CHAPTER POLICE AND CRIME (Investigation, Traffic, and Vice.docVIP

CHAPTER 6: POLICE AND CRIME The subject of police and crime is beyond that of patrol and arrest. It involves several assumptions and strategies. Two Crime Control Assumptions Police and citizens: Society’s primary mechanism for controlling crime is the police and the entire CJ system. This leads to isolation between the two. Police and other social institutions: Only the police are responsible for crime prevention programs. The 1997 report from Univ. of Maryland identified seven institutions that are in a crime prevention continuum (communities, families, schools, labor markets, places, the police, and other CJ programs). Crime Control Strategies provided by Sherman Proactive vs. Reactive General vs. Specific (routine preventive patrol vs. directed patrol) Particular crime (gang crack down, DWI, sting operation) Specific places (hot spots programs) Specific offenders (the repeat offender programs) Specific victims (mandatory arrest programs in domestic violence cases) Measuring Effectiveness of Crime Control Programs This is quite complicated. It requires meaningful definitions of what is to be measured as well as valid and reliable data on the expected outcome. Also debatable is the quantitative vs. qualitative measurement issues. I. Criminal Investigation(CI) Most police officers see CI as what policing is all about Nationally, about 12% of personnel, largely reactive CI units vary according to the size of department and the workload - small dept. -- no specialized detective unit - medium-size -- a separate but unspecialized unit (handle all crimes) - larger dept. -- detective unit with a separate units specialized according to type of crime (against person and property, homicide unit, robbery unit etc.) - criminalistics: again larger dept. will have their crime scene specialists while smaller ones will usually use state or federal facilities. Goals of criminal investigations (Gerald Williams) 1. Controlling criminals (3 ba