NCJ Number
82071
Date Published
1981
Length
19 pages
Annotation
This study of police activities and the configuration of urban power in 10 large American cities supports the hypothesis that policy responses to urban crime are determined in important ways by patterns of urban politics.
Abstract
Measures of urban governmental responses to crime were (1) the amount of resources city governments devote to policing, (2) the level of police activities, and (3) the focus of police activities. Urban configurations of power were classified according to (1) political elitism (the mayor and other political officials determine what gets done), (2) business elitism (business heads dominate the local political structure), (3) bureaucracy (professional government administrators are the most powerful determiners of policy), and (4) pluralism (local decisions strongly influenced by a variety of community groups). The study, covering the period 1948-78, shows that the stronger the power of business elites in a city, the fewer resources are invested in policing, yet the more active and aggressive the police forces; property crime tends to be the police focus. The dominance of political elites tends to produce a greater commitment of community resources to policing, with the focus tending to be more on violent crime than property crime. The linkages between both bureaucratic power and policing and pluralism and policing are scattered and indecisive. Tabular data, 13 references, and 2 notes are provided.