Policing the Streets in Europe

an International Comparative Study



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Introduction

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Introduction
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Policing the Streets in Europe

an International Comparative Study

November 2006

General Introduction

Police work has always been labour intensive. The technological evolution, through which a great deal of manual labour has disappeared, has not affected this labour intensiveness. Most police capacity is invested in everyday police patrol work, like emergency patrol and community beat patrol. The character of policing in a certain district depends on what police officers do (and do not do) while they are on patrol. Consequently, police management is managing what police officers do and do not do. Managing police work and improving the quality of policing therefore first of all requires a good insight in what police officers do. As Whitaker et al. (1980:61) observed: 'anyone assessing police performance needs to know about the police activities which constitute the relevant "performance"'. Furthermore, police management requires knowledge about what determines what police officers do. The present study will provide police management with a better insight in these issues. Since it is an international comparative study, it also provides police management with a better insight in differences between (the organization of) policing in their home country and (the organization of) policing abroad. The research project 'Policing the Streets in Europe' (PSE-research) builds on the longitudinal study 'Policing the Streets in The Netherlands' (Stol 1996, Stol et al 2004), which was funded by the Dutch Ministry of Interior (1996) and the Dutch Foundation for Police and Science (2004). The actual research project 'Policing the Streets in Europe' is a collaboration between:

Method of research: observation

What we know about everyday police patrol work is mainly based on the information police officers file in computer systems. The officers note what they have done, but not everything, or better said: the most not. Police involvement with serious incidents is fairly well documented. But not much is known about what officers undertake if they are not working on serious matters - which is usually the case. This means that it is unclear how officers are engaged in their routine patrol work and thus what style of policing the police give to the community they serve. Are officers enterprising or do they wait until they are called upon? How often do they speak to a citizen about a violation or just stop for a chat? How frequently do they take a repressive action? What is the proportion between crime control and rendering assistance? In what respect does community beat patrol differ from emergency patrol? Does patrol work differ from place to place and if so, why? What determines the character of patrol work? Bayley (1985:113) mentions four sources that can provide us with information about the character of every day police work: observation of police officers at work, activity reports by individual officers, activity files maintained collectively by police units, and reports of calls for assistance from the public. 'The best of these', he continues, 'is observation of police officers at work, because it is the most direct and the least self-interested.' The present research therefore is based on 'systematic social observation' (Reiss 1979:285). This is a technique where observers observe and record what officers are doing, according to explicit procedures that permit replication.

Observations are carried out in:

Main questions

This study is about everyday police patrol work, emergency patrol as well as community beat patrol. Emergency patrol is police patrol work that is carried out by two uniformed police officers in a marked police car. Their basic assignment is to supervise their beat area and react to citizen calls. Community beat patrol is carried out by a community beat officer. His or her basic assignment is to supervise a not too large neighbourhood and establish and maintain social relationships between the police and the public. This study will provide an insight in what police officers do on a routine basis while supervising the community. Police patrol work in several countries will be systematically observed and compared. The study is built up around five main questions:
  1. How is police patrol work organized (formal structures)?
  2. What does police patrol work involve on a day to day basis (emergency patrol as well as community beat patrol)?
  3. How are the two types of police work interconnected?
  4. What are differences between police work in different places / different countries?
  5. How can these differences be explained?
The research is also concerned with information use because police patrol work heavily depends on the officers' knowledge and on the additional information they can obtain from, for instance, their colleagues or computer systems. The second main question ('What does police patrol work involve?') therefore includes the question which role information from different sources plays in police patrol work (cf. Stol 1996). With regard to information use, attention is also given to the information provided during briefings.

Previous research

Of course police patrol work has been observed by social scientists before. In the qualitative tradition we find for example anthropological, ethnographically tinted studies of police culture, such as by Holdaway (1980) and Young (1991) in Great Britain, Reuss-Ianni (1983) in the United States, Behr (1993) in Germany, Holmberg (1999) in Denmark and the classic study by Punch (1978, 1979) in the Netherlands. Studies in the quantitative tradition might be based on self report, such as in the Netherlands in 1988 (PKP 1988a, 1988b) or on emergency room data or police journals, such as in the studies by Hauge and Stabell (1975) in Norway, Dreher and Feltes (1996) in Germany and the international comparison study by Bayley (1985), with data from India, Japan, Singapore, Sri Lanka, France, Great Britain, the Netherlands, Norway and the United States. In the present study police patrol work is described in quantitative as well as qualitative terms. Quantifying helps in making comparisons, qualitative data is used in order to understand the statistical picture of patrol work. As part of the research project 'Policing the Streets in The Netherlands' (Stol 1996, Stol et al 2004) several studies have been carried out using similar procedures for observing and recording police patrol work. The data of these studies are filed in one database. At present this database includes data from 21 observational studies between 1991 and 2003 concerning 5.490 observed incidents.

Surplus Value of an International Comparison

In the field of policing an international comparative study grounded on systematic observations has never been carried out before. Comparing the situation in a country with that in others, sheds light on the specific characteristics of policing in that country. By looking across borders, in other words, police management do not only learn about policing in other countries: they also learn what are the distinctive characteristics of policing in their home country. The participating countries thus help each other to better understand police work in their own country by exchanging pictures of everyday police practice. Consequently this international comparative study provides police management with a better mutual understanding about police patrol work, something that might also contribute to future collaboration between European countries. Last but not least, this international comparative study must help to gain insight into one of the core problems of police management: the question what determines what is involved in patrol work. The preliminary results of the observational study will be presented in a written document shortly after the fieldwork is finished. Furthermore the results can be presented during a meeting with police officers and/or police management. The police may use this information to discuss their profession and improve police patrol work.

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