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Policing Juveniles: Trends, Theories, and Implications for Public Safety

Explore the historical influence of policing on juvenile crime, evolving trends in policing strategies, competing theories, operational and theoretical questions, and implications for public safety practices.

kristinross
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Policing Juveniles: Trends, Theories, and Implications for Public Safety

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  1. Policing Juveniles Class 22

  2. POLICING • Historically, police always have had significant influence on juvenile crime • Allocation of police resources to particular types of crime and particular neighborhoods • Police influence charging decisions, with collateral effects on case disposition • Police help shape discourse on juvenile crime • Police are most frequent and intense form of interaction of adolescents with law, police influence socialization via attributions of procedural fairness and legitimacy

  3. Trends in Policing • (Post 1950) Strategies for policing youth crime changed over time • Social work model • Watchman model • Significant changes beginning in 1970s • Criticisms of police tactics from the preceding decade led to adoption of reactive model, retreat from preventive activities, • No differentiation of youth crime from other serious crime • Emergence of widespread gang activity in 1980s led to creation of specialized units for gangs • Enforcement, prosecution

  4. Current Era • Policing more closely with emerging theory and integrated in law reform movements • “Broken Windows” theory and “Order Maintenance” approaches • “Zero Tolerance” policies and practices • Influences of these theories on juvenile enforcement • Chicago Gang Ordinance • Theoretical bases? • Not just OMP or BW, but disruption of social networks and elimination of opportunities for criminal activity • Social norms – social influence model

  5. Competing Theories of Policing • Differentiation in styles of policing • Boston • Interaction of ministers and police • Replication efforts nationally • San Diego and Chicago CAPS program • Deliberative “street level” democratic experiments • New York • Broken Windows and Order Maintenance

  6. Only Boston has an adolescent-specific model • Targeted at gang violence • Neighborhood-specific • Developmental message with attention to interventionist and preventive principles • Causal Claim • Several publications claiming reduction is statistically significant, keyed to timing of intervention (1994) • Competing theoretical explanations within Boston • Deterrence • Legitimacy and compliance

  7. The Gang Ordinance • S1735 and CGO Frameworks • 3 or more persons • “Loitering” and other collective behavior that may contribute to enumerated (serious) crimes • Temporal frame (continuity of behaviors within a five-year span) • Spatial component (Chicago – public place)

  8. Issues • Balance of interests of “law abiders” versus “law breakers” within community • Liberty v order • Reinforced by social science • Reflection of will of citizens to establish constitutional thresholds for police action necessary to ensure their safety • “Courts should adjust the level of constitutional scrutiny applied to a policing technique based on the breadth of its impact on liberty in the community” • Rejects claim that the generalized impact of a statute or ordinance paramount within a jurisdiction • Rejection of case law of the preceding decades • Prior to Court challenge, over 45,000 “move on” orders were issued, and a comparable number of arrests made for violation of these orders. • Effects on crime rates? Violence rates? Drug selling?

  9. Theory • OMP, Broken Windows • Social norms, social influence dynamics • Restore and strengthen social organization • Constitutional Questions • Vagueness (Papachristou) • “Without an apparent purpose” clause • Original form did not include paragraph 3, the list of enumerated offenses, and targeted broad range of behaviors (e.g., appearance of drug dealing) • Revised statute narrows specific crime list, similar to S.1735. • Assumes that all behavior of gang members is gang behavior • Search (Terry) • Orders could translate into searches or frisks • Reduces “reasonable suspicion” standard that regulates police detention of citizens • Equal protection • Neighborhood boundaries • Adequacy of democratic process for threshold setting

  10. Operational Questions • Knowledge by police of who is a gang member? • Imperfect knowledge, subject to bias or stereotyping • Mitigated by police training and managerial oversight? • Theoretical Questions • Validity of Broken Windows Theory and other causal claims • The alternative configuration of a social norms claim from the Boston experience • Collateral consequences for adolescent perceptions of law and legal actors • Legitimacy, legal socialization effects

  11. Implications for the Next Epidemic of Juvenile Crime • Do police matter? • Does what police do matter? • Or, does it only the concentration of police matter? • Deterrence perspectives • What will you do when you are on the City Council and an ordinance is proposed?

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