The document summarizes 5 aspects of the traditional "standard model" of policing: 1) random patrol, 2) rapid response to emergency calls, 3) general enforcement and arrest policies, 4) generalized crime investigations, and 5) increasing police agency size. It reviews evidence that most of these strategies have little impact on crime rates, with the exception of focused enforcement in hot spots or among high-risk individuals. The document argues for moving away from broadly applied standard tactics toward more targeted approaches based on crime analysis.
The document summarizes 5 aspects of the traditional "standard model" of policing: 1) random patrol, 2) rapid response to emergency calls, 3) general enforcement and arrest policies, 4) generalized crime investigations, and 5) increasing police agency size. It reviews evidence that most of these strategies have little impact on crime rates, with the exception of focused enforcement in hot spots or among high-risk individuals. The document argues for moving away from broadly applied standard tactics toward more targeted approaches based on crime analysis.
The document summarizes 5 aspects of the traditional "standard model" of policing: 1) random patrol, 2) rapid response to emergency calls, 3) general enforcement and arrest policies, 4) generalized crime investigations, and 5) increasing police agency size. It reviews evidence that most of these strategies have little impact on crime rates, with the exception of focused enforcement in hot spots or among high-risk individuals. The document argues for moving away from broadly applied standard tactics toward more targeted approaches based on crime analysis.
The document summarizes 5 aspects of the traditional "standard model" of policing: 1) random patrol, 2) rapid response to emergency calls, 3) general enforcement and arrest policies, 4) generalized crime investigations, and 5) increasing police agency size. It reviews evidence that most of these strategies have little impact on crime rates, with the exception of focused enforcement in hot spots or among high-risk individuals. The document argues for moving away from broadly applied standard tactics toward more targeted approaches based on crime analysis.
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Traditional Policing
/Standard Model
5645Asst/Insp Bhekithemba Dlamini
Introduction “Standard model” strategies are often seen as traditional police approaches to dealing with crime that developed largely during the reform or professional era beginning around the 1930s ( Kelling & Moore, 1988). While these tactics are now 60 or more years old, they drive much of current police activity. Five aspects of the “standard model”:
. Random patrol across all parts of the
community 2. Rapid response to emergency calls for service (i.e. 911 calls) 3. Generally applied intensive enforcement and arrest policies. 4. Generalized investigations of crime 5. Increasing the size of police agencies Random patrol across all parts of the community Random preventive patrol (or random beat patrol) has shown little or no evidence of effectiveness as a crime fighting tool for police. The most influential and well-known study in this area was the Kansas City preventive patrol experiment conducted by Kelling and colleagues (1974). Cont…. They found no evidence that changes in the amount of preventive patrol across beats had a significant impact on reported crime, reported victimization, or levels of citizen satisfaction. The study presented no evidence that routine preventive patrol is an effective deterrent or way to improve police efficiency and effectiveness Cont.. The finding that police randomly patrolling beats is not an effective crime deterrent makes sense based on the literature on hot spots policing. Hot spots policing is an effective strategy in part because it takes advantage of the fact that crime is strongly concentrated in a small number of places across cities Rapid response to emergency calls for service (i.e. 999 calls) A second standard policing tactic that appears to have little impact on crime is rapid response to 911/999 calls. Rapid response can sometimes lead to the apprehension of suspects, particularly calls for a “hot” robbery or burglary. Cont… However, there is no evidence that rapid response to most calls increases apprehension rates or decreases crime (Spelman & Brown, 1984). The problem is that citizens frequently wait too long after an incident occurs for rapid response to be of much assistance. Cont… We do not argue here that police should ignore 911/999 calls, but instead that they should not expect crime control gains to come simply by decreasing response times to the vast majority of calls. Generally applied intensive enforcement and arrest policies More across the board increases in arrests are not particularly effective in reducing crime. As Sherman and Eck (2002) note, “the evidence in support of the reactive arrest hypothesis is remarkably not encouraging at both the community and individual levels of analysis.” Cont… It is difficult to reach strong conclusions on the effectiveness of arrest as a crime-control strategy because of mixed evidence on interventions that rely primarily on arrest and the fact that many interventions that include increases in arrest also feature a number of other facets, and disentangling the impacts of various factors can be difficult. We see little reason to believe that more broad- based reactive arrest policies will be very effective in reducing crime, and instead we argue for greater focus, either on high risk offenders, high risk places, or both Arrests for Domestic Violence Arrests for cases of misdemeanor domestic violence are a subset of general arrest policies, but one that has been more extensively studied than almost any other policing tactic. The initial Minneapolis experiment showed beneficial results in terms of reduced recidivism when comparing arrest to mediation or separation (Sherman & Berk, 1984), but results from the replication studies were more varied and depended in part on the employment status of offenders (e.g. see Pate & Hamilton, 1992; Sherman et al., 1992), Cho and Wilke (2010) also find some evidence of a deterrent effect of arrest. Generalized investigations of crime We have too little evidence on the work of detectives to provide a full assessment of their effectiveness. Much of what we know about detectives comes from research from the 1970s (e.g. Greenwood et al., 1977), which suggested detectives were not clearing most cases, especially property crimes. This suggests a lack of effectiveness for general follow-up investigations Cont.. Carter and Carter (2016), for example, examined the characteristics of homicide detectives in agencies with higher homicide clearance rates.They found these agencies tended to have the following characteristics: Adequate staffing- squads of approximately one supervisor and four investigators and enough squads so each investigator is the lead for about three homicides per year Cont… Sufficient training and preparation- ideally at least three years in patrol and two years as a general detective Gathering as much information at the scene as possible, which is easier when witnesses/the community trust the police Use of crime and intelligence analysis Cont… Access to adequate technology/equipment Strong relationships with patrol, other units, other law enforcement agencies, community partners Cont.. Braga and colleagues (2011) have recently called for a greater focus on the potential crime control benefits of detectives. Many investigators have rich insights on recurring crime problems and can be used much more creatively in dealing with the underlying conditions, situations and dynamics that cause crime problems to persist” (Braga et al., 2011). What is the Evidence on Increasing Department Size? Weisburd and Eck (2004) argued that increasing the size of police departments generally has not proven to be an effective way of reducing crime. The problem here is that it is very difficult to accurately measure the impact of increasing department size on crime, in part because departments often increase in size as a result of increases in the crime rate. We do know from data on police strikes that not having police at all tends to lead to crime increases (e.g. Makinen & Takala, 1980), but it is less clear how to calculate the crime control value of hiring one additional police officer. We find it difficult to reach strong conclusions about the relationship between levels of police and crime Conclusion
Standard Policing model are still applicable even
today but obviously needs some spices from modern Policing to be a viable Policing strategy