Why Don't the Police Stop Crime

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2005 38: 4Australian & New Zealand Journal of CriminologyDavid Dixon

Why Don't the Police Stop Crime?

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4 THE AUSTRALIAN AND NEW ZEALAND JOURNAL OF CRIMINOLOGY

VOLUME 38 NUMBER 1 2005 PP. 424

Why Dont the Police Stop Crime?

David Dixon

University of New South Wales,Australia

Several answers to the question Why dont the police stop crime? areconsidered. Police do stop some crime, although increasingly they willrely on nonpolice personnel for assistance in doing so.The proportion of

crime they stop is not fixed: learning the right lessons from the experi-

ence of New York City will help them to increase it. Nonetheless, police

need to be alert to the dangers of concentrating single-mindedly on

crime reduction. Doing so not only has inherent dangers, but it can also

divert attention from other tasks and objectives of policing.Understanding the police role in crime control and reduction is

hampered by populist insistence that simple answers are enough. Equally,

the academic promise of new sciences of crime and policing is

overstated. The article argues for a more inclusive and sophisticated

approach to answering the question in its title.

Recently, there have been several burglaries in our area. I was talking about themwith a neighbour, who asked Why dont the police do something about it? Itried to give him a potted version of my lecture to undergraduates on the limits ofpolice effectiveness, but he was not impressed: If they cant catch crooks, whatgood are they? As if on cue, around the corner came the first police officer to beseen in our street for months. He was pushing crime prevention leaflets intomailboxes, advising people to lock the back door and to cancel the newspaper whenthey go on holiday. My neighbours disgust was complete: So we have to do your jobfor you now, do we?

This articles title is deliberately ambiguous, as well as provocative. I intend toconsider various ways of answering the question Why dont the police stop crime?,and also to suggest some answers, some of which are in the form of questions in

riposte. While the article primarily has a policy orientation, it is appropriate to gobeyond this to talk a little about the nature of inquiry into these matters, and theirrelationship to our broader intellectual culture.

Answer 1:They Do

The first, and most straightforward, answer is that the police do stop crime, or at leastsome crime. A hackneyed example from historical experience is that when police goon strike, some forms of crime increase (Sherman & Eck, 2002, pp. 3023): there is

Address for correspondence: Professor and Associate Dean (Research), Faculty of Law,University of New South Wales, Sydney 2052, Australia. E-mail: [email protected]


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no doubt that the presence of police does contain crime to some extent. The policeaffect the occurrence of crime both by catching some criminals (possibly leading toincapacitation and individual deterrence) and by presenting a risk of detection andpunishment (contributing to general deterrence). This is a modest claim, not an

expression of what Reiner calls police fetishism, the ideological assumption thatthe police are a functional prerequisite of social order so that without a police forcechaos would ensue (2000, p. 1). If it is accepted that the police have some impacton crime, there is no reason to believe that this impact is constant: presumably, itcan be increased (or reduced) if the police operate differently. This suggests that thekey issues are specifying the type of crime being considered, assessing the extent towhich police can stop crime, and identifying the most effective strategies and tacticsfor crime control.

Answer 2:What Kind of Crime Are You Talking About?

The concept of crime as a category unified by anything more than legal prohibitionshould have been abandoned in our criminological cradles. In order to understandthe field, the focus must be much tighter than simply being on crime. Corporatefraud, child sexual assault, drunken driving, and offensive language have nothing incommon beyond their legal status as offences. Putting more police on the beat is notgoing to affect white-collar crime. Developing forensic skills is irrelevant to thepolicing of disorderly conduct in the street. We need, therefore, to acknowledgefactors such as variations in the reporting and detectability of types of crime, thelikelihood of one detection leading to other crimes being cleared up (as offences

taken into consideration or written off), the influence of relationships betweensuspect and victim, and between police and public, and so on (Bottomley &Coleman, 1980, 1981; Coleman & Moynihan, 1996).

Answer 3: Because They Cant Do It by Themselves

There is increasing recognition that policing is not just the business of state policeforces. The monopoly of the police may never have been as complete as some mid-20th century police chiefs envisaged, but pluralisation is now a key theme incontemporary discussions of policing. Within the public sector, state police aresupplemented by and cooperate with a range of bodies, including transnational and

international agencies, security services, specialist agencies such as crime commis-sions, customs departments, specialised sections of other departments (dealing with,e.g., social security fraud or crime inside prisons), and local government policingagencies. Problem-oriented strategies involve cooperation in crime reduction with awider range of departments and agencies. In England and Wales, such cooperationhas been hastened by the Crime and Disorder Act 1998, which shifts some responsi-bility for the management of crime onto local government and requires police andlocal authorities to work together.

Meanwhile, in the private sector, the growth of commercial providers of securityis well-documented (see, e.g., Bowling & Forster, 2002; Button, 2002; Prenzler,

2000). Their services include the familiar guarding and patrolling, but also morespecialised services such as commercial crime investigation and interrogation of

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THE AUSTRALIAN AND NEW ZEALAND JOURNAL OF CRIMINOLOGY


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suspects (Inbau et al., 2001). Public and private sectors overlap in numerous ways:notably, public police beats are being supplemented by what is (rather lamely)called in England an extended police family (Home Office, 2001; Johnston, 2003)of wardens, local street patrols and private security personnel.1 In a significant and

distinctive development, Aboriginal people in Australia are playing an increasingrole in policing their own communities by means of Aboriginal Community Patrols(Blagg & Valuri, 2004, p. 1).

There is continuing pressure on citizens to do their own policing. The jargon forthis is responsibilisation, which involves, for example, basic target-hardeningcrime prevention. The officer in my street gave a cogent response to my neighbourscriticism: Its better to spend time preventing houses from being broken into thancoming round after its happened. Given that only one in 20 break-and-enters thatwere reported to NSW police in 2002 were cleared up (Doak et al., 2003, p. 40), itis hard to disagree.

Answer 4:Whatever You Say About Police Stopping Crime,Some Wont Believe That They Do

Criminal statistics have had an unhappy history in Australia, particularly in NewSouth Wales (NSW; Arantz, 1997). They are now much more reliable, bothbecause independent, professional agencies collate and analyse them, and becausestatistics of crime reported to police are supplemented by victim surveys. In NSW,there have been significant reductions in some reported crimes.2Nonetheless, evenif criminal statistics indicate that police have had some success in reducing crime,

they may not be accepted (Hogg & Brown, 1998, pp. 2426).Some populist commentators claim access to an alternative reality, in whichpopular experience or the voice of the man in the street tells a truth about crimethat police, statisticians, academics and governments disguise.3 Whether conserva-tive or Labor, politicians when in opposition can be heard muttering darkly aboutmanipulation and cover-up.4 According to a prominent NSW journalist, In thepast year or two, anecdotes about escalating crime in Sydney have spread, despiteofficial reassurances. People tell each other about crime in their street that no-oneever reads in the newspapers. She goes on to relate a horror story of crime in herown sleepy, modest suburb (Devine, 2001). In such accounts, criminal statistics are

untrustworthy and the individual instance is promoted as definitive:While senior police and crime experts argue about whether crime is rising across

NSW, a young man is recovering from a machete attack by a gang of 15 thugs whowanted his bicycle. The states crime statistician says offences have risen significantlyin the past 12 months in most categories. Christopher Knight, 18, is in no doubtabout that. He was slashed and stabbed 5

At its worst, this approach suggests that there is some conspiracy to hide the truth.To the extent that appeals to popular experience have value, they are referring to

what is now a criminological truism: there is a gap between the reality and perceptionof crime, and the latter must be taken seriously. For many people, fear of crime is as

great a problem as the real likelihood of victimisation. Police play an important rolein the construction of such fears. Police forces are important producers of knowledge,

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information and opinion about crime: the popular image of the police battling withan almost intractable crime problem is arguably the main source of peoples fear ofcrime a fear justified neither by the risks nor by the nature of the vast bulk ofcrime (Hough & Clarke, 1980, p. 9).

Of course, the flow of influence is usually said to be in the other direction:politicians and journalists claim that they are responding to public opinion.However, most people base their opinions of policing and serious crime not onpersonal experience, but on media reports (Reiner, 2000, p. 138). Politicians areprofoundly disingenuous when they invoke public opinion to justify their actions asif it were some natural, experiential product. My argument does not involve belit-tling peoples experience, being elitist, or denying that crime is a significantproblem. Far from ignoring such realities, critical criminologists have been arguingthat they should be acknowledged and responded to realistically for decades(see e.g., Young, 1975, 1994). Indeed, their influence on New Labours crime

policies in the UK is evident.

Answer 5: Because Traditional Policing TacticsAre Not Very Effective

If, a decade ago, most police researchers had been asked Why dont the police stopcrime?, they would have agreed on an evidence-based response.6

First, they would have claimed that a mass of criminal activity is largelyunaffected by the police for the simple reason that it is not reported or is, to allintents and purposes, undetectable (Bayley, 1994, ch.1; Hough & Clarke, 1980, pp.

78). Criminological research on the dark figure of unreported crime has madegiant steps forward with crime victim surveys that show that crime dealt with by thecriminal justice process is but the top, if not the tip, of an iceberg (Coleman &Moynihan, 1996).

Second, they would have demonstrated that traditional policing tactics wereineffective in reducing crime. The professional policing model which becamehegemonic in the mid-20th century was constructed around random or beat patrol byuniformed officers in cars, radio-directed quick response, and reactive investigation bydetectives. In a series of now classic studies, American (and later British) researchersshowed that this strategy could not be expected to reduce crime significantly.

First, patrol was inevitably (at levels of resources and power which could becontemplated) too infrequent to be a significant deterrent, far less a way of catchingcriminals.7

Crimes are rare events and are committed stealthily . The chances of patrols catch-ing offenders red-handed are therefore small a patrolling policeman in Londoncould expect to pass within 100 yards of a burglary in progress roughly once everyeight years but not necessarily to catch the burglar or even realize that the crimewas taking place (Clarke & Hough, 1984, pp. 67)

In 1993, the Cheshire Constabulary bravely announced a Crime Free Day. Thiswas to be achieved by putting detectives and nonoperational officers into uniform

and out on the street, trebling the usual number of beat patrols. Far from disappear-ing, recorded crime rose by 8.5%, leaving the Assistant Chief Constable to

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complain ruefully that criminals could not give a damn about police or criminaljustice. He conceded that increasing the number of uniformed patrols had no effectwhatsoever. Perhaps the only surprising aspect of this episode is that the officersresponsible did not realize that putting more police on the street would increase the

reporting of crime and that their day was likely to end in embarrassment.8Second, reducing response times was found to be largely irrelevant. It was

unlikely that a criminal would be caught on or near the scene unless the crime wasstill in progress. But victims often delayed reporting to the police. If they rang thepolice half an hour after a crime occurred, it was unlikely to matter whether officerstook 10 or 20 minutes to arrive (Reiner, 2000, p. 117; Sherman & Eck, 2002, p.305). Finally, researchers showed that most crimes were not solved by detectivesfitting clues together. Detection and clear-up usually depended not on what policedid, but on the flow of information from the public:

the prime determinant of success is information immediately provided by members of

the public (usually the victim) to patrol officers or detectives. If adequate informa-tion is provided to pinpoint the culprit fairly accurately, the crime will be resolved; ifnot it is almost certain not to be. This is the conclusion of all the relevant studies (Reiner, 2000, pp. 11920).

Detection was not found to be what most detectives spend their time doing. Theirwork mainly consists of the processing of information into a legalised form for useelsewhere in criminal justice (Dixon, 1997, pp. 268274). Real life is not liketelevisions Law and Order, in which crimes are committed, detected, investigatedand prosecuted in less than an hour.

These empirical studies contributed to a wholesale reassessment of policing. The

main context of this was concern about the counterproductive effects of policeprofessionalism, particularly the alienation from minority communities whichcontributed to the outbreak of numerous urban disorders. The critique of the profes-sional model was made most eloquently, if rhetorically, by Peter Manning, whopresented it as one of the ironies that he found to be constitutive of modern polic-ing. Manning suggested that police had constructed a role as professional crime-fighters: the rhetoric of professionalism is the most important strategy employed bythe police to defend their mandate and thereby to build self-esteem, organisationalautonomy, and occupational solidarity or cohesiveness (1977, p. 16). The irony isthat police chose to judge themselves, and be judged by others, as crime-fighters

even though crime is the product of forces beyond police control.

The police have claimed to prevent, control, deter, and punish crime and have madethat above all their primary legitimating theme. They have done this in spite ofthe fact that they cannot control crime. The crime focus of the police, nowaffirmed as legitimate by many as a result of police efforts, is both the greatest asset ofthe police and will be their most profound burden as they attempt to adjust to publicconsciousness of their limitations. (T)heir stock is oversold and their politicalstrategy is bankrupt (1977, pp. 1516).

From this perspective, there is a further irony that, while police cannot controlcrime, their attempt to do so obstructs alternative views of their work: crime

prevention, for example, or a special sort of social service agency, or a regulatoryagency (1977, p. 16). Here, Manning implicitly refers to the original mandate of

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the English new police, which was to be not an investigative or detective, but apreventative force. The role of crime fighters was one chosen out of various possibil-ities in the later 19th and early 20th centuries.

This critique of police professionalism fed into three broader developments.

First, there was a general disillusionment with the efficacy of state interventions incriminal justice (notably rehabilitative sentencing), which became known as thenothing works approach. Second, other features of police professionalism notably the distance from community contributed to a crisis in relations betweenpolice and sections of the community that contributed to the outbreak of seriousurban disorders. Third, the early empirical studies demonstrated the centrality ofdiscretion in policing, thereby preventing the police from hiding behind the myththat they just enforce the law.

Answer 6: Crime Is Down, (Dont Just) Blame the Police9

Since the mid-1990s, the analysis presented in the previous answer has come underserious challenge. The world of policing has been thrown upside down because ofwhat happened to recorded crime in New York City. In the seven major categories(murder, robbery, forcible rape, felony assault, burglary, larceny and grand larcenyauto), crime declined by 64% between 1993 and 2002. In 1990, there were 2245murders; in 2003, there were 572, a fall of no less than 75%.

From around the world, police, press and politicians flocked to discover NewYorks secret. Not surprisingly, there was a rush to claim responsibility. The NewYork miracle was a political and commercial goldmine, producing consultancies,jobs, publishing deals and careers. According to William Bratton, who was commis-sioner in 199496, he was Americas top cop who reversed the crime epidemic(Bratton, 1998). Rudolph Giuliani (Mayor, 19932001) saw the victory as his(Giuliani, 2002). Police consultant and academic George Kelling claimed that itwas due to the implementation of the broken windows theory which he and J.Q.Wilson had proposed in 1982 (Kelling & Sousa, 2001; Wilson & Kelling, 1982),although this was almost contemptuously dismissed by the late Jack Maple, a keymember of Brattons inner circle (Maple, 1999, pp. 153156).

The New York miracle became an irresistible news story, with acres of presscoverage, including Bratton appearing on the cover of Time. The account providedby the popular press and lapped up by many politicians was that zero tolerance wasresponsible. Australian commentators repeatedly insist that we should follow NewYork and adopt zero tolerance policing.10 The NYPD model spread widely, not justin the US but in many countries, including Australia (Henry, 2002, p. 305). 11

Meanwhile, the initial response to the New York experience by academics wasoverwhelmingly critical. Starting from the assumption of police inefficacy, theylooked for other explanations of the crime drop. At the same time, they emphasisedincidents of police misconduct, which they saw as an inevitable part of zero toler-ance policing.

The story has suffered from exaggeration and oversimplification on both sides. Itis now time for a more measured assessment. Explaining the crime drop has

become a key question in contemporary criminology (and public policy more gener-ally). A substantial body of sophisticated empirical analyses of US crime trends in

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the 1990s has now been produced by respected and respectable criminologists (see,most significantly, Blumstein & Wallman, 2000; Northwestern University School ofLaw, 1998; and Karmen, 2000). So who or what was responsible for the crime drop?

We should start by considering a couple of loudly touted contenders. First, there

is zero tolerance. The quality of the debate would be greatly enhanced if this sloganwere dropped. Few police use it, even in the UK where it has been taken up by NewLabour. While the NYPD appears to be more comfortable with its use than before,12

the Departments strategy in the 1990s was not based on zero tolerance, if by that ismeant aggressive, gloves-off law enforcement. This was never more than one tacticamong others. Bratton rejected the term, except when applied to police corruption.In reality, the US police force more appropriately associated with zero tolerance isthe Los Angeles Police Department. It is an extraordinary example of the power ofpublic relations and the media that the LAPD enjoyed a favourable internationalreputation for so long. Its response to corruption in the 1930s was a crime-fighting,

alienated professionalism that caused major problems, of which the 1965 Watts riotsand the 1991 Rodney King beating were symptomatic (Cannon, 1999; Domanick,1994). However, when the chips were down, as South Central went up in flames,the macho posturing of the LAPD dissolved into incompetence and confusion,which turned the crisis of the acquittal of Kings attackers into the disaster of theriots. It is no coincidence that William Bratton was appointed commissioner of theLAPD in 2002. Zero tolerance is not on his agenda.13

One of many ironies in policing is that the NYPD became best known for thewrong thing, indeed not just the wrong thing, but for something that belittled anddistracted attention from the reality. (This is not to deny or minimise the abuses

fostered by, or the counterproductive effects of, the NYPDs strategy, which will beconsidered below.) The real achievement of the NYPD is undervalued by the focuson zero tolerance. Similarly, in NSW and elsewhere, significant achievements inpolicing (and elsewhere, notably in juvenile justice) are overshadowed by politicalrhetoric of the war on crime. In NSW, it is surely a little strange that a governmentthat claims to have implemented the recommendations of the Royal Commissioninto the NSW Police Service (Wood, 1997) should not have presented doing so tothe electorate as a major success. Instead, in the 2002 NSW state election, televi-sion advertisements featuring handcuffs spelling out the word tough were appar-ently thought to be more appropriate.

The second contender is broken windows. This idea originated in a famousarticle in theAtlantic Monthly in which J.Q Wilson and George Kelling hypothesised,without empirical basis,14 that serious crime could be reduced by clamping down onminor incivilities and disorder.15 The argument was based on the metaphor of brokenwindows. Wilson and Kelling claimed that if a broken window in a building is notrepaired, others will be broken. The rest of the building, then the street, then theneighbourhood, will deteriorate. The human equivalent of a broken window is theill-smelling drunk, the rowdy teenager, or the importuning beggar. The uncheckedpanhandler is, in effect, the first broken window (Wilson & Kelling, 1982, p. 34). 16 Ifhuman broken windows are not fixed, disorder will turn into serious crime becauseserious street crime flourishes in areas in which disorderly behavior goes unchecked

(Wilson & Kelling, 1982, p. 34). The theory was based on a kernel of commonsenseor folk wisdom (Wilson & Kelling, 1982, p. 34): little problems lead to big

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problems. It also relies on popular but inaccurate accounts of social decline resultingfrom moral and social indiscipline. As noted above, Kelling makes much of theclaim that the New York miracle was due to broken windows policing. It is certainlytrue that Bratton and Giuliani genuflected to theAtlantic Monthly article. However,

they also made clear that broken windows policing was only one tactic in a muchbroader strategy. I would suggest that it was as significant symbolically as instrumen-tally: police attempts to fix broken windows signalled commitment both to NewYorkers that their concerns about quality of life were being addressed and to policeofficers that they could crack down on people whose disorderly behaviour they hadpreviously been told, for various reasons, to leave alone.

There are deeper problems with the broken windows hypothesis. In an exhaus-tive, trenchant critique, Bernard Harcourt has shown that the study routinely citedas empirically proving the hypothesis, Skogans Disorder and Decline (1990), doesnothing of the sort, and that it is is fundamentally flawed. Theoretically, Harcourt

shows that the supposedly causal links between disorder and crime are obscure(Harcourt, 1998, 2001; for further critique of broken windows, see Dixon, 2005).

So what did work to reduce crime in New York City? There are two issues here.One is an understanding of the NYPD program which looks beyond both zero toler-ance and broken windows. The second is placing this program in the context ofother influences.

The success of the NYPD had three foundations. First, resources were deployedto deal with risks risky places, risky times, risky people (suspects and victims).Such risks were identified by strategic analysis of criminal intelligence and statistics.They were then countered by the deployment of concentrated, dedicated police

units. This policy of targeting and focusing has become increasingly significant inthe current administrations of Mayor Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Kelly.17

Secondly, the NYPD was revitalised by managerial reform involving direction andsupervision of operational officers of unprecedented intensity. Both the risk-management strategy and the managerial reform relied heavily on informationtechnology. These two strands entwined in the CompStat process, in whichcomputerised statistics of crime and criminal justice trends are used as a tool ofaccountability, problem-solving and managerial control in twice-weekly meetings atheadquarters (Henry, 2002; McDonald, 2002). It is CompStat that has been takenup by police (and other public service) departments around the world, as for

example in NSW Polices Operations and Crime Reviews and QueenslandsOperational Performance Reviews. The NYPDs mantra is not zero tolerance, butaccurate and timely intelligence; rapid deployment; effective tactics; relentlessfollow-up and assessment (Bratton, 1998). According to Bratton:

The paradigm emphasizes accountability and discretion at all levels of the organiza-tion, strategies and time-sensitive identification and response to managementproblems ; capitalization of the expertise and input of all personnel ; and contin-uous organizational restructuring or re-engineering to remove impediments to highperformance (Bratton, in Henry, 2002, p. iv).

As this tortured language suggests, this was a managerial revolution. According to

Bratton, his team transformed a reactive, risk-averse organization, that for most ofits history had been organized around avoiding risk and failure, to one that is

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organized and managed for results while rewarding risk-taking and initiative(Bratton, in Henry, 2002, p. iii). Other changes, many of them interrelated,included encouraging better morale, hiring more officers, providing more discretionand responsibility, and cracking down on quality-of-life offences.

In order to identify the crucial third foundation of the NYPDs success, it is neces-sary to connect up the elements of the NYPD strategy in a way that is usuallyoverlooked. The managerial style of the NYPD was unoriginal, containing little thatwould be unfamiliar to any student of new public management (Henry, 2002, p. 4).Indeed, it was not even new in police rhetoric: such programs have been found forexample in the Metropolitan Police Plus Programme in London and in the NSWPolice under Commissioners Avery and Lauer (Wood, 1997; Dixon, 2001). What isdifferent is that these programs were not made attractive to serving officers in Londonand NSW. By contrast, Bratton sold his reforms as a way of achieving what mostoperational police want to do: win back the streets, crack down, and lock up the bad

guys. The NYPD leadership expressed an unwavering belief in the capacity of policeoffices to make a difference and to reduce crime (Henry, 2002, p. 27). In other words,the reform went with, rather than against, the flow of police culture. What was newwas that reform was implemented in policing practice, and not just enshrined instrategic documents, operational plans and the like.

This may help to explain why NSW Police have made such a public commit-ment to crime-fighting in recent years, despite the warning given by the WoodRoyal Commission and the subsequent Qualitative and Strategic Audit of theReform Process (QSARP) against such rhetoric (Dixon, 1999, 2001; Hay Group,200002; Wood, 1997). Symptomatically, the word service has been dropped from

the organisations title: we are encouraged, once again, to call the NSW Police aforce.

The second part of the argument is that, without underestimating the NYPDsachievement (which is real if specifically incalculable), it has to be put in context ofthe other factors: social and cultural change, changes in drug markets, economicchange, and demographic change. Andrew Karmens definitive empirical studyconcludes that the crime reduction happened because:

a number of positive developments all kicked in and pulled together in the same direc-tion downward. The best way to describe the Citys situation in the 1990s was that afortuitous confluence of underlying factors materialized (E)very one of the causal

factors known to affect crime rates moved in the desired direction (2000, p. 257).

Economic improvement, lower unemployment, reduced alcohol consumption andfewer young men all contributed. Karmen identifies two specific factors in NewYork: immigration of greater numbers of generally hard-working, law-abidingpeople from around the world and more young people staying in school andenrolling in college. Both had significant influence in reducing crime. However, forKarmen, the indispensable factor was the decline of the crack epidemic from thelate 1980s, which was so intimately connected to New Yorks property and violentcrime. Karmen gives full credit to the NYPDs contribution generally and specifi-cally to the decline of crack (2001, p. 258). But it was just one factor among many.

Bratton, Kelling and others18 dismiss the argument that the NYPD was notsolely or principally responsible. However, despite Brattons protestations that

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socioeconomic factors were irrelevant, we know that they were not, for one simple

reason.19 The crime drop did not just happen in New York City. It happened in 17

of the 25 largest US cities. Indeed, it happened to varying extents elsewhere: 12 of

the 17 advanced industrial countries recorded concurrent crime drops (Travis, 1998;

Young, 1999, pp. 125126). In most of these places, the police were not applyingthe NYPD strategy. They were either doing what they had always done or they were

reforming in other directions. Unless you are prepared to make the unlikely claim

that similar results were achieved by completely different inputs, then you have to

accept that the New York miracle was not just the product of the NYPD, and that

we have to look beyond policing for explanation. (Again, this is not to belittle the

NYPDs performance, which may account for why the crime drop was sharper and

more durable in New York than in many other places.)

We can think about a local example in the same way. The NSW Police have

claimed and won great credit for changes in the heroin market in Cabramatta. Butsimilar claims have been made before.20 Why was a policing crackdown so much

more effective in 200102 than another had been in 199798? Part of the answer

certainly lies in different tactics, more resources, new powers (Dixon & Maher,

2004). But there are deeper factors. First, there was a national heroin shortage (the

drought) in 2001 (Dietze & Fitzgerald, 2002; Weatherburn et al., 2001), which

allowed the police to get a hold on the market. (In turn, this is claimed to be the

result of police action at national and international level on importation; this has to

be set alongside a series of other explanations for the drought.) Second, there is the

even less palpable factor of change in the consumers of illegal drugs. It is increas-ingly clear that drug epidemics come in waves: particular drugs come into, and then

go out of, fashion, not least because young people see what has happened to the

generation before them (Curtis, 1998). It is remarkable how vigorously this account

is resisted: it has something to do with an unwillingness to accept that communities

can change themselves and that not everything has to be engineered by the state.

This is a strange position for free market liberals to adopt.

Explanation of the crime drop must be found in a coincidence of various factors.

Police activity is certainly one of these, but it is one among several. This conclusion

should not really be a surprise. On one hand, it unlikely that cracking down on

squeegee men would reduce a citys homicide rate by three quarters. Equally, it is

hard to believe that effective reform of a police department would have no impact

on its performance in crime control. The reality lies, predictably, somewhere in

between: the NYPD contributed to the decline in crime, but were not solely respon-

sible for it. Despite Brattons and Giulianis relentless self-promotion, they should

claim only partial responsibility for the New York miracle.

So another answer to the question Why dont the police stop crime? is

suggested by the research evidence. In certain circumstances, the police can effect

marked reductions in crime, but usually only in cooperation with other agencies and

only if they adopt strategies which are in stark contrast to those dictated by theprofessional law enforcement model (Homel, 1994, p. 32).

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Answer 7: Its More Difficult Than You Think

The New York example suggests that answering our original question is inconve-niently complicated. Of course, simple, monocausal explanations are oftenpreferred. They make for effective politics and easy journalism which sometimes

run together, not least in NSW. In a dreamworld called Mirandaland, life is simple.People are divided neatly into good and bad, and what happens can be accountedfor with ease. For example: why were reductions in some crime statistics reported inNSW in 2003? Because heroin-use has declined. Why has heroin-use declined?Because of effective police interventions. Why isnt this success publicised? Becausethose blinded by antiprohibitionist ideology cannot see the truth (Devine, 2003).

Unfortunately, things are not so simple in the world in which we actually live. Ifwe are concerned with explanations rather than mere political gamesmanship, wehave to be prepared to say that matters are multidimensional and complex, and evenadmit that we dont know why some things happen. There is a similarity between the

insistence that we can explain crime trends simply and confident, dogmatic explana-tions of other phenomena. For example, the authors of a book on prehistoric struc-tures in England, such as Stonehenge, express their irritation with people who insistthat they were the work of visitors from space or, alternatively, of ancients who hadall kinds of weird and wonderful knowledge and powers which for some reason wehave lost or forgotten (Daniel & Bahn, 1987, p. 9). They argue that:

in the area of social archeology, there is fierce determination to recover theunrecoverable that is, the social structures, kinship patterns, hierarchies andreligious beliefs of vanished prehistoric peoples (by archeologists) apparentlybelieving that they can reconstruct past social life simply because they want to do so.

But the evidence is not there. (Daniel & Bahn, 1987, p. 12)

The fact that we want to explain something does not mean that we can. It does notmean we should do nothing but look at the stones in wonder: the point is that weneed some modesty in our attempts to understand them. In particular, we should bewary of simple explanations which ascribe single causes.

Explaining crime trends is difficult and complicated, and we should take the taskmore seriously. In both academic and professional research fields, kudos (andmoney) usually goes to those kinds of explanations which aspire to being scientific.In recent years, there has been a revival of positivist scientific criminology, theevidence-based what works? school. Medicine is seen as providing the model towhich we should aspire (Sherman, 1998). While Sherman is not nave about thismatter, there should be more attention paid to the reality rather than the myth ofmedical research. I must stress that I am not critical of this scientific enterprise ingeneral. We need quantitative analysis, including good experimental studies, whenthese are appropriate.21 What is worrying are the pretensions of some of itsexponents, and the ease with which they proceed as if decades of critique ofpositivist criminology never happened (Laycock, 2001).

In the context of policing, experimental research faces particular difficulties.Any proposal that a tactic or policy (e.g., mandatory arrest in domestic violencecases) can be operationally tested by requiring officers to apply it and that, once the

best tactic or policy has been identified, it can be put into practice by regulationand instruction, has to face basic realities of police organisations. As Manning

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pointed out, police are symbolised externally as a paramilitary bureaucracy, but lackof internal control, of close supervision of lower participants, and their freedom ofaction make it more a symbol than a reality (1977, p. 109, and see also ch. 7 for hiscritique of presenting police organisations as professional bureaucracies). It is almost

a clich to cite Wilsons observation that the police department has the specialproperty that within it discretion increases as one moves down the hierarchy(1968, p. 7). A police force that operates as a tightly organised, self-regulatingbody, with a highly efficient hierarchical command structure, exercising directoperational control exists only in the nightmares of conspiracy theorists and thepublic dreams and wishful thinking of some senior police managers (Baldwin &Kinsey 1985, p. 99).

A further problem with much of the new police science is its confidence thatdisputes can be settled empirically: did the police cause the crime drop, or was itchanges in drug markets? This fails to appreciate that often the real dispute is not

empirical but theoretical and political. Competing accounts of social action areinvolved. The new police science often takes for granted a view of people as ratio-nal actors, with all its implications for conceptions of choice and deterrence. Therational deterrent model of policing that is implicit in common sense discussionsof police effectiveness has been properly criticised: such clarity of vision is a form ofmyopia (Hough & Clarke, 1980, p. 2).22

In an important critique, David Thacher has argued that the idealised medicalmodel is inappropriate for understanding social phenomena such as policing. Hecontrasts the instrumental knowledge produced by, for example, randomisedcontrol trials from the practical reasoning needed to do good police work:

policing is characterized by a high degree of value pluralism and this fact limits(but does not eliminate) the role that any type of instrumental knowledge can play in

guiding decision-making. Police will clearly benefit from instrumental knowledgesuch as that produced through experiments. But they will also benefit from betterforms of practical reasoning, including better interpretations of ambiguous values andbetter ideas about how trade-offs among values should be made. Knowledge about

policing should look more like legal knowledge than medical knowledge (or at leastthe aspects of medical knowledge that have been emphasized in criminal justiceaccounts of that field ; Thacher, 2001, p. 388).

In case readers are even more alarmed by the prospect of legal reasoning than by

medical research, I should explain that Thacher is not talking about desiccated,black letter legal nitpicking, but rather the normative analysis that is characteristicof the best US jurisprudence. We should not have to put on the metaphoricaldoctors white coat and pose as scientists in order to be taken seriously. We need tovalue and respect other kinds of understanding. A major problem here is the broadmisunderstanding and devaluation of social science in Anglophone culture. This isexemplified by political leaders who are apparently unable to distinguish betweenexplaining and excusing a persons crime or (like John Major, when he was BritishPrime Minister) who insist that we should understand less and condemn more.

This is a profoundly stupid approach. Understanding and condemning should be

conducted in different dimensions; they are not alternatives. The fact that we canput people on the moon, but that we dont understand crime trends leads people to

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assume that social science is weak. It may be, but the more significant issue is the diffi-culty of the question. Perhaps understanding crime rates is as complex and importantan enterprise as putting people on the moon. If so, perhaps it deserves a little more inresearch funding than the crumbs left over after hard science has been fed.

The dispute is also political: those who attempt to treat crime analysis as avalue-free science tend to disguise their own values and politics. For example, thebroken windows hypothesis is attractive because it articulates some commonsenseideas about how little problems lead to big problems and about the discretionary,order-maintenance role of patrol officers. What is problematic is the location ofthese insights in a conservative, exclusionary account of social order and of theroles of state and community (Dixon, 2005). As Karmen suggests, To conservatives,New York Citys meanest streets became the proving ground for one of their mostcherished ideologically driven proposals: that crime rates can be substantiallyreduced through get-tough policies, and that it is not necessary to tackle the socialroots of crime (2001, p. 261).

Another illustration is provided by one of the many offshoots of broken windows:the increasingly influential US social norm school (e.g., Kahan & Meares, 1998). Inbrief, they argue that we should be more aware of the noninstrumental effects ofcriminal law and policing and that interventions should seek to influence the socialmeaning of particular activities. So, for example, a crackdown on guns should aim notjust (instrumentally) to catch gun-dealers and users, but (normatively) to reduce thedemand for guns by challenging the gun culture among gang, and potential gang,members. This makes very good sense. The difficulty comes in putting it into practice.

As David Cole (1999) shows, the social norm theorists make well-intentioned butbaseless assumptions about what social norms among their target groups are. So-calledcommunities (especially in cities such as New York and Sydney) are complex andpluralistic. For example, as Jerome Skolnick asks, Granted that we commonly sharean aversion to public defecation, but do residents who live in neighborhoods wherecrowded apartments lack air conditioning also deplore public beer drinking on hotcity nights? (Skolnick, 1999, p. 5).

The point can be illustrated by a further example from closer to home.Explanations of alleged noncooperation with Australian police by some South-EastAsianbackground communities are routinely given in terms of a wall of silence. It

is said that these communities do not trust Australian police because of culturalmemories of mistreatment by police in countries of origin. Such accounts havelittle empirical basis. By contrast, long-term ethnographic fieldwork has shown thatthis account of the wall of silence is misleading. There are other reasons for youngpeople to distrust the police, reasons which have nothing to do with how policeoperated in the countries from which their parents or grandparents came (Dixon &Maher, 1999, 2002). As this example suggests, an indispensable part of any seriousattempt at normative understanding is the use of qualitative methodologies such asethnography and cultural analysis. While quantitative techniques may be alsoemployed, the result is unlikely to be the kind of hard data (level 1 evidence) that

is valorised in the (idealised) medical model. It also shows how intertwined issues ofmethodology, theory and politics are.

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Answer 8: Because They Have Other Priorities

One reason why police do not stop crime is that trying to stop crime is not all theydo. It is trite to point out that observational studies of police work show that officersspend most of their time doing other things. Many of these things are trivial, but

not all: crime-fighting is sometimes not the first priority of the police. A (British)Royal Commission on the Police made the point in the idiom of a bygone era:

efficiency is not the sole end of a good and wise administration of the police, and

the apparently confused police system which this country has inherited reflects not

merely the British habit of adapting old institutions to meet new needs, but the inter-

play of conflicting principles of great constitutional importance which human minds

have always found, and still find, the utmost difficulty in reconciling (1962, p. 20).

In the Royal Commissions view, maintenance of law and order, protection ofpersons and property, and crime prevention should be placed ahead of crime detec-

tion (1962, p. 22). Following Peels original instructions to the Metropolitan Police,they stressed the complexity of the police function, seeing British police systems as:

the products of a series of compromises between conflicting principles or ideas.

(T)he rationale of the police service does not rest upon any single and definite

concept of the public good. Thus it is to the public good that the police should be

strong and effective in preserving law and order and preventing crime; but it is

equally to the public good that police powers should be controlled and confined so as

not to interfere arbitrarily with personal freedom (1962, p. 9).

This emphasises the complexity and importance of the police role, and suggestswhat is lost when it is reduced merely to crime-fighting. Some examples of areas inwhich crime-fighting is not the only consideration illustrate the point:

Policing domestic violence: as Thacher argues, if the idealised medical modelwas applied and crime control was given priority, the results of experimentalstudies on the policing of domestic violence would mandate a discriminatorypolicy of arresting the employed but not the unemployed and residents of afflu-ent neighborhoods but not poor ones (2001, p. 393). This is because Shermansresearch (1992, pp. 203212) concludes that arrest reduces recidivism by thosewith a stake in the community, but increases it among those without such astake. Such a policy would not be acceptable because it conflicts with other

goals like equity, due process, just deserts, and parsimony (Thacher, 2001, p.391). These are more important than preventing crime at all costs.

Drug offences and overdoses: guidelines issued to NSW Police admirably explainwhy there are more important concerns than fighting crime when police attenddrug overdoses:

Fear of prosecution for minor drug use and possession offences has been identified as

contributing to the reluctance of some people to call an ambulance in the event of an

overdose. When police attend the scene of a non-fatal overdose they are encour-

aged to exercise their discretion to not take action for self-administration offences

and minor possession offences (for the victim and anyone else at the scene).

Exercising their discretion may remove the fear of prosecution and encourage people

present at overdoses to call for assistance without delay (NSW Police, 2000).

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This policy is an example of prioritising public health above law enforcement. Itis unfortunate that these priorities are so radically reversed in policing practice(Maher & Dixon, 1999).

Stop/search: from a police perspective, stop/search is a useful way of producing

arrests, providing uniformed officers with one of few opportunities for proactivepolicing. However, attempts are made to regulate stop/search because of thepotential impact on policepublic relations of excessive or inappropriate use ofthe tactic (Dixon, 1997, pp. 93104). If, generously, we assume that 10% ofstop/searches lead to an arrest, we have to take seriously the impact of policeintervention on the remaining 90%. Incidentally, the research evidence suggeststhat police do not need to abandon widespread stop/searches: they just need todo them in a polite, respectful, nondiscriminatory way (Stone & Pettigrew,2000). Of course doing so may lose other perceived value imposing author-ity, claiming territory, collecting low-level intelligence but that only

reinforces my point that policing is not just about enforcing law against crime. Public order: the key skill of policing is not enforcing law, but deciding how and

when to do so. A police officers first priority is maintenance of order, notenforcing law (which is just one reason why a literal interpretation of zero toler-ance would produce ridiculous results). For example, a man in an unruly crowdoutside a pub swears at police officer. Arresting him may be the right thing todo: snuff out the problem. Or it may aggravate the situation: it may be better tocalm the man down and send him home. The decision has to be a situationalone, that is, it depends on the discretionary skill of police officers.23

A closely connected requirement is that we need to take account of potentiallycounterproductive effects of trying to stop crime. In the context of discussing theNYPDs story, this inevitably leads us to the flip-side of success, cases such as theassault on Abner Louima, and the killing of Amadou Diallo and PatrickDorismond (Dixon, 2005; Karmen, 2000). Recent accounts of the NYPDs successfail to mention these incidents (Giuliani, 2002; Henry, 2002; McDonald, 2002).Presumably, the authors see them as either unfortunate mistakes or individualdeviance. This is inadequate: one does not have to suggest that such incidentswere intended, much less desired, to say that they must be seen as products of amode of operation. Take an example closer to home: nobody in the NSW Policemay have wanted or planned the shooting of David Gundy in 1989, but theincident has to be explained as the product of the institutional culture and struc-ture of sections of the police at that time, including its attitude towards legalregulation (Wootten, 1991).

Critics of the NYPDs record have sometimes done their cause little good:having Rev. Al Sharpton on your team is not always an unmitigated advantage.Nonetheless, there is increasing and eminently respectable support for concernabout the (potentially but not inevitably) unacceptable effects of performancemeasuredriven crime-fighting. Experience in the US and the UK has shown thatreform efforts that focus on crime reduction can have undesirable side effects:process corruption and violence. Notably, in England, H.M. Inspectorate of

Constabulary has warned that an increasingly aggressive and demonstrable perfor-mance culture may lead to lapses in integrity and unethical practices (HMIC,

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1999, p. 19). If one accepts the verdict of the Legislative Council Committee on

policing in Cabramatta (2001), the NSW Polices attempt to apply the NYPD model

(i.e., the Operations and Crime Review and the Crimes Index) was responsible for a

breakdown of effective policing in that area. More generally, the Qualitative and

Strategic Audit of the Reform Process (QSARP) warned about the consequences ofputting crime-fighting above institutional and cultural reform.24 It would be good to

know, for example, just what is involved in the intensive preemptive policing of

repeat offenders. It is reasonable to assume that this means a little more than police

officers doing their paperwork in cars parked outside the homes of local villains.

A vital factor here is that police policy-makers and commanders have to take

account of how their policies are likely to be implemented by officers on the street.

As noted above, it is a clich to point to the difficulty of implementing policy in a

context of the discretionary freedom of operational officers. It is just irresponsible

not to be aware that ordering officers to carry out intensive, proactive street law-enforcement carries a risk that some will hear this as an encouragement to take the

gloves off. This is particularly the case if the context is one of law-and-order

politicking and identification of particular groups as socially marginal and as

problems. It was for this reason that, a few years ago, a senior NSW officer remarked

that zero tolerance should not be implemented in NSW because, whatever the

strengths and weaknesses of that policy, NSW Police of that time could not be

trusted with it.

Conclusion:Why Dont the Police Stop Crime?In summary, I have argued here that the police do stop some crime, although

increasingly they will rely on nonpolice personnel for assistance in doing so. The

proportion of crime they stop is not fixed: learning the right lessons from New York

will help them to increase it. Nonetheless, they need to be alert to the dangers of

concentrating single-mindedly on crime-reduction. Doing so not only has inherent

dangers, but it can also divert attention from other tasks and objectives of policing.

Not surprisingly, I come to the academics conclusion that we need more research.

But there is no point doing (and paying for) such research if it is not understood

and taken seriously, and that will require a significant shift in attitudes towardssocial science research. Much of the accepted wisdom about the role of police in

controlling crime has been challenged in recent years. It is vital to ensure that its

replacement is a science which is theoretically sophisticated and pluralistic.

One of the great benefits of challenges to the old orthodoxy is that they have

opened up the field of policing studies at a time when the emergence of specialist

journals, conferences and book series might have made it academically isolated.

Instead, students of policing have to look beyond the police to the broader fields of

crime prevention and community safety and to general accounts of changing

relations between the state and civil society. Today, attempting to answer the

question Why dont the police stop crime? is a complex, challenging and intellec-tually stimulating task.

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Endnotes1 The Police Reform Act 2002 authorises community support officers and accredited Community

Safety Organisations to carry out duties of patrol and low-level order maintenance.

2 The Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research reported that, in the two years to December

2002, there were substantial falls in six major offence categories, an increase in one offencecategory and no change in the other nine offence categories; see http://www.lawlink.

nsw.gov.au./bocsar1.nsf/pages/media040303

3 The Police Assistance Line, a method of reporting crime by telephone in NSW, is allegedly

designed to minimise crime by making it difficult to report incidents. The standard crimino-

logical concept of the dark figure is summoned: crime is booming, but is underreported

(Devine, 2001). The basic need to explain why rates of recorded and unrecorded crime should

grow at different rates is ignored.

4 See, for example, Carr attacks top statisticians crime figures, Sydney Morning Herald, July 13,

1994, in which the then leader of the Opposition described the Director of the NSW Bureau of

Crime Statistics and Research as being out of touch with community perceptions and overlook-

ing the reality of crime by publishing statistics showing that the rate of most major crimes wasstable or falling. Such rhetoric survived a change of government. In 2003, the Bureau was forced

to defend itself against similar accusations; see Media release: NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics

and Research response to Time to come clean on crime stats each week, October 23, 2003,

BOCSAR, in which the Bureaus Director described the Shadow Police Ministers allegations of

a cover-up in relation to crime statistics as offensive and entirely without foundation. Available

at http://www.lawlink.nsw.gov.au./bocsar1.nsf/pages/media231003

5 Machete madness, Sun-Herald, July 8, 2001.

6 But not all: see, for example, Wilson and Boland, 1978.

7 For a summary, see Reiner, 2000, pp. 115121. The classic example here is the Kansas City

Preventive Patrol Experiment, in which very different styles of policing were found to have no

significant effect on crime, fear of crime or attitudes towards police; indeed, it seems that theywere hardly noticed by many residents (Kelling et al., 1974). L.W. Sherman (1993) has

strongly criticised the Kansas City research, associating it with a politically correct ortho-

doxy which is against police even tryingto control crime (1993, p. 174, original emphasis).

From an Australasian or British perspective, Shermans critique appears, at best, dated, in its

ignorance of the realist influence in contemporary criminology.

8 Villains steal police thunder, Daily Telegraph (UK), May 5, 1993.

9 See Bratton, 1997.

10 See, for example, Daily Telegraph (Sydney), April 12 & 13, 2002.

11 Because there has been misunderstanding about this (Darcy, 1998; Chilvers & Weatherburn,

2001, p. 12, n. 1), I should make clear that my observation that NSW was influenced by the

NYPD is not a claim that NSW Police adopted zero tolerance policing.

12 While Bratton rejected the term, the NYPDs web site now defines zero tolerance in its list of

FAQs as as a full-scale strategic attack on all crime and disorder in the City; see

http://www.ci.nyc.ny.us/html/nypd/html/misc/pdfaq2.html#0

13 According to the LAPDs web site, A strong advocate of transparent community policing that

embraces partnership, problem solving and prevention, (Bratton) initiated a major re-

engineering of the Los Angeles Police Department, moving towards a decentralised police

bureaucracy with stronger area commands that are more responsive to local community needs,

and better trained and motivated police officers. See http://lapdonline.org

14 This much-reprinted article is often treated as if it reports research: it does not, contra, for

example, Adam Graycar, have findings (Graycar, 1998, p. 2).

15 It should be noted that while zero tolerance is usually equated with law enforcement, Wilson

and Kellings Broken windows suggested a broader order-maintenance strategy, not least

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because some of the targeted behaviour was not illegal and because some of the police methodsadvocated to deal with disorder were unlawful.

16 While usually a metaphor, broken windows is sometimes used literally, in claims that environ-mental decay leads to social disorder, and then to more serious crime: see, for example,Wilsons foreword to Kelling and Coles, 1996, p. xv.

17 See For Bloomberg, the crime rate keeps falling,New York Times,June 10, 2003 and MayorMichael R. Blomberg outlines public safety accomplishments in 2003, NYC Press Release #359-03, December 15, 2003. As Sherman and Eck comment, The value of policing focused on riskfactors is the most powerful conclusion reached from three decades of research (2002, p. 295).

18 See MacDonald, 2000; Kelling and Sousa, 2001. The latter describe Karmens book as proba-bly the most thorough study of the issue yet. It certainly raises all the relevant issues.However, they dismiss it by commenting some of the interpretations and conclusions arequestionable (2001, p. 22), and plough ahead with their demonstration that broken windowswas the key factor.

19 NB: Kellings dismissal of this is linked to an aetiological dispute. He suggests that critics thinkcrime is a product of structural factors and therefore it cant be shaped by policing. Although

finding some support in Mannings rhetoric, this is theoretically misconceived: the fact that asocial activity is structurally produced does not mean that intervention is impossible (Karmen,2001, pp. 261262). What is really at issue here is an attempt to devalue social explanations infavour of behaviourist explanation: see below.

20 It is instructive to note the similarities between Police win war in drug capital: Puccinisuccess, Daily Telegraph (Sydney), April 20, 1998, and Heroin hotspot comes clean, SydneyMorning Herald, January 21, 2002.

21 See Sherman (1995) for a spirited defence of random control trials in criminology.

22 But cf. Homel (1994) for a careful critique of wholesale rejection of deterrence.

23 For the definitive analysis, see Scarman, 1981, paras. 4.594.60.

24 See Hay Group (200002). As the Hay Group reports, it is true that Crime reduction is acritical indicator of Service performance in keeping with community and stakeholder expecta-tions. However, the long-term sustainability of the Service as a high-performance organisa-tion requires a concurrent emphasis on the reform process to build a corruption-resistantService. Without strengthening the Services foundations, short-term benefits derived fromcrime reduction results are likely to plateau (2000, p. i). As a result, corruption resistance islikely to be weakened (2000, p. 285). It is, incidentally, a disgrace that an audit process whichwas vital to the Wood Commissions vision of reform should be maligned, muffled and ignoredbecause its findings have been politically inconvenient for the NSW Government.

Acknowledgments

An earlier version of this article was given as a public lecture to the Royal Societyfor the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce. It draws on researchfunded by the Australian Research Council, grant # A59917112, From zero toler-ance to the new policing. I am grateful for comments to Associate Professor LisaMaher, Dr Don Weatherburn, and the journals two anonymous reviewers.

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