POLICE EMPLOYMENT AND SUBURBAN CRIME

Although politicians, police, and others have often advocated the expansion of police employment in the effort to control crime, the empirical relationship between police employment and crime rates has seldom been systematically explored. This study incorporates variables which are causally related both to crime and police employment roles for the 252 northern and northeastern suburbs for which police employment and crime data are available for 1970–1972. Separate analyses of violent and property crime are undertaken, incorporating data on police employment as a causally related variable along with several other determinants of crime identified in earlier studies. The analysis suggests that police employment and crime rates are reciprocally related, and that these relationships offer more support for a “labeling” than a “deterrence” perspective.     

UNIONIZATlON BEHIND THE WALLS

Inmate militancy has evolved from rioting to nonviolent forms of protest and, more recently, to union organizing activities. Prisoners' unions have been opposed by state officials. and a number of tactics have been employed to weaken them Although no constitutional or statutory provisions deal specifically with the right of prisoners to unionize, that right probably depends upon the union's ability to demonstrate that it does not threaten institutional security and would not significantly alter the existing power structure. Prisoners' unions could represent a more participatory and open form of bargaining than currently exists in prisons