William R. King

Measuring police innovation: issues and measurement

This paper investigates conceptual and empirical issues in the study of police organizational innovation. In particular, previous studies of police innovation have rarely created measures of innovation that are in accord with established methods and theory employed in innovation studies of other organization types. To mitigate this oversight, this paper first describes four relevant issues in organizational innovation, and applies these issues to create a fivefold measure of police innovation with data on the 431 largest municipal US police departments. Second, the components of this fivefold typology of police innovation are factor analyzed, to assess their unidimensionality. The results of these analyses indicate that three of the five innovation types are, in themselves, multi‐dimensional. Overall, police innovations do not adhere to the five innovation types suggested by theories of organizational innovation. Instead, the multi‐dimensionality of police organizational innovation is demonstrated here.

Trends in the Policing Industry

Fairness and Effectiveness in Policing: The Evidencedoes a terrific job of discussing the limited research on trends in the policing industry, but what it does not include is perhaps as informative. Large gaps in the body of research limit our ability to make definitive inferences about how the policing industry is changing. These gaps result in part from a lack of systematic, standardized, longitudinal data collection and analysis on the nature and outputs of police organizations in the United States. As a result, we know little about basic descriptive features of policing and how these features are changing over time. Lacking the ability to track even the most basic descriptive trends, the police research industry is at even more of a loss in developing careful empirical explanations of these trends. This article discusses some of these trends, summarizes what we know and what we do not know about them, and provides some recommendations for how the police research industry can do a better job of describing and explaining trends in the police industry.

Time, Constancy, and Change in American Municipal Police Organizations:

The present study investigates the relationship between organizational age and the structure of 334 police departments in the United States. Unfortunately, though the relationship between age and various aspects of organiza tions has been studied, these findings and theories have not been applied to police departments. The present study rectifies this oversight. The concept of organizational age is defined and two theories of organizational age are explained These two theories are tested with 334 municipal American police departments using survey data and the 1990 LEMAS data. The analyses indicate that the effect of organizational age on police departments is slight; however, support is found for two theories of organizational age. First, it appears that most municipal police agencies were formed during the same era. Second, use of civilian employees is negatively related to departmental age. The implications of these findings for police agencies and police histori ans are discussed.

Why homicide clearance rates decrease: evidence from the Caribbean

Police agencies and researchers have devoted significant attention to understanding and improving homicide clearance rates, which often serve as an overall barometer of police performance. Using quantitative and qualitative data, this study examines the factors that contributed to a rapid decline in homicide clearances in the developing island nation of Trinidad and Tobago. A variety of explanations are explored, including characteristics of homicide incidents, the communities where they occur, and the agencies that process these cases. The findings indicate that substantial changes in the nature of homicides, combined with insufficient organisational capacity within the criminal justice system to detect and respond to these changes, explain the declining homicide clearance rate. Theoretical explanations for homicide clearances must represent a blend of insights from criminology and organisational science to account for both the offence itself, as well as how it is processed by the police and other agencies.

The Community Corrections Partnership: Examining the Long-Term Effects of Youth Participation in an Afrocentric Diversion Program

Using Afrocentric techniques has recently emerged as a promising way of delivering services to African Americans. Briefly, a number of authors have argued that African Americans are better served, especially by substance abuse services, when service delivery utilizes Afrocentric techniques. This study reports an evaluation of an Afrocentric treatment program for male, juvenile, felony offenders in one city. The evaluation uses a two-group, quasi-experimental design to compare the 281 African American youths in the Afrocentric treatment program (called the Community Corrections Partnership) with a comparison group of 140 probation youths. Overall, the youths assigned to the Afrocentric treatment program performed slightly better than the probationers on 4 out of 15 measures of juvenile and adult criminality.

Organizational Failure and the Disbanding of Local Police Agencies

Police organizations are a ubiquitous aspect of the landscape of criminal justice in the United States. Yet, little attention has been paid to the failure of police agencies and the consequences of such failure. This article uses structural contingency theory and organizational institutional theory to explore why 31 police agencies were disbanded during the 1990s. The findings indicate that agencies disband because they face significant environmental changes in their contingency and institutional environments. Contingency reasons for disbanding are mostly related to budgetary constraints. Institutional reasons usually involve agencies that engage in behaviors that violate the expectations of powerful sovereigns. Overall, police agencies disband because they cannot adapt to changes in their contingency and institutional environments or they change in inappropriate ways, and their small organizational size does not provide a sufficient buffer against external intrusion from the institutional environment, which results in disbanding.

Dumping: Police-Initiated Transjurisdictional Transport of Troublesome Persons:

Those who write about the police have generally neglected the informal ways police officers handle situations involving troublesome persons. Troublesome persons, including homeless and mentally disturbed people, prostitutes, juveniles, and people under the influence of alcohol or drugs, are not necessarily best handled by arrest. In fact the recent move by many police agencies to handle situations with either aggressive order maintenance or community policing may encourage officers to handle troublesome persons via informal methods. This article focuses on one such informal method: police-initiated transjurisdictional transport (PITT) of troublesome persons, or dumping. This article describes PITT, explores the literature for examples of it, describes some of its possible causes, and proposes three ways to control PITT. We conclude with four research strategies for studying police dumping of troublesome persons.

Determinants of Perceived Safety Among the Elderly: An Exploratory Study

Abstract A survey of randomly selected elderly residents (N = 301) of a largely rural county in Northwest Ohio sought to explore the perception of the fear of crime victimization. Those who participated in the study were asked a series of questions about their community, actual experiences of crime victimization, perception of fear related to victimization, and social support. Logistic regression analyses were computed to explore perceptions of neighborhood safety. Most participants reported limited experiences of victimization. As expected, in this rural environment, there was more reliance on informal supports and limited use of existing formal services.

Assessing the Performance of Systems Designed to Process Criminal Forensic Evidence

Abstract This paper examines methods that can be used to assess the performance of public organizations and systems designed to process criminal forensic evidence. There is considerable literature devoted to applying scientific and technical knowledge to criminal forensics techniques, such as DNA, AFIS fingerprint systems, and IBIS ballistics systems. However, the forensic science literature tends to overlook the nature and dynamics of organizations and systems responsible for finding, gathering, transporting, and processing physical evidence. How should the performance of these organizations and systems be measured, and what benchmarks exist for comparing their performance relative to their peers? We present a framework for establishing performance measures for organizations and systems that process physical evidence. These measures can serve as a valuable tool for enabling managers to assess the performance of organizations and systems and to evaluate the impact of reforms.

Bending granite revisited: the command rank structure of American police organizations

For 30 years, critics have noted a number of ailments caused by police rank structure. This paper adds to this literature by exploring the command rank structure of American police organizations in four parts. First, police rank structure is defined. Second, the hypothesized problems and benefits of tall rank structures are culled from the prior literature and described. A review of these contentions finds little reason to believe that tall rank structures are either beneficial or detrimental. Third, a systematic review of empirical studies of a range of organizations reveals that the impact of rank structure on three classes of organizational attributes is not wholly clear. This article closes with suggestions for conducting research to better ascertain the impact of hierarchy on police agencies, and how police executives can apply this knowledge.