https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0270-2255
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ABSTRACT
This impact evaluation tests the effects of community policing, with an emphasis on problem-oriented policing, on perceived social and physical disorder in a disadvantaged Caribbean community. We use a pre-post, quasi-experimental design with two groups. The data include three waves of citizen surveys carried out in both groups. We use outcome measures developed from exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis and a difference-in-differences approach to compare changes in perceived social and physical disorder over time between residents in the treatment and comparison areas. Both the treatment and comparison areas experienced statistically significant small to modest reductions in perceived social and physical disorder between wave 1 (2006) and wave 2 (2007); the decrease was more pronounced in the treatment area. No significant changes in perceived social or physical disorder occurred between wave 2 (2007) and wave 3 (2008). Item-level analyses indicated that the composite measures of disorder masked important changes at the item level. The results suggest that community policing with a problem-solving approach can improve residents’ perceptions of social and physical disorder. The findings highlight the need to consider the nature of the community policing intervention and the quality and dosage of its implementation.
Acknowledgements
The authors are grateful to the Ministry of National Security, the Trinidad and Tobago Police Service, HHB & Associates, and all of the police officers, community residents, and other stakeholders who made the study possible.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 The latter is sometimes further divided into physical disorder and physical decay (e.g. Ross and Mirowsky Citation2001; Marco et al. Citation2015).
2 In a related study, Braga et al. (Citation2015) systematically reviewed and meta-analyzed 30 experimental and quasi-experimental design studies that focused on policing disorder to determine whether such efforts reduced crime. Although the outcome of interest in this analysis was crime and not disorder, the authors found that policing disorder projects were associated with a significant, but modest, crime reduction effect. Moreover, the largest effects were associated with community and problem-solving strategies designed specifically to reduce social and physical disorder.
3 The United Nations classifies Trinidad and Tobago as a ‘small island developing state’ and the International Monetary Fund includes it in their ‘Emerging Market and Developing Economies’ category. As of 2015, the final year in which the World Bank classified nations by development status, Trinidad and Tobago was listed as a developing nation with a ‘high income’ economy. The United Nations Development Program lists Trinidad and Tobago in the second tier (‘High Human Development’) of its four human development classifications (Very High, High, Medium, and Low).
4 Accurate population information for Gonzales is difficult to determine because the community is spread across several different jurisdictions, the boundaries are debated, and the squatter community is underrepresented in official statistics. For details, see Pride in Gonzales Committee (Citation2005), Section 4.1.1 on Population Size & Growth.
5 A female police official in the Trinidad and Tobago Police Service has expressed a similar sentiment, noting that ‘female police officers have always been thought to be far more effective than male officers in dispensing community oriented policing services’ (Lancaster-Ellis Citation2013, p. 24).
6 Gonzales is a community within Belmont. At the time of the intervention, the two areas were similar in terms of socioeconomic status, demographics, and crime. For the purposes of the evaluation, Gonzales was considered the treatment area, and the rest of Belmont (not including Gonzales) was the comparison area. Most of the work carried out by the community policing officers in Gonzales did not occur near the border with Belmont, therefore we are not very concerned about the potential for ‘diffusion of benefits’ from Gonzales to Belmont. Further, there were no similar community policing programs, training efforts, or POP projects attempted in Belmont during the study timeframe.
7 In Belmont, sampling was proportional to the size of the population, using community boundaries based on census files from the Trinidad and Tobago Central Statistical Office. Sampling in Gonzales was based on community boundaries identified by Gonzales residents, which are larger than the official boundaries used by the Central Statistical Office (Pride in Gonzales Committee Citation2005). Gonzales was then split into eight neighborhood zones and the sample was drawn proportional to the population within each zone. Using GIS maps, interviewers chose a start house, calculated a sampling interval, and visited every nth house from the start location based on the sampling interval. At each sampled household, interviewers used the ‘last birthday’ method to select an eligible adult to participate in the survey. If the selected participant was not present, interviewers made three call backs before coding the case as a non-response using AAPOR final distribution code 2.25 for non-contact (American Association for Public Opinion Research Citation2015).
8 These response rates were calculated using Response Rate 1 (RR1) from the American Association for Public Opinion Research (Citation2015).
9 Translation was not necessary since English is the official language in Trinidad and Tobago. With help from our local partners, we made some minor adjustments to the instrument to incorporate colloquial terms and improve respondent comprehension of questions and response options.
10 A variety of data were collected to ensure a rigorous evaluation of the Gonzales Project, including calls-for-service, crime data, community surveys, systematic observation of community characteristics, field notes from participant observation, interviews and focus groups, and data on police patrol, training, and other activities.
11 Since the factor structure of the items used to measure perceived physical and social disorder in this dataset has previously been established (Maguire et al. Citation2017), here we rely on additive indices to measure both dimensions. Six items are used to measure physical disorder and five items are used to measure social disorder. Cronbach’s alpha values for perceived physical disorder (α=.730) and social disorder (α=.829) confirm that both indices are internally consistent.
12 As an additional diagnostic step to assess the comparability of the treatment and comparison groups, we estimated a logit model that included age, sex, race, and education as predictors of group membership. None of the predictors was statistically significant.
13 We attribute these changes to external factors that were not unique to the treatment or comparison areas and exerted similar effects on both areas. We can only speculate on what these factors were. One possibility is a highly publicized peace treaty that occurred in September 2006 involving gangs located throughout the Port of Spain metropolitan area (including Belmont and Gonzales) Resulting reductions in gang activity may have affected perceived social disorder, though a causal linkage between the peace treaty and perceived physical disorder is less obvious. Again, this is speculative since we lack the data to test the effects of the peace treaty on perceived physical or social disorder. Our interviews with local officials did not reveal any other competing interventions or other potential explanations for these changes in perceived disorder.
14 To be clear, our findings revealed that both the treatment and comparison areas experienced significant reductions in perceived physical and social disorder. However, the reduction was more pronounced in the treatment area than the comparison area, thus suggesting that the intervention was responsible for a significant portion of the decrease.