Modelling the Influence of Organisational Structure on Crime Analysis Technology Innovations in Municipal Police Departments

Abstract

In the past two decades, many local police agencies in the USA have adopted the rhetoric of being ‘problem-oriented’, ‘evidence-based’ or ‘intelligence-led’ after investing in crime analysis technologies used for crime mapping, hot spot identification, criminal investigations and intelligence gathering. Scholars have presented general arguments concerning the environmental and organisational factors that have influenced this technological trend in policing; to date, however, no known studies have empirically tested these hypotheses at the national level. This study seeks to help fill this gap using a sample of data drawn from the Department of Justice's 2007 Law Enforcement Management and Administrative Statistics survey, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation's 2006 Uniform Crime Reports. Results reveal that several organisational factors including community policing were associated with agency adoptions of crime analysis technologies. Implications for the policing literature and avenues for future research are discussed.

Keywords

crime analysis crime mapping CompStat organisational innovation police management

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Bayley

D. H.

(2008). Police reform: Who done it? Policing & Society, 18 (7), 7–17.

Blau

P. M.

(1970). A formal theory of differentiation in organizations. American Sociological Review, 35, 201–218.

Burns

Stalker

G. M.

(1961). The management of innovation. London: Tavistock.

Buruss

G. W.

Giblin

M. J.

(2009). Modeling isomorphism on policing innovation: The role of institutional pressures in adopting community-oriented policing. Crime and Delinquency, 58, 491–514.

Buruss

G. W.

Giblin

M. J.

Schafer

J. A.

(2010). Threatened globally, acting locally: Modeling law enforcement homeland security practices. Justice Quarterly, 27, 77–101.

Damanpour

(1991). Organizational innovation: A meta-analysis of effects of determinants and moderators. Academy of Management Journal, 34, 385–390.

Ericson

R. V.

Haggerty

K. D.

(1997). Policing the risk society. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Fisher

J. C.

Mason

R. L.

(1981). The analysis of multicollinear data in criminology. In Fox

J. A.

(Ed.), Methods in quantitative criminology (pp. 99–125). New York, NY: Academic Press.

Greene

J. R.

(2000). Community policing in America: Changing the nature, structure, and function of the police. In Horney

(Ed.), Criminal justice 2000: Policies, processes, and decisions of the criminal justice system [NCJ 182410] (pp. 299–370). Washington, DC: Office of Justice Programs, U.S. Department of Justice.

10.

Hage

(1965). An axiomatic theory of organizations. Administrative Science Quarterly, 10, 289–320.

11.

Hage

(1980). Theories of organizations. New York, NY: Wiley.

12.

Hage

Aiken

(1967). Program change and organizational properties: A comparative analysis. American Journal of Sociology, 72, 503–519.

13.

Henry

V. E.

(2002). The CompStat paradigm: Management and accountability in policing. Flushing, NY: Looseleaf Law.

14.

Hickman

Piquero

A. R.

(2009). Organizational, administrative, and environmental correlates of complaints about police use of force: Does minority representation matter? Crime and Delinquency, 55, 3–27.

15.

Ikerd

Walker

(2010) Making reforms endure: The keys for success. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, Community-Oriented Policing Services.

16.

Kimberly

J. R.

Evanisko

(1981). Organizational innovation: The influence of individual, organizational, and contextual factors on hospital adoption of technological and administrative innovations. Academy of Management Journal, 24, 689–713.

17.

King

(1998). Innovativeness in American municipal police organizations (unpublished doctoral dissertation). University of Cincinnati, OH.

18.

King

(2000). Measuring police innovation: Issues and measurement. Policing: An International Journal of Police Strategies and Management, 23, 303–317.

19.

Klinger

(2003). Spreading diffusion in criminology. Criminology and Public Policy, 2, 461–468.

20.

Langworthy

R. H.

(1986). The structure of police organizations. New York: Praeger.

21.

Lawrence

P. R.

Lorsch

J. W.

(1967). Organization and environment: Managing differentiation and organization. Boston, MA: Harvard School of Business Administration.

22.

Maguire

E. R.

(1997). Structural change in large municipal police organizations during the community policing era. Justice Quarterly, 14, 547–576.

23.

Maguire

E. R.

(2003). Organizational structure in American police agencies: Context, complexity, and control. Albany, NY: SUNY Press.

24.

Manning

P. K.

(2008). The technology of policing: Crime mapping, information technology, and the rationality of crime control. New York, NY: New York University Press.

25.

Mastrofski

S. D.

Parks

R. B.

Wilson

D. W.

(2003). Influence of the adoption of community policing in the United States. Fairfax, VA: Center for Justice Leadership and Management, George Mason University.

26.

Morabito

M. S.

(2007). The adoption of police innovation: The role of the political environment. Policing: An International Journal of Police Strategies and Management, 31, 466–484.

27.

Mullen

(1996). The computerization of law enforcement: A diffusion of innovation study. (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). State University of New York at Albany.

28.

Randol

B. M.

(2012). The organizational correlates of terrorism response preparedness in local police agencies. Criminal Justice Policy Review, 23, 304–326.

29.

Ratcliffe

J. H.

(2008). Intelligence-led policing. Cullompton, UK: Willan.

30.

Rogers

E. M.

(2003). Diffusion of innovations. New York, NY: Free Press.

31.

Sabet

M. G.

Klinger

(1993). Exploring the impact of professionalism on organizational innovation. Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, 3, 253–266.

32.

Skogan

W. G.

(2006). Police and community in Chicago: A tale of three cities. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

33.

Skolnick

J. H.

Bayley

D. H.

(1986). The new blue line: Police innovation in six American cities. New York, NY: Free Press.

34.

Teece

D. J.

(1998). Design issues for innovative firms: Bureaucracy, incentives and industrial structure. In Chandler

A. D.

Hagstrom

Solvell

(Eds.), The dynamic firm: The role of technology, stategy, organization and regions (pp. 134–165). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

35.

Travis

L. F.

Hughes

K. D.

(2002 August). Mapping in police agencies: Beyond this point there be monsters. Washington, DC: Police Foundation.

36.

Weisburd

Lum

(2005). The diffusion of computerized crime mapping in policing: Linking research and practice. Police Practice and Research, 6, 419–434.

37.

Weisburd

Braga

A. A.

(2006). Police innovation: Contrasting perspectives. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

38.

Williams

(2006). Generalized ordered logit/partial proportional odds models for ordinal dependent variables. The Stata Journal, 6, 58–82.

39.

Willis

J. J.

Mastrofski

S. D.

(2011). Innovations in policing: Meanings, structures, and processes. Annual Reviews: Law and Social Sciences, 7, 309–334.

40.

Willis

J. J.

Mastrofski

S. D.

Kochel

T. R.

(2010). The co-implementation of CompStat and community policing. Journal of Criminal Justice, 38, 969–980.

41.

Willis

J. J.

Mastrofski

S. D.

Weisburd

(2007). Making sense of COMSTAT: A theory-based analysis of organizational change in three police departments. Law & Society Review, 41, 147–188.

42.

Wilson

J. M.

(2005). Determinants of community policing: An open systems model of implementation. Santa Monica, CA: RAND [NCJ 182410].

43.

Wilson

J. Q.

(1968). Varieties of police behavior: The management of law and order in eight communities. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

44.

Wolfe

(1994). Organizational innovation: Review, critique, and suggested research directions. Journal of Management Studies, 31, 405–431.

45.

Zhao

(1996). Why police organizations change: A study of community-oriented policing. Washington, DC: Police Executive Research Forum.

46.

Zhao

Lovrich

N. P.

Robinson

(2001). Community policing: Is it changing the basic functions of police? Findings from a longitudinal study of 200+ municipal police agencies. Journal of Criminal Justice, 29, 365–377.

47.

Zhao

Ren

Lovrich

(2010). Police organizational structure during the 1990s: An application of contingency theory. Police Quarterly, 13, 209–232.