Proactive Policing Effects on Crime and Communities (2018) / Chapter Skim
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5 Community Reaction to Proactive Policing: The Impact of Place-Based, Problem-Solving, and Person-Focused Approaches
5 Community Reaction to Proactive Policing: The Impact of Place-Based, Problem-Solving, and Person-Focused Approaches
Pages 177-210
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From page 177... ...
. Police leaders consistently emphasized that community perceptions and feelings about their police and the practices of those police were essential criteria for selecting policing strategies and judging police performance.
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From page 178... ...
We then organize our discussion of findings into three separate sections, one each for the three broad proactive policing approaches that give primacy to controlling crime and disorder: the place-based, problem-solving, and person-focused approaches as defined in Chapter 2. Each section includes a description of the presumed mechanisms by which the intervention affects community outcomes and a discussion of limitations of the extant research.
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From page 179... ...
More broadly, do the police behave in ways that strengthen the community's collective efficacy1 and thereby facilitate the creation of social capital among members of the community? A MODEL OF THE EFFECTS OF PROACTIVE POLICING ON COMMUNITY OUTCOMES For assessing community outcomes in this and the following chapter, the committee relies on a logic model that has framed much of the research on community effects, one that links community evaluative judgments to community orientations and ultimately to behaviors.
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Police/ Community Community Community Police policies community evaluations orientations behavior practices 1 2 3 4 5 FIGURE 5-1 Logic model of proactive policing effects on community outcomes.
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From page 181... ...
We know surprisingly little about whether and to what degree proactive policing strategies influence community outcomes in the larger urban areas within which such strategies are implemented. Without estimates of the areawide impacts of proactive policing strategies, it is difficult to assess whether these strategies, applied broadly in jurisdictions, would have meaningful effects across entire jurisdictions.
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From page 182... ...
used an interesting approach to measuring community reactions to place-based problem-oriented policing in a hot spots framework by interviewing 52 "key community residents" who shaped the way a public space is used at some point during the day in treatment and control areas (Braga and Bond, 2009; see reference to this study in the section below on "Problem-Solving Interventions")
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From page 183... ...
looked at typical broken windows practices for disorder reduction applied to hot spots policing in three medium-sized California cities. They found no statistically significant effects across a broad range of community indicators, including fear of crime, perceived police legitimacy, collective efficacy, and perceptions of crime.
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From page 184... ...
and problem solving in hot spots -- with both treatment conditions compared to standard police practice. A diverse array of community outcomes was measured in three waves of resident surveys, the last wave occurring 9 months after treatment ended.
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From page 185... ...
These studies of place-based strategies have centered on interventions in hot spots, but the diversity of police tactics employed is remarkable: gun detection patrols, broken windows enforcement, focusing on repeat offenders, directed patrol, and problem-oriented policing. Despite this diversity, there has been relatively little variation in findings about the community consequences of the interventions: for the most part, researchers do not find statistically significant effects.
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From page 186... ...
There is a general absence of a detailed, systematic monitoring of the interventions that are most likely to affect community reactions, especially those pertaining to citizen satisfaction and perceived police legitimacy. For example, most evaluations only describe the training protocol and report the amount of time spent in the hot spot or a count of incidents handled.
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From page 187... ...
are not reflected in the logic model displayed in Figure 5-1; they fall between stages 2 and 3 of that model and might be termed "direct experiences of policing." They in turn are expected to affect public perceptions about police service and conduct (community evaluations) , which in turn affect third-order effects of perceived police legitimacy, perceptions of safety, and collective efficacy.
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From page 188... ...
The available research is also limited in its focus on outcomes measured as attitudes toward police and on shortterm and less-than-jurisdictionwide effects. However, the consistency of the findings of the available studies leads the committee to conclude that place-based policing strategies rarely have negative impacts on short-term, police-focused community outcomes; at the same time, such strategies rarely improve community perceptions of the police or other community outcome measures.
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From page 189... ...
Evaluations of the community reactions to problem solving have concentrated on four types of outcome measures: perceived disorder or quality of life of the respondent, fear of crime or perception of crime risk, satisfaction with the police, and the perceived legitimacy of the police. Simply looking at the statistical significance of study results, respondent satisfaction is the only indicator that shows a positive impact with strong consis 9 To a lesser extent, proactive partnerships with other organizations (such as code or liquor enforcement agencies, schools, probation, and private businesses)
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From page 190... ...
Two (Kochel and Weisburd, 2017; Weisburd, Morris, and Ready, 2008) showed no significant effects on the four indicators commonly studied in quasi-experimental evaluations: perceived disorder, fear of crime, citizen satisfaction, and perceived police legitimacy.
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From page 191... ...
. This matched comparisongroup evaluation found little evidence to support an effect for this program on these indicators.17 It is worth considering why community satisfaction should emerge as a fairly reliable consequence of practices typical of a problem-solving approach but not other outcomes such as perceived disorder, fear of crime, or perceived police legitimacy.
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From page 192... ...
In this regard, the true capacity of focusing the SARA process of problemoriented policing to improve most community outcomes remains untested. Another explanation is that some effects take longer than others and that they depend on demonstrating the success of certain indicators in a causal chain.
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From page 193... ...
The challenges of problem-solving implementation are widely acknowledged by researchers and police leaders (Braga and Weisburd, 2006; Braga, 2010; Weisburd et al., 2010) but are typically discussed in the context of evaluating crime and disorder outcomes, not community outcomes.
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From page 194... ...
compared to midnight basketball. Hence, researchers' capacity to predict community outcomes will be heightened to the extent that evaluators take into account differences in the tactics selected for an intervention and differences in the efforts by the police to achieve community acceptance of those tactics.
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Two types of community outcomes seem relevant to person-focused interventions (Shaw, 1995, p.
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From page 196... ...
The absence of experimental evaluations of community outcomes of person-focused strategies is also noteworthy. And notably, the available empirical research looks at SQF, traffic stops, and repeat offender practices, but the committee could locate no research assessing the impact of the focused deterrence strategy on community outcomes.
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From page 197... ...
paint a picture of Black youths who perceived police order-maintenance practices in their predominantly Black neighborhoods as frequently experiencing police stops as harassment (about 8 in 10) and knowing someone who was harassed or mistreated (about 9 in 10)
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From page 198... ...
Black motorists had a higher probability of being subject to presumed investigatory stop than White drivers, whereas there was a general absence of race effects for the presumed traffic safety stops. Black drivers and White drivers indicated that they experienced similar levels of impolite demeanor during traffic stops, but Black drivers were much more likely than Whites to report impolite police behavior during investigatory stops, and they were less likely to accept as legitimate the officer's decision to pull them over.
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The study found that residents living in areas exposed to that strategy had no statistically different ratings of seven community outcomes than did those in the control areas (see above discussion of this study in the place-based interventions section)
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. However, the meaning of this pattern is not entirely clear, since the statistically significant effects were lagged for the effectiveness dependent variable (hence taking longer to show an effect)
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From page 201... ...
For example, while much has been made of the importance of community leaders' involvement and support of focused deterrence strategies (Braga, 2001; Kennedy, 1997) , it is not known how important that is in promoting broad community acceptance of these strategies, especially for those community members most proximate or similar to those who are actually targeted for proactive intervention.
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From page 202... ...
effects of person-focused strategies means that the evidence base lacks results from tests of the potential cumulative impact of such methods on community outcomes. For example, the cumulative consequences of individuals' exposure to SQF may couple the intensification of broader community hostility toward the police resulting from diffusion of negative views through informal community networks.
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From page 203... ...
. To the extent that proactive policing practices foster criminal justice contact and involvement, such consequences may also be said to derive indirectly from proactive policing.
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From page 204... ...
36) argued that targeted policing practices do more than shape young men's perceptions of the police; they also shape their "life space, affecting what they do, where, and with whom." This ethnographic study of adult and adolescent Black men in a San Francisco neighborhood, where police implemented problem-oriented policing interventions along with other targeted law enforcement practices, found that routine exposure to proactive policing practices had the potential to influence normative adolescent development.
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From page 205... ...
This literature is important because much of the discussion surrounding proactive policing strategies has focused on its targeting of non-White communities. The public health literature indicates that racism as a social condition is a cause of health and illness (Link and Phelan, 1995; Ford and Airhihenbuwa, 2010; Gee and Ford, 2011; Jones, 2001; Williams and Mohammed, 2013; Brondolo et al., 2009; Dressler, Oths, and Gravlee, 2005)
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From page 206... ...
Future studies of proactive policing should include measures that examine potential negative consequences of policing interventions on physical and mental health for both individuals and the communities where such interventions are implemented. Impact of Proactive Policing on Civic and Institutional Engagement Another emerging body of literature considers the indirect effect of proactive policing practices on civic and institutional engagement and political life.
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From page 207... ...
The study found that individuals who had been stopped by police, arrested, convicted, or incarcerated were less likely to interact with surveilling institutions, including medical, financial, labor market, and education institutions, than their counterparts who had not had criminal justice contact. That is, they exhibited behaviors of "system avoidance": the practice of individuals avoiding institutions that keep formal records and therefore heighten the risk of surveillance and apprehension by authorities.
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From page 208... ...
Nonetheless, the extant research does allow the committee to draw several specific, narrow conclusions regarding the impacts of proactive policing approaches that focus on crime control. Place-Based Proactive Strategies There is only an emerging body of research evaluating the impact of place-based strategies on community outcomes, including both quasiexperimental and experimental studies.
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From page 209... ...
Person-Focused Proactive Strategies The body of research evaluating the impact of person-focused interventions on community outcomes is relatively small, even when compared to the evidence base for problem-solving and place-based strategies. There are a handful of studies on SQF, traffic stops, and repeat offenders but none on focused deterrence.
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From page 210... ...
CONCLUSION 5-4 Studies evaluating the impact of person-focused strategies on community outcomes have a number of design limitations that prevent causal inferences to be drawn about program effects. How ever, the studies of citizens' personal experiences with person-focused strategies do show marked negative associations between exposure to stop, question, and frisk and proactive traffic enforcement approaches and community outcomes.
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