Problem-oriented Policing Research Articles

Can routinely collected ambulance data about assaults contribute to reduction in community violence?

BackgroundThe ‘law of spatiotemporal concentrations of events’ introduced major preventative shifts in policing communities. ‘Hotspots’ are at the forefront of these developments yet somewhat understudied in emergency medicine. Furthermore, little...

Hotspots of corruption: Applying a problem-oriented policing approach to preventing corruption in the public sector

Some places have no crime and some have a lot, and thus we study hotspots. Corruption is structured differently to crime, but hotspots still are notable. The difference is that hotspots are not places but clusters of activity. This article analyses corruption cases from New York City to explore a way of identifying such clusters. Seventy-two cases were coded according to features that represent the elements of the crime triangle: offender and motivation, target and opportunity, and place and ability. Multidimensional scaling revealed three groups of cases, exhibiting different patterns of corrupt activity. Group one involved politicians involved in high value financial corruption. Group two primarily involved supervisors who created opportunities involving procurement and contracts. Group three involved inspectors, particularly in the infrastructure sector, who were involved with low value bribes to violate regulations. Each is discussed in relation to situational crime prevention principles to develop possible strategies for prevention.

Problem framing in problem solving: a case study

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine how initial frameworks for understanding police problems influence how police analyze and address those problems in the context of problem-oriented policing. The paper shows why researchers, and police, should pay more attention to problem theories. Design/methodology/approach – Data for this case study were obtained from the Middletown, Ohio Police Department, the Middletown housing authority, and the Butler County auditor. Frequency tables and simple graphs were used to identify patterns in the calls for service. Discussions with police officials were used to describe how police originally conceptualized the problem described. Findings – The paper found that initial problem framing has a significant impact on the available interventions and that problem solvers should be vigilant against errors of problem identification. Research limitations/implications – Caution must be taken when generalizing from a single case study. Nevertheless, more attention needs to be placed on problem identification and framing in the problem-solving process. Practical implications – Police problem solvers should be vigilant against errors in problem identification, particularly when the original problem identification is broad or when interventions based on the original problem frame do not produce the desired effect. Originality/value – There are few studies that specifically examine the problem identification and definition process. This paper adds to the literature on problem-oriented policing by examining the critical yet understudied process of problem framing. It also adds to our knowledge of place-specific analysis.

Policing Convenience Store Crime: Lessons from the Glendale, Arizona Smart Policing Initiative

The Glendale, Arizona Police Department received funding in 2009 through the Bureau of Justice Assistance’s Smart Policing Initiative (SPI). The Glendale team employed problem-oriented policing to address crime and disorder at convenience stores throughout the city. The SPI team’s analysis demonstrated that crime was disproportionately occurring at Circle K stores and that store management practices were largely responsible for the crime problem. The Glendale SPI team developed a multipronged response that included intervention with Circle K leadership and the implementation of prevention and suppression strategies. Results indicate that crime dropped significantly at the SPI target stores (42%) from the year preceding the intervention to the year after. This decline is inconsistent with crime patterns witnessed at the remaining convenience stores in the city of Glendale. The article concludes with a discussion of how police departments can successfully engage with private sector corporations on issues of crime, disorder, and community safety.

Evaluating Place-Based Policing Strategies

In response to an increase in violent crime during the mid-2000s, the Boston Police Department implemented the Safe Street Teams program to control “hot spots” that generated a disproportionate amount of violence in Boston through the use of community and problem-oriented policing interventions. Like many police programs, the Safe Street Teams strategy was not implemented with a commitment to conduct a program evaluation. The Smart Policing Initiative provided the Boston Police with an important opportunity to partner with academic researchers to perform retrospective process and impact evaluations. Quantitative and qualitative methods were used to analyze the concentration and stability of violent crime in targeted places, examine the integrity of program implementation, and conduct a rigorous quasi-experimental analysis of program impacts. These research products established the crime control effectiveness of the Safe Street Teams and assisted the Boston Police in strengthening the implementation of the program.

Leadership in problem‐oriented policing

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to explore the role of leadership in problem‐oriented policing (POP).Design/methodology/approachThis paper uses interrupted time series models to isolate the impact on crime trends of a transformational leader's efforts to spearhead the implementation of a program of POP, called the problem solving model (PSM), in a southern state in Australia.FindingsThis paper finds that the PSM led directly to an impact on overall crime, with a significant reduction in crimes per 100,000 persons per year after the introduction of the PSM. The majority of the overall crime drop attributable to implementation of POP was driven by reductions in property crime. It was noted that the leadership influence of the PSM was not effective in reducing all types of crime. Crimes against the person where not affected by the introduction of the PSM and public nuisance crimes largely followed the forecasted, upward trajectory.Practical implicationsThe driver behind the PSM was Commissioner Hyde and the success of the PSM is largely attributable to his strong commitment to transformational leadership and a top‐down approach to implementation. These qualities encapsulate the original ideas behind POP that Goldstein (1979, 2003), back in 1979, highlighted as critical for the success of future POP programs.Social implicationsReducing crime is an important part of creating safe communities and improving quality of life for all citizens. This research shows that successful implementation of the PSM within South Australia under the strong leadership of Commissioner Hyde was a major factor in reducing property crime and overall crime rates.Originality/valueThis paper is valuable because it demonstrates the link between strong leadership in policing, the commissioner's vision for POP and how his vision then translated into widespread adoption of POP. The study empirically shows that the statewide adoption of POP led to significant reductions in crime, particularly property crime.

지역사회 경찰활동 관점에서 본 현장 경찰활동

최근 치안환경의 급변에 따른 지역주민들의 경찰에 대한 기대와 범죄의 두려움에 대한 안전이 높아지고 있으며, 경찰과 지역주민들과의 상호협력적인 관계를 조성하는 전 국가적 경찰활동의 패러다임으로 지역사회 경찰활동이 대두되고 있다. 한국 경찰활동도 변화하여 지역사회 경찰활동의 일환으로 2003년부터 지역경찰제를 시행 중이며, 최근에는 정부 추진에 따른 안전도시 프로그램의 실시, 다문화 가정 보호활동, 외국인 범죄 대응, 사회적 약자 보호 활동 등과 같이 범죄예방 뿐만 아니라 국민의 생활안전을 위한 활동 중심으로 변화하고 있는 추세이다. 이에 따라 본 연구는 지역사회 경찰활동의 세 가지 구성요소인 전략지향적 경찰활동(SOP), 이웃 지향적 경찰활동(NOP), 문제 지향적 경찰활동(POP)의 현장중심활동의 실태를 살펴보고 그에 따른 정책적 제언을 제시하고자 한다. Recently, with the sudden changes in the security environment, expectations towards the police and fear towards safety are increasing. Thus, the local community police operation, which creates a mutually cooperative relationship between the police and local residents, is coming to the fore as the paradigm of the nationwide police operation. The police operation in Korea has also gone through change, and as part of the local community police operation, Korea has implemented a community police system since 2003. Recently, the system has been going through change in that the operations are centralizing around not only prevention of crime including the safe city program, protection of multicultural families, response to foreign crime, protection of the socially disadvantaged but also life security of the citizens. Along these lines, this study seeks to examine conditions of the three elements of local community police operation - Strategic Oriented Policing (SOP), Neighborhood Oriented Policing (NOP), Problem Oriented Policing (POP) - and policy suggestions accordingly.

The Best of Three Worlds: more effective policing by a problem-oriented approach of hot crimes, hot spots, hot shots, and hot groups

Further to a remarkable development in reported crime in the period 2002–2008 – namely a substantial decrease in 2002–2006 followed by an increase in 2006–2008 – the Haaglanden police department in The Netherlands conducted an in-depth study of possible explanations. The outcome of the study is that precisely the quality and quantity of police and safety management must have been of decisive influence. By instituting a combination of intelligence-led policing, problem-oriented policing, and community policing – The Best of Three Worlds – the Haaglanden police department believe they will considerably increase the level of situational prevention and the (expected) chance of being caught in the next few years. This could enhance the effectiveness of the approach to crime and insecurity.

Reducing police use of force: Case studies and prospects

Police codes of conduct require officers to use the minimum amount of force when enforcing laws and maintaining order. At the same time, the use of excessive or unnecessary force is a major problem internationally. The purpose of this paper is to address the possibility of reducing violence in police–citizen encounters and controlling police use of force, especially at the levels that cause injuries and threaten public trust and confidence in the police. A search of the literature was conducted to identify case study reports of apparent success in this area, focused on intervention projects with time series data. Seven cases were selected and analyzed, covering a variety of indicators of force and excessive force. Our study shows that police departments can reduce the levels of force used to enforce laws and maintain order. Strategies identified in the review targeted individual, cultural and organizational factors and included equipping officers at the individual level with the appropriate skills, and providing a framework of internal and external accountability. In particular, we show the value of a Problem Oriented Policing (POP) approach that focuses on diagnostic research, tailor-made interventions, and impact evaluation. ► Identification of seven case studies demonstrating reductions in police use of force ► Focus on reduced harms; including deaths and injuries ► Key interventions identified and explicated ► Obstacles to effective implementation also identified ► Includes lessons for effective project evaluation

Space-time analysis of burglary in Beijing

In recent years, in addition to the development of environmental criminology, how crime is distributed in space and have been broadly studied and numerous crime patterns have been discovered. These findings made significant contributions to the progress of problem-oriented policing policy, especially crime forecasting and deployment of police resource. However, for some reasons, this research, especially the spatial and temporal crime analysis, is still absent in China. Therefore, in this article, we collected 5-month burglary recordings in Beijing and use spatio-temporal analysing methods to investigate property offending patterns in the second largest city of China. Initially, descriptive methods are used to analyse the crime patterns in space and time separately; the results indicate that the offences are significantly clustered in space and consecutively correlated with past history in time. Following that work, a disease contagion testing strategy is used to investigate the burglary risk in space and time. The findings indicate that the offence risk communicates at least 3 weeks within 200 m of an offended place, which shows near-repeat pattern. At end of this article, the significance of environmental crime analysis to the crime prevention in China is discussed.

On police and university collaborations: a problem-oriented policing case study

This paper describes the origins, development and experience of an extended collaborative relationship between the UCL Jill Dando Institute (JDI) of Security and Crime Science at University College London and Warwickshire Police and Warwickshire County Council. This is discussed in the context of a practitioner-led problem-oriented policing project to reduce bag theft from British supermarkets. The case study highlights many of the ways in which universities and police and partnership agencies can work fruitfully with one another. Our hope is that the case study might yield insights into potential determinants of effective academic–practitioner collaborations.

What is Known About the Effectiveness of Police Practices in Reducing Crime and Disorder?

We build upon previous reviews of the police effectiveness literature to categorize strategies and tactics based on what police should and should not be doing. We also provide relevant information on what police agencies should be doing to implement effective strategies. We argue police should be focusing on hot spots policing, problem-oriented policing (POP), focused deterrence approaches, directed patrol to reduce gun crime, and using DNA in property cases. Police should also recognize the importance of efforts to enhance legitimacy. In contrast, police should be avoiding standard policing tactics such as random preventive patrol, second responder programs, and Drug Abuse Resistance Education (D.A.R.E.). We discuss how well current policing practices match up with effective approaches, describe general implications for policing, and conclude by noting policing strategies which we know too little about to make informed recommendations.

The Past, Present and Future of POP1

Problem-oriented policing (POP) was the brainchild of Herman Goldstein. The core principles were first formulated in the late 1970s. They continue to exert a major influence on both police and partnership work, especially in the UK and US. POP has profoundly affected the work of the Jill Dando Institute of Crime Science at UCL. It involves a scientific approach--using systematically assembled evidence on the nature and extent of relevant recurrent problems to develop evidence based and ethical responses, which are systematically assessed for lessons learned. The concept has even broader implications for improving policing insofar as it responds to concerns about how police exercise discretion, how they are held accountable to the citizenry, their legal authority, and how their many functions are prioritized. Many later ideas in policing may usefully complement POP, but none challenges its basic approach. Situational crime prevention, which was originally developed at much the same time as POP, has many affinities with it and in practice the ideas complement one another well. The assessments of POP projects have often been weak. The implementation of POP also poses major challenges for policing and has in practice often been halting and weak. Robust assessments both of projects and of the approach as a whole, however, show it to be highly outcome effective. POP continues to offer a broad approach to developing and delivering effective and ethical policing. A series of suggestions for its future development are made. Language: en

The Effects of Hot Spots Policing on Crime: An Updated Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

In recent years, crime scholars and practitioners have pointed to the potential benefits of focusing police crime prevention efforts on crime places. Research suggests that there is significant clustering of crime in small places or “hot spots.” A number of researchers have argued that crime problems can be reduced more efficiently if police officers focused their attention to these deviant places. In this article, we update and improve upon a previously completed Campbell Collaboration systematic review of the effects of hot spots policing and crime. Meta-analyses were used to determine the size, direction, and statistical significance of the overall impact of hot spots policing strategies on crime. The results of our research suggests that hot spots policing generates small but noteworthy crime reductions, and these crime control benefits diffuse into areas immediately surrounding targeted crime hot spots. Our analyses find that problem-oriented policing interventions generate larger mean effect sizes when compared to interventions that simply increase levels of traditional police actions in crime hot spots. We also find that only a small number of studies examine the impacts of hot spots policing on police-community relations. The extant research on this topic, however, suggests that community members have positive reactions to these focused policing actions.

Can “disciplined passion” overcome the cynical view? An empirical inquiry of evaluator influence on police crime prevention program outcomes

Investigate the degree and nature of influence that researchers have in police crime prevention programs and whether a high degree of influence is associated with biased reporting of results. Meta-analytic inquiry of experimental and quasi-experimental studies (n = 42), drawn from four Campbell Collaboration systematic reviews of leading police crime prevention strategies: problem-oriented policing, “hot spots” policing, “pulling levers” policing, and street-level drug enforcement. Larger program effects are not associated with studies with higher involvement on the part of the evaluator (e.g., assisting in strategy design, monitoring implementation, overcoming implementation problems). This study does not find support for the cynical view, which holds that researchers have a personal stake in the program or are pressured to report positive results. Importantly, the evaluator’s involvement in the implementation of the program may be a necessary condition of successfully executed police experiments in complex field settings.

Getting deterrence right?

In recent years, scholars have begun to argue that police interventions provide an effective approach for gaining both special and general deterrence against crime. A series of experimental and quasi-experimental studies has shown that the police can be effective in preventing crime (Braga, 2001, 2005; Skogan and Frydl, 2004; Weisburd and Eck, 2004), and that such crime prevention benefits are not offset by displacement of crime to areas near to police interventions (Braga, 2001; Weisburd et al., 2006). Durlauf and Nagin (2011: 14) drew from this literature to argue that, “Increasing the visibility of the police by hiring more officers and by allocating existing officers in ways that heighten the perceived risk of apprehension consistently seem to have substantial marginal deterrent effects.” Indeed, they concluded that crime prevention in the United States would be improved by shifting resources from imprisonment to policing. A recent innovation in policing that capitalizes on the growing evidence of the effectiveness of police deterrence strategies is the “focused deterrence” framework, which is often referred to as “pulling-levers policing” (Kennedy, 1998, 2008). Pioneered in Boston as a problem-oriented policing project to halt serious gang violence during the 1990s (Braga, Kennedy, Waring, and Piehl, 2001), the focused deterrence framework has been applied in many U.S. cities through federally sponsored violence-prevention programs such as the Strategic Alternatives to Community Safety Initiative and Project Safe Neighborhoods (PSN) (Dalton, 2002). Focused deterrence strategies honor core deterrence ideas, such as increasing risks faced by offenders, while finding new and creative ways of deploying

Problem-Oriented Policing and Promoting Public Confidence

Problem-Oriented Policing and Promoting Public Confidence

Towards Checklists to Reduce Common Sources of Problem-Solving Failure

Problem solving is widely advocated in contemporary policing and crime prevention. Despite its appeal, carrying out effective problem solving is a complex and challenging task. Much can go wrong. Hence difficulties and failures are often encountered. Such types of problem are not unique to policing and crime prevention. They are also often avoidable. In other substantive fields for problem solving, the formulation and use of well-designed, evidence-based checklists have been found helpful in managing complexity, reducing error, and improving outcomes. While checklists are already employed in policing and crime prevention, there is no evidence that they have been developed and evaluated for outcome effectiveness in the same systematic manner as observed recently in allied fields, although we argue they could be. Drawing on cognate developments in sister areas of practice, notably health, this article provides examples of checklists whose systematic further development, piloting and application could inform improvements to the delivery of various aspects of problem-oriented policing and thereby also its outcome effectiveness.

지역사회 경찰활동의 통합적 정립

Today`s policing is toward to the Community Policing. Despite its widespread popularity, there exists a lack of common understanding among academics and practitioners alike regarding the scope of the community policing philosophy and of its ability to integrate these complementary ideas within it. These are Problem-oriented policing, broken windows, Compstat, third-party policing, and hot spots. We will present a definition of community policing and demonstrate how these other policing approaches can be incorporated into the overarching community policing philosophy. We will also discuss the potential benefits of taking such a unified approach with the hope of encouraging further integration among policing innovations.

Policing the North

Nordic police studies have grown considerably in the last 15 years and especially recently. Researchers from many institutions and disciplines have contributed. There are three main lines of research. In the strongest, on police practice and culture, the concept of the “police gaze” has been central. Studies show a liquid culture with great variation depending on gender, age, how the culture is situated, and forms of resistance to change. The second line, mostly an Anglo-American import, concerns new theories and methods. Concepts such as zero tolerance, problem-oriented policing, and community police have been influential on symbolic and rhetorical levels, but less so on practice. The third line is research on the difficulty of police work and different models for controlling the police. Nordic police are heavily influenced by the Scandinavian welfare model. The model has been under considerable pressure and its weakened position has influenced the police. There may be a distinctive Nordic version of the new penalism, characterized by a harsher tone in policy debates and a large increase in surveillance in which the police play an important role but also by a reserved use of imprisonment.