Kansas city preventive patrol experiment findings

Alexis Doss

The Kansas City Preventive Patrol Experiment was put into place to evaluate how valuable police patrol was in terms of visibility in reducing crimes and reducing fear of crime in citizens. The experiment was conducted over a year’s time, utilizing civilian specialists in economics, statistics, and other fields.

The implications of the results could still be current today, but in order to accurately say “yes” or “no”, I believe that the experiment would have to be conducted again. My answer to whether or not the results should be relied on to make patrol allocation and distribution decisions in modern cities and communities is that no, the results should not be relied upon. The results can be taken into consideration, but I do not think they should be completely relied upon.

Controlling and trying to limit crime will always be ranked high when it comes to the responsibilities of the police. When it comes down to whether or not police patrol diminishes crime, or potential crime, it cannot be accurately said due to one experiment from one department. Multiple departments can participate, but each department and community is different, as is how people respond to the police. For instance, a foot patrol experiment was conducted in Newark, NJ following the Kansas City experiment. “Varying foot patrol levels across 12 Newark, NJ, beats resulted in no significant differences between treatment and control beats for recorded crime or arrest rates, although treatment areas did show improvements in community fear of crime (Pate, 1986)” (Philadelphia Foot Patrol, p. 3).

In Police Patrol Allocation and Deployment Strecher is quoted saying, “In science, all knowledge is provisional. The essence of science is the verification and advancement of what is already known with repeated and refined research. The value of most police research findings is limited by a lack of both replication and refinement of the research” (Fritsch, Liederbach, Taylor, p. 15). Something that should be taken into consideration with this particular experiment is that not only did the chief have an unusually long tenure, he was liked and respected by not just his department, but the community as well. The community expected that he would do a good job in keeping the community safe. Perhaps the public didn’t necessarily take note of the change in patrol. If trust has already been established within the community, why would that change drastically, especially if there wasn’t a noticeable drop or rise in crime. Perhaps the experiment would show different results if it were carried out within different departments whose relationships vary with the community.

The famous “Broken Windows” theory proposed by Kelling and Wilson in 1982 uses a metaphor that if a broken window is left unrepaired, it will then lead to all the other windows of a building being broken. “Since its first utterance by Wilson and Kelling (1982), broken windows has become a powerful and enduring part of the criminological nomenclature, with deep influences in both disciplines’ scholarly and applied tradition” (Welsh, Braga, Bruinsma, p. 448).

Wilson and Kelling used a developmental sequence in which neighborhoods would fall into high-crime areas due to disorderly conditions. These conditions included social incivilities such as public drinking, prostitution, and loitering. Physical incivilities included trash, abandoned buildings, vacant lots, etc. A field experiment using seemingly abandoned cars was conducted by Philip Zimbardo to demonstrate the process. The cars that were left with hoods up and without license plates in the Bronx, New York and Palo Alto, California were vandalized. The car left in the high-crime area of the Bronx was vandalized within the first ten minutes. After a twenty-four hour period the car had been completely stripped. The car left within an upscale area of Palo Alto was untouched for a week until Zimbardo vandalized it himself with a sledgehammer. With a couple of hours the car that had been untouched for a week was not only vandalized, but stripped and turned over.

To Wilson and Kelling, this particular experiment suggested that crimes such as vandalism, or more serious crimes, were not limited to high-crime areas, but could happen anywhere. With the “Broken Windows” theory, I agree that when a community gives the impression that it doesn’t care or will turn a blind eye to small occurrences, what was once small can escalate into something much more. “In essence, crime is contagious and can spread to an entire community via environmental features. Relatively minor problems such as aggressive panhandling and graffiti serve as an invitation to an array of would-be offenders that particular neighborhoods are good locations to commit more serious crime” (Welsh, Braga, Bruinsma, p. 449).

Alexis

Works Cited:

Fritsch, Eric J., Liederbach, John., Taylor, Robert W.

Police Patrol Allocation and Deployment. 2008.

Ratcliffe, Jerry H., Taniguchi, Travis., Groff, Elizabeth R., Wood, Jennifer D.

The Philadelphia Foot Patrol Experiment: A Randomized Controlled Trial of

Policed Patrol Effectiveness in Violent Crime Hotspots.

Criminology. 2011.

Welsh, Brandon C., Braga, Anthony A., Bruinsma, Gerben J. N.

Reimagining Broken Windows: From Theory to Policy. 2015.