Crime Prevention and the Patrol Officer - The Dissemination of Crime Prevention Information (From Understanding Police Agency Performance, P 93-109, 1984, Gordon P Whitaker, ed. - See NCJ-93967)

• NCJ Number: 93970
• Author(s): R E Worden; G P Whitaker
• Date Published: 1984
• Length: 17 pages
• Sale Source: Superintendent of Documents, GPO; National Institute of Justice/; NCJRS Photocopy Services
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America
• Note: Available on microfiche as NCJ-93967.

Annotation

A computer simulation of the police decision to disseminate crime prevention information to crime victims found that such factors as victim incapacitation, presence of other officers, encouragement of supervisors, workload, and victim requests are relatively poor predictors of officers' propensity to disseminate crime prevention information.

Abstract

Hypotheses about factors which might affect the dissemination of crime prevention information by patrol officers pertain to the officers' own estimations of the value of disseminating such information, resource constraints, victim attitudes, the victim's physical and mental condition, the presence of a suspect, victim requests for crime prevention information, and the expectations of supervisors. Hypotheses were tested through patrol observation and officer interviews associated with a sample of 805 victims. Officers' attitudes toward the dissemination of crime prevention information were measured by volunteered comments during patrol observation, and workload was measured by the time the typical officer could expect to spend on dispatches during the shift on which each encounter occurred. The data did not fit the developed model, possibly because the operationalizations did not permit a fair assessment of the model or because the dissemination of crime prevention information is not predictable behavior. Tabular data, footnotes, and 28 references are provided.