NCJ Number
124774
Date Published
1989
Length
22 pages
Annotation
The analysis of the relationship between policing practices and statistics regarding the locations of reported crimes and offenders has undergone five phases.
Abstract
The preacademic phases consisted of the 19th century writings in which police practices were regarded as peripheral to the distribution of crime. The second phase was the ecology phase, in which the problems of using police data on crime were acknowledged but not addressed. In contrast, in the third phase crime data were seen as an artifact of enforcement practices, and police discretion was regarded as undermining the validity of crime statistics. In the fourth phase the limitations of police discretion are considered. The author's work reflects this perspective. Current developments indicate the emergence of a fifth phase, in which the emphasis is on the quality of policing in the community. 68 references.