The shifting organizational strategies of police departments implementing broken windows policing.

摘要

Police departments are salient governmental organizations in the lives of many United States citizens. Police officers, empowered with the authority of the government, serve as the front line and first responders to a range of citizen problems (from settling family disputes to apprehending murder suspects). Police departments in the United States have employed various strategies to respond to shifting political, cultural, and social tides, with the current strategy being community problem-solving (hereafter, CPS). The broken windows theory has been highly influential in effecting and understanding the current strategy. This dissertation studies the contextual elements of how departments' organizational strategies adapt to a particular theory (i.e., broken windows), how personnel in these departments view the impact of a shifting organizational strategy on policing, and the conditions that inhibit and facilitate a CPS strategy.;This study follows the multiple-case study approach and relies on both qualitative and quantitative data gathered from in-depth interviews, personal observation, surveys and archives (e.g., chief's bulletins, memoranda of understandings, newspaper articles, annual reports, and action plans); reports on and interprets the perspectives of key police personnel as they relate to the shifting organizational strategy; and explains key police personnel's understandings of the effects of broken windows policing on their work.;The sample consists of three urban police departments (Boston, Milwaukee and Newark). Following purposive and convenient sampling methods, the departments were chosen based on knowledge of their experiences with implementing broken windows policing as part of a wider departmental move towards CPS policing and on a reasonable expectation of access to department personnel and data.;Research findings explain the role of police executive leadership in implementing the CPS strategy, clarify the nebulous concepts of CPS and broken windows policing and offer suggestions for a more efficient and honest implementation of the strategy and tactic. This research goes beyond police departments' stated objectives and explores the actual changes they make to accommodate the current era of policing. Understanding police personnel's interpretations (and police departments' implementations) of broken windows policing advances our understanding of a pertinent part of the CPS strategy.