NCJ Number
84352
Journal
Social Problems Volume: 29 Issue: 4 Dated: (April 1982) Pages: 361-372
Date Published
1982
Length
12 pages
Annotation
The hypothesis that official crime rates are a function of the organizational structure of police departments was examined in three 'natural experiments' with time series analysis of Uniform Crime Reports (UCR); results suggested conditional confirmation of the hypothesis.
Abstract
The hypothesis threatens the validity of the UCR by implying that different crime rates for different jurisdictions may result from variations in the way complaints are processed rather than from any divergence in their real crime incidence. The first experiment involved tracing reported UCR burglaries in a city where a policy of formally investigating all burglary complaints by detectives for a 21-month period was instituted. The level of the UCR burglary series dropped abruptly with onset of this program and rose abruptly with its termination. It is surmised that the reduction in burglaries reflects a change of procedures by which burglary complaints were registered as burglaries. Experiment two ascertained that a city's 20 percent rise in the UCB burglary rate over a 6-month period coincided with the retirement of an incumbent police chief. The subsequent administrative shakeup is credited with affecting the UCR coding bureau. In the third experimental situation, dispatching action in response to calls for service and the recording of such calls as UCR service calls was studied. When sergeants were removed from dispatching responsibility, the number of calls dispatched and recorded as UCR 'service calls' increased, decreasing 'unreported' crime. Since each of the three cases involves a clearly defined organizational variable, research into the structural determinants of official crime rates can be promising with the use of a recommended model of the organizational process that leads from complaint to investigation, to coding decision. Charts, footnotes, and 18 references are given.