Policing Program Research Articles

The Impact of Evaluation Research on Policing Policy in Canada and the United States

Abstract: Over the past 15 years, a number of evaluation studies have had a great impact on police policy. This research has helped to bring about a shift from a largely reactive policing style that involves the police working on their own, to a proactive style that involves the community. This article reviews some of the research done on police-based strategies and programs, community-based crime prevention programs, and community policing programs.

Police Officer Job Satisfaction and Community Perceptions: Implications for Community-Oriented Policing

Much of the current interest in community-oriented policing seeks to overcome tension between police officers and community residents, as a symbolic component of this new policing strategy. Similarly, many community-oriented policing programs seek to improve individual police officer attachment to the police occupation, generally by improving job satisfaction through some form of job enlargement or job enrichment. The current analysis examines a sample of 210 Philadelphia police officers participating in a program of police and community education as to components of job satisfaction and attachment, and their effects on perceptions of the quality of community and police interaction. Assessments of job satisfaction using job diagnostic instruments are examined in relation to perceptions of community conflict and support for the police, and greater police and community interaction. The implications of these findings for community-oriented policing are then discussed.

Image Vs. Reality: An Analysis of Prime-Time Television Crime and Police Programs

Abstract There are nineteen prime-time television crime and police shows. It is generally believed by social scientists that these programs distort the reality of American crime and policing. It has been many years, however, since there has been a scientific analysis of crime and police programs. The present project uses content analysis of 46 hours of videotape to document the content of these shows. Findings are situated in the context of criminological theory.

Some Unexpected Effects of a Police Service for Victims

This article examines the impact of a special police program for crime victims. Police officers recontacted recent victims by telephone. The officers were to find out whether they needed any assistance, refer them to support services, offer advice and information, gather any new information on the case, and indicate the department's continuing concern for their plight. Participating victims also were sent crime prevention materials. The program was evaluated using an experimental design. Victims were randomly assigned to treatment and control groups, and only the former were contacted. Then, follow-up interviews were conducted with all victims in order to assess the impact of the program.

A Police Program for Employment of Youth Gang Members

One hundred experimental subjects and 100 controls were matched on age, sex, ethnic group and gang membership; and the groups were equated on the number of prior police detentions. Because both groups showed a subsequent decline in police detentions, the effect cannot be attributed to the jobs program but is more likely increasing age and maturity and decreasing vulnerability to police arrests for minor infractions. It was suggested that the focus should shift from job procure ment to job maintenance.

TV Police and Family Programs as Reality to Schizophrenic-Labeled Persons

TV Police and Family Programs as Reality to Schizophrenic-Labeled Persons

A Foreigner's View of American Diversion

As part of a Dutch-sponsored project to learn about the American ex perience with diversion, five diversion projects in California are described and evaluated: university-sponsored counseling of status offenders inside a police department; police-sponsored counseling and job seeking for sta tus offenders and minor delinquents outside the police department; a "barrio organization" for all types of young offenders, with counselors acting without links to the police as advocates and community workers; a police program of supervision and controlled activities for cooperative de linquents ; and a probation program inside a juvenile hall for counseling detained status offenders. With exception of the barrio organization, all projects proved disappointing. There was little actual diversion; instead, the projects were largely an extension of the justice system. They did not deal with delinquent youths from the lower class and they appeared to function as a "velvet cloak" for the hardening of judicial policy in other respects. Project workers do not participate because they believe in di verting, but because they believe in counseling. Therefore, they are not aware of the antidiversion aspects of the projects.

A community psychology approach to police training.

Suggests that the backlash effect which accompanies most innovative police training programs is partly the result of the failure of these programs to take a community psychology conceptual view of the police in the context of the social system. The present article describes the involvement of psychologists with police in a training program that was based on a coherent general systems intervention program consistent with a model of community psychology. Participants in a workshop were 20 senior sergeants in the police department of Queensland, Australia, a community of both urban and rural areas. Average age of Ss was over 50 yrs, and the average term of service was 30 yrs. Working on the premise that previous difficulties in police programs have involved problems with the media, with police attitudes toward the psychologists and the program, and with citizen attitudes toward the police, the 2 psychologists who designed and conducted the workshop concentrated on these 3 areas of concern, using the general systems model of community psychology. Positive results are reported. Implications of the positive results for seeing community psychology as process rather than content are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2006 APA, all rights reserved).

Recent Book: Teaching Crime Prevention: Police Programs for Preventing Crime and Delinquency

Recent Book: Teaching Crime Prevention: Police Programs for Preventing Crime and Delinquency

Book Review: Police Programs for Preventing Crime and Delinquency

Book Review: Police Programs for Preventing Crime and Delinquency

Comparative Criminal Justice Education: A Report on an Overseas Experiment

Ralph F. Turner has been a professor on the staff of the School of Criminal Justice, Michigan State University, East Lansing since 1947. He came to the University with a background in the field of criminalistics and has served on a number of the University's foreign police programs including a Consultant to the Republic of South Viet Nam 1956 and 1957, and Chief of Police Advisor in 19591961. He was a Fullbright Lecturer at the Central Police College, Taipei, Taiwan 1963-1964, and a National Visiting Professor at the same institution 1969-1970. Professor Turner has served as an associate editor of this Journal and was the instructor in charge of the course described in this article.

A Systems Approach to Comprehensive Criminal Justice Planning

The final report of the President's Crime Commission, The Challenge of Crime in a Free Society, underscored the necessity for comprehensive criminal justice planning at local, state, and national levels. Passage of the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968 and the Juvenile Delinquency Prevention and Control Act resulted in the formation of a variety of state and local planning bodies, which were charged with considering all elements of law enforcement activity, including police, court, and correctional programs and systems in addition to prevention and control programs.

Exclusive: A.I.D. Police Programs For Latin America 1971–72

Exclusive: A.I.D. Police Programs For Latin America 1971–72

A field trial of young drivers.

As a result of findings from two types of study of young drivers in Michigan, a behavioral longitudinal survey of a probability sample and a surveillance police-based study of statewide fatal accidents, target areas of young driving behavior are indicated for the design and execution of a Spring field trial in Michigan in 1970 to test the feasibility and efficacy of several countermeasures (group discussion, recognition letter, and police program) in a sample of high school seniors to reduce moving violations and accidental injuries. Although the scale of the study is probably too small for definitive results, the detection of demonstrable effects in test groups compared to controls should lead to the design and execution of more extensive trials in a very difficult area of high morbidity and mortarity.

Paradoxes in Law Enforcement

Ernest F. Roberts is Professor of Law at Villanova University, Villanova, Pennsylvania. He also teaches a course on Criminal Law and Procedure in the police program at The Community College of Temple University, which program was introduced in the Fall of 1960. This article was presented originally to the Professional Police Organization of the Delaware Valley, and because of its thought provoking quality, we are privileged in being able to present it to our readers.-EDITOR.

Legislative Needs of the State Police

It has become commonplace to say that we are living in a world of rapidly changing social and economic conditions, which have rendered traditional methods of policing obsolete, or have required important adjustments in them. Reformation of older techniques and the adoption of new enforcement methods symbolize the prevailing trends of the last three decades. Older functions have assumed specialty roles in their own right. New functions, such as traffic flow regulations, traffic accident reduction anId juvenile delinquency correction, are taking accredited places in the police program. Structurally, police departments have broadened to make way for the development of new and important auxiliary functions, as for example, communications and records. Those demands, in turn, require leaders schooled in the broad phases of administration and a personnel skilled in the specialized fields of policing. A new personnel tradition, based upon intelligence, has become indispensable to the protection of life and property.

Rethinking Federal Inducement of Pretext Stops

Rethinking Federal Inducement of Pretext Stops