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The Different Crime Solving Styles of Police Agencies across the United States.: A Latent Class Analysis of Criminal Investigation Goals

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Abstract

This study employed latent class analysis (LCA) to identify distinct subgroups of U.S. police agencies, each having a similar pattern of criminal investigation goals. Using a nationally representative sample of 1746 U.S. police agencies, including municipal, county sheriffs, and State police, this analysis yielded four subgroups: professional (32.5% of the sample), enforcing (25.2%), servicing (20.5%), and avoiding (21.8%). Results indicate that organizational level predictors of police policies and practices in the criminal investigation process, such as the roles of the public, investigative activities of patrol officers, management of detective work, and forensic support, vary across subgroups. All four variables were significant in predicting membership in the professional agencies when compared to the avoiding agencies. Also, the odds of belonging to the enforcing agencies, compared to avoiding agencies, were significantly increased for agencies with management of detective work and forensic support variables. Furthermore, the servicing agency class membership was significantly related to only forensic support variables, compared to the avoiding agencies. Finally, the mean clearance rates for robberies varied across classes, and the rate was highest in the professional agencies. Police agencies have their own crime-solving methods that predominantly reflect the organizational philosophy and values and also lead to differences in crime clearance rates.

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Notes

  1. Retrieved from https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2018/crime-in-the-u.s.-2018/topic-pages/robbery and https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2018/crime-in-the-u.s.-2018/topic-pages/burglary

  2. Questionnaires were mailed to 49 State police agencies and 44 were returned; Hawaii is the only state without one. Thirty six out of the 44 State police agencies responded that they employed investigators who generally wear civilian clothes and perform primarily investigative duties. The reason for inclusion of the State police agencies in the study is that they also have their investigative missions, personnel/units, and responsibility for solving crime in addition to general law enforcement functions such as highway patrol. They may cover both rural and urban municipalities.

  3. It would be also interesting to use the Class 1 (professional) group as the reference category as this is the ideal police agency that exhibits the most promising traits (and highest clearance rates), or to run comparing Class 1 (professional) to Class 2 (servicing) and Class 2 (servicing) to Class 3 (enforcing). For a straightforward comparison, however, we decided to narrow the scope of analytical inquiry down to a simpler empirical comparison using one reference group rather than multiple ones.

  4. The term “de-policing” here is used to as describe the “cutting back on the police” as a way to facilitate more self-help by the citizens themselves without police involvement when they need to resolve conflicts with others. Here, it does not mean officers shirking from active police work in reaction to the negative publicity such as civil unrest due to the police use of deadly of force.

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  1. Yung Hyeock Lee and Sujung Cho contributed equally to this work.

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  1. Department of Police Science, KonKuk University, 268 ChunWon-DaeRo, ChungCheongBuk-Do, ChungJu, 380-701, South Korea

    Yung Hyeock Lee

  2. Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, IL, USA

    Sujung Cho

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Lee, Y.H., Cho, S. The Different Crime Solving Styles of Police Agencies across the United States.: A Latent Class Analysis of Criminal Investigation Goals. Am J Crim Just 46, 496–527 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12103-020-09558-w

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