In October of the year 1972 through 1973, there was an experiment "Kansas Preventive Patrol Experiment "that focuses on the relationship of the police, public, and the criminals. The main aim of conducting the experiment was to determine if changes in patrolling could have an impact of reducing crime, change the perception of the people on police, reduce fear on committing a crime or address the concern of public with the police (Kelling, 1977). The experiment adopts the beat approach where the first beat was that of proactive patrols. The approach of proactive was about increasing the number of police officers and vehicles by two or three and sees the response of the public including the rate of crime occurrence.
The second beat was reactive where there were no routine patrols available, but the officers were using the police line for communication and responses. The experiment faces some of the challenges that include the failure of the police to follow the set rules. The outcome of the investigation shows that even after changing the level patrol, the citizens did not notice the change and there was no change in their behavior. Furthermore, there was no significant change in the number of crime that occurs in the community, and the people were not satisfied with the work of the police. Experiment manage to confirm that the police spent most of their time waiting to respond to the calls and this is the reason the citizens were not able to recognize the difference. The police would also spend much of their time doing their things when they are not in police-related mobile patrol.
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The primary conclusion concerning the experiment is that the resources that could have been in use for to preventive patrols should be financing other productive crime control strategies. This is because the outcome of the experiment manages to reveal that preventive patrols have no significant impact on the behavior of the people and the rate of crime in the community. It is therefore essential to know that deployment strategy should be mainly on crime prevention instead of routine prevention patrol.
There are fundamental similarities and differences of the police presence and random patrol in regards to the tactics of crime prevention. Random patrol bases its idea on visible police presence in an area can deter criminal activities and instill fear to the public from committing the crime (Richard, 1975). Random patrols are ineffective unlike police presence when it comes to deterring crime or even apprehending the offenders. Target preventive activities are more effective in reducing crime where it usually occurs especially if the strategies are under specific policies and goals but random forms the baseline of carrying out the activity.
There is the difference that exists between the reactive and proactive beats in the sense that proactive anticipate responses to problems or crime scenes rather than the responsive method that rely mainly on phone calls to respond (Sherman, 1995). The main aim of the proactive beat is to ensure that there are reduction and prevention of crime, therefore, enabling people to handle the offense in the community. Proactive beats can also help in changing the perception of the people unlike the reactive beats because when the police are readily available in handling the criminal actions, people tend to have positive impression unlike when the police are not ready to help the people during crime actions.
In conclusion, the Kansas Preventive Patrol Experiment is very informative and can be useful in making crime-reducing decisions. The results were that changing the police patrol has no significant noticeable difference to the public and there was no change in the rate f crime occurrence. Preventive patrols, for instance, having police with marked cars is not an effective way of preventing crime or making the people feel safer but random patrols can be more effective, than police presence. Proactive strategies are preferable than reactive because there are yield more positive results from the proactive response.
References
Kelling, G. L. (1977). The Kansas City Preventive Patrol Experiment: A Summary. Readings in Evaluation Research , 323.
Richard. (1975). What Happened to Patrol Operations in Kansas City? A Review of the Kansas City Preventive Patrol Experiment. Journal of Criminal Justice, 3 , 267-297.
Sherman, L. W. (1995). General Deterrent Effects of Police Patrol in Crime “Hot Spots”: A Randomized, Controlled Trial. Justice Quarterly, 12 , 625‑648.
