of a criminal investigation. Second, the investiga- tive work of the police detective is also subject to external oversight. Key among these is the power of.
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of a criminal investigation. Second, the investigative work of the police detective is also subject to external oversight. Key among these is the power of the United States Supreme Court to review a police investigation that may have violated a suspect’s constitutional rights. The investigative work of the detective may come under scrutiny if the criminal suspect accuses them of collecting evidence in a manner that violated their constitutional rights. The first 10 amendments to the Constitution are known as the Bill of Rights; within the Bill of Rights are many of the constitutional rights afforded to criminal suspects. There are two Amendments that are especially applicable to the investigative work of a police detective. The Fourth Amendment, which gives the suspect protection against unreasonable searches and seizures, means that the detective has to collect a sufficient amount of evidence that implicates the suspect. Once there is enough evidence to focus on a suspect, then the detective can arrest them. But, the consequences for an unreasonable search and seizure is that the courts will not allow the evidence to be used at trial. Second is the protection against self-incrimination; this particular protection is contained within the Fifth Amendment. Protection against self-incrimination puts the detective on notice that if they use deception or force the suspect to confess, then there will be constitutional consequences. Similar to the Fourth Amendment, a confession acquired in an unconstitutional manner is at risk of being excluded before the trial. The internal and external oversight of the detective’s investigation is to ensure fairness. The purpose of the investigation is to identify the right suspect, not just any suspect. These oversight measures strive to ensure that the detective is not just trying to close the criminal case, but to solve it. Benjamin S. Wright University of Baltimore See Also: Bank Robbery; Motor Vehicle Theft; Murder/Homicide; Police (Overview); Policing, Problem-Oriented; Rape and Sexual Assault; Theft and Larceny. Further Readings Chamlin, Mitchell B. and John K. Cochran. “Social Altruism and Crime.” Criminology, v.35/2 (1997).
Greenwood, Peter W., Jan M. Chaiken, and Joan Petersilia. The Criminal Investigation Process. Lexington, MA: D. C. Heath, 1977. Inbau, Fred, John Reid, and Joseph Buckley. Criminal Interrogation and Confessions. Baltimore, MD: Williams and Wilkins, 1986. Jackall, Robert. Street Stories: The World of Police Detectives. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005. U.S. Department of Justice. "Crime in the United States, 2010." Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 2011. Walker, Samuel. The Police in America: An Introduction. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1992.
Policing, Problem- Oriented Problem-oriented policing (POP) in America dates back to the 1980s, as a response to the need of an alternative approach to police work. Until then, the field was dominated by to the so-called traditional model, in which police departments focus on law enforcement as a primary means to control street crime, using tactics such as preventive random patrol, rapid response, and criminal investigations. However, a decade earlier, scholarly work regarding the police role and empirical studies on the effectiveness of these tactics largely showed that the traditional model of policing was not effective in reducing crime and disorder. Setting the Stage In 1979, professor Herman Goldstein published an article in which he coined the term problemoriented policing. Relying on research conducted decades earlier about the nature and functions of police, Goldstein argued that the movement toward professionalism in police departments reflected a managerial perspective. From this perspective, the desired levels of order and accountability within the organization are achieved through features such as higher standards of education among officers, opportunities for training, centralization of decision-making, and reduced discretion among police officers.
Yet this trend toward professionalism placed police departments in a vacuum. Operational efficiency was regarded as an indicator of success, despite an apparent disjuncture between the police job and its effects on mainstream society. For example, rapid response to calls for service, random patrol, or the number of arrests per year were the “means” rather than “ends” by which police departments established their efficiency. By placing more attention on these reactive strategies, police departments were neglecting the quality of the “end product” of their work: the handling of a myriad of problems on a day-to-day basis and finding intelligent solutions to these problems. Goldstein argued that police should be more analytical in dealing with citizen calls for assistance. Rather than responding to each call, he urged police to identify problems—categories, or types of calls—and to identify the conditions that caused those problems as targets for police intervention. Premises and Principles Problem-oriented policing is an approach in which police departments seek to understand the causes of crime and disorder and to attack those causes. Police may form partnerships with the community, as well as other agencies/institutions and their managers, in order to assess specific problems of crime, fear of crime, and disorder. As such, POP is a problem-solving approach with emphasis on proactive strategies of crime prevention. One of the interesting features of problem-oriented policing is that police departments adapt their responses to the very specific nature of neighborhood problems. Therefore, it would be misleading to consider POP as a standard program, since each police department can tailor different strategies to assess and analyze problems, based on specific characteristics and needs of the community they serve. A major premise of POP is that problems must be correctly identified before engaging in responses to them. Correctly identifying a problem entails understanding its underlying causes, which enables police to target its working parts. For example, a neighborhood might be experiencing burglaries, but a further analysis of the environmental characteristics where these incidents occur (e.g., lack of natural surveillance, lack of lighting) and how they occur (e.g., time of occurrence, persons involved,
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modus operandi) would be necessary to implement a successful crime prevention strategy. Therefore, there are three key elements of POP. First, POP is used to define problems, rather than just incidents, as specifically as possible. Second, in order to correctly define and analyze specific problems, POP requires police to collect information. In this case, data used to support the implementation of POP relies not only on the information that police departments possess, but also on information provided by other agencies, business managers, or other persons that might be directly affected by the problem. Finally, POP is geared toward implementing alternative responses to arrest, recognizing that a problem might persist if its underlying cause is not directly targeted. For example, the police might advocate for improved lighting to deter burglaries rather than simply try to arrest the burglars. Building on the Model As implied earlier, POP offers an innovative approach to policing and redefined role of police officers as being problem-solvers, instead of crime fighters. After more than 30 years of history and data, there are many examples of the successful implementation of POP in the United States. One of the earliest experiences is worth mentioning. Driven by Goldstein’s propositions, a group of scholars and police chiefs from the Police Executive Research Forum (PERF) assessed the extent to which they could successfully apply and evaluate POP. One of the POP efforts conducted in the city of Newport News, Virginia, targeted theft from vehicles, domestic violence, and public housing problems. They found that POP was a successful approach to solving these problems, and the research set the stage for further structuring of POP. In 1987, John Eck and William Spellman proposed the SARA model, outlining the four basic steps of the problem-solving process: Scanning, Analysis, Response, and Assessment. In general, SARA is a cyclical process designed to identify a problem, collect the necessary information to analyze it, apply the strategies designed to solve the problem, and evaluate their effectiveness during and after the implementation. Although the SARA model is a primary guide for the design and implementation of crime prevention strategies, other theoretical perspectives complement POP. These include situational crime
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One of the 10-largest local police agencies in the United States, the Metropolitan Police Department of the District of Columbia (MPDC) uses highly developed modern techniques and a contemporary community policing philosophy, referred to as Customized Community Policing. Community policing joins police and residents in a partnership designed to organize and mobilize residents, merchants, and professionals to improve the quality of life for all who live, work, and visit the nation’s capital.
prevention and routine activity theory. Altogether, these theoretical frameworks aid police departments and scholars in developing structured responses to problems of crime, fear of crime, and disorder. The available research highlights the effectiveness of POP. The National Academy of Sciences reviewed the empirical studies on various policing practices and concluded that POP is more effective than other approaches such as traditional policing or community-oriented policing. By 2012, the Center for Problem-Oriented Policing had forged an international presence and generated a wealth of support materials, professional reviews, conference programs, and other resources. The Center has drawn upon the expertise of its members to expand the application of POP methods and know-how to areas as diverse as scrap metal theft, aggressive driving, sexual assault of women by strangers, crime in urban parks, asset forfeiture, prescription fraud and abuse—to name but a few.
Each year the POP Conference brings together police officers and executives, criminologists, safety and security consultants, and others to share information, news, and analysis of POP successes and challenges. As an example of the scope of POP application to types of crimes, the POP Conference program from 2011 included these workshops and presentations: • A CPTED (Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design) Approach to Reducing Crime in Privately-Owned Apartment Complexes • A Situational Approach to Residential Security • A Strategic Response to Moped Theft • Addressing the Problem of Prescription Fraud • CCTV’s Impact on Crime and Disorder • Chronic Mental Health Consumer Stabilization Initiative
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• Comprehensive Responses to Crime and Disorder Associated With Large Produce Markets • Crime and Disorder in Apartment Complexes • Integration of Problem Analysis in Response to Crime Issues • Last Call for Unsafe Bars: Dayton (OH) Police Dept. • Noise in Neighborhoods: Achieving Community Together (ACT) • Peek-a-Boo: Responses to Hidden Crime Places • Policing Problems Associated with Abandoned Buildings • Reducing Gang-related Crimes in Maravailla Public Housing • Repeat Offending • Safe as Houses: Reducing Residential Burglary • Taking Action Against Gang Violence • Taking the Wheels off Bicycle Theft—A Situational Approach • Urban High School Disorder Reduction Project Conclusion The popularity of POP stems not only from its empirical support, but from the collaborative partnerships between scholars and practitioners that it facilitates. The approach has spread not only in America, but also in the Nordic countries, in Australia, and the United Kingdom. As a result, the Herman Goldstein Award was created in 1993 to recognize the best practices in the field of POP conducted by individual officers and police departments around the world, based on their effectiveness in preventing crime. Problem-solving is the underlying rationale for a variety of contemporary and emerging policing strategies. The Compstat program which started in New York City uses police crime data to identify problems that area commanders must solve. A range of geographic or spatial analyses of crime problems emerged in support of efforts to better understand and target crime problems. More recently, police leaders have considered “intelligence-led policing,” where data analysis seeks to predict the emergence of crime or disorder problems so police can anticipate them and take
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preemptive action. The central premise of POP is that most crime and disorder represent symptoms of larger problems. If police understand the larger problems and work to solve them, the crime and disorder issues can be attacked in a systematic way. While there are no general statistics on the number of jurisdictions that apply POP in a fundamental way, it is clear the key principles of POP have taken root at various levels of the civic and law enforcement infrastructure in the United States and other nations. Carlos E. Rojas-Gaona Lawrence F. Travis, III University of Cincinnati See Also: Broken Windows Theory; Community Policing; CompStat; Crime Prevention, Situational; Fear of Crime; Routine Activity Theory. Further Readings Center for Problem-Oriented Policing. “What’s POP?” http://www.popcenter.org/about/?p=whatiscpop (Accessed April 2012). Eck, John E. and William Spelman. “Problem-Solving: Problem Oriented Policing in Newport News.” Washington, DC: National Institute of Justice, 1987. Goldstein, Herman. “Improving Policing: A ProblemOriented Approach.” Crime and Delinquency, v.25/2 (1979). National Research Council. Fairness and Effectiveness in U.S. Law Enforcement: The Evidence on Policing. Washington, DC: National Academies Press, 2004.
Pool Halls Pool halls, barber shops, saloons, and firehouses were particular male haunts during the 1800s and into the early 1900s and continue to enjoy that reputation in the present. Specifically, in a historical context, they were places where politicians— usually, but not always, democrats—could meet, organize, and liberally ply constituents with alcohol before and during elections. As such they were targets for politically opposed reformers, early feminist groups (respectable women were not allowed in such places), and religious groups.