Evaluating Reactive Policing in St. Louis, MO

• In Event: Applied Police Research

Abstract

The ways in which officers react to crime may be as important, if not more important, than proactive policing strategies. According to this perspective, increasing crime clearance rates might lower violent crime, particularly in disadvantaged minority communities. While it has generally been found that specific victim, offender, and neighborhood characteristics on their own impact the likelihood that a crime is cleared, few studies have examined the combined impact of individual- and neighborhood-level factors on case clearance likelihood. This project uses data from the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department to examine the characteristics of individuals and communities that are associated with firearm-related crime clearance. Multi-level modeling is used to disentangle the effects of both individual-level and neighborhood-level characteristics on clearance.

Author

• Paige Vaughn, University of Missouri - St. Louis