Improving police effectiveness in ensuring justice

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/1745-9133.12458
• Author: John MacDonald,Anthony A. Braga
• Published date: 01 August 2019
• Date: 01 August 2019

DOI: 10.1111/1745-9133.12458

EDITORIAL INTRODUCTION

IMPROVING POLICE EFFECTIVENESS

Improving police effectiveness in ensuring justice

Anthony A. Braga1John MacDonald2

1Northeastern University

2University of Pennsylvania

Correspondence

AnthonyA. Braga, School of Criminology and Criminal Justice, Northeaster n University,204 Churchill Hall, 360 Huntington

Avenue,Boston, MA 02115.

Email:a.braga@nor theastern.edu

The ways in which citizens mobilize the police to enforce the law depends on their roles

as enforcers of the law. For example, a citizen may call the police in the role of victim

of crime or, as a witness of a crime against others. He may also complain about crim-

inal opportunities and situations, like gambling, in the community. And, finally, he may

complain about the quality and quantity of law enforcement. He may serve as both com-

plainant and informant for the police.

—Albert J. Reiss, Jr., The Police and the Public (1971: 84)

Communities expect police departments to be successful in pursuing a variety of goals including, but

not limited to, reducing crime and victimization, ensuring civility in public spaces, using their authority

in a fair and efficient manner, responding to emergency situations, using financial resources appropri-

ately,and delivering quality services that maint ain the satisfactionof citizens (Moore, 2002). In holding

criminal offenders accountable for their actions, police also play an important role in ensuring justice

and the morality of law (Durkheim, 1973). To some observers, achieving the principled goal of hold-

ing offenders to account is tantamount to achieving the practical goal of effectively controlling crime

(Bentham, 1948/1789; Wilson, 1983). Citizens believe that such actions deter and incapacitate crimi-

nals (Blumstein, Cohen, & Nagin, 1978). To many citizens, however, achieving justice is as important

as reducing crime and criminal victimization. A just society strives to ensure the apprehension, prose-

cution, and sentencing to some form of punishment for criminal offenders (Kant, 1964). Some suggest

that bringing offenders to justice is an important societal goal for the police regardless of its impacts on

crime and the costs that may be imposed on the innocent (see, e.g., Manski & Nagin, 2017). Holding

offenders accountable for their crimes can also provide some relief to victims and their families who

suffer physical injury, emotional trauma, and economic losses as a result of criminal transgressions.

Police initiate the criminal justice process by investigating crimes that they witness or, more com-

monly, that are reported to them by civilians and by arresting suspected offenders when they have

probable cause to do so. As police scholar Albert J. Reiss, Jr. (1971) suggested in the quote at the

Criminology & Public Policy. 2019;18:511–523. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/capp © 2019 American Society of Criminology 511