Abstract:
Problem-oriented Policing (POP) was first introduced by Herman Goldstein in 1979. The
approach was one of a series of responses to a crisis in effectiveness and legitimacy in
policing that emerged in the 1970s and 1980s. Goldstein argued that police were not
being effective in preventing and controlling crime because they had become too focused
on the “means” of policing and had neglected the “goals” of preventing and controlling
crime and other community problems. Goldstein argued that the unit of analysis in
policing must become the “problem” rather than calls or crime incidents as was the case
during that period. POP has had tremendous impact on American policing, and is now
one of the most widely implemented policing strategies in the US.
To synthesize the extant problem-oriented policing evaluation literature and assess the
effects of problem-oriented policing on crime and disorder
Eligible studies had to meet three criteria: (1) the SARA model was used for a problemoriented
policing intervention; (2) a comparison group was included; (3) at least one
crime or disorder outcome was reported with sufficient data to generate an effect size.
The unit of analysis could be people or places.
Several strategies were used to perform an exhaustive search for literature fitting the
eligibility criteria. First, a keyword search was performed on an array of online abstract
databases. Second, we reviewed the bibliographies of past reviews of problem-oriented
policing. Third, we performed forward searches for works that have cited seminal
problem-oriented policing studies. Fourth, we performed hand searches of leading
journals in the field. Fifth, we searched the publications of several research and
professional agencies. Sixth, after finishing the above searches we e-mailed the list of
studies meeting our eligibility criteria to leading policing scholars knowledgeable in the
area of problem-oriented policing to ensure we had not missed any relevant studies.
For our ten eligible studies, we provide both a narrative review of effectiveness and a
meta-analysis. For the meta-analysis, we coded all primary outcomes of the eligible
studies and we report the mean effect size (for studies with more than one primary
outcome, we averaged effects to create a mean), the largest effect, and the smallest effect.
Because of the heterogeneity of our studies, we used a random effects model.
Based on our meta-analysis, overall problem-oriented policing has a modest but
statistically significant impact on reducing crime and disorder. Our results are consistent
when examining both experimental and quasi-experimental studies.
Conclusions:
We conclude that problem-oriented policing is effective in reducing crime and disorder,
although the effect is fairly modest. We urge caution in interpreting these results because
of the small number of methodologically rigorous studies on POP and the diversity of
problems and responses used in our eligible studies.
problem-oriented policing