5 results
18 - Critic
- from Part IX - CompStat
- Edited by David Weisburd, George Mason University, Virginia, Anthony A. Braga, Northeastern University, Boston
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- Book:
- Police Innovation
- Published online:
- 09 August 2019
- Print publication:
- 29 August 2019, pp 417-436
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Summary
CompStat emerged in the mid 1990s and quickly came to be seen as a major innovation in American policing. By the turn of the century it had received national awards from Harvard University and former Vice President Gore, and was featured prominently along with William Bratton (the police administrator who created the program) in the national news media. Its originators and proponents gave CompStat credit for impressive reductions in crime and improvements in neighborhood quality of life in a number of cities that had adopted the program (Silverman, 1996; Remnick, 1997; Gurwitt, 1998; Bratton, 1999). And while CompStat was first introduced only in 1994 in New York City, police departments around the country had begun to adopt it or variations of it by the first decade of the new century (Law Enforcement News, 1997; Maas, 1998; McDonald, 1998; Weisburd et al., 2003; Willis, Mastrofski & Kochel, 2010a). Indeed, in a Police Foundation survey conducted only six years after CompStat emerged on the scene in New York City, more than a third of American police agencies with 100 or more sworn officers claimed to have implemented a CompStat-like program (Weisburd et al., 2001). By 2006, Willis, Mastrofski, and Kochel (2010b) reported that about 60 percent of large police agencies had adopted CompStat, and a Police Executive Research Forum membership survey in 2011 reported that 85 percent of 166 responding member agencies reported having adopted or plans to adopt CompStat (Bureau of Justice Assistance & Police Executive Research Forum, 2013). Drawing on this survey and the comments of police leaders, researchers, and others attending a conference on CompStat in 2013, a report on the meeting offered a uniformly positive assessment of CompStat’s performance to date, as well as its future potential: “Regardless of how it develops in the future, it is clear that Compstat has become an integral part of policing in the United States by helping agencies become more productive, agile, and effective” (BJA & PERF, 2013: 30).
2 - Critic
- from Part I - Community Policing
- Edited by David Weisburd, George Mason University, Virginia, Anthony A. Braga, Northeastern University, Boston
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- Book:
- Police Innovation
- Published online:
- 09 August 2019
- Print publication:
- 29 August 2019, pp 45-68
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- Chapter
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Summary
About three decades ago, a few American police leaders caught the wave of community policing reform, and now just about everybody has gone surfing. If recent nationwide polls of police are indicative, many lower-ranking officers are catching the community policing wave (Mastrofski, 2017). Early interest in this reform can be attributed to police anxieties in the 1960s and 70s about skyrocketing crime and urban violence, unmet rising expectations from the civil rights movement, and middle-class alienation from government authority (Fogelson, 1977: ch. 11). Like a “perfect storm” these forces converged, stimulating criticism from blue ribbon commissions and a daily drumbeat of negative press for police. Calls for change were issued, some radical: community control of policing, deprofessionalization, and reassignment of some core police tasks to other government agencies and the private sector. Alarmed and intent on ending this crisis of legitimacy (LaFree, 1998), progressive police and scholars began to explore ways to make American police both more effective and more democratic without losing many of the advances made in policing in the previous half century (Goldstein, 1977; 1990; Trojanowicz & Bucqueroux, 1990; Wilson & Kelling, 1982). The resulting community policing reforms were influenced by fashions in organization development intended to make agencies less bureaucratic, more responsive to the “customer,” and more results oriented (Mastrofski, 1998; Mastrofski and Ritti, 2000). Although early twenty-first-century concerns about the threat of terrorism may have dissipated federal financial support for community policing, highly publicized events featuring violence between police and the community have stoked alarm about the state of police–community relations, resulting in a national blue-ribbon commission document that once again advances community policing as a key to American policing that is more effective and legitimate (President’s Task Force, 2015: 43): “Recommendation: Community policing should be infused throughout the culture and organizational structure of law enforcement agencies.”
Making Sense of COMPSTAT: A Theory-Based Analysis of Organizational Change in Three Police Departments
- James J. Willis, Stephen D. Mastrofski, David Weisburd
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- Journal:
- Law & Society Review / Volume 41 / Issue 1 / March 2007
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 01 January 2024, pp. 147-188
- Print publication:
- March 2007
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COMPSTAT, the latest innovation in American policing, has been widely heralded as a management and technological system whose elements work together to transform police organizations radically. Skeptical observers suggest that COMPSTAT merely reinforces existing structures and practices. However, in trying to assess how much COMPSTAT has altered police organizations, research has failed to provide a broader theoretical basis for explaining how COMPSTAT operates and for understanding the implications of this reform. This article compares two different perspectives on organizations—technical/rational and institutional—to COMPSTAT's adoption and operation in three municipal police departments. Based on fieldwork, our analysis suggests that relative to technical considerations for changing each organization to improve its effectiveness, all three sites adopted COMPSTAT in response to strong institutional pressures to appear progressive and successful. Furthermore, institutional theory better explained the nature of the changes we observed under COMPSTAT than the technical/rational model. The greatest collective emphasis was on those COMPSTAT elements that were most likely to confer legitimacy, and on implementing them in ways that would minimize disruption to existing organizational routines. COMPSTAT was less successful when trying to provide a basis for rigorously assessing organizational performance, and when trying to change those structures and routines widely accepted as being “appropriate.” We posit that it will take profound changes in the technical and institutional environments of American police agencies for police departments to restructure in the ways anticipated by a technically efficient COMPSTAT.
15 - Critic Changing everything so that everything can remain the same: Compstat and American policing
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- By David Weisburd, Professor of Law and Criminal Justice and Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice Hebrew University Law School in Jerusalem and University of Maryland, College Park, Stephen D. Mastrofski, Professor of Public and International Affairs George Mason University, James J. Willis, Rosann Greenspan
- Edited by David Weisburd, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Anthony A. Braga, Harvard University, Massachusetts
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- Book:
- Police Innovation
- Published online:
- 22 September 2009
- Print publication:
- 04 May 2006, pp 284-302
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Summary
Compstat has come to be seen as a major innovation in American policing. It has received national awards from Harvard University and former Vice President Gore, and has been featured prominently along with William Bratton (the police administrator who created the program) in the national news media. Its originators and proponents have given Compstat credit for impressive reductions in crime and improvements in neighborhood quality of life in a number of cities that have adopted the program (Silverman 1996; Remnick 1997; Gurwitt 1998; Bratton 1999). And while introduced only in 1994 in New York City, police departments around the country have begun to adopt Compstat or variations of it (Law Enforcement News 1997; Maas 1998; McDonald 1998; Weisburd, Mastrofski, McNally et al. 2003). Indeed, a Police Foundation survey suggests that Compstat had literally burst onto the American police scene. Only six years after Compstat emerged in New York City, more than a third of American police agencies with 100 or more sworn officers claimed to have implemented a Compstat-like program (Weisburd, Mastrofski, McNally, and Greenspan 2001).
Drawing from a series of studies we conducted at the Police Foundation (Weisburd et al. 2001; Greenspan, Mastrofski, and Weisburd 2003; Weisburd et al. 2003; Willis, Mastrofski, Weisburd, and Greenspan 2004; Willis, Mastrofski, and Weisburd 2004a, 2004b), we will argue in this chapter that there is a wide gap between the promise of Compstat and its implementation in American policing.
Expectancy Theory and Police Productivity in DUI Enforcement
- Stephen D. Mastrofski, R. Richard Ritti, Jeffrey B. Snipes
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- Journal:
- Law & Society Review / Volume 28 / Issue 1 / 1994
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 02 April 2024, pp. 113-148
- Print publication:
- 1994
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This article drew on expectancy theory in industrial/organizational psychology to explain arrest productivity for driving under the influence (DUI) in a sample of Pennsylvania police officers. Expectancy theory is a cognitive model of motivation and performance based on workers' perceptions of their situation. Its major elements are estimated in a regression model: the officer's capability and opportunity for DUI enforcement (performance-reward expectancy), the instrumentality of DUI enforcement behavior for the officer, and the reward-cost balance associated with making DUI arrests. These factors account for 26% of the residual variance in the number of DUI arrests made annually once organizational effects have been removed. The relationships revealed are as expectancy theory predicts, except for instrumentality variables, which show a negative relationship to arrest productivity. This is due largely to the orientation of a small number of “rate busters,” whose exceptionally high arrest rate and negative attitudes toward their peers and the department hierarchy make them a distinct group accounting for a disproportionate number of arrests.
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