Elder Abuse: How Protective Behaviors and Risk Factors Affect the Course of Abuse

A 2003 National Research Council report decried the lack of scientifically rigorous research in the field of elder abuse. The report called for more information on how interventions affect the course of abuse and studies that use prospective designs to minimize victim forgetting and other problems inherent in retrospective designs.

The Police Foundation and the National Center for Victims of Crime are conducting research designed to respond to these concerns. The study is being conducted by the Police Foundation, a national nonprofit organization whose mission is to improve the quality of public safety and the National Center for Victims of Crime, the nation’s leading resource and advocacy organization dedicated to serving individuals, families, and communities harmed by crime. Our study envisions a prospective longitudinal study of the course of abuse using both a community sample and a sample of persons who have used elder abuse services in Dane County, Wisconsin. We would conduct two sets of interviews with respondents six months apart to determine: (a) the proportion of cases in which abuse escalates, maintains, or desists; (b) which risk factors are associated with the onset of abuse and with its persistence over time; (c) which victims of elder abuse receive assistance from law enforcement and community service programs, which do not, and why; and (d) how reporting abuse to the police, criminal justice actions, and other protective measures taken by victims affect the course of abuse.

The results of the work will give police, criminal justice officials, and community service providers a better idea of which victims are at risk of continued abuse so they can better target services to those most in need. Results will also provide a better understanding of the reasons why elder abuse victims do not come forward to report abuse or seek help, and provide insights into how to reach these victims.

Examining the Effect of Different Case Screening Practices Upon Domestic Violence Recidivism

Widespread adoption of pro-arrest policies by police and adoption of tougher prosecutor stances in domestic violence cases have seriously taxed the resources of prosecutors in the last decade. One way in which many prosecutors have adapted to the strain is to decline to file arrests in which victims expressed unwillingness to cooperate with prosecutors. Today, there are widely divergent views among prosecutors about whether cases ought to be filed regardless of whether that is what victims seem to want.

Safe Horizon and the Police Foundation are conducting research in two sites in New York City where prosecutors have adopted different screening policies: Kings County (Brooklyn) and the County of the Bronx. Since the sites are comparable in many other ways (including police arrest policies, court rules and administration, and state laws and requirements), the project will have a strong quasi-experimental design. We plan to track a sample of cases that the prosecutor declined to prosecute in one borough (Bronx) and a sample of similar cases that were prosecuted in the other borough (Brooklyn). We will test for differences between the samples in recidivism, stalking behavior, women’s satisfaction with the justice system, utilization of victim services, and allocation of prosecutor and court resources.

Eyewitness Identification Field Studies (EWID)

Mistaken eyewitness identification is the leading cause of wrongful conviction of innocent people in the United States. Scientists have shown that there are system-based factors (i.e., factors within the control of the police) that empirically elevate the risk of identification error, and in response have proposed laboratory-tested procedures that can reduce drastically wrongful convictions based on erroneous or biased eyewitness identifications. These include double-blind administration, improved instructions, better lineup construction, and recording confidence statements from the eyewitnesses at the time of the identification.

The American Judicature Society and its Institute of Forensic Science and Public Policy have partnered with the Center for Modern Forensic Practice of the John Jay College of Criminal Justice (CUNY), the Center for Problem-Oriented Policing, the Innocence Project at Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law (Yeshiva University), and the Police Foundation to implement an unprecedented and groundbreaking series of national eyewitness identification field studies.

The field studies are restricted to photo-lineups. With the assistance of a software development company, the EWID partnership created a Remote Lineup Application, which enables scientists to examine the sequential and simultaneous lineup questions. The computer-based method guarantees that the procedure consistently follows the prescribed protocol. The protocol (e.g., pre-lineup instructions, questions posed to witnesses, etc.) follows a pristine template developed by police and scientists over the last eighteen months. Additionally, the use of laptops will improve the accuracy of data collection and respond to concerns about extra personnel costs incurred in blind administration.

The Police Foundation is collaborating with the partners throughout the field studies and has developed the methodology for assessing case outcomes (qualitative and quantitative) after the proposed lineup protocols are carried out in the field. The foundation convened a panel of subject matter experts (retired judges, district attorneys, defense attorneys, and police officers) in order to develop objective, reliable, and valid criteria for evaluating the strength of the cases in each site. The foundation is tracking cases for one year to examine the relationship between lineup presentation and outcomes (both case dispositions and evidentiary strength). Finally, the foundation will assist in writing the final report and disseminating its findings.

The Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department in North Carolina served as the first site for the study. The study is now underway in Tucson, Arizona, and will begin soon in San Diego, California. Funding for this project has come from The JEHT Foundation and the Open Society Institute.

The Impact of Law Enforcement Shift Practices and Extra-Duty Employment on Various Health, Safety, Performance, and Quality-of-Life Measures

The 24/7 operational demands of a police officer's job can have serious consequences. A significant body of scientific and operational literature clearly establishes that around-the-clock operations can degrade safety, performance, health, mood, and alertness.

According to Vila (1996), fatigue and associated decrements in alertness, performance, and mood could be manipulated administratively by controlling the working hours of police, as is done in other occupations. This experimental study is designed to do just that.

Utilizing a randomized experimental design in three sites, this project seeks to evaluate the risks and benefits of current scheduling practices to more effectively manage shift work and non-standard schedules in police operations. Recognizing that other factors, such as overtime and off-duty employment, may influence the extent of the effects of shift length and schedule, we will collect data on and examine these factors as well.

As part of this study, the Police Foundation conducted a random phone survey of police agencies in November 2005.  The purpose of this phone survey was to determine the proportion of agencies having various shift schedules (e.g., 8, 10, or 12 hours in length) for their field patrol officers and the extent to which agencies still employed rotating shifts.  See the survey results at Law Enforcement Shift Schedules: Results of a Random Nationwide Survey of Police Agencies

National Survey of Records Management Systems

Records Management Systems (RMS) are central to all record keeping and analysis in that they allow law enforcement agencies to capture, track, and assess incident-related data. An RMS is one of the most costly investments a law enforcement agency can make. Yet to date, there is no known data on the actual costs associated with these systems, the extent to which agencies have fully functioning RMS or are benefiting from these systems, or any other practical information that could help to inform the field. The implementation of RMS is complex, so knowing what an agency should expect, and/or how an agency could better plan for the acquisition and implementation of RMS would be highly beneficial.

This applied research project will enhance local law enforcement community policing efforts by surveying the field about their experiences with Records Management Systems (RMS), if any, and conducting several in-depth site visits. The results of this process will be: (1) the development of a monograph on the state of affairs nationally with regard to RMS based on the survey results; (2) an RMS Technology Guide for use by all law enforcement agencies; and (3) a best practices report on RMS acquisition and implementation practices with lessons learned from those who have been through the process.

The Role of Civilian Police Forces in Post-Conflict Peacekeeping Missions

We have begun to address the role that local police forces play in international peacekeeping missions during periods of great civil unrest and instability. The changes in the operational models used in international peacekeeping missions from the early 1990s led to a broadening and deepening of the role of civilian police authorities in order to promote democratic principles and the rule of law. This model has evolved from primary reliance on military operations to greater emphasis on the role that civilian police forces can play in establishing stability in those regions. Given the deficiency in understanding civilian police reform and the mixed results to-date, major concerns have arisen regarding the role of civilian police deployments, the service delivery capacity of those agencies, and their strategic performance. The focus of civilian police deployments in the future will be to provide both security and sustained local police reform.

We will focus on the strategic performance and achievements of at least 21 UN and EU missions between 1999 and 2007, by devising conceptual civilian police reform and service delivery models from fields including policing, organizational and change management, and capacity development to understand how policing should be delivered in transition and post-conflict nations. Using information from previous civilian police missions, we will analyze extant findings and develop new frameworks for understanding the police role in peacekeeping and peace building. The research goals are to (1) identify the appropriate role(s) for civilian police in intervention or post-conflict missions; (2) identify the appropriate civilian policing service delivery and reform/capacity development model(s) to be utilized in intervention and post-conflict environments, and (3) identify the appropriate policing performance measures and frameworks to be utilized in the intervention and post-conflict environments.

The applied goal of the research is to use this evidence and resulting analysis to devise responsive operational tools and policies that will support the effective use of deployed civilian police in their service delivery and capacity development and therefore improve peace-building outcomes through increasing post-conflict security, stability, and development.

Smart Police Deployment: Evaluating the Use of Automated Vehicle Locator Technologies in Policing

The finding of the Kansas City Preventive Patrol Experiment (KCPPE) (Kelling, Pate, Dieckman, & Brown, 1974) that routine patrol did not affect crime has had ramifications on policing that continue today. 

Currently, police agencies have little ability to assess the effectiveness of their deployment strategies in relationship to their goals.  Developments in technology, such as the Automated Vehicle Locator (AVL) – a global positioning device that can be placed in a vehicle for monitoring its location across real time/space – promise to provide an invaluable tool to inform CompStat and other directed patrol strategies (e.g., hot spots policing) in police agencies through measurement of police presence at all places and at all times.

Although GIS are in use in 63 percent of larger police agencies, we still know little about where the police actually are when not responding to calls for service.  Do the police simply “chase crime” across a city, or does concentrated police presence have long term crime prevention benefits with little displacement of crime? Is there a “diffusion of crime control benefits” when police presence is high at certain locations? 

Our study will examine the reliability and utility of the use of AVL technology to quantify police presence.  If the data are reliable, the study would next examine the impact of police presence on crime in specific geographic areas in Dallas, Texas and, more important, test whether AVL can be an effective tool for deploying officers. The Dallas Police Department has AVL technology in almost all of its patrol vehicles and has implemented a Compstat program that focuses on directing patrol to specific problem areas.