By: Michael S. Scott

Problem-oriented policing initiatives are one important form of crime prevention, and they offer opportunities for learning about implementation success and failure. Problem-oriented policing initiatives can succeed or fail for a variety of reasons, among them: inaccurate identification of the probk?n, inaccurate analysis of the problem, inadequate implementation, or application of an incorrect theory. This paper draws upon both the research literature and reports on problem-oriented policing initiatives to identify those factors that best explain why action plans do or do not get implemented. It identifies and provides examples of five clusters of factors that help explain implementation success or failure: (I) characteristics, skills, and actions of project managers; (2) resources (3) support and cooperation external to the police agency; (4) evidence; and (5) complexity of implementation.

Crime Prevention Studies, volume 20 (2006), pp. 9-35

By: Graham Farrell and Ken Pease

The attempt to reduce

• the number of crime events and/or

• the loss and harm resulting from crime events

is the core work of both the security industry and the police, with their local authority partners. The difference is that the former does its work for its employers (where the security is in-house) or for paying clients. The police act as the National Health Service to the security industry’s BUPA, with many of the same tensions that arise at the points of connection.

This chapter seeks to outline key aspects of criminology that, in the view of the authors, make a significant and continuing contribution to the security industry. Its main aim therefore, is to present an introduction to crime prevention and crime science for a readership working in the security industry. Enough case studies of successful crime reduction efforts have now been published to provide a source of information and possible emulation for anyone in the public or private sector seriously interested in crime and loss reduction.

August 2005 Chapter forthcoming in M. Gill (Ed.) The Handbook of Security. Perpetuity Press.

By: John E. Eck & Emily B. Eck

On May 16, 2010, in the Club Ritz nightclub, Jerry Scott shot Dexter Burroughs dead. This was the second killing in the bar since 1998. Five years earlier, four people were shot near the club, one by the police and three in a separate incident. Four years earlier, a fight at the club resulted in a car chase that killed Philiant Johnson and wounded three others. On Valentine’s Day 2010, three people were shot in the club’s parking lot (Baker, 2010; Horst, 2010). After the killing of Burroughs, the club closed for several months but then reopened. Police state that since reopening, “14 arrests for disorderly conduct or drug possession have been made at the club, plus 10 assaults, four domestic violence incidents, a robbery and carjacking” (Whitaker, 2011). The owner of the club stated: “It’s not our fault. Nightclubs do not kill people. People kill people” (Nightclub and Bar, 2010). Just as the owner of the Club Ritz implies they should, current crime policies focus exclusively on offenders. We suggest he is wrong—crime reduction policies also should focus on places. Research has established that crime is concentrated at places; yet to date, policy makers and criminologists have focused most of their attention on two policy prescriptions: use coercion to deter or remove offenders, use forms of social assistance to divert potential offenders from crime, or convince active offenders to pursue legitimate activities (Weisburd, Telep, and Braga, 2010).

Criminology & Public Policy Volume 11 Issue 2

By: KENT R. KERLEY & MICHAEL L. BENSON

Advocates of community-oriented policing contend that it has great potential to reduce crime and fear because it strengthens community social organization and cohesion. Previous studies of community policing, however, fail to include community process variables as outcome measures and instead focus on outcome measures such as crime rates and fear of crime. Despite the recent focus by criminologists on community context in general studies of crime and delinquency, no direct attempt has been made to investigate the potential relationship between community policing and broader community processes such as community organization, cohesion, and cooperative security. Using data from a comprehensive community policing study conducted in Oakland, California, and Birmingham, Alabama, from 1987 to 1989, this article investigates whether community policing strategies have effects on community processes. Findings indicate that community policing tactics do not have strong effects on community processes. These results may help explain why community policing has so far had little measurable impact on crime and fear of crime, and may be instructive for the design and evaluation of future community policing studies.

POLICE QUARTERLY Vol. 3 No. 1, March 2000 46–69

By: Michael S. Scott

What works in policing? David Weisburd, Cody W. Telep, Joshua C. Hinkle, and John E. Eck (2010, this issue) sought to answer this core question in their review of problem-oriented policing. Herman Goldstein proposed the problem-oriented approach in 197 as the means by which the police could achieve their objectives more effectively and, thereby, improve the overall police institution. Weisburd et al. set out to put the problem-oriented approach to the test some 30 years later. Given the ambitiousness of Goldstein’d proposal, it follows that Weisburd et al.’s study in equally ambitious and important. If problem-oriented policing is proven to work, then it would stand to reason that police and local governments should commit to the approach more fully. if it is proven not to work, then reconsideration of the approach—either to better understand why it is not working or to pursue alternative approaches to policing—would be warranted.

Criminology฀&฀Public฀Policy฀•฀Volume฀9฀•฀Issue฀1

By Rose M.C. Kagawa, Christopher D. McCort, Julia Schleimer, Veronica A. Pear, Amanda Charbonneau, Shani A.L. Buggs, Garen J. Wintemute, Hannah S. Laqueur

This study estimates disparities in driving under the influence (DUI) convictions relative to the frequency with which racial/ethnic groups engage in alcohol-impaired driving. We use had-been-drinking crashes and self-reported alcohol-impaired driving to approximate alcohol-impaired driving frequency for racial/ ethnic groups in California from 2001 to 2016.DUI conviction and had-been-drinking crash data are from a sample of 72,368 California men aged 21–49 in 2001. Self-reported alcohol-impaired driving rates could lead to more equitable DUI conviction rates.

Such actions could include limiting discretion at each level of the criminal justice system, for example, by providing prescriptive guidance to officers on when to stop drivers or using local had-been-drinking crash rates to determine sobriety checkpoint and saturation patrol locations are from male Californians who responded to the Behavioral RiskFactor Surveillance System. Relative to race/ethnicity-specific estimated rates of engaging in alcohol-impaired driving, Latino/Hispanic men had higher rates of DUIconviction than White men. This suggests racial bias plays a role in DUI convictions, with White men experiencing a lower probability of conviction thanLatino/Hispanic men who engage in similar behavior.Policy implications:These findings suggest actions aimed at reducing individual and structural biasesThis is an open access article under the terms of theCreative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivsLicense, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made.

Criminology & Public Policy, Volume20, Issue 4 November 2021 Pages 645-663

By Rory Kramer and Brianna Remster

An estimated 61.5 million Americans encounter police annually and more than one million are threatened or subjected to police use of force during these encounters. Much research exists on the efficacy for crime control of the policing practices that produce those encounters, but outside of formal consequences such as incarceration, the criminology of police harms has been slower to emerge. In this review, we describe the slow violence that contemporary policing practices disproportionately inflict on people of color. These wide-ranging harms constitute cultural trauma and shape health, well-being, academic performance, government participation, community membership, and physical space. As a result, routine policing practices help create and maintain the racial and class status quo. We close by considering the limits of popular reforms given those harms and urge researchers to take a broader approach by studying nonpolicing alternatives to public safety alongside crime control efficacy and incorporating more critical perspectives to build a more comprehensive assessment of modern policing practices.

Annu. Rev. Criminol. 2022. 5:43–66

By Walter Cade Reckless and Simon Dinitz. Chiefly based on a report of the Ohio State University Research Foundation to the National Institute of Mental Health, May 31, 1970. “The disintegration of the social and familial roles that children see for themselves, and the alienating effects that are the inevitable accompaniments of the increased mobility and fluidity that mark our society, are the major causes of delinquency and crime in the United States today. The prevention of juvenile delinquency must be tied, therefore, to an effort to overcome this critical lack of a role structure to which young people perceive themselves as belonging, and to reverse the present trend toward alienation and revolt.”

Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press, 1972. 253p.