman and weisburd (1995)
Philadelphia Policing Tactics Experiment
Dr. Jerry Ratcliffe and Dr. Elizabeth Groff
Minneapolis Hot Spots Policing Experiment (Focused Patrol)
Minneapolis Hot Spots Policing Experiment (Focused Patrol)
Sherman and weisburd (1995) were motivated by the historical conclusion that police could not impact crime via their presence/strategies
But if crime concentrates at certain places -> what happens if we direct much police attention to those places?
Hotspots: small clusters of addresses with many calls for service
Example: East hastings is a hotspot in Vancouver
Partnered with the Minneapolis police department to identify 110 hotspots of crime
110 hot spots were divided by 2
55 Experimental Treatment
Intensified but INTERMITTENT patrol
Goal -> 3 hours of patrol per day at each of the experimental hot spots
11am- 7pm 7pm - 3am
Results
Experimental sites received TWICE as much observed patrol presence
Total crimes were reduced by 6-13%
Observed disorder was reduced by 50%
Suggesting that substantial increases in police presence can reduce crime and disorder at high crime locations (“hot spots”).
Problems
Fidelity (Officer Boredom): officers will get bored over time when they sit at a stop sign for three hours a day for the next 6 months.
Displacement
Police actions at Hot Spots: This study was unable to account for the actions of the police officers at these locations. Some officers could be talking to business owners and some could be sleeping in there car.
Kansas City Preventive Patrol Experiment (1972)
The Kansas City Police Department undertook the most comprehensive experiment ever conducted at the time to analyze the effectiveness of routine preventive patrol
Divided the city into three groups which would all have different levels of routine preventive patrol
Reactive Group
No routine preventive patrol; officers entered beats only to respond to calls for service
Proactive Group
Two or three times MORE preventive patrol than regular
Control Group
Regular amount of preventive patrol
Philadelphia Policing Tactics Experiment
3 Policing Tactics:
Foot Patrol
Problem-Oriented Policing
Offender-Focused Policing
Foot Patrol
Police officers patrol on foot instead of in vehicles; often in pairs or groups
The goal is to increase visibility/presence of officers, and therefore prevent crime from occuring
Offender-Focused Policing
By increasing the certainty of arrest for a small group of highly active offenders, police can deter both the targeted individuals as well as others who hear about such targeting from coming crime
81 violent crime location identified
Violent crime locations divided in 3 groups of 27 sites
27 FP, 27 PO, 27 OF
Within each group, 20 sites experimental treatment and 7 sites acted as controls
Each tactic ran for a minimum of 12 weeks and a maximum of 24 weeks at any single target area
Reason why they didnt start and end at the same time exam
Problem-Oriented Policing
