Fairness and Effectiveness in Policing The Evidence (2004) / Chapter Skim
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Executive Summary
Executive Summary
Pages 1-10
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The Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968 created what became the National Institute of Justice, which has sponsored a substantial body of research on police practice. The Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 encouraged the adoption of community policing, as well as fostering the hiring of many new police officers and the adoption of modern information technology.
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Evidence from policing research contradicts any concern that an emphasis on policing that is fair and restrained will necessarily undermine their crime control effectiveness, and vice versa, for fairness and effectiveness are not mutually exclusive, but mutually reinforcing. The work of this committee suggests that policing that is perceived as just is more effective in fostering a law-abiding society, and that success in reducing crime enhances police legitimacy.
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Traffic enforcement commands significant police resources, but it too has escaped the attention of researchers. The emergence of racial profiling on the nation's public agenda is changing that, but the committee concludes that most current data collection efforts in this area are unlikely to speak to any of the policy issues involved.
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Local political cultures and the priorities of political leaders affect policies and spending levels as well. CRIME CONTROL EFFECTIVENESS The committee examined research on police effectiveness at reducing crime, disorder, and fear.
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Research on police effectiveness in attacking chronic concentrations of crime, widely known as "hot spots," has found that well-managed investigations and crackdowns can suppress crime, deter its future reappearance, and avoid simply displacing a similar number of crimes elsewhere. Discovering hot spots and tracking the effectiveness of policing efforts against them has been facilitated by the widespread adoption of new computer mapping and crime analysis technologies by the police, another new development awaiting careful evaluation and analysis.
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The solutions to both problems are generally the same: determined leadership, enforcement of department policies and rules, and the creation of new mechanisms for monitoring problem behavior. There is only limited research on the impact of formal legal efforts to control misconduct, through criminal prosecution and civil suits against individual officers and federal "pattern and practice" actions against police departments.
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Recommendation 1: Enhancing crime control effectiveness. The committee recommends that police continue to turn their attention from providing standardized levels of police resources and activities to achieving measurable results related to focused effectiveness and fairness issues that reflect community goals.
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Current efforts to collect data on public encounters with police that are intended to inform judgments on whether police agencies engage in racial profiling are not very effective. The committee calls for more research on the collection of reliable and valid encounter data under field conditions that can then be analyzed in ways that point unambiguously to policy recommendations and personnel decisions.
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Although several federal agencies are charged with encouraging innovation in law enforcement, the committee found little research about the innovation process or how it can be facilitated. There is likewise little systematic, cross-agency research on the extent and effectiveness of organizational change strategies in policing, or on the role of police leadership in securing lawful policing.
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Whether or not a separate office is formed, the police research portfolio requires stable, long-term research funding managed by a professional staff, which could implement broad strategies of knowledge development. The development of the policing portfolio should be under the direction of an official recruited from senior ranks of the scientific community.
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