Summary: New Perspectives In Policing

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New Perspectives in Policing m a r c h 2 011 National Institute of Justice Moving the Work of Criminal Investigators Towards Crime Control Anthony A. Braga, Edward A. Flynn, George L. Kelling and Christine M. Cole Executive Session on Policing and Public Safety This is one in a series of papers that will be pub­ lished as a result of the Executive Session on Policing and Public Safety. Harvard’s Executive Sessions are a convening of individuals of independent standing who take joint responsibility for rethinking and improving society’s responses to an issue. Members are selected based on their experiences, their repu­ tation for thoughtfulness and their potential for helping to disseminate the work of the Session. In the early…show more content…
Although Goldstein envisioned the problemoriented approach as a departmentwide activity, it has largely been implemented by uniformed patrol officers. 3 Similar to uniformed patrol offi­ cers responding to repeated 911 calls for service, the work of most criminal investigators can also be thought of as “incident-driven policing” (Eck and Spelman, 1987). Investigators respond to recurring incidents, attempt to gather enough information to generate a warrant or make an arrest, and rarely look for the underlying conditions that may be causing like groups of incidents. Like Goldstein, we believe criminal investigators should go further than responding to case after case, that they search for solutions to recurring problems that generate the repeated incidents. Investigating unsolved inci­ dents is an important task and still must be done, but criminal investigators should respond system­ atically to recurring crimes arising from the same problem. In order for criminal investigators to be more efficient and effective, they must gather infor­ mation about incidents and design an appropriate response based on the nature of the underlying conditions that cause the problem(s). A data-driven analytic approach, led and supported by investiga­ tors, would best position police…show more content…
There are obviously other examples of investigators leading innovative crime control and prevention efforts. For instance, detectives in the Mesa (Ariz.) Police Department assumed primary responsi­ bility for the Crime Free Multi-Housing Program, convened meetings with residents and prop­ erty owners, and implemented crime prevention through environmental design measures to address crime and quality-of-life problems (Cosgrove and Wycoff, 1999). These efforts were associated with a reported 70- to 80-percent reduction in calls for service (Cosgrove and Wycoff, 1999). In the Kirkholt Burglary Prevention Project in Rochdale, England, inspectors collaborated with probation officers and Home Office Crime Prevention Unit research­ ers to understand the nature of repeated burglary victimization in a public housing estate. Analysis revealed that once a home was burglarized, it was four times as likely to experience a repeat burglary relative to homes that had not been burglarized. The team then designed an innovative response to the problem that included the development of small neighborhood watches (called “cocooning”) around victimized apartments and the removal of coin-fed gas meters from victimized apartments that were attractive to burglars (Forrester, Chatterton and Pease 1988;

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