Con­tin­u­ing from yes­ter­day

Hansen Stew­art

The New­ly-mint­ed CoP Gary Grif­fith has adopt­ed some crime-fight­ing ap­proach­es that new re­search has proven to be ef­fec­tive in crime re­duc­tion. "There are a num­ber of proac­tive polic­ing strate­gies that have im­pacts on crime and, for the most part, they don't cause those neg­a­tive out­comes in the com­mu­ni­ty," says David Weis­burd, a crim­i­nol­o­gist at George Ma­son Uni­ver­si­ty and the lead au­thor of the analy­sis.

Weis­burg and Bueer­mann (a for­mer po­lice chief) worked with a pan­el of 15 oth­er ex­perts, in­clud­ing crim­i­nol­o­gists, lawyers, sta­tis­ti­cians, and an­oth­er for­mer po­lice chief. They analysed ex­ist­ing stud­ies of sev­er­al pop­u­lar, proac­tive polic­ing strate­gies. Their re­sults are pub­licly avail­able in a re­port pub­lished by the Na­tion­al Acad­e­mies of Sci­ences, Med­i­cine, and En­gi­neer­ing. These four strate­gies should be at­tempt­ed and CoP Gary Grif­fith has be­gun the process of im­ple­ment­ing some:

PROB­LEM-ORI­ENT­ED POLIC­ING

Prob­lem-ori­ent­ed polic­ing was one of the most promis­ing strate­gies Weis­burd and his team stud­ied. There was ev­i­dence sug­gest­ing that the ap­proach both re­duces crime in the short term and im­proves com­mu­ni­ty re­la­tions slight­ly. (There is lit­tle long-term da­ta, which was true of every­thing the pan­el ex­am­ined.) To count as prob­lem-ori­ent­ed polic­ing, a pro­gramme had to iden­ti­fy an is­sue in a com­mu­ni­ty, some­times with in­put from com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers, and de­vel­op strate­gies to solve it. The is­sue might be spe­cif­ic, like ju­ve­nile crime in one park, or it might be broad­er, like "phys­i­cal dis­or­der".

Many stud­ies of prob­lem-ori­ent­ed polic­ing pro­grams found they in­creased com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers' sat­is­fac­tion with the po­lice. Some al­so found they im­proved peo­ple's per­cep­tion of their qual­i­ty of life, low­ered their fear of crime, and bol­stered their be­lief in the le­git­i­ma­cy of the po­lice.

HOT SPOTS POLIC­ING

Hot spots polic­ing takes ad­van­tage of re­search that has shown that a large por­tion of a city's crime will of­ten oc­cur on just a few streets. Hot spots polic­ing pro­grammes in­vest in these streets more in­tense­ly—and stud­ies show that the strat­e­gy helps re­duce crime there in the short term, with­out push­ing off crime to sur­round­ing ar­eas. The re­searchers al­so found that hot spots polic­ing rarely cre­at­ed back­lash from the com­mu­ni­ty.

STOP-AND-FRISK AND TRAF­FIC STOPS

Stop-and-frisk and ag­gres­sive traf­fic stops have be­come some of the most con­tro­ver­sial po­lice tac­tics in Amer­i­ca, the for­mer be­cause of civ­il rights law­suits and the lat­ter be­cause of po­lice killings of un­armed black men pulled over for mi­nor in­frac­tions. Re­search shows that, when ap­plied to spe­cif­ic ar­eas, stop-and-frisk can re­duce crime.

COM­MU­NI­TY POLIC­ING

Amer­i­can po­lice de­part­ments de­ploy so-called "com­mu­ni­ty polic­ing" in a lot of dif­fer­ent ways, from hav­ing a po­lice rep­re­sen­ta­tive at­tend com­mu­ni­ty meet­ings to pub­lish­ing newslet­ters to bike pa­trols. The re­searchers found that when they sep­a­rat­ed the "com­mu­ni­ty en­gage­ment" strate­gies from oth­er po­lice tac­tics they stud­ied—such as prob­lem-ori­ent­ed polic­ing, which of­ten so­lic­its com­mu­ni­ty in­put—com­mu­ni­ty en­gage­ment alone didn't re­duce crime. But big re­views of com­mu­ni­ty polic­ing did find it im­proved com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers' sat­is­fac­tion with po­lice. Whether it im­proved peo­ple's per­ceived dis­or­der in their neigh­bour­hoods, fear of crime and be­lief in the po­lice's le­git­i­ma­cy was less clear.

It's pos­si­ble com­mu­ni­ty polic­ing does re­duce crime, but re­searchers couldn't tell be­cause stud­ies of it don't tend to last longer than a year, Weis­burd says. The the­o­ry be­hind com­mu­ni­ty polic­ing sug­gests it should take a while to work against crime be­cause po­lice need to build up trust among their con­stituents, first. But ma­jor crime-study fun­ders, such as the De­part­ment of Jus­tice, of­ten give out grants that last on­ly a year, Weis­burd says.

"Facts are stub­born things; and what­ev­er may be our wish­es, our in­cli­na­tions, or the dic­tates of our pas­sions, they can­not al­ter the state of facts and ev­i­dence" (John Adams). Con­grats Capt­ian Grif­fith, leave a trail for oth­ers to fol­low.