Results of the Kansas City Experiment

Kansas City Experiment
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Institution

The Kansas City Experiment
Results of the Kansas City Experiment
The Kansas City Experiment was conducted to test the validity of the assumption that police presence prevented people from committing a crime or improving the public feeling of security (Kelling, Pate, Dieckman & Brown, 1974). Three levels of controlled routine preventive patrol were used in the experiment. These levels were proactive, reactive and control levels. Proactive level is where the number of police patrols was increased to improve police visibility in the experiment areas. The reactive level is where the police only responded to public calls for assistance, and this level reduced police visibility in the experiment areas. The last level was control level where the usual patrol routine was maintained meaning no changes of current actions were carried out.
The results from the experiment were analyzed from six subsections of the experiment used to observe changes as the experiment was initially expected. The following results were realized from the experiment.
It was observed that the citizens did not note any difference in the frequencies as it was being varied from time to time within the course of the experiment. It was also observed that changes in patrol levels did not have any impact on vandalism crimes, local and commercial crimes, robberies involving automobile accessories, or automobile thefts. The citizens’ fear of crime was also not affected by changes in the levels of patrol. The reported fear of citizens remained the same all throughout the period of the experiment. It was also reported that public satisfaction with police did not change at any point of the experiment. Lastly, the change in the level of patrol did not alter any change in the rate of crime reporting. The number of crimes reported remained the same all through the experimental period. From the above results, the Kansas City Police Department made the conclusion that the routine preventive patrol in marked police cars has an insignificant effect on deterring crime or assurance of security to the public.
Because of the experiment, the police operations changed in some ways. The emphasis that police patrol reduced crime rate was rendered useless. The police patrols were reduced, and police administrations aimed at better strategies that seemed to have a greater impact on the rate of crime.
Operational strategies of the police department
There are five-core operational strategies in the police department. The first strategy is emergency response whereby the police quickly respond to incidents of instant and plausible threat to property or life. It involves malicious intentions like theft, shooting and vandalism. The second core strategy is the criminal investigation. It is a process where following of facts relating to an existing crime are collected. These facts later lead to the arrest of people linked to the crimes. The third strategy is the preventive patrol where the police presence is used to prevent criminal activities. The strategy ...