Taking Back Druid Hills: An Evaluation of a Community Policing Effort in Birmingham, Alabama

This paper examines the effectiveness of a cooperative police‐citizen effort to eradicate open‐air drug markets in the Druid Hills neighborhood of Birmingham, Alabama. Using calls‐for‐service data, the study found that calls increased during initial efforts to organize citizen cooperation. As efforts to implement police activities in the area began, calls decreased; the types of calls changed as well. The results indicate the program was effective in reducing problems associated with the open‐air drug market in this neighborhood and illustrate the usefulness of calls for service as a way to monitor the value of a program's efforts.     

The Search for Job Satisfaction: A Survey of Alabama Policing

This study examines police job satisfaction and its association with general occupational attraction. Police officers from sixteen municipal departments (n = 1,114) across one southern state (Alabama) were found to possess moderate-high overall job satisfaction, with regression analysis supporting the conclusions of prior studies that demographics are of little value to understanding job satisfaction. The findings convey that 25% of job satisfaction variance can be explained from six variables (in order of importance): social contribution, pay, adventure/excitement, autonomy, peer respect, and job security. The importance of benefits and community respect was unsupported, as were partner and special operation assignments. The author concludes that a great portion of police satisfaction hinges on the realization of work environment expectations, and that departments must proactively construct policies to enhance fulfillment of officer aspirations.     

The Effects of Community Policing on Complaints Against Officers

Between 1982 and 1989, the Houston Police Department was committed toforming partnerships with the community as part of its strategy to improvepolice service to the city. Using complaint data from the Internal AffairsDivisions of the Houston Police Department, this research examines whetherofficers assigned to areas of the city that implemented community policinghave fewer complaints than other officers. The results showed that officersworking in areas where community policing had been implemented receivedsignificantly fewer complaints than officers working in other areas. Anexception was complaints for criminal behavior, which increased. The resultssuggest that models of community policing that focus on creating communitypartnerships have the potential to reduce tension between the police and thepublic.     

论社会转型中的社区管治与社区警务

我国现阶段的社会转型对社区管治与社区警务产生着深刻的影响,使社区的管治环境、人际关系、管治方式和治安生态发生了重大变化。在对社区实施的政府管理与居民自治中,政府管理是主导,需要通过完善的居民自治才能最大限度地发挥管理作用;居民自治是基础,只有在政府引领下才能充分实现自治功能。社会转型期的社区警务活动,应当立足社区履行公安社会管理职能,充分利用社区资源改善警务运行条件,建立和谐警民关系为社区建设提供治安保障。     

Reliability, validity, and utility of criminal profiling typologies

Criminal profiling has received attention from the academic community and from the entertainment world since the FBI first published accounts of its profiling principles. It became popular through films such as Silence of the Lambs and the X-Files making headlines. However, beyond the victims' pin pictures that help create the sensationalism in these resources, there have been few, if any, reliable criminal profiling classification designs. This work examines deductive and inductive profiling models that classify crime scene activity including the first systematic review of the FBI's organized and disorganized profiling typology. The paper concludes with a discussion about how to turn profiling from an art too more a scientific process through the use of investigative process management research.     

论美国社区警务的理论与实践

美国的社区警务理论研究成熟、实践经验丰富,是包括中国在内许多国家学习的对象。对美国社区警务产生的背景、主要理论依据、实践内容及评估评价做了细致而深入的分析。以期对我国社区警务建设提供一些新的认识与视角。     

论社区警务建设的承继与创新

社区警务建设是做好公安工作的基石。在社会管理创新和构建和谐警民关系的新形势下,社区警务建设需要承继公安工作优良传统,专群结合、亲民为民,切实履行好社区民警的职责;还需要变革,不断创新社区警务的内涵、工作方法、形象和服务等。只有这样,才能筑牢维护稳定的第一道防线,服务群众的第一个平台,巩固政权的第一层基石,促进社会和谐稳定。     

The Effects of a School Policing Program on Crime,Discipline, and Disorder: A Quasi-Experimental Evaluation

This study analyzes the impacts of school-based law enforcement officers on school crime, disciplinary actions, and disciplinary problems in 238 middle and high schools in West Virginia using a non-equivalent groups design and three years of data. Propensity score weights are utilized to reduce selection biases resulting from non-random group assignment in observational data. Binary and multinomial logistic treatment models are used when estimating treatment effects to examine whether the extent to which police officers are present in schools impacts problem outcomes. Findings indicated that while the presence of school police officers increased drug-related crimes and out-of-school suspensions for drug crimes regardless of whether they were present in schools for a single year or multiple years, there were deterrent effects observed for violent crimes and incidents of disorder when police officers were present in schools during all school years. Implications for policy and practice are discussed.

     

Police Support for Community Problem-Solving and Broken Windows Policing

This paper explores overall police officer acceptance of tactics and tenets of broken windows and community problem-solving policing. It assesses differential support for each by police officer characteristics (i.e., race/ethnicity, gender, rank, education level, years of service, and assignment). This study presents the findings of a survey of 227 sworn police personnel from two urban police departments. Univariate analyses reveal the levels of support that police have for certain police tactics and tenets of broken windows and community problem-solving policing. Regression analyses examine the relationship between key officer characteristics and support for these tactics and tenets as measured by respondents’ agreement with various items and indices. Findings include support for community problem-solving (and also a reliance on traditional policing methods); a lag in investigators’ acceptance of community problem-solving; and differences by officer race/ethnicity, education, rank, and assignment in indices related to broken windows and rapid response policing. The differential acceptance of broken windows and rapid response tactics by race/ethnicity suggests interesting implications for future studies of race/ethnicity and broken windows policing. The greater acceptance of certain tactics by patrol officers supports current moves toward innovating in police investigations’ bureaus.     

Implanting Community Policing in South Africa: A Failure of History,of Context,and of Theory

The globalisation of policing is not anew phenomenon. The British colonial police are a much older example of that process. But in recent years, policing has come to be `sold' to `transitional' and to `failed' state in a cumulative fashion. The most obvious export by the West in the present day is that of Community-Oriented Policing. However, much of that export drive has been accompanied by a failure of the salespeople to recognize that community policing only works in societies with particular histories and in particular social context. The paper examined the implantation of community policing in South Africa and its failure to take root. An appropriate lesson is drawn. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

The Economic Evaluation of Policing Activity: An Application of a Hybrid Methodology

This paper advances a hybrid police cost function that synthesises the proactive/preventive and response/reactive methodologies from the criminology literature. The model presents a coherent estimation process that can help in the allocation of scarce resources to police forces and also enable economists, government organisations and criminologists to assess the scale and technical efficiency of forces. This hybrid model uses response survey data for a sample of English and Welsh police forces in which relative efficiency rankings are contrasted with relative performance measures produced by the Audit Commission. We find that there are considerable divergences in police force's scale and technical efficiency during 1997/98 and 1998/99 utilising non-parametric techniques.     

A Comparative Perspective of Community Policing in Taiwan and Washington State

This study explores the attitudes and behaviors of Taiwanese police officers regarding community oriented policing (COP) by comparing their attitudes and behaviors with those of officers in Washington State. Data used in the study were collected from 375 Taiwanese line officers assigned to the city of Tainan and 167 American line officers from various police and sheriffs’ departments in Washington State. The study finds that (1) Taiwanese and American officers hold similar opinions of COP’s potential to reduce crime; (2) both groups are similarly involved in implementing the various strategies of COP; yet (3) American officers are more involved in formulating (planning/devising) COP strategies; and (4) are more receptive to citizen involvement in COP; while (5) Taiwanese officers are more receptive to civilian oversight, and (6) are more amenable to applying COP outcomes for evaluative purposes than are their American counterparts. Policy implications and areas for future research are discussed.

Female Officers and Community Policing: Examining the Connection between Gender Diversity and Organizational Change

This study aimed to evaluate the temporal relationship between gender diversity and the adoption of community policing. The results from three separate structural equation models suggest that gender diversity is the stronger temporal predictor. The findings highlight the potential importance of gender diversity in organizational change. In theory, increasing the number of female officers may increase organizational agility through the creation of an alternative cultural ethos. More research is needed to understand how gender diversity affects police agencies, as well as how calls to reform the institution of policing affect women in law enforcement.     

关于创新和谐社区警务区建设的实践和思考

创建和谐社区警务区,社区平安是基础,社区服务是关键。实践证明,全力推进和谐社区警务区建设,必须围绕社区的治安实际和群众需求,不断强化社区警务建设,健全五大机制,推进社区警务工作＂五化＂,将社区警务区打造成零距离服务群众,近距离防控犯罪的平台,实现警察形象柔性化、警民关系伙伴化、警务活动社会化的新型警务模式,有效提升社区居民群众的安全感和满意度。同时要做到理念创新,在建设和谐社区警务区的进程中,必须坚定不移地树立＂以民为本、服务至上＂等六个正确的理念。     

香港社区警务制度及其影响探究

社区警务是20世纪末在国际范围内兴起的一种适应市场经济体制的警务模式,这种模式已经成为国际警务发展的大趋势。作为原英国殖民地,香港的法律制度和警察体制都深受英国警务制度的影响,从而形成了具有香港特色的较为严谨的法律体系和专业警察队伍。20世纪70年代,英国的社区警务制度在香港悄然兴起,并在遏制犯罪和促进警民关系等方面起到积极作用,形成了相对完整、系统的社区警务模式。香港回归以来,内地公安机关逐渐引入香港先进的警务模式和理念,从而对大陆的警务政策的制定和警民关系的维护产生了巨大的影响。     

Policing: The patrol sergeants’ perspective

Implementing community policing is a complex and difficult task for police departments. Patrol sergeants are essential in accomplishing any organizational change and so their observations should be used to modify and finetune community policing efforts. A group of twenty patrol sergeants were interviewed regarding the change strategies which helped or hurt implementation of community policing. Several statistical analyses are discussed with age being the only factor which was significantly related to supervisor’s attitudes toward community policing.