NCJ Number
163820
Date Published
1996
Length
24 pages
Annotation
In examining initial and subsequent effects of policing on crime, this chapter shows how including time in a study can sharpen images of changing patterns of crime and illuminate the contributions of competing theories developed to explain them.
Abstract
In view of the causal and temporal nature of the arguments that social scientists make, and since logic as a determination of sequence can become complex, social scientists would be well- advised to use longitudinal designs that focus on change over time, instead of relying on cross-sectional research designs that compare the values of variables across units within one time period. Longitudinal analyses not only permit the possibility of determining sequence but enable students of social processes to examine how long a cause may take to produce an effect. This chapter illustrates this point by examining the competing claims of deterrence theory and reaction arguments concerning crime and punishment. Specifically, the author investigates whether the presence of police represses crime, as deterrence theory would maintain, or whether policing is more likely to inflate offense rates, as reaction arguments suggest. The analysis focuses on the emergence of civilization in Europe in general, as well as on France between 1852 and 1914 in particular. Overall, the findings are consistent with deterrence arguments and suggest that growth of the urban police force may have been a substantial contributor to the decline in rates of major property crime in 19th-century France. It is with rates of minor offenses that the study found the greatest support for reaction arguments. Increases in the number of both urban police and the gendarmes were significant predictors of rates of minor crime. Thus, policing may have inflated rates of minor offenses, either by increasingly discovering minor crimes or by manufacturing arrests, as more critical reaction theorists suggest. 2 tables and 1 figure