Abstract
Crime statistics from the Indianapolis Police Department are interpreted inlight of news reports and interviews. A shift from proactive enforcement (vice, traffic, and juvenile arrests) to reactive enforcement (taking citizen crime reports) begins in the mid-1950s. If they do report offenses, police are blamed for failing to control crime. Eventually, if they fail to report offenses, they are chided for being unresponsive to citizens. Even homicide statistics get manipulated as police are caught in political cross-pressures. It is concluded that police would be better off if relieved of responsibility for defining the size and shape of the crime problem.
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The data for this study were gathered for the Governmental Responses to Crime Project, Northwestern University, funded under Grant No. 78 NI-AX-0096, National Institute of Justice, U.S. Department of Justice. Thanks for data collection go to Co-Field Director for Indianapolis Phil Parnell, and to Jean Kane, Joan Kane, and Mary Roth. Thanks, too, to Mary DeShong for manuscript preparation.
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Selke, W.L., Pepinsky, H.E. The politics of police reporting in Indianapolis, 1948–1978. Law Hum Behav 6, 327–342 (1982). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01044301
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01044301