What do police do and where do they do it?
| Author | Kathryn E Wuschke,Christopher Rattenbury,Martin A Andresen,Andrew Richards,Paul J Brantingham |
| Published date | 01 March 2018 |
| DOI | 10.1177/1461355717748973 |
| Date | 01 March 2018 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Article
What do police do and where
do they do it?
Kathryn E Wuschke
Division of Criminology & Criminal Justice, Portland State University, USA
Martin A Andresen
Institute for Canadian Urban Research Studies and School of Criminology, Simon Fraser University, Canada
Paul J Brantingham
Institute for Canadian Urban Research Studies and School of Criminology, Simon Fraser University, Canada
Christopher Rattenbury
Port Moody Police Department, Canada
Andrew Richards
Port Moody Police Department, Canada
Abstract
Recent research in the economics of policing has been concerned with what the police do and how much time they spend
on those activities. Some of this research has highlighted that, based on the number of incidents, “crime” comprises only
*20% of the police workload with much of the remaining 80% addressing public safety concerns. In this article, we
deconstruct the nature of police incidents within a suburban city. We show that police expenditures, relative to the entire
municipal budget, have been relatively constant over 30 years and that the volume of police activity has also remained
relatively constant, although with a slight increasing trend. We show that the most of the decrease in crime can be
attributed to population growth in this suburban city and thattheplacesinwhichthepoliceundertakedifferent
activities vary.
Keywords
Economics of policing, police activity, crime; role of police
Submitted 24 Aug 2017, accepted 31 Oct 2017
Introduction
Research using police data most often takes the form of
analyzing actual criminal incidents; these analyses may
search for patterns over time or space, victim patterns or
offender patterns. Recently, however, there has been
increased interest in what the police actually do. This
research tends to fall within “economics of policing”
research, which is concerned with fiscal accountability,
operational costs, operational accountability, increasing
police resource demands, and decreasing police budgets
(Griffiths et al., 2015). Although a large issue in and of
itself (see Kempa, 2014 and Public Safety Canada, 2014
for issues and discussion points around the economics of
policing), part of what is needed is more data in more
Corresponding author:
Martin A Andresen, Institute for Canadian Urban Research Studies and
School of Criminology, Simon Fraser University, 8888 University Drive,
Burnaby, British Columbia V5A 1S6, Canada.
Email: andresen@sfu.ca
International Journalof
Police Science & Management
2018, Vol. 20(1) 19–27
ªThe Author(s) 2017
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DOI: 10.1177/1461355717748973
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