Comprehensive Study Guide: Criminology, Police History, and Social Control

Crime Statistics, Offender Concentration, and Social Accountability

• Statistical Concentration of Crime:

  • $1\%$ of a population or biomarker group is responsible for $40\%$ of a line of investigation/offenses.

  • At most $20\%$ of a country's population commits $90\%$ of all crimes, which includes property crimes.

• Administrative and Political Perspectives on Local Crime:

  • Local leaders, mayors, and police chiefs effectively choose to allow crime in their jurisdictions because the specific offender population committing the offenses is known and actionable.

  • Comparison to Parenting: Parents who fail to discipline unruly children choose not to parent because active discipline causes personal discomfort.

  • Comparison to Workplace Confrontation: Employees who avoid arguing or standing up for themselves get passed over at work because avoiding confrontation causes discomfort.

  • Application to Crime: Addressing local crime requires direct, uncomfortable confrontation with known offenders, which administrative bodies frequently avoid.

• Impact of Criminal Victimization:

  • Criminal acts inflict long-lasting psychological trauma that alters the victim's entire life course.

  • Example: A resident permanently relocated her home after her vehicle was stolen directly from her driveway, unable to endure the persistent fear of property invasion.

  • Relativity of Perceived Safety: Perceptions of crime vary by environment. While suburban residents operate without fear of theft, urban residents often normalize intense security measures, such as physically chaining barbecue grills to deck posts in residential Philadelphia neighborhoods.

Historical Development of Policing: American vs. English Models

• Foundational Origins:

  • American criminal justice derives directly from English legal traditions, notably Sir Robert Peel's establishment of the London Metropolitan Police ("Bobbies") in $1829$.

• Primary Structural Differences:

  • American policing was immediately and inherently political compared to the English system.

  • In the United States, obtaining a position as a police officer or constable required monetary payment or political patronage to local machine politicians.

  • Local political bosses directly dictated which laws were enforced, where police resources were deployed, and who was hired.

Social Control Frameworks: Formal vs. Informal Social Control

• Formal Social Control:

  • Comprises official state institutions: police, courts, and correctional systems.

• Informal Social Control:

  • Comprises foundational community institutions: families, parenting, churches, schools, local civic organizations, and peer pressure.

• Historical and Cross-Cultural Comparisons:

  • Prior to modern police forces, societal crime was extremely low because informal social control was absolute and effective.

  • Shaming Societies (Japan and Holland): High informal social control keeps crime rates exceptionally low.

    • Japan: Relies heavily on mutual trust and high social shaming. A student committing a minor theft (such as stealing a marker) faces profound social ostracization from peers, family, and educators. This level of dishonor carries extreme consequences, historically exemplified by designated forest areas known for suicides committed by individuals seeking to erase family dishonor.

    • Holland (Netherlands): In coastal communities such as Arrow Beach, beachside establishment owners leave commercial assets (surfboards, boogie boards, tables, chairs) outside unlocked overnight. The societal culture rejects theft out of internal informal norms rather than fear of police enforcement.

  • United States System: Demonstrates low informal social control, forcing reliance on a massive formal criminal justice apparatus.

• Case Study on Skewed Crime Metrics (Tuscaloosa, Alabama):

  • Tuscaloosa, Alabama once registered as the highest crime-rate city in the United States, surpassing major urban centers like Chicago, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, or Camden.

  • The primary driver was a localized epidemic of drive-off gasoline thefts (pumping fuel prior to paying). In high-trust areas (such as historical State College, Pennsylvania), pump-first policies functioned normally; in Tuscaloosa, high non-payment volume artificial inflated official property crime statistics.

Four Primary Reasons to Study Police History

1. Dramatize Change:

   • Examines comparative structural conditions before and after major operational shifts, such as the introduction of patrol automobiles, telecommunications, force diversification, or establishing police presence in a neighborhood.

2. Put Current Problems in Perspective:

   • Provides contextual clarity on modern issues often distorted by news media.

   • Historical Substance Abuse: Collegiate drinking culture in the $1960\text{s}$, $1970\text{s}$, and $1980\text{s}$ was significantly higher than modern drinking levels. Historical dormitories at institutions like Penn State featured direct beer tap pipelines wired through fraternity districts, shopping carts transporting kegs, and pickup trucks loaded with kegs parked inside Beaver Stadium.

   • Historical Use of Force: Physical force (striking suspects with nightsticks, batons, or fists) was historically routine. Legally, police officers are authorized to use one stage of force higher than the stage presented by a suspect: $\text{Authorized Police Force Level} = \text{Suspect Force Level} + 1$

3. Assess the Effectiveness of Past Reforms:

   • Evaluates administrative strategies to determine if specific programs achieve intended outcomes or merely waste public funds while worsening local conditions (e.g., poorly managed community policing initiatives).

4. Alert to Unintended Consequences of Reforms:

   • Identifies unexpected negative outcomes stemming from structural changes (e.g., decentralized administrative decision-making).

   • Ethnic Political Control: Early municipal political machines created hyper-ethnic departmental dominance—Irish officers dominated police departments in Boston, New York City, and Philadelphia, while German officers dominated Cleveland.

   • Compensation Dynamics in Municipal Union Jobs: Unionized municipal positions (police, fire, sanitation/trash haulers) leverage union contracts to generate high earnings. Sanitation workers earning a base salary of $80,000\,\text{USD} - 90,000\,\text{USD}$ can double their earnings through overtime to exceed $152,000\,\text{USD}$ annually.

Plainclothes Operations, Overtime Structures, and Systemic Administrative Fraud

• Uniformed vs. Plainclothes Operations:

  • Uniformed patrol officers in marked squad cars act as visible targets for citizen complaints and administrative oversight.

  • Uniformed personnel face strict behavioral regulations, including prohibitions against entering commercial establishments that serve alcohol during meal breaks.

  • Plainclothes detectives operate without visible indicators, granting them mobility to enter restricted establishments (e.g., dining at high-end delis like Nick's Roast Beef).

• Court-Time Overtime Optimization and Payroll Fraud:

  • Homicide detectives significantly inflate their base salaries through arrest-related court appearances.

  • Every arrest mandates court appearances paid at time-and-a-half ($1.5\times$) or double-time ($2.0\times$) if scheduled on an officer's regular day off or during approved vacation leave.

  • Collusive Overtime Schemes: Detectives coordinate with Assistant District Attorneys (ADAs) to review vacation and travel schedules. The ADA places the detective on the official witness subpoena list for trial dates falling within off-duty or vacation windows. The ADA maintains the officer on standby status without calling them to testify, allowing the officer to clock in and accumulate double-time pay for up to $100\,\text{hours}$ per year without performing actual field work (constituting systematic administrative payroll fraud).

Walker's Three Criticisms of 1800s Police Patrols & Modern Parallels

• Criticism 1: Hopelessly Inefficient Patrols

  • 1800s Context: Foot patrol officers were spread extremely thin across large geographic sectors without mutual communication or mobility.

  • Modern Parallel: Modern police units remain spread thin. Suburbs and university campuses maintain the highest police-to-citizen ratios and training budgets despite having the lowest crime rates, while high-crime urban sectors remain chronically understaffed.

• Criticism 2: Lack of Communication Systems

  • 1800s Context: Absence of telephones, radios, or $911$ dispatch mechanisms left foot officers unable to coordinate, request assistance, or communicate with precinct headquarters during arrests.

  • Modern Parallel: Radio systems remain highly unreliable in contemporary operations:

    • Atmospheric Interference: Radio signals require cloud cover to bounce transmissions back down to ground receivers. On clear, sunny days, signals bounce into the upper atmosphere and fail to return, causing intermittent or nonexistent communications: $\text{Clear/Sunny Weather} \rightarrow \text{Atmospheric Dissipation} \rightarrow \text{Signal Loss}$

    • Physical Barriers: Radio signals fail inside steel-reinforced structures, underneath elevated train lines, or when operating out of line-of-sight from transmission towers. Handheld radios explicitly carry manufacturer warnings stating: Warning: Please do not work inside buildings.

    • Duty Evasion via Communications: Officers exploit atmospheric dead zones to evade assignments, parking in isolated areas (such as cemeteries) and claiming bad reception when questioned by supervisors.

• Criticism 3: Duty Evasion and Loitering

  • 1800s Context: Inclement weather (snow, rain, extreme heat) drove foot officers into saloons and barbershops. Barbershops functioned as male social hubs featuring adult media (such as Playboy magazines).

  • Modern Parallel: Modern officers continue seeking safe, clean havens off patrol.

    • Hospital Cafeterias/ERs: Officers retreat to hospital emergency rooms and cafeterias because they offer clean facilities, secure environments, and unadulterated food.

    • Fire Stations: Patrol officers congregate at local fire stations (e.g., stations along Folly Road on James Island).

    • Commercial Logbook Requirements: Municipalities instituted mandatory sign-in logs behind cash registers at high-risk commercial targets (coffee shops, drugstores, banks, liquor stores). Officers must physically enter and sign the log every $20\,\text{minutes}$ to verify active patrol. Officers bypass call assignments by spending shifts idling in parking garages ticketing vehicles or sleeping at industrial locations (e.g., lumber/sawmills) while faking log entries.

Major Forces for Change in 20th Century Policing

1. Organized Movement for Professionalism:

   • Initiated in the early $1900\text{s}$ and peaking in the $1960\text{s}$.

   • Professionalism was defined strictly as requiring higher education (college degrees) rather than tactical field training.

   • Historical Educational Standards: Urban police departments historically required minimal education. For example, the Philadelphia Police Department did not mandate a high school diploma for recruit hiring until $1987$.

   • Law Enforcement Assistance Administration (LEAA): A $1960\text{s}$ federal bureaucracy established to fund college degrees for active police officers to eliminate corruption and professionalize forces.

   • Failure of the LEAA: The program resulted in massive officer attrition. Cops utilized free federal tuition to acquire lucrative degrees (e.g., accounting, business administration) and left low-paying ($12,000\,\text{USD}/\text{year}$), high-risk police work to enter six-figure private-sector careers.

   • Academic-Practitioner Conflict: Academic reformers held deep disdain for police personnel (viewing them as uneducated autocrats), while police officers rejected academic research and administrative oversight.

2. Introduction of Modern Communications Technology:

   • Adoption of centralized $911$ telecommunications, telephone networks, and two-way vehicle radios.

3. Civil Rights Movement Demands for Equal Justice:

   • $1960\text{s}$ civil rights activism exposed institutional police misconduct and forced systemic judicial and administrative reforms.

Four Major Operational Changes: 1960s through 1990s

1. Increased Minority Representation: Implementation of affirmative action programs and hiring quotas starting in the $1960\text{s}$ to recruit racial and ethnic minority officers.

2. Increased Female Officers: Systematic expansion of female personnel across all operational and administrative ranks.

3. Increased College-Educated Officers: Higher baseline educational qualifications across departments (though often unlinked to specific police science or criminal justice curricula).

4. Increased Pre-Service Training Hours: Extension of mandatory instructional hours required within police academies prior to field deployment.

Three Primary Factors Restricting Police Discretion in the 1960s

1. Minority Community Protests and Civil Rights Riots:

   • Evolution from $1950\text{s}$ peaceful civil rights demonstrations led by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to militant Black Power movements (e.g., Black Panther Party, Nation of Islam) in the mid-$1960\text{s}$.

   • Outbreak of major urban riots across the nation, beginning in Philadelphia ($1964$) and Watts, Los Angeles ($1965$).

   • Broad adoption of residential television sets broadcast explicit imagery of police force (canine attacks, high-pressure fire hoses) directly into American homes, driving national political intervention.

2. Supreme Court Jurisprudence:

   • Landmark legal rulings restricted police discretion regarding Fifth Amendment rights, Miranda warnings, right to counsel, search and seizure parameters (residences/vehicles), deadly force thresholds, and vehicle pursuit parameters.

3. Civil Lawsuits and Municipal Liability:

   • Threat of civil litigation became the primary driver of departmental policy creation.

   • Departmental directives are drafted reactively by risk-management attorneys to defend municipalities against lawsuits rather than to optimize police strategy.

   • Contradictory Policy Manuals: Reactive policy creation results in mutually conflicting departmental directives.

   • Example (Philadelphia Directive 10): Following a shooting lawsuit, the Philadelphia Police Department altered its policy regarding discharge of firearms at moving vehicles, changing the language from "should not fire" to "shall not fire." When an officer was ambushed and shot while sitting inside his parked patrol car, he returned fire at the suspect's vehicle to save his own life, which technically placed him in direct violation of Directive 10.

Public Expectations and Modern Technological Backlash

• The integration of automobiles, telephones, and centralized $911$ systems created unrealistic public expectations regarding police response speeds.

• Citizens who observe a passing patrol vehicle assume instantaneous response upon calling $911$, unaware that dispatch centers prioritize emergency calls over lower-tier property complaints.

• Administrative Consequences: Delayed responses lead citizens to file formal administrative complaints. In cities like Philadelphia, complaints cannot be logged against the municipality; they must be filed directly against the individual officer's badge number, creating permanent personnel records that hinder promotional opportunities.