The Technology of Policing

Crime Mapping, Information Technology, and the Rationality of Crime Control

Peter K. Manning

• Publisher: NYU Press
• Year: 2008
• ISBN:
  9780814795767
• Topic: Sozialwissenschaften
• Subtopic: Kriminologie

With the rise of surveillance technology in the last decade, police departments now have an array of sophisticated tools for tracking, monitoring, even predicting crime patterns. In particular crime mapping, a technique used by the police to monitor crime by the neighborhoods in their geographic regions, has become a regular and relied-upon feature of policing. Many claim that these technological developments played a role in the crime drop of the 1990s, and yet no study of these techniques and their relationship to everyday police work has been made available.

Noted scholar Peter K. Manning spent six years observing three American police departments and two British constabularies in order to determine what effects these kinds of analytic tools have had on modern police management and practices. While modern technology allows the police to combat crime in sophisticated, detail-oriented ways, Manning discovers that police strategies and tactics have not been altogether transformed as perhaps would be expected. In The Technology of Policing, Manning untangles the varying kinds of complex crime-control rhetoric that underlie much of today's police department discussion and management, and provides valuable insight into which are the most effective—and which may be harmful—in successfully tracking criminal behavior.

The Technology of Policing offers a new understanding of the changing world of police departments and information technology's significant and undeniable influence on crime management.

1
Rationalities

The contention of signification and being which has caused such mischief in religion would perhaps have been more salutary if it had been conducted with respect to other subjects, for it is a general source of misfortune to us that we believe things are in actuality what they in fact only signify.

—Georg Christoph Lichtenberg 1990

Résumé

Consider now the police. On the one hand, they function as they have for some 177 years: they stand poised, ready to react to the emergent, the unexpected, and the unpredictable, that which cannot be fully anticipated, prevented, nor planned for in detail. On the other hand, they are being dragged into the information age, an age that imagines the future prior to executing it. Are they caught up in the global western European movement Max Weber (1947) called the rationalizing of society? What is known about how policing is being affected by the daunting and rapid changes in applied information technology? Is this technology being applied? Are the police being shaped by a more rational, goal-oriented management and making better, more information-centered, decisions? What is known about these matters presently is more descriptive than analytic, eagerly ameliorative in tone and not grounded in a sociological tradition.¹

One highly praised system of information processing, crime mapping and crime analysis (CM/CA), has been seen as a fundamental window into the transformation of policing (Willis, Mastrofski, and Weisburd 2004, 2007). Meetings featuring these displays achieved great popularity after the crime drop in the early nineties was attributed to management (Bratton 1998) and to crime analysis and mapping techniques initially developed and refined in the NYPD. Yet, no convincing evidence or logical chain has been shown to support this claim of a direct effect of CA/CM. The process by which ad hoc traditional tactics suppressed crime, including homicide and other largely private conflicts, has not been explained. The workings of the meetings producing the putative results remain more or less a “black box.” They are opaque at best. With the exception of one case study (Willis, Mastrofski, and Weisburd 2004), little is known about this “window” into the rationalizing of policing.

My focus here is on the rationalizing effects of an applied information technology, CM/CA, taken together as a pair. This pair is a fact-based, generalizable, reproducible source of information that appear to challenge the traditional logic and practices of policing. Crime analysis (CA) is a family of techniques designed to gather information on the temporal, spatial, and social aspects of crime (offenders, victims, and their social characteristics such as race, class, age, and gender); describe their patterning (basically, show variations indicating increases in everyday street crimes—burglary, robbery, homicide, assault, and some indications of disorder such as shots fired, noise complaints, and “gangs”); make them available generally; and direct police resources in order to reduce the levels shown. These analyses, prepared by civilian analysts, are quite simple, showing variations in reported crime and other matters of interest for brief periods of time. Once gathered and recorded by officers, entered into standardized computer files, and shaped by software to include text, pictures, or graphics for dramatic data presentation, they are combined with detectives’ records for the reporting, investigation, and disposition of crime and presented in summary form without the complexities of the events reported—their substance or context, the local knowledge of patrol officers or detectives, etc.—and aggregated as problematic. The screens present. With the current speed, memory, and data capacity of computers, materials can be dramatically configured and shown in maps, tables, graphs, and other colorful iconic displays. The data can be quickly distributed, discussed, and referred to across units and divisions and are in some departments essentially “online.” In many ways, these crime maps are modern versions of the pin maps first used in nineteenth-century London, refined in Chicago in the 1920s, and long a staple of police information systems. The maps are of course the surface manifestation of a very complex infrastructure. But it is important to keep one’s eye on what is out of sight.

What follows is an inquiry into the features of a CM/CA capacity, and the process of sense making surrounding data presentations. In the following chapters I ask to what degree and how crime mapping and crime analysis (CM/CA), as implemented, reveals rationalizing forces, how they are accounted for or explained, and what effects these changes, if any, have upon power relationships within police organizations. By “effects,” I mean changes in the everyday police practices, or police administration, the cognitive and sense-making processing of information that is prior to police work “on the streets.” I begin with rationality, examine how it is seen in the context of policing, sketch an outline of police and organization and technology, and then present the analysis based on three case studies. Boston’s crime-analysis meetings require extended treatment because the BPD had the only operating version of CM/CA.

Variations on a Theme of Rationality

A characteristic of our chaotic times is the contest of rationalities, a struggle between adherents of particular ways in which means are related to ends in a rational-legal organizational context (Espeland 1998). While Weber used a single term, “instrumental rationality,” he included in this a wide range of “methodical suiting of efficient means to widely embraced social ends” (Merelman 1998, interpreting Weber 1978b: 24–26). Technology, more than any other means, has been elevated as the source of efficiency in the modern age. The introduction of new technologies raises questions about why and how it works and its impact on the organization. It may erode a pattern of organizational legitimacy, a mode of stability and compliance. Even in a rational-legal bureaucracy, many interests may lie behind apparent submission to an order (Weber 1978a: 37–38). There are thus many rationalities linking ends to means and many ways to think with such ideas. The rationalities found in police organizations are in part a function of the development of the modern bureaucratic form, and in part a function of their traditional mandate. The patterns of conflict, loyalty, and submission are situational, and reflect contesting rationalities. While the notion of the bureau seems to imply unity and coherence rather than conflict and confusion, there is no reason to assume that human confusions, passions, and self-serving performances have been eradicated by modern organizational forms. It may be that modern bureaux are the most important context for passions, envy, revenge, lust, attachment and alienation, politics and power (Herzfeld 1992).

The Long Shadow of Max Weber

In studies of economic and social development, Weber’s concept of rationality is a dominant icon. Weber (1947, 1978a, b; Gerth and Mills 1958), on the basis of his elaborate historical and comparative research, emphasized that if a form of rationality consistent with capitalism was to emerge, the end, accumulation of wealth, should be ideally connected to the means by rules and procedures that ensure that the end will occur. His strongest point here was the necessity of sustained, close monitoring of the modes of deciding and of the outcomes produced. Whatever the end—to suppress crime, capture a market share, serve communities better—the means must be evaluated with respect to this desired end state. The connection between the ends sought and the means used must be consistently evaluated and audited for success (Weber 1947: 186–202). Those matters, such as personal preferences, religious beliefs, loyalties to families and friends, as they did not elevate the importance of organizational goals and might deter their pursuit, were to be set aside. “To be set aside” in this context meant that they were not to be taken into account in evaluation of organizational functioning. As organizations became more rule and procedurally guided, more objective, they were seen as “more rational,” or as rationalizing their operations.

This broad concept of rationality was contrasted with another social form, irrationality. Rationality, in Weber’s view, referred to action, a means that is oriented to the achievement of an end. This conception of rationality pervades modern life, shadows all its institutions, and is a dominant vocabulary of motives, or way of explaining why something was done (Mills 1940). To function collectively, a means-ends connection must have a general tacit reality. This is achieved via public enunciation and rhetoric, symbolized by such things as mission statements, values, and formal statements of purpose. Rationality as an explanation for why something was done is a useful story that guides actions and reflections upon it. Businesses, universities, armies, and charitable institutions are governed by the notion of rationality, a careful and persistent gauging of the means by which resources are developed, deployed, and allocated with reference to ends or mission statements. Irrationality, on the other hand, is a term that references action that is oriented to the sustaining of a principle, an end, or a belief that is habitual or affectively based. These distinctions between rational and irrational action, as Weber noted, are perspectival: the definitions depend in part on the point of view of the actor or organization. While devout Christians may believe that floods and other disasters are best avoided or reduced by prayer, rituals, and offerings, a nonbeliever would reject these measures, favoring planning, emergency procedures, and scientific analysis of the causes of such disasters as floods. Habits and customs are critical to this latter formulation because the believer acts as those before him or her have acted, and feels emotional connection to the reproduction of the traditional ways of doing. But, individuals and organizations sustain and develop alternative modes of subjective rationality over time, and these are the source of change.

Weber (1947) sought to explain the conditions under which “subjective rational action” obtains or governs decisions. An action is “subjective” insofar as it refers to the meanings that are attached to such action, not the overt behavior itself. Instrumental formal rationality is thus subjective and refers to action or means oriented to achieving ends. On the other hand, value-oriented rationality refers to actions that seek valued ends in themselves. It is action intended to sustain what is valued.² In any organization, both sorts work actively and beneath observation—they decline into invisibility.

The tendency in modern societies to value formal rationality has become institutionalized in a pattern, reinforced by rules, procedures, and techniques within given institutional areas such as music, art, literature, religion, or public administration. This attachment and legitimation of policies and practices is what Weber (1978: xxx) called the “iron cage of rationality” because such a process of institutionalization drains away the appeal of other modes of acting, feeling, and expressing. These forces have powerful rooting and legitimation in other institutions as well so that they complement each other in operation (Merelman 1998). While ends differ, rationality, or the connection between means and ends, remains salient in all modern bureaucracies. That having been said, it is also true that police organizations are unusual, perhaps similar to the armed services, the fire service, and religious organizations, because a core of sacredness remains as an alternative source of order and compliance. Let us consider this further.

Weber distinguishes between organizations based on charisma, rational-legal compliance, or bureaucratic compliance and those based on loyalty to a patron, or to persons. These competing organizational forms do not vanish in the course of development, but remain viable in the world, even as formal rationality tends to destroy and flatten alternative modes of reasoning and evaluating action. Police organizations manifest a mixed or dualistic mode of organizational compliance. The modes of loyalty and leadership in reference to grounding legitimation, or achieving the police mandate, are in conflict. Weber writes that rational bureaucracy is a reversal of the patrimonial model of routinization; it is, as translated, “patrimonialism transposed into rationality.” This is true because in the patrimonial form people perform routines, or what might be termed behavioral sequences, as a result of habit and loyalty. On the other hand, in the rational bureau, routines are based on well-established procedures and rules that stabilize these preferred routines (Gerth and Mills 1958: 245). The police department, as we shall see, remains a two-sided and awkwardly integrated organization precisely because it combines uneasily the patrimonial model of loyalty to the patriarch, whether to a rank superior, to senior officers, or to a member of the top command, with immediate here-and-now actions conforming loosely to established practices. These are nominally rule based. The icon and target of this loyalty is the chief, the patriarch of the police department. The rigid rational-legal bureaucracy requires loyalty to rules, procedures, and routines; the patrimonial bureau requires consistent unquestioning responses to the “irrational” commands of a chief. This heritage is a troubled inheritance of the police from the military with its collocation of ideas of loyalty, honor, and duty, matters that are almost totally in contrast and conflict with formal rationality. As Weber points out, of course, subjective rationality can be an essential element in achieving a rational goal such as winning a war or subduing a riotous situation. In other words, the basis for compliance differs fundamentally: in one mode, loyalty to rules and procedures drives action, while in the other, loyalty to persons and groups is the basis. One sort of rationality achieves a goal by means of loyalty to persons and groups, another by means of rules, procedures, and calculative rationality. These rationalities are in conflict from time to time, even when they are not verbalized openly.

Within the rational-legal model or mode of organizing action, a tension remains among the means that obtain. There are connections made in the organization between ends and means in which the putative ends are the same or at least equivalent, but the means differ. Organizations operate on what might be called notional or imagined goals that are often unclear, contradictory, or unexplicated. Actions become displaced to the imagined means to these ends, not the means themselves. Consider a university that wants to be better known and respected according to U.S. News & World Report. It might reduce class size, but this is not necessarily a sign of increased quality of education; it can increase retention rates of students, but the students may be of less ability, and so on. In addition, all these measures are means, not ends, and they reify the process of education. Thus, while a university can rise in some of the indices, the evaluation by other university faculty of the research and publication of the university in question can fall as the other variables in the index rise. None of these variables of course measures the central aim of a university—the development, dissemination, and analysis of credible knowledge. As we shall see in chapter 6 on Boston, ministers were asked by the police department to hold services, to walk the streets in displays of piety, and, in effect, to pray for reduced crime (McRoberts 2003). The effectiveness of this effort was gauged by crime statistics. These are based on various means used by the police, patrol, 911 responses, and investigation of crime to assess the effectiveness of those means in reducing crime (an end). The effectiveness of prayer, devotion, service attendance, and belief in God is given in the doing; these are intrinsically valued matters. Within the police, there were devotees of this approach to crime reduction while others favored “crack-downs,” crime-attack models, threats, and abundant arrests. These are conflicts or contests surrounding means to an unexplicated end.

However, the most important tensions arise, in a contest of rationalities, when ends are not clearly stated, or the ends stated are surrogates, symptomatic, or displaced from effectiveness. In policing, as noted above, many tactics or means are afloat, and they are accounted for in statements and public documents. Policing now includes community policing, problem-solving policing, and crime mapping and crime analysis—all tactics relating to the ill-defined goal of improving the quality of life in our neighborhoods (this is the Boston Police Department’s mission statement as found in the Annual Report, 2003). These tactics are rational in the sense that they are stipulated means to this end. However, the debate over means that takes place in policing obscures the reality that there is no clearly stated end and that whatever end is assumed is out of sight—a value such as security, high-quality life, co-production of order, control of the streets. To these value-laden ideas are added statistical paraphernalia such as tables, charts, and graphs (see the annual report of any large police department) that measure not the quality of life, security, or disorder but calls for service, complaints against officers, reported official crime, and so on. Even crime figures alone, whether high or low, do not indicate the quality of life or security of an area as those are measured by other means and instead measure other matters such as sense of security, safety, and degree to which the area is seen as a high-crime area (Mastrofski, Reisig, and McCluskey 2002). In this sense, crime figures do not serve to audit, evaluate, adjust, or assess the achievements of the organization, as Weber would require. These are surrogate measures not of an achievable end state, but of a value. This creates a form of substantive rationality.

Policing is characterized by rationalities, not rationality, for the reasons outlined above. Any police organization could be seen through two lenses, or in term of two conflicting images—as a rational-legal bureau at some times, and as a patrimonial bureau at others. Conflicts exist among the means advocated to achieve policing’s mission or mandate. These conflicts are sometimes resolved or discussed within the context of an operating patrimonial bureau and sometimes in the context of a rational-legal organization. This means the context of deciding varies and is occasioned or evolves and appears in a situation. Decisions can be made and justified or accounted for on the grounds of loyalty, duty, and honor (shorthand terms for personal obligation)—an approach sometimes criticized as being a function of the occupational culture if the behavior is that of an officer of sergeant level or below—or on the basis of procedures, rules and regulations, and legal standards. In either case, the operative rationalities are grounded quite differently in history and tradition. The debates within the overtly rational-legal model are accounts based on expertise, planning, information, new technology, and the like. These grounding ideas are modern “professional policing,” supported by experts, consultants, and researchers and rooted in the idea of scientific, even experimental, research.

Vocabularies of Motive as Institutional Accounts

Rationalities are not self-explanatory or even visible. They come in and out of organizational functioning and discourse. The way one goes about achieving an end in an organization is problematic; many modes are possible, and they are often debated. In a sense, the “operational” status of principles of rationality must be established and sustained. One version of this establishment of rationalities is that it takes place through the acceptance of a vocabulary of motives. Motives in this sense are explanations for actions, or “institutional accounts.” Motives do not drive action from “inside the heads” of people; they are explanations for what has been done. Life is lived forward and explained backward, as Kierkegaard once wrote.

Let us explore this idea further. C. Wright Mills, in a classic article (1940), argued that motives are ways of coordinating action in situations. This argument had much influence on social sociology and is reflected in Goffman’s (1959) masterful synthesis of performative actions. “Motives may be considered as typical vocabularies having ascertainable functions in delimited social situations. … The differing reasons men give for their actions are not themselves without reason” (Mills 1940: 904–905). Vocabularies of motive coordinate social action by being typical, repetitive, and anticipated. Motives are social and are indexed by what is said when, in a given situation, an account is requested, or answers to questions interrupt acts. Why did you … ? They are “accepted justifications” that shape and provide grounds for mutual accommodation. While there are terminologies or taxonomies of motives, such as the Marxian or Freudian view of motivation, motives are best studied in situations, when they are present. They must be studied as “vocabularies of motive in historic epochs and specified situations” (Mills 1940: 913). Motives are typical of organizations, occupations, and current ideologies, and are preferred in these contexts as plausible explanations. Finally, the virtue of using a vocabulary of motives as a conceptual window into organizational rationalities is that they account for both the past and anticipated future actions; they serve to organize social interactions; and they anticipate future consequences of conduct (Mills 1940: 907). They must, in Mills’s view (1940: 913), remain grounded in situations, and not si...