Variability in the Use of Misdemeanor Arrests by Police Agencies From 1990 to 2013: An Application of Group-Based Trajectory Modeling

2017 ◽  
Vol 29 (6-7) ◽  
pp. 536-560 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cynthia Lum ◽  
Heather Vovak
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Law Enforcement ◽  
The United States ◽  
Police Departments ◽  
Law Enforcement Agencies ◽  
Trajectory Modeling ◽  
Patterns Of Use ◽  
Police Agencies ◽  
Long Term Trends ◽  
Zero Tolerance Policing

Arrest for minor offenses has become one tool that some police departments employ to fight crime and disorder in their jurisdictions. Dubbed by some as “broken windows” or “zero tolerance” policing, a few police agencies in the 1990s and 2000s notably and significantly increased their use of arrest for such misdemeanors, such as New York City and Baltimore. But was this the case for other law enforcement agencies in the United States? Our analysis is the first to examine long-term trends in the use of misdemeanor arrests in a sample of U.S. law enforcement agencies using group-based trajectory modeling. Results show that police agencies have distinct longitudinal patterns of use of arrests for minor crimes from 1990 to 2013; some agencies significantly increased their use of arrests for minor crimes while others did not. Further analysis of possible explanations for agency membership in any given longitudinal trajectory found that agencies with similar patterns in their use of misdemeanor arrests were not similar on demographic or crime characteristics. This finding suggests that the decision to increase the use of arrest for minor offenses may have been a policy choice by agencies influenced by factors not detected here.

Building Bridges Between Researchers and Police Practitioners in Small and Midsize Law Enforcement Agencies in the United States

2021 ◽  
pp. 104398622199988
Author(s):  
Janice Iwama ◽  
Jack McDevitt ◽  
Robert Bieniecki
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Law Enforcement ◽  
The United States ◽  
Law Enforcement Agencies ◽  
Local Police ◽  
Police Agencies

Although partnerships between researchers and police practitioners have increased over the last few decades in some of the largest police agencies in the United States, very few small agencies have engaged in a partnership with a researcher. Of the 18,000 local police agencies in the United States, small agencies with less than 25 sworn officers make up about three quarters of all police agencies. To support future collaborations between researchers and smaller police agencies, like those in Douglas County, Kansas, this article identifies challenges that researchers can address and explores how these relationships can benefit small police agencies across the United States.

scholarly journals Auditor Involvement With Law Enforcement Agencies: A Specialized Niche

2011 ◽  
Vol 1 (12) ◽  
Author(s):  
Arthur F. Hintz ◽  
Michael W. Fedoryshyn
Keyword(s):  
Law Enforcement ◽  
Internal Control ◽  
The United States ◽  
Public Confidence ◽  
Criminal Cases ◽  
Law Enforcement Agencies ◽  
Local Law Enforcement ◽  
Police Agencies ◽  
State And Local ◽  
Asset Forfeiture

With over 18,000 state and local law enforcement agencies in the United States, opportunities exist for auditors to assist police agencies design and implement effective and efficient procedures for control of cash and other properties. Auditor involvement can improve police performance and help maintain public confidence in the police departments ability to serve and protect the public interest.The article discusses how auditors can provide a valuable service to police agencies by improving the agencies internal control over assets entrusted to them as evidence in criminal cases or to aid in their fight against crime. It discusses the needed audit procedures for such an engagement.The article also discusses the special audit procedures for police agencies, which are involved in the Federal Asset Forfeiture Program.

Screening the Police

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Noah Tsika
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New York ◽  
Law Enforcement ◽  
Police Department ◽  
Film History ◽  
The United States ◽  
Law Enforcement Agencies ◽  
Local Law Enforcement ◽  
State And Local ◽  
American Police

American police departments have presided over the business of motion pictures since the end of the nineteenth century. Their influence is evident not only on the screen but also in the ways movies are made, promoted, and viewed in the United States. Screening the Police explores the history of film’s entwinement with law enforcement, showing the role that state power has played in the creation and expansion of a popular medium. For the New Jersey State Police in the 1930s, film offered a method of visualizing criminality and of circulating urgent information about escaped convicts. For the New York Police Department, the medium was a means of making the agency world famous as early as 1896. Beat cops became movie stars. Police chiefs made their own documentaries. And from Maine to California, state and local law enforcement agencies regularly fingerprinted filmgoers for decades, amassing enormous records as they infiltrated theaters both big and small. Understanding the scope of police power in the United States requires attention to an aspect of film history that has long been ignored. Screening the Police reveals the extent to which American cinema has overlapped with the politics and practices of law enforcement. Today, commercial filmmaking is heavily reliant on public policing—and vice versa. How such a working relationship was forged and sustained across the long twentieth century is the subject of this book.

Organizing Communities to Prevent the Sale of Tobacco Products to Minors

1992 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 77-86 ◽  
Author(s):  
K. Michael Cummings ◽  
Karen Coogan
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Law Enforcement ◽  
Public Awareness ◽  
New York State ◽  
Police Departments ◽  
Law Enforcement Agencies ◽  
Erie County ◽  
Tobacco Products ◽  
Case Examples ◽  
Local Law Enforcement

In New York State, it is illegal to sell tobacco products to persons under the age of eighteen. A 1989 survey of 120 retail stores in Erie County, New York, found that 82 percent sold cigarettes illegally to fourteen and fifteen year olds. In an effort to address this problem, Project SCAN (Stop Children's Addiction to Nicotine) was launched by Roswell Park Cancer Institute in the Spring of 1990. Project SCAN had three objectives: 1) to increase public awareness of the problem of youth tobacco use; 2) to educate merchants about the tobacco access law to promote voluntary compliance; and 3) to encourage local law enforcement agencies to enforce the access law. This article describes our experience in implementing Project SCAN including strategies used to recruit volunteers to deliver merchant education materials, reaction of merchants to the program, and the involvement of local police departments in enforcement efforts. Case examples describing how Project SCAN has been implemented in two communities illustrate the importance of community participation and law enforcement in the success of the program.

Assessing the Utility of Body-Worn Cameras for Collegiate Police Agencies

2021 ◽  
pp. 109861112110375
Author(s):  
Janne E. Gaub
Keyword(s):  
Law Enforcement ◽  
Police Departments ◽  
Law Enforcement Agencies ◽  
Privacy Concerns ◽  
Educational Processes ◽  
Police Agencies ◽  
Police Executives ◽  
Municipal Police ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Municipal Police Departments

Nearly all scholarship on body-worn cameras (BWCs) has focused on municipal police departments, as they comprise a majority of sworn agencies. Given the unique environment of collegiate law enforcement agencies, however, it is possible that their paths to BWCs—and the benefits and challenges they experience—vary from that of more traditional agencies. Using a survey of 126 collegiate police departments and in-depth interviews with 15 collegiate police executives, this study describes their goals, challenges, and benefits related to BWCs. Importantly, it also describes the decision-making of agencies that chose not to implement BWCs, giving voice to an understudied population and providing guidance to special agencies in making the decision to adopt BWCs. The most notable benefits and challenges interrelate with their placement as part of institutions of higher education, such as the impact of collegiate privacy concerns (e.g., FERPA) and the utility of BWC footage in both law enforcement and educational processes.

scholarly journals Crime mapping and Geographical Information Systems in crime analysis

2016 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 2208 ◽  
Author(s):  
Uğur Argun ◽  
Murat Dağlar
Keyword(s):  
Information Systems ◽  
Law Enforcement ◽  
Geographical Information Systems ◽  
Geographical Information ◽  
Crime Analysis ◽  
Policy Recommendations ◽  
Police Departments ◽  
Crime Mapping ◽  
Law Enforcement Agencies ◽  
Police Agencies

As essential apparatus in crime analysis, crime mapping and Geographical Information Systems (GIS) are being progressively more accepted by police agencies. Development in technology and the accessibility of geographic data sources make it feasible for police departments to use GIS and crime mapping. GIS and crime mapping can be utilized as devices to discover reasons contributing to crime, and hence let law enforcement agencies proactively take action against the crime problems before they become challenging. The purpose of this study is to conduct a literature review of Geographical Information System and Crime Mapping in Crime Analysis and to propose policy recommendations regarding to implementation of crime mapping and GIS. To achieve this purpose, first a historical evaluation of GIS and crime mapping will be rendered and then the importance of place will be explained in terms of assessing crime problems accurately.

scholarly journals Newspaper headlines as a tool for linguistic modeling of police image

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 25-37
Author(s):  
V. V. Guzikova ◽  
V. Е. Nesterova
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Law Enforcement ◽  
New York Times ◽  
Social Institutions ◽  
The United States ◽  
Media Discourse ◽  
Law Enforcement Agencies ◽  
Social Mediation ◽  
The Media ◽  
Linguistic Modeling

The article considers the issue of linguistic modeling of the image of the police in the newspa[1]per discourse, in newspaper headlines in particular. This article is relevant and determined by the need to study the representation of reality in the media discourse and its linguistic manifestation. In addition, the media have recently paid close attention to the coverage of the activities of social institutions, especially with regard to law enforcement agencies. The authors describe the characteristics of the mass media discourse as one of the tools for implementing public power, organizing the activities of political and social institutions, and forming an image. The paper considers the specific features and functions of the newspaper discourse, and also considers the newspaper headline, which acts as a pragmatic component of a newspaper article contributing to the creation of information and social mediation between addressees and addressers in order to exert a regulatory influence on public opinion. The article focuses on the structural, semantic and stylistic analysis of the newspaper headlines that represent information about law enforcement agencies’ activities in Russia and the United States. The authors divide the publications into neutral (“Arguments and Facts”, “USA Today”, “Wall Street Journal”), pro-government (“Newspaper. Ru”, “Rossiyskaya Gazeta” and “Moskovsky Komsomolets”, “Associated Press”) and opposition newspapers (“Novaya Gazeta”, “Kommersant”, “The New York Times”, “Washington Post”). In total, 60 newspaper headlines were analyzed for the period from September to December 2020. The results show that the texts of newspaper reports perform informative and pragmatic functions, and the newspaper headline is the key to understanding the author’s position and intentions. Lexical, grammatical, and stylistic differences in the headlines of Russian and American newspapers devoted to the activities of law enforcement agencies were identified, as well as language techniques for exerting speech influence on the reader and linguistic modeling of the police image.

Racializing Crimmigration

2016 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 82-95 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amada Armenta
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Law Enforcement ◽  
The United States ◽  
Immigration Enforcement ◽  
Law Enforcement Agencies ◽  
Local Law Enforcement ◽  
Local Jail ◽  
Colorblind Ideology ◽  
Local Actors ◽  
Local Law

Deporting “criminal aliens” has become the highest priority in American immigration enforcement. Today, most deportations are achieved through the “crimmigration” system, a term that describes the convergence of the criminal justice and immigration enforcement systems. Emerging research argues that U.S. immigration enforcement is a “racial project” that subordinates and racializes Latino residents in the United States. This article examines the role of local law enforcement agencies in the racialization process by focusing on the techniques and logics that drive law enforcement practices across two agencies, I argue that local law enforcement agents racialize Latinos by punishing illegality through their daily, and sometimes mundane, practices. Investigatory traffic stops put Latinos at disproportionate risk of arrest and citation, and processing at the local jail subjects unauthorized immigrants to deportation. Although a variety of local actors sustain the deportation system, most do not see themselves as active participants in immigrant removal and they explain their behavior through a colorblind ideology. This colorblind ideology obscures and naturalizes how organizational practices and laws converge to systematically criminalize and punish Latinos in the United States.

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