MANAGING CITIZEN CALLS TO THE POLICE: THE IMPACT OF BALTIMORE'S 3‐1‐1 CALL SYSTEM*

Research Summary: Our paper explores the impact of implementing a nonemergency 3‐1‐1 call system in Baltimore, Maryland. We found a large (34.2%) reduction in 9‐1‐1 calls following the introduction of the 3‐1‐1 nonemergency call system. Many, but not all, of these calls simply migrated over to the 3‐1‐1 call system. Overall, we identified a 7.7% reduction in recorded citizen calls to the police post 3‐1‐1 intervention. This recorded reduction in citizen calls was confounded by an increase in high priority calls to the 9‐1‐1 system (27.5%), a large overall reduction in low priority calls (54.3%), and an estimated increase (perhaps 8%) in unrecorded calls to the police. We also note a small increase in response times to high priority 9‐1‐1 calls following the implementation of the 3‐1‐1 call system and virtually no change in the amount of officer time available for community policing or problem‐oriented policing activities. Policy Implications: Our findings suggest that nonemergency call systems, such as 3‐1‐1, can greatly facilitate police efforts to better handle citizen calls for police service. However, the intrinsic value of nonemergency call systems is tightly woven with a police department's willingness to change dispatch policies (especially for those calls received via the 3‐1‐1 system), reallocate patrol resources, and adopt organizational reforms to support alternative methods (apart from dispatch) for handling nonemergency calls for service.     

Hot spots policing and crime prevention: A systematic review of randomized controlled trials

Crime scholars and practitioners have argued that police actions should be focused on high-risk crime places rather than spread thinly across the urban landscape. This review examines five randomized controlled trials of the effects of concentrating police enforcement efforts on crime hot spots. The findings of these evaluations suggest that focused police actions can prevent crime and disorder in crime hot spots. A meta-analysis of the effect sizes from the five experiments reveals a statistically significant mean effect size for hot spots policing interventions; this suggests overall reductions in citizen calls for service in the treatment hot spots relative to the control hot spots. These studies also suggest that focused police actions at specific locations do not necessarily result in crime displacement. Although these evaluations reveal that these programs work in preventing crime, additional research is needed to unravel other important policy-relevant issues such as community reaction to focused police enforcement efforts.     

A multimethod approach to community evaluation of police performance

The aim of the present study is to examine the ability of police peers and supervisors to predict police street performance, as measured by citizen evaluations of the service received on recent police service calls. One question to be answered was whether there was any correlation between what a police supervisor, a police peer patrol officer, and a citizen percieved as “good” police performance. It was hypothesized that peer patrol officers would more accurately predict the quality of police street performance than would police supervisors. Results supported the hypothesis. An additional finding of the present study related to the feasibility of the evaluation of police street performance by citizen consumers.     

Welfare Reform: Prescription for Abuse? A Report on New Research Studies Documenting the Relationship of Domestic Violence and Welfare

Anecdotally, welfare‐to‐work programs have documented that domestic violence serves as a welfare‐to‐work barrier by partners' interference with education, training and work, or by physical or mental trauma which also prevents employment. Four new research studies, which, although using different methods, including random and nonrandom surveys of welfare caseloads and random neighborhood surveys, document high and remarkably consistent prevalence of domestic violence within welfare caseloads. Although much more needs to be known, the prevalence of domestic violence in these women's lives requires specific domestic violence‐sensitive welfare policies lest women become injured during the welfare‐to‐work process.     

Introduction: Problem‐Solving Courts

Problem‐solving courts have become a significant feature of the U.S. justice system, and their popularity appears to be growing internationally with courts under way or in development in countries such as Australia and Great Britain. Drug courts are the most visible type of problem‐solving court, but other varieties are beginning to take hold. Mental health courts, domestic violence courts, and community‐based courts among others are beginning to handle a considerable portion of the legal workload in many jurisdictions. Criminal law violations as well as neighborhood conflicts and interpersonal disputes are increasingly being referred to problem‐solving courts rather than to traditional criminal or civil courts.     

What happens after the lone ranger rides away?

A community policing program consisting of citizen input and problem solving techniques often results in a decision to police places and translates into lower crime rates at the policed locations. Proponents of community policing programs believe that they build social capital, which invests neighborhood citizens in the crime reduction efforts and reduces the simultaneous occurrence of potential offenders and victims required for crimes to be committed.     

Calling the cops: Police telephone operators and citizen calls for service

Citizen calls for police service represent direct demands on government. It is the job of police phone operators to translate these demands into official, bureaucratically recognized inputs. As “street-level” bureaucrats, police phone operators enjoy considerable discretion in how they recieve, process, and transmit information. Operators screen all calls, categorize the citizen's problem, and by that process they determine much of the initial police response to that call. This article analyzes data on citizen requests and operator responses coded from a sample of over 26,000 phone calls to police in 21 jurisdictions in three metropolitan areas. The data indicate that most citizen calls to police involve the provision of information or assistance, nuisance abatement, traffic problems, or the regulation of interpersonal disputes. Citizen calls cover a wide range of topics, but only about 20 percent involve predatory crime of any type. The typical operator response to the problems described by most citizens was to promise the dispatch of a patrol unit, although this varied by problem type and by the apparent seriousness of the call. Complaint operators seem to follow a decision rule that a patrol unit will always be sent to the scene except in those situations where it is clear that none is needed. The article concludes with a discussion of the possible impact of operator demeanor on policy-community relations.     

Recovering from the Effects of Domestic Violence: Implications for Welfare Reform Policy

This article highlights the importance of understanding how the impact of domestic violence renders participation in welfare‐to‐work programs highly problematic since the symptoms of post‐traumatic stress disorder (a not uncommon outcome of domestic violence experience) can undermine the victim's best efforts to benefit from training and return to work programs. A short history of PTSD is provided with the cautionary note that definitions of PTSD remain in flux. Sub‐categories of PTSD, such as Battered Women's Syndrome, are also reviewed. Recovery from PTSD is not described in psychotherapeutic terms, but in rehabilitative terms with an emphasis on those recovery processes which facilitate restoration of psychological and functional capacities, leading to participation in welfare‐to‐work or retraining programs with labor market participation as the goal.     

Assessing the relationship between individual characteristics, neighborhood context, and fear of crime

The purpose of this study is to examine citizens’ fear of crime based on the neighborhood in which they live. Integrating individual characteristics, citizens’ perceptions, and neighborhood structure provides a more complete perspective on understanding fear. Individuals were asked to report on proximate level of fear, social cohesion, neighborhood disorder and level of police/citizen satisfaction. Neighborhood structure emerged as a predictor of citizen's fear even after controlling for race, age, gender and education. Results indicated that perceived disorder neighborhood structure was strongly associated with citizens’ fear of crime. Considering individual characteristics, perceptions of disorder, and neighborhood context simultaneously provides an opportunity to develop a more comprehensive understanding of fear and policies to reduce fear.     

Community Participation and the Function of Rules: The Case of Urban Zoning Boards

Data from a case study of piecemeal zoning change suggest that the decisions of citizen zoning boards of appeal are neither lawless nor ineffective – the majority of requests that come before them are for bulk and dimension variances which typically do not threaten the land use status quo and are usually granted unless there is local opposition. When substantial changes of land use are involved two factors are influential in determining the outcome of zoning cases – the consistency or clash between the proposed land use and that of the neighborhood surrounding the site, particularly in single-family residential areas; and the expression of opinion (positive or negative) by the residents of the community.
Despite criticism of zoning boards as defective and illegitimate legal institutions and calls for their abolition, they remain popular and extremely resistant to change because they have come to play important dispute settling and community maintenance functions in the urban environment in addition to their explicit rule enforcement functions. These broader community functions of zoning can only be understood in terms of a participatory model of legal process where legal rules are understood as functioning to identify situations as much as they are norms to be enforced.     

Community crime prevention: A review and synthesis of the literature

In the absence of effective formal means for controlling crime in the Western world, community crime prevention has emerged as a major alternative and supplement to the criminal justice system. This article attempts to review what is known currently about the nature, extent, and effectiveness of community-based efforts to prevent residential crime. Included in this assessment are citizen actions to protect themselves, their property, and their neighborhood, as well as efforts to prevent crime through changes in the physical environmental and through innovations in community policing. The historical, theoretical, and empirical rationale for community crime prevention strategies are discussed, but primary attention is given to the results of evaluation research in the field. Although community-based efforts are supported widely by theory, studies of natural covariation, and by numerous poorly designed evaluations, there is a paucity of strong demonstrations and evaluations showing that such interventions can alter the behavior and local environments of persons who are not already predisposed to crime prevention. Substantially more research is needed to determine the collective benefits of community crime prevention strategies, but a number of promising approaches currently are being developed.     

Awareness of community-oriented policing and neighborhood perceptions in five small to midsize cities

Although past research in large urban areas showed that community-oriented policing (COP) had a positive effect on citizens' views of the police and their neighborhood, very little was known about its impact on citizen perceptions in smaller cities. In the present study, multiple-regression was used to analyze survey data from 524 respondents in five small cities or towns in North Carolina to examine the success of local police departments in disseminating information about their COP program. The association between resident awareness of COP and their ratings of police/community relations, self-protection strategies, fear of crime, and community integration was also assessed. Police agencies in each city implemented COP at least one year before the survey. Results indicated that 20-50 percent of residents were aware of community policing efforts in their neighborhoods, but most did not participate in these efforts. Awareness of COP was associated with greater self-protection efforts, lower fear of crime, and stronger feelings of community attachment, controlling for demographic, perceptions of neighborhood problems, and victimization. Awareness of COP also had a stronger association with the outcome variables compared to a more traditional policing strategy, perceived visibility. The implications of these findings for COP programs, especially for small to midsize cities, are discussed in the Conclusion.     

Legal Procedure and Participation by the Public: Germany's 1990 Genetic Engineering Act

In German law, administrative procedures concerning high‐risk technologies generally involve an element of public participation. This form of "participation for all" often causes a great deal of contention. A well‐known example of this development can be found in the Genetic Engineering Act of 1990, which provided for citizen participation at a public hearing ( Ero¨rterungstermin ) whenever someone applied for a license to release genetically modified plants. Four years later, as a consequence of the experience gained while implementing the law, this provision was removed in the 1994 First Amendment to the Genetic Engineering Law ( Bundestag‐Drucksache 720/93). Decisions on deliberate release are now made on the basis of written submissions. This article will argue that while there had certainly been good theoretical reasons for implementing a direct, oral form of public participation, in this case failure was predestined by the facts of the situation. In conclusion, the article makes a special plea for continued empirical research into the circumstances of the hearings, in order to explore better the possibilities for implementing functional equivalents to this form of public participation.     

Managing the HIV/AIDS Pandemic: Paving a Path into the Future of International Law and Organization

Complex global interdependence continues to influence international legal and political affairs at the close of the twentieth century. As interdependence has tightened, non‐state actors have emerged in many policy areas as key political and service delivery players; often supporting increasingly prioritized human‐centered issues. Analysis of the global management of the HIV/AIDS pandemic suggests that use of international quasi‐legislation can be employed in order to create space within which to manage these changes, thus opening room for discussion about new approaches to meeting the challenges of a changing world.     

A comparison of Latino and White citizen satisfaction with police

Latinos represent the fastest growing racial/ethnic population in the United States, yet paradoxically, are one of the least studied groups in the field of criminal justice (Schuck, Lersch, & Verrill, 2004). This study aimed to fill this gap by comparing citizen satisfaction with police among Latinos and Whites in the majority-minority city of San Antonio, Texas. Drawing upon prior research as a guide, the study modeled citizen satisfaction with police from a sample of 592 survey respondents that were contacted by telephone in the fall of 2005. Models across the two groups indicated that neighborhood disorder strongly influenced satisfaction and Latinos had slightly higher satisfaction levels when compared with Whites. Implications for future research are discussed regarding the enhancement of knowledge about ethnic differences in perceptions of police and the larger criminal justice system.     

CITIZEN RATINGS OF THE POLICE: The Difference Contact Makes

Recent surveys repeatedly indicate that the public holds favorable attitudes toward the police. This analysis suggests positive public evaluations of the police may be in part the result of citizen satisfaction with police actions in handling specific incidents. Citizen-police contacts are found to be relatively common, and in the majority of these contacts, citizens are found to rate police actions favorably. Four types of citizen-police contacts are analyzed: contacts resulting from victimizations, assistances provided by the police, stops initiated by police, and citizen calls to the police for information. Contact type alone is found to have relatively little influence on citizen evaluations of the police services provided to their neighborhoods. But citizen satisfaction with police handling of contacts has a stronger impact, which appears to vary with contact type.     

The Effects of Domestic Violence on Women's Employment

This article presents some results of a random household survey that examined the effects of domestic violence on the labor force participation of 824 women living in a low‐income neighborhood. It also uses data from twenty‐four long interviews.
Eighteen percent of the respondents reported having experienced physical aggression in the past twelve months, and 11.9% reported more severe physical violence. Women who reported abuse were more likely to have experienced unemployment and held more jobs and to report more health problems. They also had lower personal incomes, and were significantly more likely to receive public assistance. At the same time, women who reported abuse were employed in roughly the same numbers as those who did not. Thus, it appears that domestic violence may depress women's socioeconomic and occupational status attainment over time, but does not affect employment status per se.  The article concludes with comments about the implications of the findings for the redesign of public assistance and job training programs.     

The Legal Context of School Violence: The Effectiveness of Federal, State, and Local Law Enforcement Efforts to Reduce Gun Violence in Schools

In the wake of recent school shootings, communities and legislatures are searching for law enforcement solutions to the perceived epidemic of school violence. A variety of legal measures have been debated and proposed. These include: the enactment of tougher gun control laws and more vigorous federal and local enforcement of existing gun control laws; the enactment of laws imposing civil or criminal liability on parents for their children's violent behavior; the establishment of specialized courts and prosecution strategies for handling juveniles who are charged with weapons offenses; stricter enforcement of school disciplinary codes; reform of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act to make it easier to expel students for weapons violations; and greater use of alternative schools as placements for students who are charged with weapons violations.
  This article provides a legal and empirical analysis of proposed legislation in these areas as informed by social science research on the patterns of school violence, gun acquisition by juveniles, and the effectiveness of various laws and law enforcement measures. It proposes and discusses recommendations for legal reform. While efforts to reduce school violence will be most effective at the state and local levels, the United States federal government has an important role to play, particularly in federal‐state partnerships aimed at disrupting illegal gun markets, and through the formulation of national standards and guidelines. These standards and guidelines are for the enforcement of existing laws; inter‐agency law enforcement cooperation and information‐sharing (particularly using computer‐based analysis); effective school discipline and alternative educational settings for disruptive youth; and psycho‐educational interventions designed to detect and prevent school violence in the first place.     

政府公共服务绩效评估中的公民参与研究

当前,我国各地政府开展的公民参与政府公共服务绩效评估活动,拓宽了公民参与政府社会管理和公共服务的路径。本文在阐释政府公共服务绩效评估中公民参与内涵的基础上,分析了我国政府公共服务绩效评估中公民参与的现状,并提出优化公民参与政府公共服务绩效评估的路径：强化和提高公民的参与意识与能力;增强公民与政府间公共服务绩效信息的对称性;加快公民参与绩效评估的制度化建设;鼓励和发展独立性和专业化的第三方评估组织;建立健全评估中政府与公民的互动机制。