Some Thoughts about Police and Crime

Abstract

The central theme of the Conference on Crime and Criminal Justice at Stanford Law School in October 1995 was the relationship between crime and criminal justice. Political leaders have acted on the assumption that police prevent and control crime, as evidenced by President Clinton's call for 100,000 more police officers on America's crime-ridden streets. Police strategies might either increase or decrease crime, or both, depending on other factors. David Bayley's argument that police do not prevent crime, which rests on evidence that the strength of police forces is not inversely correlated with crime rates, is flawed at its premise. Like Bayley, some current police leaders—who attribute observed decreases in crime to community policing—are guilty of overstating their position. The task for police scholars and criminal justice officials who wish to understand the relationship between police and crime is to identify the specific conditions under which police activity affects crime rates, whether positively or negatively.