7,377 research outputs found

    Stops and Stares: Street Stops, Surveillance, and Race in the New Policing

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    The use of proactive tactics to disrupt criminal activities, such as Terry street stops and concentrated misdemeanor arrests, are essential to the “new policing.” This model applies complex metrics, strong management, and aggressive enforcement and surveillance to focus policing on high crime risk persons and places. The tactics endemic to the “new policing” gave rise in the 1990s to popular, legal, political and social science concerns about disparate treatment of minority groups in their everyday encounters with law enforcement. Empirical evidence showed that minorities were indeed stopped and arrested more frequently than similarly situated whites, even when controlling for local social and crime conditions. In this article, we examine racial disparities under a unique configuration of the street stop prong of the “new policing” – the inclusion of non-contact observations (or surveillances) in the field interrogation (or investigative stop) activity of Boston Police Department officers. We show that Boston Police officers focus significant portions of their field investigation activity in two areas: suspected and actual gang members, and the city’s high crime areas. Minority neighborhoods experience higher levels of field interrogation and surveillance activity net of crime and other social factors. Relative to white suspects, Black suspects are more likely to be observed, interrogated, and frisked or searched controlling for gang membership and prior arrest history. Moreover, relative to their black counterparts, white police officers conduct high numbers of field investigations and are more likely to frisk/search subjects of all races. We distinguish between preference-based and statistical discrimination by comparing stops by officer-suspect racial pairs. If officer activity is independent of officer race, we would infer that disproportionate stops of minorities reflect statistical discrimination. We show instead that officers seem more likely to investigate and frisk or search a minority suspect if officer and suspect race differ. We locate these results in the broader tensions of racial profiling that pose recurring social and constitutional concerns in the “new policing.”

    Hot spots policing of small geographic areas effects on crime

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    Background In recent years, crime scholars and practitioners have pointed to the potential benefits of focusing crime prevention efforts on crime places. A number of studies suggest that there is significant clustering of crime in small places, or “hot spots,” that generate half of all criminal events. Researchers have argued that many crime problems can be reduced more efficiently if police officers focused their attention to these deviant places. The appeal of focusing limited resources on a small number of high-activity crime places is straightforward. If crime can be prevented at these hot spots, then citywide crime totals could be reduced. Objectives To assess the effects of focused police crime prevention interventions at crime hot spots. The review also examined whether focused police actions at specific locations result in crime displacement (i.e., crime moving around the corner) or diffusion (i.e., crime reduction in surrounding areas) of crime control benefits. Search Methods A keyword search was performed on 15 abstract databases. Bibliographies of past narrative and empirical reviews of literature that examined the effectiveness of police crime control programs were reviewed and forward searches for works that cited seminal hot spots policing studies were performed. Bibliographies of past completed Campbell systematic reviews of police crime prevention efforts were reviewed and hand searches of leading journals in the field were completed. Experts in the field were consulted and relevant citations were obtained. Selection Criteria To be eligible for this review, interventions used to control crime hot spots were limited to police-led prevention efforts. Suitable police-led crime prevention efforts included traditional tactics such as directed patrol and heightened levels of traffic enforcement as well as alternative strategies such as aggressive disorder enforcement and problem-oriented policing. Studies that used randomized controlled experimental or quasiexperimental designs were selected. The units of analysis were limited to crime hot spots or high-activity crime “places” rather than larger areas such as neighborhoods. The control group in each study received routine levels of traditional police crime prevention tactics. Data Collection and Analysis Sixty-five studies containing 78 tests of hot spots policing interventions were identified and full narratives of these studies were reported. Twenty-seven of the selected studies used randomized experimental designs and 38 used quasiexperimental designs. A formal meta-analysis was conducted to determine the crime prevention effects in the eligible studies. Random effects models were used to calculate mean effect sizes. Results Sixty-two of 78 tests of hot spots policing interventions reported noteworthy crime and disorder reductions. The meta-analysis of key reported outcome measures revealed a small statistically significant mean effect size favoring the effects of hot spots policing in reducing crime outcomes at treatment places relative to control places. The effect was smaller for randomized designs but still statistically significant and positive. When displacement and diffusion effects were measured, a diffusion of crime prevention benefits was associated with hot spots policing. Authors\u27 Conclusions The extant evaluation research suggests that hot spots policing is an effective crime prevention strategy. The research also suggests that focusing police efforts on high-activity crime places does not inevitably lead to crime displacement; rather, crime control benefits may diffuse into the areas immediately surrounding the targeted locations

    Mobile Mental Health Crisis Intervention in the Western Health Region of Newfoundland and Labrador

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    The impetus for this research is Recommendation #15 of the 2003 Luther Inquiry into the deaths of Norman Reid and Darryl Power: “IT IS FURTHER RECOMMENDED that the Regional Health Boards establish mobile health units to respond to mentally ill persons in crisis where no criminal offence is alleged. Each unit would be developed locally and based on local needs.” Our stakeholder partners in the Western Regional Health Authority asked us to identify a range of mobile crisis intervention service models, some of which may be better suited to lower-density, rural populations and some of which may be better suited to higher-density areas like Corner Brook. Our partners expressed a particular interest in models that can be implemented with minimal additional human resources, but that involve local, face-to-face contact rather than telephone, electronic, or clinic-based models of service delivery. The term “crisis intervention” generally refers to any immediate, short-term therapeutic interventions or assistance provided to an individual or group of individuals who are in acute psychological distress or crisis. The term encompasses a number of after-the-fact interventions – such as rape counseling and critical incident stress debriefing – that would not be relevant to the kinds of situations described in the Luther Report. Given the project parameters specified by our partners at Western Health, we formulated a research question and a literature search strategy that would enable us to focus specifically on forms of crisis intervention that are designed to manage potentially dangerous mental health crises on-site rather than to mediate their impacts after the fact. Our research question is as follows: “What models of mobile– i.e., face-to-face – crisis intervention have proven effective in managing potentially violent mental health crises occurring outside the hospital setting?

    Illuminating Solutions: The Youth Violence Reduction Partnership

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    Over the last decade, P/PV has undertaken several studies of the Philadelphia-based Youth Violence Reduction Partnership (YVRP), an intensive collaboration that targets young people deemed at highest risk of being involved in a homicide. YVRP provides young probationers with enhanced supervision and support, with the goal of keeping them out of trouble and putting them on a path toward productive adulthood

    Shared-Use Bus Priority Lanes On City Streets: Case Studies in Design and Management, MTI Report 11-10

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    This report examines the policies and strategies governing the design and, especially, operations of bus lanes in major congested urban centers. It focuses on bus lanes that operate in mixed traffic conditions; the study does not examine practices concerning bus priority lanes on urban highways or freeways. Four key questions addressed in the paper are: How do the many public agencies within any city region that share authority over different aspects of the bus lanes coordinate their work in designing, operating, and enforcing the lanes? What is the physical design of the lanes? What is the scope of the priority use granted to buses? When is bus priority in effect, and what other users may share the lanes during these times? How are the lanes enforced? To answer these questions, the study developed detailed cases on the bus lane development and management strategies in seven cities that currently have shared-use bus priority lanes: Los Angeles, London, New York City, Paris, San Francisco, Seoul, and Sydney. Through the case studies, the paper examines the range of practices in use, thus providing planners and decision makers with an awareness of the wide variety of design and operational options available to them. In addition, the report highlights innovative practices that contribute to bus lanes’ success, where the research findings make this possible, such as mechanisms for integrating or jointly managing bus lane planning and operations across agencies

    Cure Violence: A Public Health Model to Reduce Gun Violence

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    Scholars and practitioners alike in recent years have suggested that real and lasting progress in the fight against gun violence requires changing the social norms and attitudes that perpetuate violence and the use of guns. The Cure Violence model is a public health approach to gun violence reduction that seeks to change individual and community attitudes and norms about gun violence. It considers gun violence to be analogous to a communicable disease that passes from person to person when left untreated. Cure Violence operates independently of, while hopefully not undermining, law enforcement. In this article, we describe the theoretical basis for the program, review existing program evaluations, identify several challenges facing evaluators, and offer directions for future research

    What do we really know about police patrol? A systematic review of routine police patrol research

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    Purpose: Research on routine police patrol has experienced little attention in criminology for the past four decades. Despite the fact that little is known about this mode of policing, a consensus seems to prevail regarding its ineffectiveness for crime deterrence and crime prevention. To emphasize this gap of research, this study systematically reviews existing literature on routine police patrol. Methods: A systematic review in accordance with the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines of scientific studies (n=4) was conducted. Evidence was synthesized quantitatively (e.g., tabular) and qualitatively (e.g., narrative argumentation). Results: The synthesized results provide no ground for the diagnosed ineffectiveness of routine police patrol, that seems to be believed throughout criminological studies. Despite the outdated character of the majority of reviewed studies, results show inconsistencies and fail to clearly establish positive or negative quantitative crime deterrent effects. Conclusion: Contemporary research does not adequately understand the effects of routine police patrol and builds leading police research on a limited number of methodically flawed studies from the mid 1970’s. Future research should establish the effectiveness of this mode of policing and optimal spatial allocation of police officers following a sound methodological framework

    The Effect of Privately Provided Police Services on Crime

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    Research demonstrates that police reduce crime. The implication of this research for investment in a particular form of extra police services, those provided by private institutions, has not been rigorously examined. We capitalize on the discontinuity in police force size at the geographic boundary of a private university police department to estimate the effect of the extra police services on crime. Extra police provided by the university generate approximately 45-60 percent fewer crimes in the surrounding neighborhood. These effects appear to be similar to other estimates in the literature
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