The Compstat
Paradigm: Management Accountability in Policing, Business and the Public Sector
(Paperback)
by William
J. Bratton (Foreword), Vincent
E. Henry
The New York City Police
Department has achieved great reductions in crime through the Compstat process. Major
crimes have declined 66%, and homicides are down 77% since 1993. These statistics
translate into thousands of lives saved and significantly improved quality of life for all
the people of New York. Those who argue that factors other than the police were
responsible for this decline ignore the significant institutional changes in the NYPD and
its method of policing.
It was not simply hiring
thousands of cops and putting them on the street, it was a matter of changing the way
those cops worked. This involved not only technological change, such as the use of
computer pin mapping, but also managerial and cultural change within the NYPD. The result
was a more analytical and focused NYPD, a more responsive and flexible department, better
able to serve the people of New York. Compstat was driving force behind those changes.
Who’s Really
in Prison for Marijuana?
The Office of National
Drug Control Policy announces the release of a publication that debunks the myth that
America's prisons are filled with low-level, nonviolent marijuana users.
Pro-drug advocates
actively spread misinformation about the number of people in prison for marijuana, and
their claims are widely accepted as conventional wisdom. But they are false claims.
Entire
Report in
PDF format
(766 kb)
"Who's Really in
Prison for Marijuana?" uses the most reliable state and Federal data to show that the
number of inmates imprisoned solely for marijuana offenses is actually quite low, and only
a fraction of that number are first-time offenders. The vast majority of drug prisoners,
in fact, are traffickers, violent criminals, repeat offenders, or various combinations of
these types.
According to the most
recent available data:
Just 1.6 percent of
the state inmate population were held for offenses involving marijuana only;
Less than 1 percent
(0.7 percent) of state prisoners were incarcerated with marijuana possession as the only
charge; and
Only 0.3 percent of
all state prisoners convicted for marijuana possession and no other crimes were first-time
offenders.
The numbers on the
Federal level reflect a similar trend. Of all drug defendants sentenced in Federal courts
for marijuana crimes in 2001, the overwhelming majority were convicted for trafficking.
-
Fixing Broken Windows (1996)
ISBN: 0684824469
Broken windows breed
disorder. So said George L. Kelling and James Q. Wilson in a groundbreaking article for
the Atlantic Monthly in 1982. Now Kelling returns with Catherine M. Coles to call
community policing and the aggressive protection of public spaces the best crime-control
options available. Three-strikes-and-you're-out is fine as far as it goes, say the
authors, but it focuses on punishment rather than prevention. Kelling and Coles make
sensible suggestions for restoring law and order to the places where they no longer seem
to exist. Their argument is aided immensely by real-life examples of how their
"broken windows" strategy has reduced crime where it's been tried.
The authors asserted
that the best way to fight crime is to fight the disorder that precedes it:
We suggest that
"untended" behavior leads to the breakdown of community controls.
A stable
neighborhood of families who care for their homes, mind each other's children, and
confidently frown on unwanted intruders can change, in a few years or even a few months,
to an inhospitable and frightening jungle.
A piece of
property is abandoned, weeds grow up, a window is smashed. Adults stop scolding rowdy
children; the children, emboldened, become more rowdy. Families move out, unattached
adults move in. Teenagers gather in front of the corner store. The merchant asks them to
move; they refuse. Fights occur. Litter accumulates. People start drinking in front of the
grocery; in time, an inebriate slumps to the sidewalk and is allowed to sleep it off.
Pedestrians are approached by panhandlers.
Wilson and Kelling
elaborated on a related theme in "Making Neighborhoods Safe" (February, 1989);
they explored the idea of community-oriented policing that focuses on preventative
measures as well as punitive response to incidents. They found this approach, which was
being practiced increasingly throughout the country, to represent the most significant
redefinition of police work in the past half century.
The authors cite several
factors, including the rise of individualism, the decriminalization of drunkenness and the
deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill, that contribute to public disorder. Many of
the homeless, they note, are not merely down on their luck but suffer serious behavioral
problems.
They explain how civic
reforms during the 1950s that professionalized police services shifted police work from
crime prevention to crime response, thus creating some of the unintended consequences that
more recent reforms have had to address.
Beginning most notably
with the New York City Transit Police, for whom Kelling consulted, police departments have
recently focused on minor offenses, capturing a large number of serious criminals in the
process.
Other police
departments, with the assistance of civic groups, have begun similar work. The authors
provide cogent advice, backed by copious endnotes, on how to implement similar strategies.
More Reads:
The
Crime Fighter : Putting the Bad Guys Out of Business by Jack
Maple
Character
and Cops: Ethics in Policing by Edwin
J. Delattre
The
Turnaround : How America's Top Cop Reversed the Crime Epidemic by Peter
Knobler
The
Compstat Paradigm: Management Accountability in Policing, Business and the Public Sector
by William
J. Bratton
Crime
and Punishment in America by Elliott
Currie
Supervision
of Police Personnel (6th Edition) by Nathan
F. Iannone
Community
Policing, Chicago Style (Studies in Crime and Public Policy) by Wesley
G. Skogan
Illusion
of Order : The False Promise of Broken Windows Policing, by Bernard
E. Harcourt
A
General Theory of Crime by Michael
R. Gottfredson
Managing
Police Operations: Implementing the NYPD Crime Control Model Using COMPSTAT by Phyllis
P. McDonald
Problem-Oriented
Policing and Crime Prevention by Anthony
A. Braga
Malign
Neglect: Race, Crime, and Punishment in America by Michael
Tonry
Thinking
about Crime: Sense and Sensibility in American Penal Culture (Studies in Crime &
Public Policy) by Michael
Tonry
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