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The Effects of the Police on Crime: A Second Look

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 July 2024

Herbert Jacob  and
Michael J. Rich
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Abstract

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This paper is a replication of the analysis undertaken in 1978 by James Q. Wilson and Barbara Boland. We use time-series data for nine cities for portions of the period 1948-1978 to test the effect of aggressive policing on the robbery rate. Contrary to Wilson and Boland, we do not find moving violations to be a useful indicator of police aggressiveness. We also conclude that using the arrest/offense ratio introduces artifactual negative correlations. When one examines police expenditures, the size of the police force, the arrest rate, and the concentration of the police on robbery arrests, one generally finds positive relationships rather than negative ones. We interpret these results to indicate that a focus on the problem of robbery by the police leads the police both to make more arrests and to record more offenses, thus producing the positive correlations we found.

Type
Research Article
Information
Law & Society Review , Volume 15 , Issue 1 , 1981 , pp. 109 - 122
Copyright
Copyright © 1981 The Law and Society Association

Footnotes

*

This report is a product of the Governmental Responses to Crime Project of which Herbert Jacob is principal investigator, Robert L. Lineberry is co-principal investigator and Anne M. Heinz is Project Manager. This paper supercedes an earlier version which was presented at the 1980 meetings of the Law and Society Association, June 6-8, 1980, in Madison, Wisconsin. The research has been funded by Grant 78 NI-AX-0096 from the National Institute of Justice, U.S. Department of Justice. The points of view and opinions stated in this paper are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.

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