Can Additional Resources Lead to Higher Levels of Productivity (Arrests) in Police Agencies?

Citation

Donner, C.M. (2012), "Can Additional Resources Lead to Higher Levels of Productivity (Arrests) in Police Agencies?", Policing: An International Journal, Vol. 35 No. 2. https://doi.org/10.1108/pijpsm.2012.18135baa.007

Can Additional Resources Lead to Higher Levels of Productivity (Arrests) in Police Agencies?

Can Additional Resources Lead to Higher Levels of Productivity (Arrests) in Police Agencies?

Article Type: Perspectives on Policing From: Policing: An International Journal of Police Strategies & Management, Volume 35, Issue 2

Jihong Solomon Zhao, Yang Zhang and Quint Thurman,Criminal Justice Review,Vol. 32, Issue 2,2011,pp. 165-182

While many police administrators claim that there is a positive relationship between Community Oriented Policing Services(COPS) grants and police arrests, empirical research on this topic is very limited. Between 1994 and 2000, COPS awarded more than $7 billion in grants to law enforcement agencies. These awards provided funding for over 109,000 community police officers focusing on “quality of life” issues. The authors use three varieties of COPS grants in this study: hiring grants, Making Officer Redeployment Effective (MORE) grants, and innovative grants.

The data used in the study were derived from three sources. The first source was the Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) published annually by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The current analysis used UCR 1993–2000 “arrests made by police” and “violent and property crimes reported to police” data. A second source of data was the dollar amount of grants awarded to individual law enforcement agencies from the COPS Office from 1994 to 1999. In the original data provided by COPS, there were 11,750 law enforcement agencies that received funding from 1994 to 1999. The third source of data was U.S. census data taken in 1990 and 2000; census information was included for social and demographic characteristics of cities in the analysis. Four categories of arrest by the police were used in this study: arrest for Part I violent crime, arrest for Part I property crime, arrest for Part II drug crimes, and arrest for Part II crimes (e.g. disorder-related crimes). A nested statistical method for longitudinal analysis (i.e. hierarchical linear modeling – HLM) was used in the analysis of police arrest data from 5,871 cities from 1993 and 2000.

The primary findings from this study suggest that a positive relationship exists between COPS hiring grants and all four types of police arrests during the period of study. The most meaningful finding was that after controlling for socioeconomic and UCR crime variables, COPS hiring grants were significantly associated with increases in all four types of arrests, including arrests for disorder offenses, which also was highlighted as the key to reducing crime and improving quality of life in a community. At the same time, the results also suggested that innovative grants failed to be a significant predictor of all four types of arrests and the MORE grant was only significantly correlated with disorder arrests. Moreover, HLM in panel data analyses allowed the variance to be distinguished at two distinct levels of analysis. Interestingly, in cross-sectional analysis, the relationship between the COPS funding and police arrests was negatively related. However, the HLM model consistently showed a positive relationship between the COP hiring grant and police arrests for all four crime types.

The results of this study support policy implications of further federal grants. The authors cite President Obama’s proposal to put 50,000 more police officers on the street for combating urban crimes and social disorder. Based on the findings of this study, the authors believe that this plan will lead to further increases in police productivity (i.e. arrests) in a cost-effective manner.

Christopher M. DonnerUniversity of South Florida, Tampa, FL, USA