Police Department Size and Agency Structure

• NCJ Number: 96759
• Journal: Journal of Criminal Justice Volume: 13 Issue: 1 Dated: (1985) Pages: 15-27
• Author(s): R H Langworthy
• Date Published: 1985
• Length: 13 pages
• Publication Format: Article
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

This paper examines the relationship between police agency size and police agency structure, using Peter Blau's formal theory of differentiation in organizations as a referent.

Abstract

The analysis brings two data sets that describe police departments to bear on the relations between agency size and spatial, hierarchical, occupational, and functional differentiation and between agency size and administrative overhead. The analysis generally supports the Blau thesis, but, with the exception of the relation between size and spatial differentiation, the relations appear too weak for agency size to significantly constrain structural options. (Author abstract)