Team Policing In A Yaqui Community

The most persistent problem in American policing is style: the police are continually challenged to perform according to the community's expectations of how police ought to perform. During the 1960's, the violent confrontations between police and minority communities forced the convening of the National Advisory Commission on Criminal Justice Standards and Goals which examined the entire criminal justice system and offered recommendations for improvement. In the case of poor minority communities, the Commission recommended that the police adopt a particular style, the team policing model, in order to obtain better cooperation from citizens and, ultimately, greater assistance in solving and preventing crimes. Team policing projects have emerged in many cities. Some have failed, others prosper. During 1977-78, I scrutinized one such program that failed. I chronicled the demise of a two-year team policing project conducted by the Pima County, Arizona, Sheriff's Department (PCSD) in the New Pascua Yaqui community located twenty miles southwest of Tucson, Arizona.

Download Full-text

Crime, the Criminal Justice System, and Socioeconomic Inequality

The Journal of Economic Perspectives ◽

10.1257/jep.30.2.103 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 30 (2) ◽

pp. 103-126 ◽

Cited By ~ 14

Author(s):

Magnus Lofstrom ◽

Steven Raphael

Keyword(s):

United States ◽

Criminal Justice ◽

Criminal Justice System ◽

Crime Rate ◽

Justice System ◽

Socioeconomic Inequality ◽

The United States ◽

Crime Rates ◽

Minority Communities ◽

The Us

Crime rates in the United States have declined to historical lows since the early 1990s. Prison and jail incarceration rates as well as community correctional populations have increased greatly since the mid-1970s. Both of these developments have disproportionately impacted poor and minority communities. In this paper, we document these trends. We then assess whether the crime declines can be attributed to the massive expansion of the US criminal justice system. We argue that the crime rate is certainly lower as a result of this expansion and in the early 1990s was likely a third lower than what it would have been absent changes in sentencing practices in the 1980s. However, there is little evidence that further stiffening of sentences during the 1990s—a period when prison and other correctional populations expanded rapidly—have had an impact. Hence, the growth in criminal justice populations since 1990s has exacerbated socioeconomic inequality in the United States without generating much benefit in terms of lower crime rates.

Download Full-text

Battling Crack

Journal of Urban History ◽

10.1177/0096144215576333 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 43 (1) ◽

pp. 18-32

Author(s):

Noël K. Wolfe

Keyword(s):

Criminal Justice ◽

Criminal Justice System ◽

Justice System ◽

Crack Cocaine ◽

New Age ◽

Tipping Point ◽

Law And Order ◽

Minority Communities ◽

Faith Based ◽

Community Activist

The crack crisis of the 1980s and 1990s was a social and cultural tipping point with regards to race and the criminal justice system. The Northwest Bronx Community and Clergy Coalition, a ten-thousand-member, multiracial, faith-based community activist organization, was at the forefront of a local war against crack cocaine in the Bronx during the 1980s and 1990s. Their activism demonstrates that the impetus for the draconian response to crack came not only from law and order politicians but also from minority communities under siege. The Coalition demanded and aggressively lobbied for a punitive response to crack sellers and users from their own communities. These demands were made years before the passage of laws that ushered in a new age of racially discriminatory sentencing.

Download Full-text