Kansas city preventive patrol experiment established that

Criminal Justice Forum Responses

Ciara Rios

1. Briefly Summarize the Kansas City Preventive Patrol Experiment. Are the implications of the results still current today? Should they be relied on to make patrol allocation and distribution decisions in modern cities and communities? Why or why not? Fully explain your position.

In October 1972 the Kansas City, Missouri, Police Department conducted a year long experiment to “measure the impact routine patrol had on the incidence of crime and the public’s fear of crime” (Kelling, Pate, Duane & Brown, 1974). This year long experiment tested the effectiveness of Kansas Cities, traditional policing strategies of routine preventive patrol of that time (Kelling et al, 1974).

According to the experimental findings after of surveying in Kansas City researchers concluded that; “decreasing or increasing routine preventive patrol within the range tested in this experiment had no effect on crime, citizen fear of crime, community attitudes toward the police on the delivery of police service, police response time, or traffic accidents” (kelling et al , 1974). That may have been true in Kansas City in 1972-73 but in todays world I don’t feel that the finding still hold true. Fritsch mentions that some feel that police tend to have a “big city” bias or “East coast” focus, basically saying that there is in fact a difference in the way police handle different communities. There are more police in these more dense big cities then there would be in somewhere like Kansas city, so to assume that decreasing or increasing police presence would have no effect on the crime rate or citizens fear of crime would be just that, an assumption (Fritsch, Liederbach & Taylor, 2009). So to answer the question, no they findings from the Kansas City experiment should not be relied on for allocation in todays modern cities because of factor such as the time or era in which the experiment was conducted (over 40 years ago) the location and the undeniably larger population.

2. In 1982, Kelling and Wilson proposed the famous "Broken Windows" theory that resulted in many changes in police patrol emphasis. Recent studies have resulted in some professional disagreement with the original theory. Again, using recent academic references, briefly discuss the theory and whether you believe it should be considered valid for police resource utilization.

In 1982 James Wilson and George Kelling came up with a theory to reduce and possibly hindering future crimes from happening, by using police as a deterrent. This theory is called “Broken windows”. The Idea was that stopping small crimes such as vandalism or petty thefts would deter future more major crimes from happening. “If they (Police) focus in on disorder and less serious crime in neighborhoods that have not yet been overtaken by serious crime, they can help reduce fear and resident withdrawal” (Weisburd & Lum, 2013). When it comes to the question of whether or not Broken Windows should be used in policing today my opinion is yes to an extent. I do believe the basis of the theory that by stopping smaller crimes it might stop a worse crime from occurring along with a larger police presences. Weisburd explains that the theory its self has changed with time. In New York Broken Windows has been linked up with “zero tolerance policing”, in which “disorder is aggressively policed and all violators are ticketed or arrested” (Weisburd & Lum, 2013). Connecting the two is not the correct way to look at this theory because zero tolerance policing is looked at in a negative light because its as though police are over exercising their right to arrest and ticket in some cases. Broken is a valid way for policing when used in the right way.

Fritsch, Eric J., Liederbach, J. R., Taylor, R. W., , M. C. (3/1/2008). Police Patrol Allocation and Deployment, 1st Edition. [VitalSource Bookshelf Online]. Retrieved from https://online.vitalsource.com/#/books/9781269514415/

Kelling, G. L., Pate, T., Dieckman, D., & Brown, C. E. (1974). The Kansas city preventive patrol experiment. Police Foundation, 1-910.

Weisburd, D., & Lum, C. (2013). Broken Windows Policing. Retrieved July 14, 2016, from http://cebcp.org/evidence-based-policing/what-works-in-policing/research-evidence-review/broken-windows-policing/