Patrol planning in the Rotterdam Police Department

A detailed analysis leading to the development of a specialized police department planning section has resulted in an improved patrol operation for Rotterdam, based on Larson's travel time model combined with a three-priority queuing model, and the prospect of improved police dispatching and patrol allocation for other cities in the Netherlands.     

Motivational interviewing training in juvenile corrections: A comparison of outside experts and internal trainers

Purpose. This study was designed to compare expert consultant trainers and less experienced, in‐house trainers in providing basic training in motivational interviewing (MI) for juvenile corrections employees. Methods. Trainees (n= 1,552) attended a 3‐day workshop administered by either a member of the Motivational Interviewing Network of Trainers (MINT) or a corrections staff member who had been trained by a MINT trainer. Results. Pre‐ to post‐test MI knowledge and skill gains did not vary between MINT expert and internal trainers, and increased for both groups. MINT trainees were more motivated to learn MI and expected it to be more effective in their work compared with those trained by corrections staff. MINT trainers were perceived as more knowledgeable about the topic, whereas corrections staff trainers were rated as better at utilizing handouts and visual aids. The groups did not differ on other measures of trainee satisfaction. Conclusions. These data suggest that a train‐the‐trainers model, in which expert consultants provide initial trainings to develop a pool of staff to provide subsequent trainings, may be as effective as a model that relies exclusively on expert trainers.     

What happened to patrol operations in Kansas city? A review of the Kansas city preventive patrol experiment

This paper reviews important aspects of the design, execution, and evaluation of the Kansas City Preventive Patrol Experiment. The focus is on the operational behavior of the patrol force during the experiment and not on before-and-after crime statistics. Where appropriate, simple probabilistic models are employed to estimate frequencies of preventive patrols and response times in each of the experimental areas. These models, together with experimental data, demonstrate that (1) typical patrol intensities in Kansas City are not large enough to encompass the range of patrol intensities experienced in other cities, and (2) patrol visibility in the depleted areas (the reactive beats) due to responding calls for service is relatively quite large, perhaps even equalling the pre-experimental levels during high workload periods. Such models also demonstrate that travel distances into the reactive beats should not be markedly increased, as the researchers had expected.Based on models and experimental data, the analysis indicates that the particular experimental design used in Kansas City resulted in a significant continued patrol presence in the depleted areas, with little increase in travel times in those areas. This suggests two policy conclusions: (1) great caution should be used in attempting to induce the general value of a visible patrol presence from the results of the Kansas City Preventive Patrol Experiment; (2) patrol administrators in other cities could, on a day-by-day basis if need be, remove conventional patrol coverage from certain beats and markedly increase manning in others nearby without incurring significant degradations in service (either actual or perceived) in the depleted areas. This second possibility facilitates the implementation of crime-directed patrol efforts.     

Minimizing the cost of dispatch delays by holding patrol cars in reserve

At many police departments high-priority callers sometimes incur undue delays that could be avoided by the use of a differential response strategy that takes full account of the different costs of delay for different priority calls. In this article we examine such a strategy, in which lower-priority callers may not be served immediately, even though some response units are available. Arriving priorityi callers are queued whenever the number of busy patrol units equals or exceeds the cutoff number for that priority. Our purpose is (1) to find a practical way of choosing the set of cutoff numbers that will minimize the expected total cost of delays for the entire system and (2) to use that method to investigate how the optimal set of cutoffs changes in response to changes in several important variables, including the relative costs of delay for different priorities, the overall workload, and the relative frequencies of different priority calls.     

Prices,Devices, People,or Rules: The Relative Effectiveness of Policy Instruments in Water Conservation1

Water conservation policy is a natural laboratory for addressing general issues of relevance to policy analysis and public administration, particularly the relative effectiveness of policies in changing human behavior. Using multivariate regression analysis of a dataset comprised of more than 200,000 monthly observations of more than 19,000 household accounts over six years, this paper makes three main contributions. First, it contributes to the substantive area of water conservation policy by analyzing what works. Second, it contributes to our understanding of generic policy instruments. Third, it raises an important issue regarding standard assumptions about selection bias. The results support earlier work warning that offsetting behavior can negate engineering solutions to policy problems, but further indicate that adding communication to engineering solutions can create cooperation that overcomes offsetting behavior. They also provide evidence that appropriate regulation can be effective, and that pricing can be effective even when price elasticities of demand are low.