De‐policing and homicide

• Published date: 01 February 2019
• Date: 01 February 2019
• Author: Peter Neyroud
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/1745-9133.12425

DOI: 10.1111/1745-9133.12425

POLICY ESSAY

DE-POLICING AND THE HOMICIDE RAISE

De-policing and homicide

Applying evidence and ethics to the “de-policing” debate

Peter Neyroud

University of Cambridge

Correspondence

PeterNeyroud, Jerry Lee Centre for Experimental Criminology, Institute of Criminology, University of Cambridge, Sidgwick

Avenue,Cambridge, U.K. CB3 9DA.

Email:pwn22@cam.ac.uk

Whether and to what extent the police can affect homicide rates is obviously a key debate about the

effectiveness of public policing. In their article, Richard Rosenfeldand Joel Wallman (2019, this issue)

seek to explore this issue by examining the relationship between a phenomenon they describe as “de-

policing” and the homicide rate. Their measure for the extent of policing activity or its converse, “de-

policing,” is the global arrest rate across a selected group of North American cities. They raise many

questions and seem to find few clear answers. Indeed, Rosenfeld and Wallman find little support for

the relationship between arrest and homicide rates. Instead, they devote their conclusions to a series of

wider implications about targeted patrol and legitimacy.

It is usual to write a response to such an academic article as that of Rosenfeld and Wallman (2019)

in the third person, adopting the standard distanced response of an academic. For me to respond to this

article, however, I need to drawon both my identities—first as a police officer and former police chief

and second as an academic, teaching and researching in policing. One reason forthe first is that, in a 30+

year career in four police departments, at the last two of which,Thames ValleyPolice1and the National

Policing Improvement Agency (NPIA),2I was the chief constable, I never measured effectiveness in

my department or the departments that I supported nationally in the NPIA by the simplistic yardstick

of arrest rates.

From a police practitioner's perspective, arrest is a process, not an outcome. Rosenfeld and Wallman

(2019) assert that arrests “constitute the punitive bulwark that maintains the credibility and effective-

ness of proactive policing.” The extent to which that statement is credible must surely depend on the

proportion of arrests that lead to charges. Indeed, Nagin, Slolow, and Lum (2015) argued that arrest

and prosecution are less important than the “sentinel” role of the police. Furthermore, although it may

well be correct to emphasize that arrest is a more important “teachable moment” (Tyler, 2003), it is

surely also the case that there must be a significant risk of prosecution and punishment; otherwise

arrest would seem likely to lose its deterrent sting from the perceived certainty of punishment. It is

primarily for these reasons that, in the United Kingdom, police are measured by the extent to which

offenses are “brought to justice” rather than by arrest or clearance rates, both of which are capable of

substantial manipulation (ONS, 2018; Parkinson, 2012).

Criminology & Public Policy. 2019;18:81–88. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/capp © 2019 American Society of Criminology 81