Chapter 8 Flashcards
Why are the police the primary social control agency in society.
Becasue of greater reliance on governmental services and diminishing role of traditional social institutions.
Problem solving by the police should not be restricted to crime. These problems and issues are all the providence of the poice.
- social
- health
- quality life (sic)
If the police depart from focusing on incidents, the next step in the hierarchy of problem solving is dangerous places or hot spots. Criminals are attracted to geographical locations by: (4)
1.entertainment
2. potential victims
3. their work
their residences
Locations that have high levels of crime and disorder include: (9)
- bars
- certain apartment complexes
- areas around liquor stores
- bus stops
- shopping malls
- homeless shelters
- fast-food restaurants
- abandoned buildings
- parks
Political crime is organized in state houses and mansions; police crime happens on the street in precinct houses; and white colloar crime follows:
The path of the dollar
Houses and building on primary roadways leading to these tend to experience more vandalism and minor crimes such as larceny:
High Schools
as students travel to and from school
More than ______% of crimes are committed in relatively few locations.
60%
This term describes the concentrations of crime and disorder.
Hot spots
This refers to criminal offenses, usually Part I crimes
hard crime
This refers to minor violations and instances of disorder.
soft crime
A hot spot should not exceed a _______ in size.
Block
SARA
This refers to a process whereby individual officers, police units, or the police department collectively examine the community for problems or hot spots.
Scanning
SARA
Once a problem, quality of life, or a hot spot is identified, officers attempt to collect information about it. Basically they attempt to learn who, what, where, and how the problem.
Analysis
SARA
This means the police must deal with the cause(s) of the problem rather that its symptoms.
Response
SARA
If the strategy did not result in a acceptable outcome, the police must re-analyze the problem and fashion another response.
Assessment
Skogan;s problem-solving model by the Chicago Police Department has a five stage process: (5)
- Identifying
- Analyzing
- Designing (…thinking outside the box…)
- Implementing (…a step requiring special skill and effort by the community…)
- Evaluating (…through self-assessment)
Webster and Connors have identified 8 methods the police can use to identify problems: (8)
- officer observation and experience
- complaints
- crime analysis
- police reports
- call for service analysis
- crime mapping
- community groups
- surveys
The first step in problem solving is:
Scanning the enviroment to identify the problems that are suitable for police intervention.
One formative method of udentifying problems in a jurisdiction is to poll these people:
Police Officers
This type of policing involves the police pressuring not the people directly causing the problems but the people who have control over locations in which a problem is occurring. These people may include tavern and store owners, owners of rental houses and apartments, as well as parents and guardians of juveniles.
Third Party Policing
When polled citizens often list the following problems as their primary concerns: (4)
- speeding cars
- loitering on street corners
- unruly juveniles
- panhandling
An effective way to identify problems from people in a neighborhood is to hold neighborhood meetings. Such meetings can be held in : (4)
- churches
- schools
- business meeting rooms
- governmental facilities
Two benefits of community meetings are that: (2)
- it serves as an excellent opportunity to gather information
- it develops better relations with people
The object of community meetings is to:
Develop a long-term relationship with the neighborhood residents.
Once the crime analysis unit receives information, it produces reports which can be used by: (3)
- management
- operational units
- individual officers
In the past, police departments depended on these to provide officers and iunits with crime information.
- pin maps, and
2. daily bulletins
The factors which are useful in the crime analysis function, include: (7)
- types of crimes
- times of occurrence
- locations of occurrence
- suspect information
- victim information
- modus operandi
- physical evidence
CRIME MAPPING
This is where a number of crimes or activities are concentrated in a geographical area.
Geographical concentration pattern
There are two broad type of crime patterns: (2)
- geographical concentration patterns
2. similar offense patterns
Similar offense paaterns can be concentrated in an area…or they may spread over a large geographical area as is the most: (3 types of criminals)
- serial rapists
- serial armed robbers
- burglars
Community surveys are a way of measuring citizen attitudes about the police and police performance as well as problems in the community. These surveys contain questions about the: (3)
- quality of service
- how often they call the police
- general impression about the police
This serves as a good prelude to neighborhood meetings.
A neighborhood survey
To ensure that a response (to a problem) works, the police must constantly review these to see if the response indeed worked: (3)
- calls for service
- citizen’s perception of safety, and
- crime
Nine reasons why problem solving efforts in many departments are mediocre:
- police officers do not have the analytical skills required to analyze problems
- police managers and supervisors do not know how to foster problem solving
- police agencies resist change
- police workloads prevent anything but superficial analysis
- there is too little involvment of communities, and communities do noy cooperate
- local government agencies provide too little support
- little is known about what works under what circumstances
- the problem solving process used a linear, but most problem solving is nonlinear
- we do not know how to solve problems because we do not know much about the problem
What are the two principle components of community policing?
- problem solving
2. community partnerships
SARA
This is the search for problems:
Scanning
SARA
This is the process whereby the police attempt to fully understand the problems and symptoms:
Analysis
SARA
This is the reaction to the problem:
Response
SARA
This is the process where the police evaluate their response to endure that it is successful:
Assessment
Hotspot consistency was confirmed by Spelman in 1995 who found that calls for service at these locations in Boston remained fairly consistent over time:
- high schools
- housing projects
- subway stations
- parks
When it comes to problem solving, Clarke found that these tend to be the dominant assesment modality, especiallr for small-problem-solving projects.
personal observations
What makes problem-solving more common place within an organization:
When there are policies in organizational arrangements to facilitate and mandate it.
