Wilson and Kelling:A Broader Notion of Public Order - Book Report/Review Example

Wilson and Kelling: A Broader Notion of Public Order That issues involving policing and public order are important is hardly worthy; on the other hand, there has been a tremendous amount written about the mechanisms, both theoretical and practical, for putting the most effective and the most efficient type of police force on the street. The publication of an article in 1982, by two academics, argued that police have been too reactive to fulfill their functions in the most efficient manner possible, that public order encompasses much more than a rigid attention paid to crime rates, and that investing police officers with a greater amount of discretion would contribute more to the fundamental goals of policing than methods and approached currently in fashion. These two academics, Kelling and Wilson, have since then come to be known as advocates of what is known colloquially as the "Broken Windows" approach to policing. Their approach, however, has not been without its detractors; indeed, a multitude of studies, both empirical and descriptive, have been conducted since their ground-breaking article in attempts to either confirm or deny their essential premises. This report will analyse their policing approach. It will begin by dissecting their essential arguments and conclusions before examining how their approach fits within the larger confines of criminology more generally. 1.1 Broken Windows Article: Issues Raised and Implications This article arose from a new policy, the "Safe and Clean Neighborhoods Program", which was conceived of and implemented by the state of New Jersey in the mid-1970s. The basic concept was to place police officers back on walking beats, to bring them into closer contact with the communities and the neighborhoods which they were trained and hired to serve, and to attempt to integrate the police into the communities rather than for them to be perceived as outsiders and threats. It was hoped that this more intimate approach to policing would also decrease crime rates and increase an overall sense of public order and personal security. These foot patrol policies were to be implemented in twenty-eight cities in New Jersey. Quite predictably, politicians and other interested governmental officials hailed the program. It demonstrated, politically at least, that they were attempting to deal with rising crime rates and public insecurity; the irony was that both police chiefs and rank-and-file police officers resisted and criticized the program. As noted by Wilson and Kelling, "many police chiefs were skeptical. Foot patrol, in their eyes, had been pretty much discredited. It reduced the mobility of the police, who thus had difficulty responding to citizen calls for service, and it weakened headquarters control over patrol officers" (1982). In addition to these policy reasons for resisting a return to foot patrols, many police officers offered less persuasive reasons. They were more comfortable in their cars, it was often cold and rainy in New Jersey, and they were not persuaded that foot patrols would contribute to their policing mission. It was against this backdrop that the program was implemented in twenty-eight cities. Five years later, the Police Foundation from Washington D.C. conducted a research study to examine the effects of the foot-patrol program in New Jersey. This study selected one city, Newark, and its observations and conclusions were noteworthy. As a preliminary matter, it must be noted that the foot-patrol program, from a superficial point of view, seemed to have been a failure. This is because there was no demonstrable finding that the foot patrols had contributed to decreasing the crime rate in Newark. Once one looks beyond this superficial finding, as Wilson and Kelling did, the observations were quite surprising and optimistic from both the point of view of the residents surveyed and from the point of view of the police officers surveyed. Both, contrary to initial expectations, responded positively to this new approach to policing. The residents of Newark, to begin, reported positively on the new policing approach. The research data demonstrated that residents reported feeling more secure, that they believed the crime rate had stabilized or decreased despite evidence to the contrary, that they felt less compelled to take extra steps to protect themselves and their valuables against criminals, and that they had developed a more positive relationship with and impression of the police. The survey data obtained from the police officers further reinforced and confirmed the positive feedback of the residents; more particularly, the police officers assigned to foot patrol in Newark noted that their morale had risen, that they felt a greater sense of job satisfaction, and that they, too, had a more favorable opinion of the Newark residents whom they served when compared to officers confined to their patrol cars. The most striking implication is that public order seems to involve much more than naked crime rates. It is this more comprehensive notion of public order, of which crime rates are but a constituent part of a larger whole, that Kelling and Wilson sought to analyse and from which to draw conclusions and make suggestions. As an initial matter, Kelling and Wilson sought to define the precise nature that policing assumed in the foot-patrol context. Rather than functioning as reactive public servants, dealing with events that had already occurred, the police officers in this case were, in effect, woven into the fabric of the community. By becoming a more integrated part of the community, as stated by Kelling and Wilson, What foot-patrol officers did was to elevate, to the extent they could, the level of public order in these neighborhoods. Though the neighborhoods were predominantly black and the foot patrolmen were mostly white, this "order-maintenance" function of the police was performed to the general satisfaction of both parties (1982). This order-maintenance function manifested itself in very practical and useful ways. Kelling engaged in his own observations by joining police officers on their foot-patrols. He noted that the police officers became a very real part of the communities and the neighborhoods. They grouped individuals into familiar categories, such as peaceful residents, substance abusers, and strangers. Once the police officers were able to become familiar with the local residents, they were then able to adjust their policing strategies. This involved a great deal of police discretion. One beat officer, for instance, set rules about drinking in public. Residents could drink on certain side streets but not on main streets; substance abusers could sit in specified areas, but could not lie down or sleep so as to become a public nuisance; and. brown paper bags were required to cover any alcoholic beverages being consumed on the aforementioned side streets. In addition, despite frequent slogans to the effect that the customer is always right, the police officers extended a presumption of correctness to local business owners and let it be known that disturbances initiated by customers would be dealt with harshly. In the final analysis, by being visible, by getting to know and classifying the local residents, and by exercising police discretion in such a way as to become a problem-solver rather than an enforcer, these police officers were able to increase public order to the satisfaction of the local residents and themselves. In short, Kelling viewed this program as a success. It was a success, as they noted, because the foot-patrols must be viewed through the prism of communal public order rather than through mere crime rates; to this end, they concluded by noting that Above all, we must return to our long-abandoned view that the police ought to protect communities as well as individuals. Our crime statistics and victimization surveys measure individual losses, but they do not measure communal losses. Just as physicians now recognize the importance of fostering health rather than simply treating illness, so the police - and the rest of us - ought to recognize the importance of maintaining, intact, communities without broken windows (1982). 1.2 Broken Windows Within the Context of Criminology These observations are important because, in many ways, they break from conventional wisdom; to be more precise, a wealth of fairly recent scholarship in the field of criminology has treated the notion of foot-patrols as old-fashioned, inefficient, and a misallocation of human resources. From a practical point of view, perhaps the single most significant point is that police discretion is an invaluable policing tool. The issue of police discretion, while a seemingly natural aspect of the duties of a law enforcement officer, is a topic which generates much debate. Historically, the concept of police discretion was thought to be associated with police corruption and with an "extralegal" use of police power (O'Connor, 2005: np). Indeed, the recognition of police discretion as a legitimate aspect of police duties was not formally recognized until 1956 when it was formally identified and discussed by an American Bar Association study. This revelation, that the police did in fact use discretion in the course of their duties, generated a substantial amount of controversy: "When it was finally exposed, people like the American Friends Service Committee (1971) called for its abolishment, and police administrators sought a clampdown on discretion (administrative rulemaking)" (O'Connor, 2005: np). In the beginning, though police discretion was an integral part of daily police work, it was viewed with suspicion. A more modern view posits that police discretion is a valuable and necessary part of police work. To this end, calls for the elimination of police discretion have been replaced by proposals to more carefully define when and how police officers should use discretion. This modern view operates on the assumption that police work is often complex, that situations are rarely neat and simple, and that discretion results in better police work than a mechanistic application of the law. Discretion means many things and encompasses a tremendous variety of different situations. From a theoretical point of view, it has been referred to as the making of decisions where the law is not clear, where the police officer has alternative courses of action, and where a cost-benefit analysis cautions against the rigid application of the law. Some scholars have defined police discretion as judgments made within the realm of a "regulated autonomy" (De Lint, 1998: pg. 2) and others have characterized discretion as a police officer's role as a public servant whom is sworn to balance the intent of the law against the interests of the community in which he serves ("Broken Windows" and Police Discretion, pg. 42). Police discretion has been further addressed and defined at the highest levels of the American criminal justice system. The United States Supreme Court, the ultimate arbiter of the reasonableness of police procedure, has sanctioned the use of police discretion in 4th Amendment search and seizure cases. Indeed, "There are many other intrusive activities that the Court leaves solely to the discretion of the police on the grounds that the individual has no "reasonable expectation of privacy" in the place or premises targeted by the police" (Maclin, 1996: np). In short, even from a constitutional point of view, there are situations when the use of police discretion is not only allowed, but necessary. Police discretion, therefore, can best be characterized as the use of judgment in fluid situations and settings. Discretion, in short, is best incorporated into a policing approach based on the Broken Windows model. Such discretion can hardly be guided by the facts on the ground when police officers are separated from the communities which they serve. 1.3 Key Concepts: "Police Discretion" and "Crime" To understand the more subtle nuances of the Kelling and Wilson text, it is necessary to explore how they define their terms and their concepts. They use their words very carefully, they define them within a criminological context, and they define them in terms of causation and consequences. First, they use the term, "police discretion", in an expansive manner. This is in line with recent modern statements to the effect that "as noted by a National Institute of Justice Research Report, "Each tactical choice by the police, each citizen's response, counter responses by each, and changes in other variables in the context (for instance, intervention of strangers) create a fluid, ever-changing encounter" (1997: pg.35). Police discretion, in short, means investing police with the power to weigh circumstances, to judge people, and to resolve disputes according to their best judgment. Crime has traditionally defined by reference to legislation and common law guidelines; recent approaches, however, have adopted a more expansive definition. Indeed, as noted by Henry and Lanier, that "the recent criminological trend toward theoretical integration lacks an integrated definition of crime. Effective integration requires a comprehensive incorporation of the multiple definitions of crime, including moral consensus, rule-relativism, political conflict, power, and social harm, because each contributes important but restricted insights" (1998: 610). The result, consistent with the new approach to policing espoused by Kelling and Wilson, is that criminology must broaden its horizons if it is to truly encapsulate the complexity of the real world. These recent restatements of age old definitions regarding crime and police discretion are in line with such re-evaluative approaches. 1.4 Comparative Analysis: Broken Windows and the Two Models of the Criminal Process. In the Two Models of the Criminal Process, Packer abstracts two perspectives. The first, designated the Crime Control Model, incorporates as its motivation the fact that the repression of criminal conduct is by far the most important function to be performed by the criminal process. The failure of law enforcement to bring criminal conduct under tight control is viewed as leading to the breakdown of public order and thence to the disappearance of an important condition of human freedom. If the laws go unenforced-which is to say, if it is perceived that there is a high percentage of failure to apprehend and convict in the criminal process-a general disregard for legal controls tends to develop (1969: np). It can thus be seen that the Crime Control Model is at odds with the method of policing described and lauded by Kelling and Wilson. The foot patrols examined did not "repress" criminal conduct; instead the police exercised discretion and actually allowed certain criminal behavior, such as drinking in public, to occur. In addition, this lack of strict enforcement did not result in what Packer termed a general disregard for legal concepts; quite the contrary, the evidence demonstrated that the legal concepts developed through the application of discretion set clear boundaries regarding acceptable and unacceptable conduct. The Broken Windows article, therefore, would seem to refute the Crime Control Model set forth by Packer. The second model, designated the Due Process Model, focuses more on processes and procedures than outcomes. More specifically, the criminal process ought to respect certain rights, ought to defer to certain obligations, and ought to treat individuals with respect and dignity. There is no mention of repression at all costs. This abstract model, to be sure, meshes more nicely with the work of Kelling and Wilson. Whereas the Due Process Model addresses procedure from a theoretical and philosophical point of view, the Broken Windows discusses that same type of regard for citizens on the ground. In sum the Due Process Model is the best abstraction for incorporating the foot-patrol approach to policing. 1.5 Conclusion In conclusion, the foot-patrol experiment was a success, and this success was judged against the backdrop of a more generalized sense of public order and security as opposed to a strict attention paid to crime rates. Critical to this result was the exercise of police discretion. The delegation of certain decision-making powers, from top to bottom, allowed police officers to set rules and to better control the communities which they served. References "Broken Windows" and Police Discretion (1997). U.S. Department of Justice. National Institute of Justice Research Report. Retrieved 5 March 2007. Available: http://www.ncjrs.org De Lint, W. (July 1998). "Regulating autonomy: police discretion as a problem for training." Canadian Journal of Criminology, v40 n3 pgs. 277-304. Retrieved 4 March 2007. Available: http://sjg.uwindsor.ca/delint/regulating_autonomy.pdf Henry, S. and Lanier, M. (1998). "The prism of crime: Arguments for an integrated definition of crime" Justice Quarterly. Volume 15, Number 4 / December 1998, pp. 609 - 627 Maclin, T. (1996). "Applying the Norm of Controlling Police Discretion." 3 University of Pennsylvania Journal of Constitutional Law 398. Retrieved 5 March 2007. Available: http://www.law.upenn.edu/conlaw/issues/vol3/num1/maclin/node4.html O'Connor, T. (2005). "Police in Society: Police Discretion." Retrieved 4 March 2007. Available: http://faculty.ncwc.edu/toconnor/205/205lect09.htm Packer, H. (1969). "Two Models of the Criminal Process" from The Limits of the Criminal Sanction (Stanford: Stanford University Press), chapter eight. Class Readings. Wilson, J. Q. and Kelling, G. L. (1982). "Broken Windows." 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