Equity in Police Services (From Evaluating Performance of Criminal Justice Agencies, P 99-125, 1983, Gordon P Whitaker and Charles D Phillips, ed. - See NCJ-92180)

• NCJ Number: 92184
• Author(s): E Ostrom
• Date Published: 1983
• Length: 28 pages
• Grant Number(s): NSF SES 79-13397; APR74-14059
• Sponsoring Agency: National Science Foundation
• Sale Source: Sage Publications, Inc
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

This paper discusses the general principle of equity as applied to police service delivery and examines how the most common indicators of police service are used in research on equity as well as the problems generated in interpreting the meaning of observed distribution patterns.

Abstract

Selten (1978) argues that almost all specific equity criteria can be understood as special cases of a more general equity principle that applies to many situations in which rewards or costs are allocated to persons within a group. This general principle is defined in terms of a specific set of rewards allocated to persons within a group. In this study, Selten's reward is considered to be a service distributed to persons living within a defined territory or to groups of persons in a set of neighborhoods. Since so little is known about the production function for police and researchers have relied on such different indicators as proxy measures of service, considerable disagreement exists about the equity of police service delivery. Scholars who have examined the distribution of police services to neighborhoods within and across large central cities have come to different conclusions about the equity of police service delivery. Scholars who have examined the distribution of police services to neighborhoods within and across large central cities have come to different conclusions about the equity of police services depending on (1) which cities they have studied, (2) which steps in the series of transformations they observed and measured, and (3) how they interpret the meaning of the indicators used. Most of the studies that have attempted to develop a quantitative measure of equity in police services have examined one or more of the following: the distribution of police personnel throughout the districts in a jurisdiction, police response time in the districts in a jurisdiction, comparative crime or victimization rates, and citizen feelings of safety and evaluations of police performance. This study discusses each of these equity standards. Five notes and 66 references are provided.