Strategic policing philosophy and the acquisition of technology: findings from a nationally representative survey of law enforcement

ABSTRACT

Police departments that emphasise certain strategic models (e.g. community-oriented policing, problem-oriented policing) may adopt specific types of technology to better achieve their core missions. A contrasting theory is that police agencies do not invest strategically in technology; rather, they adopt technology in a ‘black box’ without a larger plan for how a particular technology fits within the agency’s guiding philosophy or operational goals. Despite the importance of this discourse, very little research has been conducted to address these claims. Using survey data from a large and nationally representative sample of police agencies in the United States (N = 749), we examine whether strategic police goals are associated with technology use for six core technologies (crime mapping, social media, data mining software, car cameras, license plate readers (LPRs), and body-worn cameras (BWCs)). Nationally, across the sample of all US law enforcement agencies, we find little relationship between strategic goals and technology. Agency size, rather than policing philosophy was a more important determinant of technology use. However, stronger relationships between strategy and technology emerged when the analysis was limited to a subsample of larger agencies (250 or more sworn officers). Specifically, community and hot spot policing strategies were positively associated with the use of geographic information system technology, social media, and LPRs. Agencies who emphasised hot spot policing were also more likely to have used BWCs. Implications of these findings are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Law enforcement
• technology
• policing strategy

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Results from a randomized controlled experiment in Mesa, Arizona, conducted by the Police Executive Research Forum (PERF) indicated no relationship between the number of scanned license plates and vehicle theft rates (Taylor et al. 2012). Similarly, others find that the use of LPRs does not have an appreciable effect on reducing auto thefts (Lum et al. 2010).

2. Hawaii does not have a state police agency.

3. To account for missing data for the remaining sample (N = 749), we first performed tests to ensure that the missing data were missing at random. Logistic regression models were used to predict the odds of having a missing value on each of our dependent variables by key agency characteristics (region, size, type). Results did not indicate that specific agency characteristics were associated the odds of having a missing value on various technologies.

4. This effect may be directly due to differences in political climate and differences in funding received, and indirectly related to prevalence of alcohol-impaired driving (Jewett et al. 2015, Schuck 2015).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by National Institute of Justice [2012-MU-CX-0043].