Collaborative Research on Police and Criminal Interaction

这个项目的目的是增加我们对阻止犯罪行为的方法的理解。这是对社区结构对警察和罪犯之间互动的影响的系统研究，描述这种互动所需的适当聚集水平，以及犯罪对警察制裁的反应和警察对犯罪行为模式的反应之间发生的滞后时间。在这个合作项目中，dr。Kohfeld和Sprague通过一种测量程序来调查警察和罪犯之间的相互作用，这种测量程序可以解释反应的不同时间模式。他们为进行这些分析而开发的独特而丰富而详细的数据集来自圣路易斯大都会警察局。数据集的时间跨度从1970年到1982年，其特征是非常精细的时间结构——犯罪发生的单位是小时，逮捕的单位是天——以及非常精细的地理结构——每次犯罪和每次逮捕的地点都由X-Y坐标确定，可以定位为人口普查街区、街区群和区域。Drs。Kohfeld和Sprague利用一种创新的基于地理的软件程序进行图形显示和分析，以帮助他们在不同人口条件下检查犯罪和警察的相互作用。通过模拟罪犯和警察在事件层面上对彼此的反应，该项目有可能在我们对威慑过程的了解方面取得重大进展，这对于理解法律的社会控制和执法功能至关重要。在社会背景下模拟这种行动-反应过程将解释为什么刑事司法系统在某些地方比在其他地方运行得更好或不同，以及为什么犯罪在某些地方被展示或可以更有效地阻止。

This project is intended to increase our understanding of ways to deter criminal action. It is a systematic study of the effects of neighborhood structure on the interaction between police and criminals, the proper level of aggregation necessary to delineate this interaction, and the lag time that occurs between criminal responsiveness to police sanctions and police responses to criminal behavior patterns. In this collaborative project, Drs. Kohfeld and Sprague investigate the mutual interaction between police and criminals by means of a measurement procedure that accounts for the differential time pattern of response. The uniquely rich and detailed data set they develop for carrying out these analyses is drawn from the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department. The data set spans the time period 1970 through 1982 and is characterized by a very fine time structure-- the unit for crime occurrence is hours and the unit for arrests is days--and a very fine geographic structure--the place of each crime and each arrest is identified by X-Y coordinates and can be located as to census blocks, blockgroups, and tracts. Drs. Kohfeld and Sprague utilize an innovative geo-based software program for graphic display and analysis to aid them in their examination of criminal and police interactions under varying demographic conditions. By modelling both the offender and police reactions to one another at the incident level, the project has the potential to make a major advance in our knowledge of deterrence processes, which is central to understanding the social control and enforcement functions of law. Modelling this action-reaction process within social contexts will explain why the criminal justice system works better or differently in some places than in others and why crime is exhibited or can be deterred more effectively in some sites.