Book Review: Kooi, B. R. (2007). Policing Public Transportation: An Environmental and Procedural Evaluation of Bus Stops. New York: LFB Scholarly. 190 pp

• Date: 01 September 2009
• Published date: 01 September 2009
• DOI: 10.1177/0734016808328770
• Subject Matter: Articles

456 Criminal Justice Review

correspondence. Following visual inspection of the variables, descriptive statistics are dis-

cussed. The second stage of the analysis begins with multivariate analysis to determine the

best fitting models for each crime type. Any significant relationships identified in these

models are graphed over time and modeled once but with the decomposed dependent vari-

ables to assess whether previously identified relationships affect one series more than the

other. Using two analyses, the author finds a difference between two measures. Then the

author investigates the reasons for the differences using three hypotheses.

The first hypothesis is that the convergence between reported victimizations and police-

recorded crime is positively related to changes in policing, such as the implementation of

technology, the increasing use of computerization, and changes in organizational structure.

The second hypothesis is that change in the population’s composition has affected both the

victim pool and the offender pool in such a way as to contribute to an increasing number

of crimes being reported to or recorded by the police. As the pool of potential victims

increases in age or changes by sex or racial composition, the extent to which the population

is willing to contact the police might change as well. Fluctuations in the population of

certain groups, such as young males, the number of recent movers, persons with higher

educational attainment, and the percentage of households without a telephone affect both

the victim and offender pool, contributing to an increase in the number of crimes being

reported to and recorded by police. The third hypothesis is that perceptions of crime, vio-

lence, and support of the criminal justice system have changed over time such that there is

now greater agreement regarding definition of and response to crime. Fourth, the conver-

gence may be an artifact of a methodological design change in the NCVS. Catalano’s

conclusion regarding this issue through a multivariate regression model is the change in

domestic violence measurement. According to Catalano’s findings, the changed policy

toward domestic violence is the most significant factor leading to the different results of

the two crime measures.

This publication is a good attempt to explain how policy change affects crime measure-

ment and overall trends. However, it would have been better if the author had shown more

empirical researches related to her hypotheses as to why the three variables should be

selected. That is, lack of empirical research before setting up the research question and

hypothesis is one of the limitations. However, this book is still a good example of the dif-

ferences between two sets of official crime data in the United States using graphical tools.

I believe that interpreting the differences between the measures of crime is new. Moreover,

I do not think the use of the graphs is limited to criminologists or criminology students.

MiRang Park

University of Florida

Kooi, B. R. (2007). Policing Public Transportation: An Environmental and Procedural

Evaluation of Bus Stops. New York: LFB Scholarly. 190 pp.

DOI: 10.1177/0734016808328770

Mass transit is too important to our society for its safety and security to be ignored.

Brandon R. Kooi’s book, Policing Public Transportation: An Environmental and Procedural