NCJ Number
83185
Journal
Atlantic Monthly Volume: 249 Issue: 3 Dated: (March 1982) Pages: 29-36,38
Date Published
1982
Length
9 pages
Annotation
Police maintenance of public order is important because it reduces the fear of crime and creates a climate conducive to lawabiding behavior. This relationship of public order to crime control is discussed, as are issues in due process discrimination, and police legal constraints regarding public order maintenance.
Abstract
In the mid-1970's, New Jersey undertook a comprehensive program to improve the quality of community life in 28 cities. Part of the program involved State funding for police foot patrol. A fifth-year evaluation, chiefly in Newark, showed that foot patrol had not reduced crime rates; however, residents of experimental neighborhoods felt more secure than persons in other areas, tended to believe that crime had been reduced, and took fewer precautionary steps, such as staying at home with the doors locked. Other studies have shown that the fear of crime is sparked more often by signs of disorder and incivility in a community than by the statistical crime rate or an individual's actual experience of victimization. Visible indications of poor social control and an 'I don't care' mentality, in a community (such as an unrepaired broken window) fuels a breakdown in caring and ordered behavior in a community, which in turn gives residents a sense that crime is rampant and encourages deviant behavior. Unfortunately, many standard practices essential to maintaining order also contradict individuals' due process rights, can easily be discriminatory, and run counter to many restrictions put on the police in the 1960's and 1970's to reduce citizen complaints. Such practices include interrogating transients, harassing gangs of juveniles, enforcing conduct rules on neighborhood drunks and vagrants, etc.