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Australian & New Zealand Journal of

Criminology
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Why Don't the Police Stop Crime?


David Dixon
Australian & New Zealand Journal of Criminology 2005 38: 4
DOI: 10.1375/acri.38.1.4
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Why Dont the Police Stop Crime?


David Dixon
University of New South Wales,Australia

everal answers to the question Why dont the police stop crime? are
considered. Police do stop some crime, although increasingly they will
rely on nonpolice personnel for assistance in doing so.The proportion of
crime they stop is not fixed: learning the right lessons from the experience of New York City will help them to increase it. Nonetheless, police
need to be alert to the dangers of concentrating single-mindedly on
crime reduction. Doing so not only has inherent dangers, but it can also
divert attention from other tasks and objectives of policing.
Understanding the police role in crime control and reduction is
hampered by populist insistence that simple answers are enough. Equally,
the academic promise of new sciences of crime and policing is
overstated. The article argues for a more inclusive and sophisticated
approach to answering the question in its title.

ecently, there have been several burglaries in our area. I was talking about them
with a neighbour, who asked Why dont the police do something about it? I
tried to give him a potted version of my lecture to undergraduates on the limits of
police effectiveness, but he was not impressed: If they cant catch crooks, what
good are they? As if on cue, around the corner came the first police officer to be
seen in our street for months. He was pushing crime prevention leaflets into
mailboxes, advising people to lock the back door and to cancel the newspaper when
they go on holiday. My neighbours disgust was complete: So we have to do your job
for you now, do we?
This articles title is deliberately ambiguous, as well as provocative. I intend to
consider various ways of answering the question Why dont the police stop crime?,
and also to suggest some answers, some of which are in the form of questions in
riposte. While the article primarily has a policy orientation, it is appropriate to go
beyond this to talk a little about the nature of inquiry into these matters, and their
relationship to our broader intellectual culture.

Answer 1:They Do
The first, and most straightforward, answer is that the police do stop crime, or at least
some crime. A hackneyed example from historical experience is that when police go
on strike, some forms of crime increase (Sherman & Eck, 2002, pp. 3023): there is

Address for correspondence: Professor and Associate Dean (Research), Faculty of Law,
University of New South Wales, Sydney 2052, Australia. E-mail: d.dixon@unsw.edu.au

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VOLUME 38 NUMBER 1 2005 PP. 424

WHY DONT THE POLICE STOP CRIME?

no doubt that the presence of police does contain crime to some extent. The police
affect the occurrence of crime both by catching some criminals (possibly leading to
incapacitation and individual deterrence) and by presenting a risk of detection and
punishment (contributing to general deterrence). This is a modest claim, not an
expression of what Reiner calls police fetishism, the ideological assumption that
the police are a functional prerequisite of social order so that without a police force
chaos would ensue (2000, p. 1). If it is accepted that the police have some impact
on crime, there is no reason to believe that this impact is constant: presumably, it
can be increased (or reduced) if the police operate differently. This suggests that the
key issues are specifying the type of crime being considered, assessing the extent to
which police can stop crime, and identifying the most effective strategies and tactics
for crime control.

Answer 2:What Kind of Crime Are You Talking About?


The concept of crime as a category unified by anything more than legal prohibition
should have been abandoned in our criminological cradles. In order to understand
the field, the focus must be much tighter than simply being on crime. Corporate
fraud, child sexual assault, drunken driving, and offensive language have nothing in
common beyond their legal status as offences. Putting more police on the beat is not
going to affect white-collar crime. Developing forensic skills is irrelevant to the
policing of disorderly conduct in the street. We need, therefore, to acknowledge
factors such as variations in the reporting and detectability of types of crime, the
likelihood of one detection leading to other crimes being cleared up (as offences
taken into consideration or written off), the influence of relationships between
suspect and victim, and between police and public, and so on (Bottomley &
Coleman, 1980, 1981; Coleman & Moynihan, 1996).

Answer 3: Because They Cant Do It by Themselves


There is increasing recognition that policing is not just the business of state police
forces. The monopoly of the police may never have been as complete as some mid20th century police chiefs envisaged, but pluralisation is now a key theme in
contemporary discussions of policing. Within the public sector, state police are
supplemented by and cooperate with a range of bodies, including transnational and
international agencies, security services, specialist agencies such as crime commissions, customs departments, specialised sections of other departments (dealing with,
e.g., social security fraud or crime inside prisons), and local government policing
agencies. Problem-oriented strategies involve cooperation in crime reduction with a
wider range of departments and agencies. In England and Wales, such cooperation
has been hastened by the Crime and Disorder Act 1998, which shifts some responsibility for the management of crime onto local government and requires police and
local authorities to work together.
Meanwhile, in the private sector, the growth of commercial providers of security
is well-documented (see, e.g., Bowling & Forster, 2002; Button, 2002; Prenzler,
2000). Their services include the familiar guarding and patrolling, but also more
specialised services such as commercial crime investigation and interrogation of

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DAVID DIXON

suspects (Inbau et al., 2001). Public and private sectors overlap in numerous ways:
notably, public police beats are being supplemented by what is (rather lamely)
called in England an extended police family (Home Office, 2001; Johnston, 2003)
of wardens, local street patrols and private security personnel.1 In a significant and
distinctive development, Aboriginal people in Australia are playing an increasing
role in policing their own communities by means of Aboriginal Community Patrols
(Blagg & Valuri, 2004, p. 1).
There is continuing pressure on citizens to do their own policing. The jargon for
this is responsibilisation, which involves, for example, basic target-hardening
crime prevention. The officer in my street gave a cogent response to my neighbours
criticism: Its better to spend time preventing houses from being broken into than
coming round after its happened. Given that only one in 20 break-and-enters that
were reported to NSW police in 2002 were cleared up (Doak et al., 2003, p. 40), it
is hard to disagree.

Answer 4:Whatever You Say About Police Stopping Crime,


Some Wont Believe That They Do
Criminal statistics have had an unhappy history in Australia, particularly in New
South Wales (NSW; Arantz, 1997). They are now much more reliable, both
because independent, professional agencies collate and analyse them, and because
statistics of crime reported to police are supplemented by victim surveys. In NSW,
there have been significant reductions in some reported crimes.2 Nonetheless, even
if criminal statistics indicate that police have had some success in reducing crime,
they may not be accepted (Hogg & Brown, 1998, pp. 2426).
Some populist commentators claim access to an alternative reality, in which
popular experience or the voice of the man in the street tells a truth about crime
that police, statisticians, academics and governments disguise.3 Whether conservative or Labor, politicians when in opposition can be heard muttering darkly about
manipulation and cover-up.4 According to a prominent NSW journalist, In the
past year or two, anecdotes about escalating crime in Sydney have spread, despite
official reassurances. People tell each other about crime in their street that no-one
ever reads in the newspapers. She goes on to relate a horror story of crime in her
own sleepy, modest suburb (Devine, 2001). In such accounts, criminal statistics are
untrustworthy and the individual instance is promoted as definitive:
While senior police and crime experts argue about whether crime is rising across
NSW, a young man is recovering from a machete attack by a gang of 15 thugs who
wanted his bicycle. The states crime statistician says offences have risen significantly
in the past 12 months in most categories. Christopher Knight, 18, is in no doubt
about that. He was slashed and stabbed 5

At its worst, this approach suggests that there is some conspiracy to hide the truth.
To the extent that appeals to popular experience have value, they are referring to
what is now a criminological truism: there is a gap between the reality and perception
of crime, and the latter must be taken seriously. For many people, fear of crime is as
great a problem as the real likelihood of victimisation. Police play an important role
in the construction of such fears. Police forces are important producers of knowledge,

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WHY DONT THE POLICE STOP CRIME?

information and opinion about crime: the popular image of the police battling with
an almost intractable crime problem is arguably the main source of peoples fear of
crime a fear justified neither by the risks nor by the nature of the vast bulk of
crime (Hough & Clarke, 1980, p. 9).
Of course, the flow of influence is usually said to be in the other direction:
politicians and journalists claim that they are responding to public opinion.
However, most people base their opinions of policing and serious crime not on
personal experience, but on media reports (Reiner, 2000, p. 138). Politicians are
profoundly disingenuous when they invoke public opinion to justify their actions as
if it were some natural, experiential product. My argument does not involve belittling peoples experience, being elitist, or denying that crime is a significant
problem. Far from ignoring such realities, critical criminologists have been arguing
that they should be acknowledged and responded to realistically for decades
(see e.g., Young, 1975, 1994). Indeed, their influence on New Labours crime
policies in the UK is evident.

Answer 5: Because Traditional Policing Tactics


Are Not Very Effective
If, a decade ago, most police researchers had been asked Why dont the police stop
crime?, they would have agreed on an evidence-based response.6
First, they would have claimed that a mass of criminal activity is largely
unaffected by the police for the simple reason that it is not reported or is, to all
intents and purposes, undetectable (Bayley, 1994, ch.1; Hough & Clarke, 1980, pp.
78). Criminological research on the dark figure of unreported crime has made
giant steps forward with crime victim surveys that show that crime dealt with by the
criminal justice process is but the top, if not the tip, of an iceberg (Coleman &
Moynihan, 1996).
Second, they would have demonstrated that traditional policing tactics were
ineffective in reducing crime. The professional policing model which became
hegemonic in the mid-20th century was constructed around random or beat patrol by
uniformed officers in cars, radio-directed quick response, and reactive investigation by
detectives. In a series of now classic studies, American (and later British) researchers
showed that this strategy could not be expected to reduce crime significantly.
First, patrol was inevitably (at levels of resources and power which could be
contemplated) too infrequent to be a significant deterrent, far less a way of catching
criminals.7
Crimes are rare events and are committed stealthily . The chances of patrols catching offenders red-handed are therefore small a patrolling policeman in London
could expect to pass within 100 yards of a burglary in progress roughly once every
eight years but not necessarily to catch the burglar or even realize that the crime
was taking place (Clarke & Hough, 1984, pp. 67)

In 1993, the Cheshire Constabulary bravely announced a Crime Free Day. This
was to be achieved by putting detectives and nonoperational officers into uniform
and out on the street, trebling the usual number of beat patrols. Far from disappearing, recorded crime rose by 8.5%, leaving the Assistant Chief Constable to

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DAVID DIXON

complain ruefully that criminals could not give a damn about police or criminal
justice. He conceded that increasing the number of uniformed patrols had no effect
whatsoever. Perhaps the only surprising aspect of this episode is that the officers
responsible did not realize that putting more police on the street would increase the
reporting of crime and that their day was likely to end in embarrassment.8
Second, reducing response times was found to be largely irrelevant. It was
unlikely that a criminal would be caught on or near the scene unless the crime was
still in progress. But victims often delayed reporting to the police. If they rang the
police half an hour after a crime occurred, it was unlikely to matter whether officers
took 10 or 20 minutes to arrive (Reiner, 2000, p. 117; Sherman & Eck, 2002, p.
305). Finally, researchers showed that most crimes were not solved by detectives
fitting clues together. Detection and clear-up usually depended not on what police
did, but on the flow of information from the public:
the prime determinant of success is information immediately provided by members of
the public (usually the victim) to patrol officers or detectives. If adequate information is provided to pinpoint the culprit fairly accurately, the crime will be resolved; if
not it is almost certain not to be. This is the conclusion of all the relevant studies
(Reiner, 2000, pp. 11920).

Detection was not found to be what most detectives spend their time doing. Their
work mainly consists of the processing of information into a legalised form for use
elsewhere in criminal justice (Dixon, 1997, pp. 268274). Real life is not like
televisions Law and Order, in which crimes are committed, detected, investigated
and prosecuted in less than an hour.
These empirical studies contributed to a wholesale reassessment of policing. The
main context of this was concern about the counterproductive effects of police
professionalism, particularly the alienation from minority communities which
contributed to the outbreak of numerous urban disorders. The critique of the professional model was made most eloquently, if rhetorically, by Peter Manning, who
presented it as one of the ironies that he found to be constitutive of modern policing. Manning suggested that police had constructed a role as professional crimefighters: the rhetoric of professionalism is the most important strategy employed by
the police to defend their mandate and thereby to build self-esteem, organisational
autonomy, and occupational solidarity or cohesiveness (1977, p. 16). The irony is
that police chose to judge themselves, and be judged by others, as crime-fighters
even though crime is the product of forces beyond police control.
The police have claimed to prevent, control, deter, and punish crime and have made
that above all their primary legitimating theme. They have done this in spite of
the fact that they cannot control crime. The crime focus of the police, now
affirmed as legitimate by many as a result of police efforts, is both the greatest asset of
the police and will be their most profound burden as they attempt to adjust to public
consciousness of their limitations. (T)heir stock is oversold and their political
strategy is bankrupt (1977, pp. 1516).

From this perspective, there is a further irony that, while police cannot control
crime, their attempt to do so obstructs alternative views of their work: crime
prevention, for example, or a special sort of social service agency, or a regulatory
agency (1977, p. 16). Here, Manning implicitly refers to the original mandate of

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WHY DONT THE POLICE STOP CRIME?

the English new police, which was to be not an investigative or detective, but a
preventative force. The role of crime fighters was one chosen out of various possibilities in the later 19th and early 20th centuries.
This critique of police professionalism fed into three broader developments.
First, there was a general disillusionment with the efficacy of state interventions in
criminal justice (notably rehabilitative sentencing), which became known as the
nothing works approach. Second, other features of police professionalism
notably the distance from community contributed to a crisis in relations between
police and sections of the community that contributed to the outbreak of serious
urban disorders. Third, the early empirical studies demonstrated the centrality of
discretion in policing, thereby preventing the police from hiding behind the myth
that they just enforce the law.

Answer 6: Crime Is Down, (Dont Just) Blame the Police9


Since the mid-1990s, the analysis presented in the previous answer has come under
serious challenge. The world of policing has been thrown upside down because of
what happened to recorded crime in New York City. In the seven major categories
(murder, robbery, forcible rape, felony assault, burglary, larceny and grand larceny
auto), crime declined by 64% between 1993 and 2002. In 1990, there were 2245
murders; in 2003, there were 572, a fall of no less than 75%.
From around the world, police, press and politicians flocked to discover New
Yorks secret. Not surprisingly, there was a rush to claim responsibility. The New
York miracle was a political and commercial goldmine, producing consultancies,
jobs, publishing deals and careers. According to William Bratton, who was commissioner in 199496, he was Americas top cop who reversed the crime epidemic
(Bratton, 1998). Rudolph Giuliani (Mayor, 19932001) saw the victory as his
(Giuliani, 2002). Police consultant and academic George Kelling claimed that it
was due to the implementation of the broken windows theory which he and J.Q.
Wilson had proposed in 1982 (Kelling & Sousa, 2001; Wilson & Kelling, 1982),
although this was almost contemptuously dismissed by the late Jack Maple, a key
member of Brattons inner circle (Maple, 1999, pp. 153156).
The New York miracle became an irresistible news story, with acres of press
coverage, including Bratton appearing on the cover of Time. The account provided
by the popular press and lapped up by many politicians was that zero tolerance was
responsible. Australian commentators repeatedly insist that we should follow New
York and adopt zero tolerance policing.10 The NYPD model spread widely, not just
in the US but in many countries, including Australia (Henry, 2002, p. 305).11
Meanwhile, the initial response to the New York experience by academics was
overwhelmingly critical. Starting from the assumption of police inefficacy, they
looked for other explanations of the crime drop. At the same time, they emphasised
incidents of police misconduct, which they saw as an inevitable part of zero tolerance policing.
The story has suffered from exaggeration and oversimplification on both sides. It
is now time for a more measured assessment. Explaining the crime drop has
become a key question in contemporary criminology (and public policy more generally). A substantial body of sophisticated empirical analyses of US crime trends in

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DAVID DIXON

the 1990s has now been produced by respected and respectable criminologists (see,
most significantly, Blumstein & Wallman, 2000; Northwestern University School of
Law, 1998; and Karmen, 2000). So who or what was responsible for the crime drop?
We should start by considering a couple of loudly touted contenders. First, there
is zero tolerance. The quality of the debate would be greatly enhanced if this slogan
were dropped. Few police use it, even in the UK where it has been taken up by New
Labour. While the NYPD appears to be more comfortable with its use than before,12
the Departments strategy in the 1990s was not based on zero tolerance, if by that is
meant aggressive, gloves-off law enforcement. This was never more than one tactic
among others. Bratton rejected the term, except when applied to police corruption.
In reality, the US police force more appropriately associated with zero tolerance is
the Los Angeles Police Department. It is an extraordinary example of the power of
public relations and the media that the LAPD enjoyed a favourable international
reputation for so long. Its response to corruption in the 1930s was a crime-fighting,
alienated professionalism that caused major problems, of which the 1965 Watts riots
and the 1991 Rodney King beating were symptomatic (Cannon, 1999; Domanick,
1994). However, when the chips were down, as South Central went up in flames,
the macho posturing of the LAPD dissolved into incompetence and confusion,
which turned the crisis of the acquittal of Kings attackers into the disaster of the
riots. It is no coincidence that William Bratton was appointed commissioner of the
LAPD in 2002. Zero tolerance is not on his agenda.13
One of many ironies in policing is that the NYPD became best known for the
wrong thing, indeed not just the wrong thing, but for something that belittled and
distracted attention from the reality. (This is not to deny or minimise the abuses
fostered by, or the counterproductive effects of, the NYPDs strategy, which will be
considered below.) The real achievement of the NYPD is undervalued by the focus
on zero tolerance. Similarly, in NSW and elsewhere, significant achievements in
policing (and elsewhere, notably in juvenile justice) are overshadowed by political
rhetoric of the war on crime. In NSW, it is surely a little strange that a government
that claims to have implemented the recommendations of the Royal Commission
into the NSW Police Service (Wood, 1997) should not have presented doing so to
the electorate as a major success. Instead, in the 2002 NSW state election, television advertisements featuring handcuffs spelling out the word tough were apparently thought to be more appropriate.
The second contender is broken windows. This idea originated in a famous
article in the Atlantic Monthly in which J.Q Wilson and George Kelling hypothesised,
without empirical basis,14 that serious crime could be reduced by clamping down on
minor incivilities and disorder.15 The argument was based on the metaphor of broken
windows. Wilson and Kelling claimed that if a broken window in a building is not
repaired, others will be broken. The rest of the building, then the street, then the
neighbourhood, will deteriorate. The human equivalent of a broken window is the
ill-smelling drunk, the rowdy teenager, or the importuning beggar. The unchecked
panhandler is, in effect, the first broken window (Wilson & Kelling, 1982, p. 34).16 If
human broken windows are not fixed, disorder will turn into serious crime because
serious street crime flourishes in areas in which disorderly behavior goes unchecked
(Wilson & Kelling, 1982, p. 34). The theory was based on a kernel of commonsense
or folk wisdom (Wilson & Kelling, 1982, p. 34): little problems lead to big

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WHY DONT THE POLICE STOP CRIME?

problems. It also relies on popular but inaccurate accounts of social decline resulting
from moral and social indiscipline. As noted above, Kelling makes much of the
claim that the New York miracle was due to broken windows policing. It is certainly
true that Bratton and Giuliani genuflected to the Atlantic Monthly article. However,
they also made clear that broken windows policing was only one tactic in a much
broader strategy. I would suggest that it was as significant symbolically as instrumentally: police attempts to fix broken windows signalled commitment both to New
Yorkers that their concerns about quality of life were being addressed and to police
officers that they could crack down on people whose disorderly behaviour they had
previously been told, for various reasons, to leave alone.
There are deeper problems with the broken windows hypothesis. In an exhaustive, trenchant critique, Bernard Harcourt has shown that the study routinely cited
as empirically proving the hypothesis, Skogans Disorder and Decline (1990), does
nothing of the sort, and that it is is fundamentally flawed. Theoretically, Harcourt
shows that the supposedly causal links between disorder and crime are obscure
(Harcourt, 1998, 2001; for further critique of broken windows, see Dixon, 2005).
So what did work to reduce crime in New York City? There are two issues here.
One is an understanding of the NYPD program which looks beyond both zero tolerance and broken windows. The second is placing this program in the context of
other influences.
The success of the NYPD had three foundations. First, resources were deployed
to deal with risks risky places, risky times, risky people (suspects and victims).
Such risks were identified by strategic analysis of criminal intelligence and statistics.
They were then countered by the deployment of concentrated, dedicated police
units. This policy of targeting and focusing has become increasingly significant in
the current administrations of Mayor Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Kelly.17
Secondly, the NYPD was revitalised by managerial reform involving direction and
supervision of operational officers of unprecedented intensity. Both the riskmanagement strategy and the managerial reform relied heavily on information
technology. These two strands entwined in the CompStat process, in which
computerised statistics of crime and criminal justice trends are used as a tool of
accountability, problem-solving and managerial control in twice-weekly meetings at
headquarters (Henry, 2002; McDonald, 2002). It is CompStat that has been taken
up by police (and other public service) departments around the world, as for
example in NSW Polices Operations and Crime Reviews and Queenslands
Operational Performance Reviews. The NYPDs mantra is not zero tolerance, but
accurate and timely intelligence; rapid deployment; effective tactics; relentless
follow-up and assessment (Bratton, 1998). According to Bratton:
The paradigm emphasizes accountability and discretion at all levels of the organization, strategies and time-sensitive identification and response to management
problems ; capitalization of the expertise and input of all personnel ; and continuous organizational restructuring or re-engineering to remove impediments to high
performance (Bratton, in Henry, 2002, p. iv).

As this tortured language suggests, this was a managerial revolution. According to


Bratton, his team transformed a reactive, risk-averse organization, that for most of
its history had been organized around avoiding risk and failure, to one that is

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DAVID DIXON

organized and managed for results while rewarding risk-taking and initiative
(Bratton, in Henry, 2002, p. iii). Other changes, many of them interrelated,
included encouraging better morale, hiring more officers, providing more discretion
and responsibility, and cracking down on quality-of-life offences.
In order to identify the crucial third foundation of the NYPDs success, it is necessary to connect up the elements of the NYPD strategy in a way that is usually
overlooked. The managerial style of the NYPD was unoriginal, containing little that
would be unfamiliar to any student of new public management (Henry, 2002, p. 4).
Indeed, it was not even new in police rhetoric: such programs have been found for
example in the Metropolitan Police Plus Programme in London and in the NSW
Police under Commissioners Avery and Lauer (Wood, 1997; Dixon, 2001). What is
different is that these programs were not made attractive to serving officers in London
and NSW. By contrast, Bratton sold his reforms as a way of achieving what most
operational police want to do: win back the streets, crack down, and lock up the bad
guys. The NYPD leadership expressed an unwavering belief in the capacity of police
offices to make a difference and to reduce crime (Henry, 2002, p. 27). In other words,
the reform went with, rather than against, the flow of police culture. What was new
was that reform was implemented in policing practice, and not just enshrined in
strategic documents, operational plans and the like.
This may help to explain why NSW Police have made such a public commitment to crime-fighting in recent years, despite the warning given by the Wood
Royal Commission and the subsequent Qualitative and Strategic Audit of the
Reform Process (QSARP) against such rhetoric (Dixon, 1999, 2001; Hay Group,
200002; Wood, 1997). Symptomatically, the word service has been dropped from
the organisations title: we are encouraged, once again, to call the NSW Police a
force.
The second part of the argument is that, without underestimating the NYPDs
achievement (which is real if specifically incalculable), it has to be put in context of
the other factors: social and cultural change, changes in drug markets, economic
change, and demographic change. Andrew Karmens definitive empirical study
concludes that the crime reduction happened because:
a number of positive developments all kicked in and pulled together in the same direction downward. The best way to describe the Citys situation in the 1990s was that a
fortuitous confluence of underlying factors materialized (E)very one of the causal
factors known to affect crime rates moved in the desired direction (2000, p. 257).

Economic improvement, lower unemployment, reduced alcohol consumption and


fewer young men all contributed. Karmen identifies two specific factors in New
York: immigration of greater numbers of generally hard-working, law-abiding
people from around the world and more young people staying in school and
enrolling in college. Both had significant influence in reducing crime. However, for
Karmen, the indispensable factor was the decline of the crack epidemic from the
late 1980s, which was so intimately connected to New Yorks property and violent
crime. Karmen gives full credit to the NYPDs contribution generally and specifically to the decline of crack (2001, p. 258). But it was just one factor among many.
Bratton, Kelling and others18 dismiss the argument that the NYPD was not
solely or principally responsible. However, despite Brattons protestations that

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socioeconomic factors were irrelevant, we know that they were not, for one simple
reason.19 The crime drop did not just happen in New York City. It happened in 17
of the 25 largest US cities. Indeed, it happened to varying extents elsewhere: 12 of
the 17 advanced industrial countries recorded concurrent crime drops (Travis, 1998;
Young, 1999, pp. 125126). In most of these places, the police were not applying
the NYPD strategy. They were either doing what they had always done or they were
reforming in other directions. Unless you are prepared to make the unlikely claim
that similar results were achieved by completely different inputs, then you have to
accept that the New York miracle was not just the product of the NYPD, and that
we have to look beyond policing for explanation. (Again, this is not to belittle the
NYPDs performance, which may account for why the crime drop was sharper and
more durable in New York than in many other places.)
We can think about a local example in the same way. The NSW Police have
claimed and won great credit for changes in the heroin market in Cabramatta. But
similar claims have been made before.20 Why was a policing crackdown so much
more effective in 200102 than another had been in 199798? Part of the answer
certainly lies in different tactics, more resources, new powers (Dixon & Maher,
2004). But there are deeper factors. First, there was a national heroin shortage (the
drought) in 2001 (Dietze & Fitzgerald, 2002; Weatherburn et al., 2001), which
allowed the police to get a hold on the market. (In turn, this is claimed to be the
result of police action at national and international level on importation; this has to
be set alongside a series of other explanations for the drought.) Second, there is the
even less palpable factor of change in the consumers of illegal drugs. It is increasingly clear that drug epidemics come in waves: particular drugs come into, and then
go out of, fashion, not least because young people see what has happened to the
generation before them (Curtis, 1998). It is remarkable how vigorously this account
is resisted: it has something to do with an unwillingness to accept that communities
can change themselves and that not everything has to be engineered by the state.
This is a strange position for free market liberals to adopt.
Explanation of the crime drop must be found in a coincidence of various factors.
Police activity is certainly one of these, but it is one among several. This conclusion
should not really be a surprise. On one hand, it unlikely that cracking down on
squeegee men would reduce a citys homicide rate by three quarters. Equally, it is
hard to believe that effective reform of a police department would have no impact
on its performance in crime control. The reality lies, predictably, somewhere in
between: the NYPD contributed to the decline in crime, but were not solely responsible for it. Despite Brattons and Giulianis relentless self-promotion, they should
claim only partial responsibility for the New York miracle.
So another answer to the question Why dont the police stop crime? is
suggested by the research evidence. In certain circumstances, the police can effect
marked reductions in crime, but usually only in cooperation with other agencies and
only if they adopt strategies which are in stark contrast to those dictated by the
professional law enforcement model (Homel, 1994, p. 32).

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Answer 7: Its More Difficult Than You Think


The New York example suggests that answering our original question is inconveniently complicated. Of course, simple, monocausal explanations are often
preferred. They make for effective politics and easy journalism which sometimes
run together, not least in NSW. In a dreamworld called Mirandaland, life is simple.
People are divided neatly into good and bad, and what happens can be accounted
for with ease. For example: why were reductions in some crime statistics reported in
NSW in 2003? Because heroin-use has declined. Why has heroin-use declined?
Because of effective police interventions. Why isnt this success publicised? Because
those blinded by antiprohibitionist ideology cannot see the truth (Devine, 2003).
Unfortunately, things are not so simple in the world in which we actually live. If
we are concerned with explanations rather than mere political gamesmanship, we
have to be prepared to say that matters are multidimensional and complex, and even
admit that we dont know why some things happen. There is a similarity between the
insistence that we can explain crime trends simply and confident, dogmatic explanations of other phenomena. For example, the authors of a book on prehistoric structures in England, such as Stonehenge, express their irritation with people who insist
that they were the work of visitors from space or, alternatively, of ancients who had
all kinds of weird and wonderful knowledge and powers which for some reason we
have lost or forgotten (Daniel & Bahn, 1987, p. 9). They argue that:
in the area of social archeology, there is fierce determination to recover the
unrecoverable that is, the social structures, kinship patterns, hierarchies and
religious beliefs of vanished prehistoric peoples (by archeologists) apparently
believing that they can reconstruct past social life simply because they want to do so.
But the evidence is not there. (Daniel & Bahn, 1987, p. 12)

The fact that we want to explain something does not mean that we can. It does not
mean we should do nothing but look at the stones in wonder: the point is that we
need some modesty in our attempts to understand them. In particular, we should be
wary of simple explanations which ascribe single causes.
Explaining crime trends is difficult and complicated, and we should take the task
more seriously. In both academic and professional research fields, kudos (and
money) usually goes to those kinds of explanations which aspire to being scientific.
In recent years, there has been a revival of positivist scientific criminology, the
evidence-based what works? school. Medicine is seen as providing the model to
which we should aspire (Sherman, 1998). While Sherman is not nave about this
matter, there should be more attention paid to the reality rather than the myth of
medical research. I must stress that I am not critical of this scientific enterprise in
general. We need quantitative analysis, including good experimental studies, when
these are appropriate. 21 What is worrying are the pretensions of some of its
exponents, and the ease with which they proceed as if decades of critique of
positivist criminology never happened (Laycock, 2001).
In the context of policing, experimental research faces particular difficulties.
Any proposal that a tactic or policy (e.g., mandatory arrest in domestic violence
cases) can be operationally tested by requiring officers to apply it and that, once the
best tactic or policy has been identified, it can be put into practice by regulation
and instruction, has to face basic realities of police organisations. As Manning

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pointed out, police are symbolised externally as a paramilitary bureaucracy, but lack
of internal control, of close supervision of lower participants, and their freedom of
action make it more a symbol than a reality (1977, p. 109, and see also ch. 7 for his
critique of presenting police organisations as professional bureaucracies). It is almost
a clich to cite Wilsons observation that the police department has the special
property that within it discretion increases as one moves down the hierarchy
(1968, p. 7). A police force that operates as a tightly organised, self-regulating
body, with a highly efficient hierarchical command structure, exercising direct
operational control exists only in the nightmares of conspiracy theorists and the
public dreams and wishful thinking of some senior police managers (Baldwin &
Kinsey 1985, p. 99).
A further problem with much of the new police science is its confidence that
disputes can be settled empirically: did the police cause the crime drop, or was it
changes in drug markets? This fails to appreciate that often the real dispute is not
empirical but theoretical and political. Competing accounts of social action are
involved. The new police science often takes for granted a view of people as rational actors, with all its implications for conceptions of choice and deterrence. The
rational deterrent model of policing that is implicit in common sense discussions
of police effectiveness has been properly criticised: such clarity of vision is a form of
myopia (Hough & Clarke, 1980, p. 2).22
In an important critique, David Thacher has argued that the idealised medical
model is inappropriate for understanding social phenomena such as policing. He
contrasts the instrumental knowledge produced by, for example, randomised
control trials from the practical reasoning needed to do good police work:
policing is characterized by a high degree of value pluralism and this fact limits
(but does not eliminate) the role that any type of instrumental knowledge can play in
guiding decision-making. Police will clearly benefit from instrumental knowledge
such as that produced through experiments. But they will also benefit from better
forms of practical reasoning, including better interpretations of ambiguous values and
better ideas about how trade-offs among values should be made. Knowledge about
policing should look more like legal knowledge than medical knowledge (or at least
the aspects of medical knowledge that have been emphasized in criminal justice
accounts of that field ; Thacher, 2001, p. 388).

In case readers are even more alarmed by the prospect of legal reasoning than by
medical research, I should explain that Thacher is not talking about desiccated,
black letter legal nitpicking, but rather the normative analysis that is characteristic
of the best US jurisprudence. We should not have to put on the metaphorical
doctors white coat and pose as scientists in order to be taken seriously. We need to
value and respect other kinds of understanding. A major problem here is the broad
misunderstanding and devaluation of social science in Anglophone culture. This is
exemplified by political leaders who are apparently unable to distinguish between
explaining and excusing a persons crime or (like John Major, when he was British
Prime Minister) who insist that we should understand less and condemn more.
This is a profoundly stupid approach. Understanding and condemning should be
conducted in different dimensions; they are not alternatives. The fact that we can
put people on the moon, but that we dont understand crime trends leads people to

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assume that social science is weak. It may be, but the more significant issue is the difficulty of the question. Perhaps understanding crime rates is as complex and important
an enterprise as putting people on the moon. If so, perhaps it deserves a little more in
research funding than the crumbs left over after hard science has been fed.
The dispute is also political: those who attempt to treat crime analysis as a
value-free science tend to disguise their own values and politics. For example, the
broken windows hypothesis is attractive because it articulates some commonsense
ideas about how little problems lead to big problems and about the discretionary,
order-maintenance role of patrol officers. What is problematic is the location of
these insights in a conservative, exclusionary account of social order and of the
roles of state and community (Dixon, 2005). As Karmen suggests, To conservatives,
New York Citys meanest streets became the proving ground for one of their most
cherished ideologically driven proposals: that crime rates can be substantially
reduced through get-tough policies, and that it is not necessary to tackle the social
roots of crime (2001, p. 261).
Another illustration is provided by one of the many offshoots of broken windows:
the increasingly influential US social norm school (e.g., Kahan & Meares, 1998). In
brief, they argue that we should be more aware of the noninstrumental effects of
criminal law and policing and that interventions should seek to influence the social
meaning of particular activities. So, for example, a crackdown on guns should aim not
just (instrumentally) to catch gun-dealers and users, but (normatively) to reduce the
demand for guns by challenging the gun culture among gang, and potential gang,
members. This makes very good sense. The difficulty comes in putting it into practice.
As David Cole (1999) shows, the social norm theorists make well-intentioned but
baseless assumptions about what social norms among their target groups are. So-called
communities (especially in cities such as New York and Sydney) are complex and
pluralistic. For example, as Jerome Skolnick asks, Granted that we commonly share
an aversion to public defecation, but do residents who live in neighborhoods where
crowded apartments lack air conditioning also deplore public beer drinking on hot
city nights? (Skolnick, 1999, p. 5).
The point can be illustrated by a further example from closer to home.
Explanations of alleged noncooperation with Australian police by some South-East
Asianbackground communities are routinely given in terms of a wall of silence. It
is said that these communities do not trust Australian police because of cultural
memories of mistreatment by police in countries of origin. Such accounts have
little empirical basis. By contrast, long-term ethnographic fieldwork has shown that
this account of the wall of silence is misleading. There are other reasons for young
people to distrust the police, reasons which have nothing to do with how police
operated in the countries from which their parents or grandparents came (Dixon &
Maher, 1999, 2002). As this example suggests, an indispensable part of any serious
attempt at normative understanding is the use of qualitative methodologies such as
ethnography and cultural analysis. While quantitative techniques may be also
employed, the result is unlikely to be the kind of hard data (level 1 evidence) that
is valorised in the (idealised) medical model. It also shows how intertwined issues of
methodology, theory and politics are.

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Answer 8: Because They Have Other Priorities


One reason why police do not stop crime is that trying to stop crime is not all they
do. It is trite to point out that observational studies of police work show that officers
spend most of their time doing other things. Many of these things are trivial, but
not all: crime-fighting is sometimes not the first priority of the police. A (British)
Royal Commission on the Police made the point in the idiom of a bygone era:
efficiency is not the sole end of a good and wise administration of the police, and
the apparently confused police system which this country has inherited reflects not
merely the British habit of adapting old institutions to meet new needs, but the interplay of conflicting principles of great constitutional importance which human minds
have always found, and still find, the utmost difficulty in reconciling (1962, p. 20).

In the Royal Commissions view, maintenance of law and order, protection of


persons and property, and crime prevention should be placed ahead of crime detection (1962, p. 22). Following Peels original instructions to the Metropolitan Police,
they stressed the complexity of the police function, seeing British police systems as:
the products of a series of compromises between conflicting principles or ideas.
(T)he rationale of the police service does not rest upon any single and definite
concept of the public good. Thus it is to the public good that the police should be
strong and effective in preserving law and order and preventing crime; but it is
equally to the public good that police powers should be controlled and confined so as
not to interfere arbitrarily with personal freedom (1962, p. 9).

This emphasises the complexity and importance of the police role, and suggests
what is lost when it is reduced merely to crime-fighting. Some examples of areas in
which crime-fighting is not the only consideration illustrate the point:
Policing domestic violence: as Thacher argues, if the idealised medical model
was applied and crime control was given priority, the results of experimental
studies on the policing of domestic violence would mandate a discriminatory
policy of arresting the employed but not the unemployed and residents of affluent neighborhoods but not poor ones (2001, p. 393). This is because Shermans
research (1992, pp. 203212) concludes that arrest reduces recidivism by those
with a stake in the community, but increases it among those without such a
stake. Such a policy would not be acceptable because it conflicts with other
goals like equity, due process, just deserts, and parsimony (Thacher, 2001, p.
391). These are more important than preventing crime at all costs.
Drug offences and overdoses: guidelines issued to NSW Police admirably explain
why there are more important concerns than fighting crime when police attend
drug overdoses:
Fear of prosecution for minor drug use and possession offences has been identified as
contributing to the reluctance of some people to call an ambulance in the event of an
overdose. When police attend the scene of a non-fatal overdose they are encouraged to exercise their discretion to not take action for self-administration offences
and minor possession offences (for the victim and anyone else at the scene).
Exercising their discretion may remove the fear of prosecution and encourage people
present at overdoses to call for assistance without delay (NSW Police, 2000).

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This policy is an example of prioritising public health above law enforcement. It


is unfortunate that these priorities are so radically reversed in policing practice
(Maher & Dixon, 1999).
Stop/search: from a police perspective, stop/search is a useful way of producing
arrests, providing uniformed officers with one of few opportunities for proactive
policing. However, attempts are made to regulate stop/search because of the
potential impact on policepublic relations of excessive or inappropriate use of
the tactic (Dixon, 1997, pp. 93104). If, generously, we assume that 10% of
stop/searches lead to an arrest, we have to take seriously the impact of police
intervention on the remaining 90%. Incidentally, the research evidence suggests
that police do not need to abandon widespread stop/searches: they just need to
do them in a polite, respectful, nondiscriminatory way (Stone & Pettigrew,
2000). Of course doing so may lose other perceived value imposing authority, claiming territory, collecting low-level intelligence but that only
reinforces my point that policing is not just about enforcing law against crime.
Public order: the key skill of policing is not enforcing law, but deciding how and
when to do so. A police officers first priority is maintenance of order, not
enforcing law (which is just one reason why a literal interpretation of zero tolerance would produce ridiculous results). For example, a man in an unruly crowd
outside a pub swears at police officer. Arresting him may be the right thing to
do: snuff out the problem. Or it may aggravate the situation: it may be better to
calm the man down and send him home. The decision has to be a situational
one, that is, it depends on the discretionary skill of police officers.23
A closely connected requirement is that we need to take account of potentially
counterproductive effects of trying to stop crime. In the context of discussing the
NYPDs story, this inevitably leads us to the flip-side of success, cases such as the
assault on Abner Louima, and the killing of Amadou Diallo and Patrick
Dorismond (Dixon, 2005; Karmen, 2000). Recent accounts of the NYPDs success
fail to mention these incidents (Giuliani, 2002; Henry, 2002; McDonald, 2002).
Presumably, the authors see them as either unfortunate mistakes or individual
deviance. This is inadequate: one does not have to suggest that such incidents
were intended, much less desired, to say that they must be seen as products of a
mode of operation. Take an example closer to home: nobody in the NSW Police
may have wanted or planned the shooting of David Gundy in 1989, but the
incident has to be explained as the product of the institutional culture and structure of sections of the police at that time, including its attitude towards legal
regulation (Wootten, 1991).
Critics of the NYPDs record have sometimes done their cause little good:
having Rev. Al Sharpton on your team is not always an unmitigated advantage.
Nonetheless, there is increasing and eminently respectable support for concern
about the (potentially but not inevitably) unacceptable effects of performance
measuredriven crime-fighting. Experience in the US and the UK has shown that
reform efforts that focus on crime reduction can have undesirable side effects:
process corruption and violence. Notably, in England, H.M. Inspectorate of
Constabulary has warned that an increasingly aggressive and demonstrable performance culture may lead to lapses in integrity and unethical practices (HMIC,

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1999, p. 19). If one accepts the verdict of the Legislative Council Committee on
policing in Cabramatta (2001), the NSW Polices attempt to apply the NYPD model
(i.e., the Operations and Crime Review and the Crimes Index) was responsible for a
breakdown of effective policing in that area. More generally, the Qualitative and
Strategic Audit of the Reform Process (QSARP) warned about the consequences of
putting crime-fighting above institutional and cultural reform.24 It would be good to
know, for example, just what is involved in the intensive preemptive policing of
repeat offenders. It is reasonable to assume that this means a little more than police
officers doing their paperwork in cars parked outside the homes of local villains.
A vital factor here is that police policy-makers and commanders have to take
account of how their policies are likely to be implemented by officers on the street.
As noted above, it is a clich to point to the difficulty of implementing policy in a
context of the discretionary freedom of operational officers. It is just irresponsible
not to be aware that ordering officers to carry out intensive, proactive street lawenforcement carries a risk that some will hear this as an encouragement to take the
gloves off. This is particularly the case if the context is one of law-and-order
politicking and identification of particular groups as socially marginal and as
problems. It was for this reason that, a few years ago, a senior NSW officer remarked
that zero tolerance should not be implemented in NSW because, whatever the
strengths and weaknesses of that policy, NSW Police of that time could not be
trusted with it.

Conclusion:Why Dont the Police Stop Crime?


In summary, I have argued here that the police do stop some crime, although
increasingly they will rely on nonpolice personnel for assistance in doing so. The
proportion of crime they stop is not fixed: learning the right lessons from New York
will help them to increase it. Nonetheless, they need to be alert to the dangers of
concentrating single-mindedly on crime-reduction. Doing so not only has inherent
dangers, but it can also divert attention from other tasks and objectives of policing.
Not surprisingly, I come to the academics conclusion that we need more research.
But there is no point doing (and paying for) such research if it is not understood
and taken seriously, and that will require a significant shift in attitudes towards
social science research. Much of the accepted wisdom about the role of police in
controlling crime has been challenged in recent years. It is vital to ensure that its
replacement is a science which is theoretically sophisticated and pluralistic.
One of the great benefits of challenges to the old orthodoxy is that they have
opened up the field of policing studies at a time when the emergence of specialist
journals, conferences and book series might have made it academically isolated.
Instead, students of policing have to look beyond the police to the broader fields of
crime prevention and community safety and to general accounts of changing
relations between the state and civil society. Today, attempting to answer the
question Why dont the police stop crime? is a complex, challenging and intellectually stimulating task.

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Endnotes
1
2

5
6
7

8
9
10
11

12

13

14
15

20

The Police Reform Act 2002 authorises community support officers and accredited Community
Safety Organisations to carry out duties of patrol and low-level order maintenance.
The Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research reported that, in the two years to December
2002, there were substantial falls in six major offence categories, an increase in one offence
category and no change in the other nine offence categories; see http://www.lawlink.
nsw.gov.au./bocsar1.nsf/pages/media040303
The Police Assistance Line, a method of reporting crime by telephone in NSW, is allegedly
designed to minimise crime by making it difficult to report incidents. The standard criminological concept of the dark figure is summoned: crime is booming, but is underreported
(Devine, 2001). The basic need to explain why rates of recorded and unrecorded crime should
grow at different rates is ignored.
See, for example, Carr attacks top statisticians crime figures, Sydney Morning Herald, July 13,
1994, in which the then leader of the Opposition described the Director of the NSW Bureau of
Crime Statistics and Research as being out of touch with community perceptions and overlooking the reality of crime by publishing statistics showing that the rate of most major crimes was
stable or falling. Such rhetoric survived a change of government. In 2003, the Bureau was forced
to defend itself against similar accusations; see Media release: NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics
and Research response to Time to come clean on crime stats each week, October 23, 2003,
BOCSAR, in which the Bureaus Director described the Shadow Police Ministers allegations of
a cover-up in relation to crime statistics as offensive and entirely without foundation. Available
at http://www.lawlink.nsw.gov.au./bocsar1.nsf/pages/media231003
Machete madness, Sun-Herald, July 8, 2001.
But not all: see, for example, Wilson and Boland, 1978.
For a summary, see Reiner, 2000, pp. 115121. The classic example here is the Kansas City
Preventive Patrol Experiment, in which very different styles of policing were found to have no
significant effect on crime, fear of crime or attitudes towards police; indeed, it seems that they
were hardly noticed by many residents (Kelling et al., 1974). L.W. Sherman (1993) has
strongly criticised the Kansas City research, associating it with a politically correct orthodoxy which is against police even trying to control crime (1993, p. 174, original emphasis).
From an Australasian or British perspective, Shermans critique appears, at best, dated, in its
ignorance of the realist influence in contemporary criminology.
Villains steal police thunder, Daily Telegraph (UK), May 5, 1993.
See Bratton, 1997.
See, for example, Daily Telegraph (Sydney), April 12 & 13, 2002.
Because there has been misunderstanding about this (Darcy, 1998; Chilvers & Weatherburn,
2001, p. 12, n. 1), I should make clear that my observation that NSW was influenced by the
NYPD is not a claim that NSW Police adopted zero tolerance policing.
While Bratton rejected the term, the NYPDs web site now defines zero tolerance in its list of
FAQs as as a full-scale strategic attack on all crime and disorder in the City; see
http://www.ci.nyc.ny.us/html/nypd/html/misc/pdfaq2.html#0
According to the LAPDs web site, A strong advocate of transparent community policing that
embraces partnership, problem solving and prevention, (Bratton) initiated a major reengineering of the Los Angeles Police Department, moving towards a decentralised police
bureaucracy with stronger area commands that are more responsive to local community needs,
and better trained and motivated police officers. See http://lapdonline.org
This much-reprinted article is often treated as if it reports research: it does not, contra, for
example, Adam Graycar, have findings (Graycar, 1998, p. 2).
It should be noted that while zero tolerance is usually equated with law enforcement, Wilson
and Kellings Broken windows suggested a broader order-maintenance strategy, not least

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16

17

18

19

20

21
22
23
24

because some of the targeted behaviour was not illegal and because some of the police methods
advocated to deal with disorder were unlawful.
While usually a metaphor, broken windows is sometimes used literally, in claims that environmental decay leads to social disorder, and then to more serious crime: see, for example,
Wilsons foreword to Kelling and Coles, 1996, p. xv.
See For Bloomberg, the crime rate keeps falling, New York Times, June 10, 2003 and Mayor
Michael R. Blomberg outlines public safety accomplishments in 2003, NYC Press Release #35903, December 15, 2003. As Sherman and Eck comment, The value of policing focused on risk
factors is the most powerful conclusion reached from three decades of research (2002, p. 295).
See MacDonald, 2000; Kelling and Sousa, 2001. The latter describe Karmens book as probably the most thorough study of the issue yet. It certainly raises all the relevant issues.
However, they dismiss it by commenting some of the interpretations and conclusions are
questionable (2001, p. 22), and plough ahead with their demonstration that broken windows
was the key factor.
NB: Kellings dismissal of this is linked to an aetiological dispute. He suggests that critics think
crime is a product of structural factors and therefore it cant be shaped by policing. Although
finding some support in Mannings rhetoric, this is theoretically misconceived: the fact that a
social activity is structurally produced does not mean that intervention is impossible (Karmen,
2001, pp. 261262). What is really at issue here is an attempt to devalue social explanations in
favour of behaviourist explanation: see below.
It is instructive to note the similarities between Police win war in drug capital: Puccini
success, Daily Telegraph (Sydney), April 20, 1998, and Heroin hotspot comes clean, Sydney
Morning Herald, January 21, 2002.
See Sherman (1995) for a spirited defence of random control trials in criminology.
But cf. Homel (1994) for a careful critique of wholesale rejection of deterrence.
For the definitive analysis, see Scarman, 1981, paras. 4.594.60.
See Hay Group (200002). As the Hay Group reports, it is true that Crime reduction is a
critical indicator of Service performance in keeping with community and stakeholder expectations. However, the long-term sustainability of the Service as a high-performance organisation requires a concurrent emphasis on the reform process to build a corruption-resistant
Service. Without strengthening the Services foundations, short-term benefits derived from
crime reduction results are likely to plateau (2000, p. i). As a result, corruption resistance is
likely to be weakened (2000, p. 285). It is, incidentally, a disgrace that an audit process which
was vital to the Wood Commissions vision of reform should be maligned, muffled and ignored
because its findings have been politically inconvenient for the NSW Government.

Acknowledgments
An earlier version of this article was given as a public lecture to the Royal Society
for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce. It draws on research
funded by the Australian Research Council, grant # A59917112, From zero tolerance to the new policing. I am grateful for comments to Associate Professor Lisa
Maher, Dr Don Weatherburn, and the journals two anonymous reviewers.

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