Today's Police Research Articles

A Comparitve Study of Anlyzing Data Minig Methods in Libyan National Crime Data

Law enforcement agencies which are represented in the police today are faced with large volume of data that must be processed and transformed into useful information and hence data mining can greatly improve crime analysis and aid in reducing and preventing crime as much as possible. Crime reports and data are used as an input for the formulation of the crime prevention policies and strategic plans. This work will apply some data mining methods to analyses Libyan national criminal record data to help the Libyan government to make a strategically decision regarding prevention the increasing of the high crime rate these days. The data was collected manually from Benghazi, Tripoli, and Al-Jafara Supremes Security Committee (SSC). A comparative study will be conducted with a recent model used in the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to detect and classify the major personality and behavioral characteristics of an individual based upon analysis of the crime or crimes the person committed. Our proposed model will be able to extract crime patterns by using association rule mining and clustering to classify crime records on the basis of the values of crime attributes.

Criminal Justice in Transition: The Northern Ireland ContextA.‐M. McAlinden and C. Dwyer (Eds.). Oxford: Hart (2015) 386pp. £49.50hb ISBN 978–1849465779

Criminal Justice in Transition: The Northern Ireland ContextA.‐M. McAlinden and C. Dwyer (Eds.). Oxford: Hart (2015) 386pp. £49.50hb ISBN 978–1849465779

Our past

This article explores the effects of colonialism on policing in Ghana, and suggests ways of improving police legitimacy. Ghana experienced a century-long colonization by the British, and this experience had a tremendous impact on contemporary governmental institutions in the country. The Ghana police, one of the major institutions that has suffered from colonialism, continue to apply the policies, practices, and behaviors of the colonial policing system. An approach that has woefully and negatively affected police legitimation in the country. The article furthers the discussion of police legitimacy in post-colonial Ghana and puts forth two related arguments: first, the legitimacy problems facing the police today were due to the imperialist rule by the British; and second, the best way to address these problems is for the police to untangle itself from the past. Specific recommendations are offered to enable the police improve upon its legitimacy.

The Rhizome State: Democratizing Indonesia's Off-Budget Economy

ABSTRACTWhat kinds of states are financed by illicit monies? Does the source of state revenue matter for state formation? This article examines these questions in the context of democratizing Indonesia by analyzing licit and illicit sources of Indonesian police financing and the ways in which illicit practices of extraction and accumulation reshape the structure of the state. Budgetary revenues are both deficient and poorly organized by the Indonesian police (POLRI), continuing practices of fiscal maladministration and rent seeking that defined Suharto's New Order. This article demonstrates how this legacy continues within today's police by illustrating how on- and off-budget financing both resources police work and feeds centralized patron-clientalism through an ethics of “dirty-money” that ultimately sees rents flow upwards to police leadership. However, as Indonesia's neoliberal style democratization fragments centralized patronage into a shifting and unstable patron-clientalism, established patterns of rent accumulation and circulation and the moral-legal regimes that support them break down. In an uncertain environment, officers of all ranks canvass the political system, forming increasingly diverse networks that they hope will secure rents and their political future. Reworking Jean François Bayart's original use of the term, this, the author argues, is “the rhizome state.”

Programming Errors: Understanding the Constitutionality of Stop and Frisk as a Program, not an Incident

This essay takes seriously the relevance of law enforcement effectiveness and the role of empiricism to understanding the constitutionality of the police practices at issue in the Floyd case and urban police practices more generally and also recasts the debate a bit. A critical, but obscured, issue is the mismatch between the level of analysis at which the Supreme Court articulated the relevant test for constitutional justification of a stop and frisk in Terry v. Ohio , and the scale at which police today (and historically) engage in stop and frisk as a practice. To put this more succinctly, while the Court in Terry authorized police intervention in an individual incident when the police officer possesses probable cause to believe that an armed individual is involved in a crime, in reality stop and frisk typically is carried out by a police force en masse as a program. Although the constitutional framework is based upon a one-off investigative incident, many of those who are stopped, the majority of them young men of color, do not experience the stops as one-off incidents. They experience them as a program to police them as a group, which is, of course, the reality. That is exactly what police agencies are doing. Fourth Amendment reasonableness must take this fact into account. I make an argument here about how we should approach this issue.

The Consequence of Being a Target of Suspicion: Potential Pitfalls of Proactive Policing

During the latter half of the 20th century a new model of policing developed in the United States which continues to dominate American policing today. It has two key features. First, it proactively attempts to prevent crime through the widespread use of police stops and arrests for minor crimes. Second, it imposes policing policies and practices upon communities instrumentally via the threat or use of various legal sanctions. Data from a national survey indicate that this approach to policing does not lower fear of crime; increase the perceived risk of punishment for rule breaking; or strongly impact perceptions of disorder. On the other hand, it has damaged the social bonds between the police and the community; undermined police legitimacy and led to declines in public willingness to cooperate with the police. This paper examines how such policies developed, why they are problematic, and how a focus on building popular legitimacy would be more desirable.

In Search of Civic Policing: Recasting the ‘Peelian’ Principles

For over a century the so-called ‘Peelian’ principles have been central to the self-understanding of Anglo-American policing. But these principles are the product of modern state-building and speak only partially to the challenges of urban policing today. In fact, they stand in the way of clear thinking and better practice. In this paper, I argue that these principles ought to be radically recast and put to work in new ways. The argument proceeds as follows. First, I recover and outline the current ‘Peelian’ principles and argue that they lack the specificity, sufficiency and status required in order to do real work in the governance of policing. Second, I make the case for principles both as a regulative ideal guiding our aspirations for what policing can become and as a means of regulating police work in the here-and-now. I then develop a revised set of principles and indicate, in conclusion, how they can guide the formation of trust-producing and democracy-enhancing practices of civic policing.

Police and its Role in the Society

Police is an executive civil force of a state to which is entrusted the duty of maintaining public order and enforcing regulations for the prevention and detection of crime. The constant expansion of the functions of the state for development, democracy and welfare of the people, growing complexity of life and social relationship, imposed newer obligations on the police in modern society. Its role has been increasing also particularly with the development of technology which is making negative impact along with the positive aspect in the society. Today in contemporary society police has to perform variety of services and emergency functions, rather than simply doing crime prevention and detection & maintenance of law and order. Dependency of people on police has increased as they take help of police in even odd situation whether it is natural calamity or family disputes. Police today, not only provide security service rather it deliver many human and social services. Therefore in this changing scenario, to make police force more effective and efficient, social, political and economic changes are required to combat with the emerging problem of society so that people can feel safe in the society.

The Knock-and-Announce Rule and Police Searches after Hudson v. Michigan

The exclusionary rule in the Fourth Amendment knock-and-announce context has been challenged by the U.S. Supreme Court in Hudson v. Michigan. After Hudson, even if police fail to knock and announce prior to entering a person's home to search, any evidence found by police remains admissible at that person's trial. The Court reasoned that today police are better educated, trained, disciplined, and monitored by citizens; as a result, exclusion of evidence is no longer needed as a deterrent for police knock-and-announce misconduct during searches. This paper, using both legal and social scientific methodologies, examines the legitimacy of this aspect of the Court's reasoning by surveying chiefs in large U.S. cities concerning their perceptions of the efficacy and value of the various deterrents to knock-and-announce misconduct (e.g., exclusion, education, training, discipline, and citizen review). The study also surveys the chiefs on their departmental policies and procedures related to the knock-and-announce rule and police searches as well as their knowledge of the rule. The study's outcomes reflected in the paper enhance understanding of the efficacy of the exclusionary rule compared to the alternative deterrents for police knock-and-announce violations during searches.

Police reforms: the voice of police and residents in Mexico City

Although attempted on a daily basis, it is difficult to truly analyse the problems faced by police today, both as an institution and as a part of society, due to the complex current situation in Mexico. The lack of public safety is not only due to crime, but also to the ongoing “war” between the government and drug-traffickers. ‘Police problems, beyond their objective foundation, have become an ideological tool generating both supporters and critics of an issue that has been politicized and used to promote consent or dissent’. It has become the story of the hour, and everybody has their opinion on the topic, but lacking is a deeper understanding of the sociopolitical process that has led up to the current situation in Mexico. ‘Faced with threats and lack of security, the government and public opinion turned to the first familiar and available option they had: the police. They expected that a more efficient and effective police force would be able to solve the security problem.’ There is continuous discussion about the police, never from a broad-based perspective, but always as if they were an isolated subject existing in another dimension separate from the rest of us. The police are not considered part of society. In our collective imagination the police represent a social group separate from ‘us’. Nevertheless, they are still thought of as the solution to the security problem.

Wilson's theory of local political culture revisited in today's police organizations

PurposeOver the course of the past 40 years Wilson's theory of local political culture has influenced many students of policing. Wilson argued that variation in structural arrangements in police organizations can be explained largely by the form of municipal government structure in place. For example, police departments using a strict law enforcement style of policing tend to work within a more bureaucratic structure (e.g. hierarchically differentiated) than their counterparts employing a watchman style of policing. The purpose of this study is to test the application of Wilson's theory of local political culture in today's police organizations.Design/methodology/approachLongitudinal agency survey data for 280 police departments collected through the 1990s were analyzed using a random‐effects panel technique.FindingsThe findings observed suggest that there was only a very limited relationship between local political culture and the five principal dimensions of organizational structure — formalization, centralization, functional differentiation, specialization differentiation, and occupational differentiation derived from Peter Blau's measures among these police agencies during the 1990s.Research limitations/implicationsThe theory of local political culture may have limited utility in the analysis of the structural arrangements in contemporary police organizations. At the same time, a longer period of time is required in the study of local political culture.Practical implicationsThe identification of key determinants of structural arrangements in police organizations is an important issue because there is a lack of consensus on the role of local political culture. The research used two approaches and found that organizational structure in police agencies is largely determined by socioeconomic factors.Originality/valueThe study represented an original study of police organization, using panel data collected by the authors during the 1990s.

Community Policing and Youth as Assets

Community policing is the most important innovation in American policing today. It receives broad political support and is endorsed by a diverse cross-section of the legal academy. Among community policing's underappreciated virtues is that it provides a better way to regulate police conduct than does the traditional model of judicial enforcement of the Fourth Amendment. But although there is much to be said for community policing, it has not reached its potential. The most important group from a public safety standpoint - inner-city youth and young adults - has largely been left out of the new policing model. This group is still policed under the discredited warrior approach to policing, which views the young exclusively as threats to public order. But despite the powerful image of urban youth as threats, most inner-city young people are law-abiders. They are also the principal victims of the law-breaking minority. They therefore have a profound stake in both ensuring public safety and in reducing police abuse and harassment. Building on lessons from policing experiments in Boston and Chicago, this Article will advocate a model of community policing that allows young people to join other citizens in regular group deliberations with neighbors and local officers to set policing priorities.

Community Policing and Youth as Assets

Community policing is the most important innovation in American policing today. It receives broad political support and is endorsed by a diverse cross-section of the legal academy. Among community policing's underappreciated virtues is that it provides a better way to regulate police conduct than does the traditional model of judicial enforcement of the Fourth Amendment. But although there is much to be said for community policing, it has not reached its potential. The most important group from a public safety standpoint - inner-city youth and young adults - has largely been left out of the new policing model. This group is still policed under the discredited warrior approach to policing, which views the young exclusively as threats to public order. But despite the powerful image of urban youth as threats, most inner-city young people are law-abiders. They are also the principal victims of the law-breaking minority. They therefore have a profound stake in both ensuring public safety and in reducing police abuse and harassment. Building on lessons from policing experiments in Boston and Chicago, this Article will advocate a model of community policing that allows young people to join other citizens in regular group deliberations with neighbors and local officers to set policing priorities.

Project54: standardizing electronic device integration in police cruisers

Technological advances have introduced many electronic devices into police cruisers. Today's police cruisers are equipped with not only lights and sirens but also digital radios, GPS units, computers, radars, and other devices. These in-car devices aren't usually designed with integration in mind. This design approach creates two problems. The first stems from the fact that police cruisers are primarily vehicles and the officers operating them are primarily drivers. Because in-car devices aren't designed for integration, most police departments install them in cruisers as stand-alone devices, each with its own user interface. Consequently, the officers operating the cruisers must deal with the distraction of interacting with multiple user interfaces in the hands- and eyes-busy environment of a car. Research shows that interacting with even a single in-car device can lead to safety problems. Interacting with multiple in-car devices clearly poses a safety problem. This problem is likely to worsen as new devices are installed in cruisers.

‘A Benevolent Institution for the Suppression of Evil’: Joseph Conrad's The Secret Agent and the Limits of Policing

The study of law in literature stimulates critical reflection about law and the limits of its institutions by expanding contextual analysis to include the emotive discourses of fiction. This article starts from the premisses that the orthodox separation of literary expression from social scientific writing is not immutable and that different temporal settings are not barriers to exploring themes that traverse them. It uses Joseph Conrad's The Secret Agent, a story of policing and anarchism in late nineteenth‐century London, in order to discuss the limits of policing today. This novel is read in parallel with two modern police studies to show how it prefigures current concerns, portraying policing as an imperfect totem of security, immaterial to the individual's emotional crises, which, by extension, can be seen to illustrate the limits of law itself. This article thus raises methodological and theoretical issues of general interest to the study of law in society and suggests how reading literature can thicken' legal analysis by offering experience of the emotional beyond that law ignores.

Investigating the "Machinery of Murder": Irish Detectives and Agrarian Outrages, 1847-70

Policemen in nineteenth-century Ireland were expected to play a variety of roles, for their duties were far more numerous and varied than those usually assigned to the police today. Writing in 1881, a former sub-inspector with seventeen years' service in the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC), whose father had also been a member of the force, claimed that: "Everything in Ireland, from the muzzling of a dog to the suppression of a rebellion, is done by the Irish constabulary." 1 A policeman could be called upon to act at least six major parts: soldier, 2 crime prevention officer, political intelligence agent, civil servant, prosecutor, and detective. Admittedly, not all policemen filled all these roles, but the Irish Constabulary was a multipurpose force, with military and civil responsibilities, as well as criminal and judicial ones. Before the 1870s, however, the role of detective was probably the least significant one in the policeman's repertoire. This may seem strange to the modern observer, especially as there was an almost constant chorus of complaint voiced throughout the century in both Ireland and England at the supposedly high levels of Irish crime. 3

Toward the development of a roles framework for police psychology

The past two decades have seen major transformations in the way police departments conduct business. These transformations have impacted all aspects of policing from evidence collection to how officers perform their duties while on patrol. One aspect of policing that is still in the throes of transformation is the role of the police psychologist. Picice psychologists have moved from a beginning of counseling police officers involved in critical incidents (see Kurke & Scrivner, 1995) to a broad range of law enforcement related activities. The traditional aspects of their jobs such as providing assistance to crisis negotiation teams, conducting counseling sessions for officers, and developing and presenting in-service and cadet training are part of an ever-changing picture of the police psychologist. Today's police psychologists operate at all levels of police department. Some of the newer roles to emerge in recent years are organizational and management consulting, counseling crime victims, and coordinating community involvement. This paper provides a framework for looking at both new and old roles of police psychologist and to argue for an expanded and better defined role within the policing profession.

Value change among police officers at a time of organizational reform: a follow‐up study using Rokeach values

This paper examines evidence of value change among police officers in a medium‐sized police department which has been selected as a demonstration site for community‐oriented policing (COP). Relying primarily upon two survey data collections with a period of three years’ separation, the aim of this paper is to provide a follow‐up to a previously published article in this journal to investigate two issues. First, was there a change in the value orientations among police officers between 1993 and 1996?; and second, was any change noted favorable to the COP organizational culture that the department is attempting to promote? The primary findings of this paper strongly suggest that the value orientations among police officers did indeed change over this time period. However, the direction of the change noted may not be consistent with the goal of enhancing COP organizational culture. These findings help explain how the institutionalization of COP is properly seen as a very difficult, long‐term task facing American police today.

A Post-modern Turn in Policing: Policing as Pastiche?

This paper evaluates the contention that a number of developments in late modern times will serve to undermine the role of the police. The thesis that the public police are operating in the context of a hollowed-out moral order and according to post-modern versions of authority and subjectivity is challenged. It is contended that this version of policing today is one which relies on a top-down synthesis which does not pay adequate attention to the continuities of policing from the ground-up. From the point of view of the ‘low culture’ of the craft, high modern reflections on policing are just catching up to the pragmatism and realism which ethnographies on the police have been pointing out for almost half a century.

Assessing police training curricula: “Consumer reports”

Abstract As the demands placed on today's police continue to escalate, as well as accountability for police methods, so will the public's concern with the quality of police training. It has become increasingly important for police training to be assessed, to determine the propriety, adequacy, discernibility, and utility of the curriculum. The present study is replicable in other venues and provides a method for accomplishing such an assessment. It examines the state mandated P.O.S. T. academy training in Nevada as critically evaluated by their “consumers”: recent academy graduates. Included are discussions of the history and purpose of police academies and curriculum development, and the need to adequately train. The article closes with policy implications and recommendations for future research.