Day 1

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# A Brief Overview of U.S. Policing Today

[Justin Nix](https://jnix.netlify.app)  
*School of Criminology and Criminal Justice*  
*University of Nebraska Omaha*

.white[January 27, 2022]

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# Pop Quiz!

Take out a sheet of paper and write down your answers to the following:

1. **In one sentence**, explain why we have police (i.e., what is their **purpose**?).

2. What does **violent crime** refer to?

3. On any given day, about what % of their time do police spend responding to violent crime?

4. For every 1,000 crimes, how many do you think result in an offender going to jail or prison?

5. What gives Americans **confidence** in the police?

6. Has policing has become **more dangerous** in the last 30 years?

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# Why do we have police?

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# The function of police in society

If we want to reform the police, [the first step](https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/06/first-step-figuring-out-what-police-are/612793/) is figuring out what they're for.

- Sociologist **Egon Bittner** famously said:

> [Police are nothing else than a mechanism for the distribution of situationally justified force in society.](https://www.ojp.gov/pdffiles1/Digitization/147822NCJRS.pdf)

- So we must ask ourselves:

> [What kinds of situations require remedies that are non-negotiably coercible?](https://www.ojp.gov/pdffiles1/Digitization/147822NCJRS.pdf)

- ***Do you agree?***
  
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# What is **violent crime**?

# How much time do police spend on violent crime?

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# How do police spend their time?

.small[from [*Intelligence-Led Policing* (2nd Ed.)](https://www.routledge.com/Intelligence-Led-Policing/Ratcliffe/p/book/9781138859012) by Jerry Ratcliffe]

???

- Violent crime plays a small role in the day-to-day activities of police officers (< 2% of their time)

- Media makes a big deal out of homicides, but it's the smallest square on the graph

- A lot of policing is social work. Attempting to prevent general community harms, addressing disputes, otherwise assisting the public.

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# On average, how often does a criminal offense result in a jail or prison sentence?

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# The Crime Funnel

.small[from [*Intelligence-Led Policing* (2nd Ed.)](https://www.routledge.com/Intelligence-Led-Policing/Ratcliffe/p/book/9781138859012) by Jerry Ratcliffe]

???

- Note these figures are from England & Wales where it's easier to generate national estimates

- **Only about half of all crimes are reported to the police**

- The detection rate in E&W at the time was 23% (so we're down to 99 of the original 1000 offenses)

- Of those, 60% resulted in an indictment, charge, or summons

- Conviction rate was nearly 83% (so now we're down to 50)

- Most of the punishments were fines, community service, suspended sentences...**only 8% of convictions result in jail or prison**

- **Why is this so important to see?**

- **If you could improve any component of the funnel by 10%, where could you have the biggest impact?**

- Even if we sentenced **everyone** found guilty to jail/prison, we'd still only be jailing offenders for 5% of all crimes
  
  - If **every** offender was forced to appear in court, it'd mean we'd be sending 39 more people to court
  
  - Police can do more to impact crime if they focus on the earlier components of the funnel. 
  
  - If we could generate a 10% increase in citizen willingness to call police for help, it'd mean police became aware of an additional 100 crimes, and this would have an impact on the rest of the funnel as well. 
  
  - So this begs the question: **How do we increase citizen willingness to call the police?**

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# What factors shape your confidence (or lack thereof) in police?

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# Confidence in the Police

.small[sources: [Gallup](https://news.gallup.com/poll/1597/confidence-institutions.aspx) and [FBI Crime Data Explorer](https://crime-data-explorer.fr.cloud.gov/pages/explorer/crime/crime-trend)]

???

- Public perception of the police is clearly driven by something other than crime/victimization

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# Is policing a **dangerous** job?

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# How **Dangerous** is Policing?

- Line-of-duty deaths have declined dramatically [since the 1970s](https://doi.org/10.1111/1745-9133.12408)

- And policing doesn't crack the Top 10 ["deadliest jobs"](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/01/28/charted-the-20-deadliest-jobs-in-america/) as measured by occupational fatality rates

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  - Measured this way, *logging* and *fishing* are the most dangerous jobs
  
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- ***What are we missing when we measure danger this way?***
  
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# How **Dangerous** is Policing?

- However, police account for 13% of workplace gun homicide victims, despite accounting for ~0.5% of the US workforce

- Gun homicide victimization rate for police is ~1.6x the U.S. rate

- Nonfatal gun assault victimization disparity is even larger
  
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- Determining how often officers *avert* injury or death is far more difficult

- According to [UCR data](https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2019/crime-in-the-u.s.-2019/topic-pages/tables/table-29), in 2019 police made ~10 million arrests

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  - Including ~500K arrests for violent offenses 
  - And ~150K arrests for weapons offenses (carrying, possessing, etc.)

.small[sources: [FBI 2021](https://ucr.fbi.gov/leoka/2019/tables/table-28.xls); Bureau of Labor Statistics 2021; [Kaufman et al. 2021](https://doi.org/10.1001/jamainternmed.2020.6696); [Sierra-Arévalo & Nix 2020](https://doi.org/10.1111/1745-9133.12507)]

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# How **Dangerous** is Policing?

.small[source: working paper using data from [Gun Violence Archive](https://www.gunviolencearchive.org/)]

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# What does police **effectiveness** look like?

# How can police maximize effectiveness?

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# Evidence-Based Policing

In terms of *crime prevention*, policing is most effective when it is *focused* and *proactive* (see [EBP Matrix](https://cebcp.org/evidence-based-policing/the-matrix/))

- Must balance against potential for [police-caused harms](https://www.nap.edu/read/24928/chapter/1)

???

Black circles = effective
White circles = ineffective
Grey circles = mixed results
Red triangle = harmful intervention

- This figure tells us that interventions that focus **proactively** on **neighborhoods** or **individuals** are most effective in terms of crime reduction

- **Focus** on **people** and **places** that disproportionately conribute to community problems

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# Have a great day! 😄

### *You never fail until you stop trying.*

<div style="text-align: right"> - Albert Einstein </div>