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Preventative patrolling can be defined as a police effort to reduce crime by walking or driving around an area and deterring crime in order to ensure the safety of others. Today, it is widely believed that preventative patrol done by police officers reduces crime. Others tend to think that a more directive and straight-forward form of police patrol can be more effective. According to Seigel (2003), reducing crime has been successful to police organizations that assigned officers to areas with higher crime rates and took a more focused approach. Other organizations may act oppositely to that by performing a more preventative patrol effort in order to reduce crime. As Vigoa (2010) stated, there is only a small amount of research that has been …show more content…
According to Vigoa (2010), working overtime for preventative patrolling is at a minimum in order to save money for the police departments. An important point brought up by Vigoa (2010) is about crime taking over a certain area. He stated, “if crime is allowed to permeate an area, citizens are inclined to move-away reducing the tax base (Vigoa, 2010).” Taxes are very essential in keeping a police department up and running. If people move away from a crime-ridden area, the taxes will decrease and it will negatively affect the police department. Cost plays a huge part in determining what form of patrol should be used because of necessary resources and working …show more content…
This experiment covered the issues surrounding preventative patrol and whether it reduced crime effectively or not. As stated by Vigoa (2010), this experiment was established mainly because, at the time, no one conducted any studies or experiments to find out if more police officers performing preventative patrol actually reduced crime. The experiment split police sectors into different groups and were assigned to different tasks. One group was assigned to only respond to service calls, the other group was to perform normal preventive patrols, and the last group had to take a more aggressive patrolling approach (Vigoa, 2010). The results of the experiment showed that they were not able to find any evidence that stated preventative patrol being successful in reducing crime rates (Telep & Weisburd,
A, Braga & D, Weisburd. 'Police Innovation and Crime Prevention: Lessons Learned from Police Research over the Past 20 Years'. Paper presented at the National Institute of Justice (NIJ) Policing Research Workshop: Planning for the future, Washington, DC. 2006. p. 22.
According to Kelling, Pate, Dieckman, & Brown (1974), patrol is the “backbone” of police work. This belief is based around the premise that the mere presence of police officers on patrol prohibits criminal activity. Despite increasing budgets and the availability of more officers on the streets, crime rates still rose with the expanding metropolitan populations (Kelling et al., 1974). A one year experiment to determine the effectiveness of routine preventive patrol would be conducted, beginning on the first day of October 1972, and ending on the last day of September 1973.
More police officers doesn’t mean less crime because many of the crimes committed such as burglary, robbery, auto theft, larceny and vandalism which are preventable cannot be prevented if the response time is too slow. Even though more officers were on the job, even the fasted response had little influence of crime since the crime reports made came a significant time after the actually occurrence ,therefore flawing even the fastest police response.
By approaching these ideas with solid research goals and planning, researchers have come up with two basic crime fighting strategies that can increase police effectiveness. The first strategy Community Policing, which addresses immedia...
The term Evidence-Based Policing (EBP) as defined by Frank Schmalleger (2014) in the textbook Criminal Justice Today, is “the use of the best available research on the outcomes of police work to implement guidelines and evaluate agencies, units, and officers”. The evidence is based on the scientific research, and not on assumptions or perceptions made by people’s views on law enforcement agencies. However, there have been assumptions about police work that have been scientifically studied and brought into question. For instance, the approach to implement a preventative measure rather than a reactive approach on crime, and it is safer for two police officers to ride in one car. Evidence-Based Policing
In order for the police to successfully prevent crimes, public cooperation is needed. Various community policing programs have been implemented and it is important to discuss the benefits and limitations of these programs. Community policing allows the community to be actively involved and become a partner in promoting safety. This partnership increases trust of police officers and helps citizens understand that the police are on their side and want to improve their quality of life (Ferreira, 1996). The role of the police officers goes beyond that of a “crime fighter” and expands to multiple roles including that of a victim-centered
...area. Researchers have realized that even though foot patrol did not exactly lower the rate of the crimes as they have hoped for, but they did realize that maybe people would not commit crimes in those areas if they knew that officers are around almost at every other corner and they would be easily caught right away. Also, in this article, it has been noted that close contact between police and the people helps the former develop first-hand information about crime and possible criminal behavior. Information system such as this is more likely to have a positive long-term impact.
What should police be doing at crime hot spots? There are still concern about the effectiveness of hot spot policing, and what police officers should do in order to effectively reduce crime. Because police officer should be spending some time in these places it is essential to know what they should d...
It is a myth to believe that an officers job is spend fighting dangerous crimes, in reality officers spend more time handing smaller cases. For example, police officers spend a lot of time doing daily tasks such as giving speeding tickets and being mediators in disputes (Kappeler & Potter, 2005). Handing out speeding tickers and handling minor disputes are far from fighting crime. Police officers spend more time doing preventive measures (Kappeler & Potter, 2005). Preventive measures involve officers intervening to prevent further altercations. Victor Kappeler and Gary Potter discussed the myth of crime fighting as invalid and misleading notions of an officer’s employment.
The role in which police departments follow is the detail of patrolling communities, responding to emergency calls of service, and conducting investigations in an effort to follow up reported crimes. Reactive policing is responding to a crime that has already been committed. Police officers patrol areas within their own jurisdictions not only to look for crime, but to also be visible so to deter crime from happening. “Routine Patrol” includes the additional element of response time. Officers out patrolling their communities is required in order to facilitate response in a timely manner to dispatch
Because of budget constraints, the study only used one beat to collect data on the effects of increasing police patrol. Even though money was an issue, the experiment could have yielded better data by repeating the experiment multiple times to see if the data they collected would be reliable. The experiment also took place during the winter. The report of the study even noted that there was some evidence that crime activity levels declined, just as street activity does, because of colder weather. Although the design of the study contained weaknesses, some of the methods used by the researchers worked well for this type of study. One of the strengths of this experiment was the different methods used to acquire illegal guns in the beat. By using a variation of ways to seize illegal weapons in the “hot spot,” it allowed officers to increase their chances of finding more illegal guns. Using different methods of search also could have led to greater number of potential offenders to know that officers were looking for illegal weapons and refrained from offending. Another strength of the study includes the relatively inexpensive method to try to answer their hypothesis. Increasing police patrol is one of the more inexpensive methods and it did manage to decrease the number of gun crimes and homicide in the
I believe the chain of command is important in a police agency for many reasons. It is a roadmap that shows the route within the organization that order would flow coming down through the organization or that requests flow going up the organization, like a two-way street. The chain of command also establishes formal lines of communication within the department for organizational purposes and it must be used by everyone to communicate formally. This will eliminate crucial departmental problems. For example, if the chief administrative level does not follow the chain of command downward and gives an order directly to the patrol officer, this could cause confusion. For example, the supervisory level might feel that it is alright to do the same thing sending information up the chain. The purpose of the chain of command is to show individuals who their bosses are, from the chief
Arguably computer crime mapping has helped mitigate the negative perception held about the effectiveness of police in fighting crime. According to Goldstein & McEwen (2009), perceived confidence in police abilities largely decline in the 1970s and 1980s. Studies conducted at the time, established that the existing policing strategies needed an overhaul. For instance preventive patrol and rapid response to police call (which were the predominant strategies) did very little in crime prevention. Also in line with the findings, available statistical figure clearly pointed out, crime rates-even in areas patrol by highly qualified police forces-were rising at an alarming rate. Police scholars were affected by the negative perception as much as the police; therefore they intensified their search for a solution, by carrying out various studies (Goldstein & McEwen, 2009).
Crime Analysis has many benefits to the community. Community engagement, targeted initiatives, strategic use of resources, and data-driven decision-making contribute to decreasing crime. Crime prevention and community satisfaction with police services, while linked to the number of officers on the streets, does not depend entirely on the visibility of patrol officers. Community engagement, targeted initiatives, strategic use of resources, and data-driven decision-making contribute to decreasing crime. So in closing I believe that departments that take the positive elements of foot patrols and combine their efforts with crime analysis that focuses on the time, location, and type of crime, may use the findings to develop strategies to decrease crime and enhance the quality of life in their communities.
Based on its analysis of a carefully controlled experiment carried out chiefly in Newark, the foundation concluded, to the surprise of hardly anyone, that foot-patrol had not reduced crime rates (Koper, 1995). However, residents of the neighborhoods where foot-patrols had been conducted seemed to feel more secure than persons in other areas that were not receiving foot-patrols. These same citizens tended to believe that crime had been reduced, and appeared to engage in fewer processes take to protect themselves from crime and acts of disorder, such staying at home with the doors locked and not taking walks in the evening (Kelling & Wilson, The Atlantic, 1982). More importantly, citizens in the foot-patrol areas had a significantly more favorable opinion of the police than did those living elsewhere, where the foot-patrol experiment was not conducted. This study also revealed that the officers that had been assigned walking beats exhibited higher morale, greater job satisfaction, and a more favorable attitude toward citizens in their neighborhoods than did officers assigned to patrol cars only (Bain,