Policing explained in a few graphs

As a new semester starts and I look forward to teaching a new group of undergraduates, I am reminded that some of them have not had extensive exposure to law enforcement or policing research. How then to encapsulate the essence of what is useful to know about policing in a brief enough format? These are some of the graphs I use to help my new students understand the challenges of policing in the 21st century.

1. Policing is overwhelmingly a social service

Graph no. 1. This is from the second edition of my book “Intelligence-Led Policing“. The area of each box represents the volume of incidents in 2015 in the City of Philadelphia (about 1.5m in total). These incidents can come from verified calls for service from the public (something really took place as confirmed by a police officer), or from officer-initiated events (such as drug incidents). 

What is clear from the graphic is that violent crime plays such a small part in the day-to-day demands on police departments, even in Philadelphia, one of the more troubled cities in the U.S. While the media frets over homicide, it can be seen in the lower right as one of the least noticeable boxes in the graph. The majority of the police department’s workload is the day-to-day minutiae of life in a big city.

2. Impacting early in the crime funnel is the key to public safety

Graph no. 2 is another image from my Intelligence-Led Policing book. The crime funnel represents what happens to a random selection of 1,000 crimes that affect the public (top bar). It shows the loss of cases through the criminal justice system. These are British national data derived from public records, but the comparisons to the U.S. are very similar. If you take a random selection of 1,000 crimes actually suffered by the public (violence, robbery, vehicle theft, residential burglary, theft and criminal damage) you can see that they only report 530 to the police, who in turn record just 43 percent of the original total.

Of these 429 events, 99 are detected (solved or cleared in some way) and of these, 60 end up with a day in court. The majority of those are found guilty or plead the same, but in the end only four of the events from the original 1,000 end up in a custodial sentence for the offender. This is an incarceration rate of 0.4% based on crime suffered by the community.

The main point here is that impacting higher in the crime funnel will be more effective because it affects the numbers below and affects a larger number of actual cases. Improving the detection rate will have an impact on prosecutions, pleas and incarceration, but only to a minimal level. Being prevention focused and changing the higher numbers is much more impactful. Consider if you could have a 10% change on one level. Where would it be most effective?

3: Public perception of the police has little to do with crime

Graph no. 3. Going back nearly 20 years, it is clear from the graph that violent crime in the U.S. has continued a decline right through to at least 2013. Things have changed in the last year or two but that isn’t the point here. Public perception in terms of confidence in the police does not seem to be tied to the crime rate. Confidence in the police is pretty high, especially compared to nearly every other occupation (except the medical field). After all in June this year, it was found that only 27% of Americans say they have “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in newspapers, so police are doing pretty well. The graph shows however that there isn’t a direct and easy correlation between the crime rate and confidence in the police. It is more complicated.Public confidence is more complicated than just crime reduction. This graph is from a book I wrote called “Reducing Crime: A Companion for Police Leaders” and is a crime reduction guide for mid- to senior-level police command staff.

4: Policing is changing drastically

Graph no. 4 isn’t even about policing, but it is about external policy impacts on policing. When I joined the police service in 1984 and started policing on the old H district in East London, we had to deal with a few behavioral health patients because we had St. Clement’s hospital mental health hospital a stone’s throw from the nick. So perhaps we were immune to the gradual change in the social structure of society, a change that has affected the U.S. as well. Graph no. 4 is from the U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.

30 years ago, nearly two-thirds of U.S. mental health spending was on inpatient and residential care: in other words, professionally trained carers. Over the last 30 years this has reduced to only be about one-third of national spending. As graph number 4 shows on the right, the corresponding increase has not been in outpatient treatment, but in retail prescription drugs. This has essentially shifted the supervision of people having a behavioral health crisis onto the community – and the police.

It is indicative of just one change in society that has made demands on the police. Police officers are not really trained to be mental health professionals, and yet society has demanded they take a role in the care and control of people with behavioral health crises because society seems unwilling to pay for appropriate professional care. Behavioral health is just one factor, and students are often able to consider many other areas where the police are now the lead agency in areas that were never originally police issues.

Source: This is from SAMHSA data and screen captured from a PowerPoint I use in when consulting and training police departments on intelligence-led policing.

5. Policing is increasingly a safer occupation

This is one graphic that I confess I didn’t create myself, but it tracks with my research on this area and mimics many similar charts online. It is sourced from the Officer Down memorial page. While things have changed in the last couple of years, the good news is that policing has become increasingly safer (as has society) in the U.S. over the last 30 years.

What I find interesting is that increases in police fatalities are linked to government policy changes that alter the role of police in society. The overarching point remains that policing has become a much safer occupation over the last 30 years or more. It now does not feature in the top 10 list of dangerous occupations (This next graph from WaPo isn’t counted in my list – it’s a freebie).

6: Policing is most effective when focused on specific people and places

OK, this one takes a bit to get your head around. Graph no. 6 is the Evidence-Based Policing Matrix from Cynthia Lum and colleagues has three dimensions and four symbols. The key symbol is the black circle – this indicates an effective intervention (white is ineffective, grey is a mixed result, and the red triangle is a harmful intervention). Where the black circles are most concentrated are in the areas where interventions focus proactive activity on places that are at the neighborhood level or smaller, or on people. This (and other evidence) suggests that general interventions that are applied across whole jurisdictions or cities are less effective.

The bottom line? Police interventions that actually reduce crime are locally focused and tailored to specific problems, not citywide interventions.

Are there more graphics that depict the reality of 21st Century policing? Of course. But these ones seem to be significant. Ping me if you have others you think are relevant and important.