Search

Unwarranted, by NYU law professor Barry Friedman, offers a diagnosis of some of the contemporary ills of American policing and a prescribed cure. Between 2014 and 2016, incidents of fatal shootings...

The procedural justice that citizens subjectively experience with the police affects police legitimacy. The procedural justice of policing is typically not measured in police agencies, nor is it an outcome for which managers are held accountable. We examine whether and how the measurement of procedural justice would affect its management. Survey-based measures of subjective procedural justice in police contacts were reported to two departments’ command staffs on a monthly basis in Compstat meetings. The impacts of thusly measuring performance were estimated. We also analyzed an indicator of procedural justice that was based on systematic observation through video and audio recording of police-citizen encounters, and we interviewed patrol officers and supervisors about supervisors’ efforts to manage procedural justice. Neither indicator of police performance revealed consistent changes. However, a modest improvement on one platoon was detected. We discuss the implications for enhancing police legitimacy.

The police decision to arrest is impacted by several areas, including policy, community, and law. This chapter discusses the need to better understand the long-term and unintended consequences of the decision to arrest as well as alternatives to arrest. Well-designed evaluations, particularly through the use of systematic social observation and police-academic partnerships, are argued to be particularly useful for this purpose. Legitimizing how police make decisions, particularly around the decision to arrest, is an important step to enhancing police-community relations. There is a critical need in the field of policing research to re-establish the foundation of research on police decision-making. Ultimately, this chapter considers how the police can simultaneously reduce crime and rates of arrest, by strategically using arrest and alternatives to arrest.

This chapter considers the different definitions of arrest and the reasons for the difficulty in creating a universally standard term. However, a singular definition is offered, which is used to guide discussions throughout this review. This chapter considers the historical use of arrest, including the evidence for the general and specific deterrent effects of police use of arrest. This chapter also discusses the many substantial direct and collateral consequences to individuals and communities. This wide range of costs emphasizes the importance of arrest, and how police can carefully consider its strategic use in order to achieve desired results.

Academics and practitioners recognize that research partnerships can benefit both research and practice. Many such partnerships, of varying scope and duration, have been formed over the past 20 years. However, while we have learned some lessons about such partnerships, we have much yet to learn about how research partnerships can be sustained and put to their greatest use. In this paper, we describe the functions that comprise the research partner role, and we draw from our experience as a research partner in one city – Syracuse, NY – to illustrate the performance of those functions and to reflexively distill from that experience some lessons for the development and maintenance of research partnerships. We discuss the factors that we believe shaped the success with which the partnership has operated, and the challenges that we confronted.

Recent analyses of the relationship between crime and an aggressive patrol strategy have led to no single conclusion concerning the deterrent power of aggressive policing. This research adds to that debate by exploring the effects of a variety of aggressive patrol tactics on several different crimes. The empirical analysis, based on cross-sectional data from sixty urban neighborhoods, indicates that there appears to be no stable complex of police actions that constitute an aggressive patrol strategy. However, one form of police action usually included under the rubric of aggressive patrol—suspicion stops—may indeed deter certain types of criminal activity.