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Columbia Law School

Law Enforcement and Corrections

Police officers

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Full-Text Articles in Law

Why We Need Police, Justin Mccrary, Deepak Premkumar Jan 2019

Why We Need Police, Justin Mccrary, Deepak Premkumar

Faculty Scholarship

This chapter discusses the essential role that the police have in deterring and reducing crimes, particularly the most violent and costly ones to society, such as murder. We begin by providing a brief overview of deterrence theory before discussing the empirical evidence on the efficacy of police staffing and various policing strategies on crime reduction. Using a framework developed in Weisburd and Eck (2004), we quickly evaluate the model of standard policing and then mainly focus on evidence behind three current policing practices: hot spots, problem- oriented, and proactive. Finally, we use the empirical evidence of police staffing to provide …


Corruption By Card: How Police Association Cards Allow Law Enforcement To Cloak Self-Dealing As Discretion​, Andrew Kuntz Jan 2018

Corruption By Card: How Police Association Cards Allow Law Enforcement To Cloak Self-Dealing As Discretion​, Andrew Kuntz

Center for the Advancement of Public Integrity (Inactive)

Law enforcement abuse their discretion by providing favorable treatment to individuals that demonstrate a relationship to the law enforcement community. Private organizations affiliated with law enforcement have capitalized on this by creating association cards which are distributed by members to friends, family members, and others. Card holders present the card during encounters with law enforcement to signal that they have a relationship with law enforcement, with the expectation that they will receive favorable treatment. Though the cards have no formal authority behind them, strong norms in the law enforcement community punish officers that fail to honor them. Because the cards …