NCJ Number
209788
Journal
Policing: An International Journal of Police Strategies and Management Volume: 28 Issue: 1 Dated: 2005 Pages: 49-68
Date Published
2005
Length
20 pages
Annotation
This study examined the relationship between social capital and police sense of responsibility and their impact on proactive policing.
Abstract
The understanding of police behavior, especially proactive behavior, has been pursued throughout policing history. The impetus in examining variables for understanding proactive police behavior has become a major thrust in policing literature. This study examined the relationship between police perception of their community’s social capital and their sense of responsibility toward the provision of public safety and assessed empirically the impact of sense of responsibility on their propensity to engage in proactive policing. The purpose was to understand why community policing is or is not successful, as well as to understand police behavior in environments that by their structural and demographic makeup complicate the task of effective policing. Data for the study were gathered through a self-administered questionnaire distributed among the Kansas City Police Department in Missouri during the years 1999 and 2000. It was hypothesized that individual perceptions of social capital would play an important role in explaining proactive policing and that individual perceptions of social capital do not exist in a sociological vacuum, and that they are conditioned on police sense of responsibility. Overall, the findings indicate that perceptions of community social capital and police sense of responsibility are important for explaining proactive police behavior and that although police sense of responsibility is directly impacted by social capital, crime rates and the race of the officer are also important for understanding police sense of responsibility. In summation, crime is still an important factor for understanding police behavior. Notes, references and appendix