The Effectiveness of Community Policing in Reducing Urban Violence

2002 ◽  
Vol 48 (4) ◽  
pp. 592-618 ◽  
Author(s):  
John M. MacDonald
Keyword(s):  
Violent Crime ◽  
Community Policing ◽  
Census Data ◽  
Urban Violence ◽  
Police Departments ◽  
Political Determinants ◽  
Time Period ◽  
Inverse Effect ◽  
Proactive Policing ◽  
American Cities

In recent years, sharp declines in violent crime rates have been recorded across major American cities. During this time period, many police departments have shifted from a traditional reactive form of policing to a community-oriented approach. It is unclear whether these changes have any causal relationship with the control or reduction in violent crime. To examine this issue, this study used the Law Enforcement Management and Administrative Statistics survey, the FBI's Uniform Crime Reports, and city-level census data to examine the economic and political determinants of robbery and homicide rates in 164 American cities. Findings indicate that community policing had little effect on the control or the decline in violent crime. Proactive policing strategies related to arrest had an inverse effect on violent crime measures and were related to reductions in violent crime over time. Implications of these findings for criminal justice policy are discussed.

Is De-policing the Cause of the Spike in Urban Violence? Comment on Cassell

2020 ◽  
Vol 33 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 142-143
Author(s):  
Richard Rosenfeld
Keyword(s):  
Violent Crime ◽  
Property Crime ◽  
Police Legitimacy ◽  
Urban Violence ◽  
Present Evidence ◽  
Disadvantaged Communities ◽  
Police Presence ◽  
The Impact ◽  
American Cities

Paul Cassell maintains that de-policing was a major cause of the spike in violent crime many American cities experienced during the summer of 2020. While plausible, Professor Cassell’s argument is unconvincing because it fails to explain why de-policing did not produce a rise in property crime, and it overstates the impact of policing on crime. Nor does he present evidence of a drop in police presence and activity large enough to produce such a huge increase in violence. Professor Cassell’s criticism of the argument that diminished police legitimacy caused the violence spike is more persuasive. He and I agree that the explanation for the spike lies somewhere in the nexus between the police and the disadvantaged communities they serve more or less effectively.

The Relationship Between City “Greenness” and Homicide in the US: Evidence Over a 30-Year Period

2021 ◽  
pp. 001391652110450
Author(s):  
Jonnell C. Sanciangco ◽  
Gregory D. Breetzke ◽  
Zihan Lin ◽  
Yuhao Wang ◽  
Kimberly A. Clevenger ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Violent Crime ◽  
P Value ◽  
Homicide Rates ◽  
Violence Reduction ◽  
Time Period ◽  
The Us ◽  
Longitudinal Effects ◽  
Curve Modeling ◽  
First Time ◽  
Us Cities

Residents in US cities are exposed to high levels of stress and violent crime. At the same time, a number of cities have put forward “greening” efforts which may promote nature’s calming effects and reduce stressful stimuli. Previous research has shown that greening may lower aggressive behaviors and violent crime. In this study we examined, for the first time, the longitudinal effects over a 30-year period of average city greenness on homicide rates across 290 major cities in the US, using multilevel linear growth curve modeling. Overall, homicide rates in US cities decreased over this time-period (52.1–33.5 per 100,000 population) while the average greenness increased slightly (0.41–0.43 NDVI). Change in average city greenness was negatively associated with homicide, controlling for a range of variables (β = −.30, p-value = .02). The results of this study suggest that efforts to increase urban greenness may have small but significant violence-reduction benefits.

scholarly journals Firework-related injuries treated at emergency departments in the United States during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 compared to 2018–2019

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Nathan Maassel ◽  
Abbie Saccary ◽  
Daniel Solomon ◽  
David Stitelman ◽  
Yunshan Xu ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Census Data ◽  
The United States ◽  
Population Based ◽  
Emergency Department Visits ◽  
Consumer Product Safety Commission ◽  
Injury Surveillance System ◽  
Time Period ◽  
National Estimates ◽  
Us Census

Abstract Background Despite a national decrease in emergency department visits in the United States during the first 10 months of the pandemic, preliminary Consumer Product Safety Commission data indicate increased firework-related injuries. We hypothesized an increase in firework-related injuries during 2020 compared to years prior related to a corresponding increase in consumer firework sales. Methods The National Electronic Injury Surveillance System (NEISS) was queried from 2018 to 2020 for cases with product codes 1313 (firework injury) and narratives containing “fireworks”. Population-based national estimates were calculated using US Census data, then compared across the three years of study inclusion. Patient demographic and available injury information was also tracked and compared across the three years. Firework sales data obtained from the American Pyrotechnics Association were determined for the same time period to examine trends in consumption. Results There were 935 firework-related injuries reported to the NEISS from 2018 to 2020, 47% of which occurred during 2020. National estimates for monthly injuries per million were 1.6 times greater in 2020 compared to 2019 (p < 0.0001) with no difference between 2018 and 2019 (p = 0.38). The same results were found when the month of July was excluded. Firework consumption in 2020 was 1.5 times greater than 2019 or 2018, with a 55% increase in consumer fireworks and 22% decrease in professional fireworks sales. Conclusions Firework-related injures saw a substantial increase in 2020 compared to the two years prior, corroborated by a proportional increase in consumer firework sales. Increased incidence of firework-related injuries was detected even with the exclusion of the month of July, suggesting that the COVID-19 pandemic may have impacted firework epidemiology more broadly than US Independence Day celebrations.

Using Web 2.0 as a Community Policing Strategy

2012 ◽  
pp. 139-152
Author(s):  
Matthew A. Jones ◽  
Melchor C. de Guzman ◽  
Korni Swaroop Kumar
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Web 2.0 ◽  
Community Policing ◽  
Police Departments ◽  
Policy And Practice ◽  
Policing Strategy ◽  
Municipal Police ◽  
Community Livability ◽  
Media Applications ◽  
Municipal Police Departments

Community policing is intended to empower citizens who are plagued by crime and disorder. Scholars have considered community policing as a proactive measure that addresses issues of disorder to prevent the occurrence of more serious crimes (Goldstein, 1986; Wilson & Kelling, 1982). In a digital age, people are increasingly interacting socially via web platforms. This digital interaction includes governments, which can interact with the citizens in their society to co-produce effective responses to criminal activity. Social media applications such as Facebook, Twitter, blogs, iPhone applications, and Nixle provide new media for citizens and police interactions. Using a sample of 163 municipal police departments, this chapter examines the level and type of participation among municipal police departments using these resources. It is argued that Web 2.0 social media applications allow for a more fluent and dialogic relationship between citizens and police to work together to reduce crime and increase community livability. Policy and practice recommendations related to participating in and enhancing social media presence for police are also provided.

scholarly journals The prevalence of MS in the United States

Neurology ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 92 (10) ◽  
pp. e1029-e1040 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mitchell T. Wallin ◽  
William J. Culpepper ◽  
Jonathan D. Campbell ◽  
Lorene M. Nelson ◽  
Annette Langer-Gould ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Census Data ◽  
Adult Population ◽  
The United States ◽  
Health Claims ◽  
The North ◽  
Time Period ◽  
The Us ◽  
Group A ◽  
Us Census

ObjectiveTo generate a national multiple sclerosis (MS) prevalence estimate for the United States by applying a validated algorithm to multiple administrative health claims (AHC) datasets.MethodsA validated algorithm was applied to private, military, and public AHC datasets to identify adult cases of MS between 2008 and 2010. In each dataset, we determined the 3-year cumulative prevalence overall and stratified by age, sex, and census region. We applied insurance-specific and stratum-specific estimates to the 2010 US Census data and pooled the findings to calculate the 2010 prevalence of MS in the United States cumulated over 3 years. We also estimated the 2010 prevalence cumulated over 10 years using 2 models and extrapolated our estimate to 2017.ResultsThe estimated 2010 prevalence of MS in the US adult population cumulated over 10 years was 309.2 per 100,000 (95% confidence interval [CI] 308.1–310.1), representing 727,344 cases. During the same time period, the MS prevalence was 450.1 per 100,000 (95% CI 448.1–451.6) for women and 159.7 (95% CI 158.7–160.6) for men (female:male ratio 2.8). The estimated 2010 prevalence of MS was highest in the 55- to 64-year age group. A US north-south decreasing prevalence gradient was identified. The estimated MS prevalence is also presented for 2017.ConclusionThe estimated US national MS prevalence for 2010 is the highest reported to date and provides evidence that the north-south gradient persists. Our rigorous algorithm-based approach to estimating prevalence is efficient and has the potential to be used for other chronic neurologic conditions.

Who Ya Gonna Call? The Police as Problem-Busters

1987 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 31-52 ◽  
Author(s):  
John E. Eck ◽  
William Spelman
Keyword(s):  
Community Policing ◽  
Crime Control ◽  
Police Departments ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
Long Run ◽  
Underlying Causes ◽  
Standard Set ◽  
Problem Oriented Policing ◽  
The City

Current police practice is dominated by two, competing strategies—“community policing” and “crime control policing.” Both are limited: they each apply a standard set of police tactics to a wide variety of differing circumstances; they focus on incidents, rather than the underlying problems which cause these incidents. Recently, two police departments have developed an alternative. Through “problem-oriented policing,” officers focus on these underlying causes. They collect information from numerous sources, and enlist the support of a wide variety of public and private agencies and individuals in their attempts to solve problems. Case studies in these departments show that use of the problem-oriented approach can substantially reduce crime and fear. In the long run, problem-oriented policing will require changes in management structure, the role of the police in the community and the city bureaucracy, and the limits of police authority.

Re-evaluating community policing in a polycentric system

2015 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 305-325 ◽  
Author(s):  
PETER J. BOETTKE ◽  
JAYME S. LEMKE ◽  
LIYA PALAGASHVILI
Keyword(s):  
Community Policing ◽  
The United States ◽  
Empirical Literature ◽  
Federal State ◽  
Police Departments ◽  
Indiana University ◽  
Law Enforcement Agencies ◽  
Community Initiatives ◽  
Local Law Enforcement ◽  
State And Local

AbstractElinor Ostrom and her colleagues in The Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis at Indiana University in Bloomington conducted fieldwork in metropolitan police departments across the United States. Their findings in support of community policing dealt a blow to the popular belief that consolidation and centralization of services was the only way to effectively provide citizens with public goods. However, subsequent empirical literature suggests that the widespread implementation of community policing has been generally ineffective and in many ways unsustainable. We argue that the failures are the result of strategic interplay between federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies that has resulted in the prioritization of federal over community initiatives, the militarization of domestic police, and the erosion of genuine community-police partnerships.

Blacks and Violent Crime: A Psychoanalytically Oriented Analysis

1988 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 269-301 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. G. Schoenfeld
Keyword(s):  
Violent Crime ◽  
Sense Of Self ◽  
Lower Class ◽  
The United States ◽  
Social Policies ◽  
Psychological Consequences ◽  
Self Worth ◽  
Psychological Difficulties ◽  
Disproportionate Number ◽  
American Cities

This article offers a psychoanalytic explanation of why blacks commit a disproportionate number—half—of violent crimes in the United States. Slavery and its crippling psychological effects are discussed, as are the devastating psychological consequences of the hundred years of discrimination, segregation, and antiblack terror that followed. The conclusion reached is that black aggression was stimulated inordinately by all this, while simultaneously the black superego was decisively weakened and rendered incomplete and conflicted. These psychological difficulties have persisted and become endemic among the poor, uneducated, lower-class blacks who populate the rotting core of many American cities. Unlike their parents and grandparents, however, they no longer fear imminent bodily harm or death at the hands of violent whites and no longer turn their aggression back upon themselves and become depressed, but feel free to externalize their aggression in periodic riots and violent crime. The solutions suggested in this article include the elimination of social policies that stimulate the aggression of blacks by threatening their sense of self-worth, and the promotion of social policies that help to strengthen their superegos; e.g., minimizing the number of fatherless black households. Ways of using the criminal law to reinforce the black superego are also considered.

scholarly journals The Economic Aftermath of the 1960s Riots in American Cities: Evidence from Property Values

2007 ◽  
Vol 67 (4) ◽  
pp. 849-883 ◽  
Author(s):  
William J. Collins ◽  
Robert A. Margo
Keyword(s):  
Census Tract ◽  
Census Data ◽  
Central City ◽  
Property Values ◽  
Residential Property ◽  
Property Value ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
American Cities

In the 1960s many American cities experienced violent, race-related civil disturbances. This article examines census data from 1950 to 1980 to measure the riots' impact on the value of central-city residential property, and especially on black-owned property. Both OLS and IV estimates indicate that the riots depressed the median value of black-owned property between 1960 and 1970, with little or no rebound in the 1970s. Census tract data for a small number of cities suggest relative losses of population and property value in tracts that were directly affected by riots compared to other tracts in the same cities.

Police culture, individualism, and community policing: Evidence from two police departments

2000 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 575-605 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eugene A. Paoline ◽  
Stephanie M. Myers ◽  
Robert E. Worden
Keyword(s):  
Community Policing ◽  
Police Culture ◽  
Police Departments
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