Design
The experiment was designed to answer the following questions:
- Would citizens notice changes in the level of police patrol?
- Would different levels of visible police patrol affect recorded crime or the outcome of victim surveys?
- Would citizen fear of crime and attendant behavior change as a result of differing patrol levels?
- Would their degree of satisfaction with police change?
The design took three different police beats in Kansas City, and varied patrol routine in them. The first group received no routine patrols, instead the police responded only to calls from residents. The second group had the normal level of patrols, while the third had two to three times as many patrols.
This was upheld for 12 months, from 1 October 1972 to 30 September 1973.
Victim surveys, reported crime rates, arrest data, a survey of local businesses, attitudinal surveys, and trained observers who monitored police-citizen interaction were used to gather data. These were taken before the start of the experiment (September 1972), and after (October 1973), giving 'before' and 'after' conditions for comparison.
Read more about this topic: Kansas City Preventive Patrol Experiment
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