|
| Note to Readers:
The opinions expressed on the Forum page are those of the contributing writer or cartoonist, or of the original source newspaper, and do not represent an official position of Law Enforcement News.
Readers are invited to voice their opinions on topical issues, in the form of letters or full-length commentaries. Please send all materials to the editor.
|
|
|
|
Anderson:
Crime by the numbers — Compstat takes off
Officer John Spence drives through Philadelphia’s 18th Police District, pointing out certain landmarks: This corner was recently the site of a shootout among drug dealers; over there is a notorious crack house. Down that street, an abandoned car recently yielded up the body of a man bound in duct tape and shot through the head.
A few hours earlier, in a gymnasium at the city’s police academy, an assemblage of chiefs and district commanders had pondered another rendering of events in the 18th, projected onto a giant screen. Homicides and shootouts, rapes and robberies were reduced to dots on a street map grid, shifting and blinking as a computer technician clicked on her mouse...
|
|
Kelling:
‘Broken Windows’ vs. ‘A New Look’
Before “Broken Windows” is thrown into the trash heap of failed ideas and policies as a result of Sampson and Raudenbush’s article “Systematic Social Observation of Neighborhoods: A New Look at Disorder in Urban Neighborhoods,” I would suggest that readers examine very closely the original article in the American Journal of Sociology. Not just the press releases or the summaries like “A New Look a Neighborhood Disorder,” in National Institute of Justice Journal (April 2000) — check the article itself.
First, check the sampling. The observations that make up the main data base of the project, and are put forward as methodological advances, are measures of disorder videotaped from a sport utility vehicle cruising slowly down Chicago streets between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m. The idea that such an SUV would go unnoticed by street people like prostitutes and drug dealers and not influence their behavior defies experience and logic. For example, drug dealers hire kids to watch for unusual happenings in neighborhoods (e.g., police attempting to record their drug dealing behavior)...
|
|
|