NCJ Number
171090
Journal
American Journal of Criminal Justice Volume: 20 Issue: 2 Dated: (Spring 1996) Pages: 165-182
Date Published
1996
Length
18 pages
Annotation
The relationship between crime and the numbers of police personnel were studied in a model that divided total police employment into its component sectors and considered its relationship both to total crime and to specific types of crime.
Abstract
The research was prompted by Loftin and McDowall's use of rational choice theory to hypothesize that a reciprocal relationship is likely to exist over time between police force strength and crime and by the unexpected findings that this relationship did not exist in Detroit during 1926-77. The Detroit research and the current research both used Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average (ARIMA) models. Data for the current study came from Milwaukee, Wisc. for 1930-87. ARIMA techniques were used to model the reciprocal relationship between total, patrol, and detective police employment and total, property, and personal robbery crimes. Results were consistent with the previous research and revealed no indication that an increase in the size of a police agency reduces crime or that an increase in crime leads to an increase in the size of a police agency. However, small but significant relationships existed between detective strength and crime in that increases in property crime rates, in total offenses, and robberies produced decreases in the number of detectives. Overall, findings provided further support to the conclusion that changes in rational choice theory cannot account for the relationship between crime and the size of a police agency. Findings also replicated the basic finding from almost all longitudinal analyses of the crime-police size relationship. Tables, notes, and 33 references (Author abstract modified)