Examination of an Intelligence-Led Policing Strategy BY TIMOTHY ALLAN LAVERY BA, Michigan

158 Pages·2013·1.19 MB·English

Targeting Violence-Prone Offenders:
Examination of an Intelligence-Led Policing Strategy

BY
TIMOTHY ALLAN LAVERY
B.A., Michigan State University, 1993
M.A., University of Illinois at Chicago, 1998

THESIS

Submitted as partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Criminology, Law and Justice
in the Graduate College of the
University of Illinois at Chicago, 2013

Chicago, Illinois

Defense Committee:
Dennis P. Rosenbaum, Chair and Advisor
William McCarty, Criminology, Law and Justice
Amie M. Schuck, Criminology, Law and Justice
Wesley G. Skogan, Northwestern University
Sarah E. Ullman, Criminology, Law and Justice
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would like to thank my dissertation committee – William McCarty, Amie M.
Schuck, Wesley G. Skogan, and Sarah E. Ullman – for their assistance. Academic
professionals inherently face a multitude of competing tasks and responsibilities. I am
appreciative of the committee’s willingness to incorporate my project into their agenda.
I also owe a debt of gratitude to my advisor, Dennis P. Rosenbaum. In addition to
his thoughtful commentary, this project would not have been possible without his
willingness to fold me into an already large group of graduate students under his
mentorship.
Finally, I thank my wife, Melanie Garrett. Our beautiful daughter, Ada, was born
during the completion of this thesis. Melanie’s patience and flexibility in the face of our
familial responsibilities made this project possible.

TAL

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TABLE OF CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................... 1
A. Overview: Intelligence-Led Policing and Pulling Levers Policing ................ 2
B. The CPD Violence Reduction Initiatives ....................................................... 7
1. The DOC Process and Offender Targeting ....................................... 14
a. Offender Target Selection Criteria .......................................... 16
b. Strategies in the Field .............................................................. 18
2. Evaluation Results ............................................................................. 22
C. Intelligence-Led Policing .............................................................................. 24
1. Defining “Intelligence” ..................................................................... 27
2. Research Results ............................................................................... 28
D. Pulling Levers Policing ................................................................................. 31
1. Deterring Violence-Prone Offenders ................................................ 34
2. Elements of the Pulling Levers Approach ........................................ 39
E. The Two Approaches – Areas of Overlap with DOC Offender Targeting ... 43
F. Analysis Approach ........................................................................................ 46
G. Expected Results ........................................................................................... 48

II. METHOD .................................................................................................................. 50
A. Study Period .................................................................................................. 51
B. Other Inclusion Criteria ................................................................................. 56
C. Additional Justifications – Study Sample ..................................................... 57
D. Police Records ............................................................................................... 59
E. Research Design ............................................................................................ 62
F. Group-Based Trajectory Modeling ............................................................... 65
G. Propensity Score Matching ........................................................................... 70
1. Covariates for Matching .................................................................... 74
H. Outcome Measures ........................................................................................ 82
I. Estimating Treatment Impact ........................................................................ 88

III. RESULTS .................................................................................................................. 91
A. Group-Based Trajectory Models ................................................................... 91
B. Matched Comparison Group ......................................................................... 113
C. Poisson Regression Results ........................................................................... 120

IV. DISCUSSION ........................................................................................................... 127

CITED LITERATURE .............................................................................................. 137

APPENDIX ............................................................................................................... 143

VITA ......................................................................................................................... 145

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LIST OF TABLES
TABLE PAGE
I. THE VIOLENCE REDUCTION INITIATIVES: A SUMMARY ...................... 10

II. RESEARCH STUDIES THAT EXAMINED AN OFFENDER
TARGETING APPROACH ................................................................................. 32

III. ARRESTED OFFENDERS IN DOC PACKETS, 2004-2006 ............................. 55

IV. JUSTIFICATIONS FOR TARGET SELECTION .............................................. 60

V. DESCRIPTIVE STATISTICS FOR PROPENSITY SCORE
COVARIATES ..................................................................................................... 77

VI. SUMMARY OF EXPECTED RESULTS ............................................................ 89

VII. COVARIATE BALANCE.................................................................................... 117

VIII. DESCRIPTIVE STATISTICS FOR OUTCOME MEASURES .......................... 122

IX. POISSON REGRESSION RESULTS .................................................................. 124

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LIST OF FIGURES
FIGURE PAGE
1. The CPD offender targeting approach ................................................................. 21

2. Group-based trajectory models by age interval ................................................... 92

3. Boxplots – absolute standardized differences in means before and after
matching ............................................................................................................... 119

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SUMMARY
Analyses were conducted examining an offender targeting strategy implemented
in the Chicago Police Department as part of a citywide violence reduction effort. Under
the strategy, from approximately June 2003 to November 2007, violence-prone offenders
were identified for enhanced police contact. Gang-based intelligence was used to identify
offenders who posed the greatest immediate risk to commit violent acts. The strategy
incorporated elements of two police innovations that have received scholarly attention –
intelligence-led policing and pulling levers policing. The research goal was to use the
analyses as a vehicle to provide greater understanding of these innovations.
The analyses examined whether, following identification, police were able to
successfully make contact with targeted offenders, and whether such contact could
plausibly be attributed to the strategy. A sample of offenders targeted during 2005 or
2006 (N = 885) were compared to a matched sample of non-targeted offenders (N =
3,366) who, (1) conducted their pre-treatment criminal activity in the same geographic
area, (2) were at approximately the same temporal place in their criminal “career”, and
(3) had experienced approximately the same amount of pre-treatment police contact for
approximately the same types of offenses. Matches were identified based on propensity
scores, using nearest neighbor matching. Nineteen covariates, developed based on police
records, were used to estimate propensity scores.
Outcome analyses examined whether, following identification, targeted offenders
experienced more police contact than matched, non-targeted offenders. Poisson
regression was used to compare targeted and non-targeted offenders on 45 police contact
outcomes measures, purposely designed to vary in terms of the expected impact that the
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strategy would have on their levels. The outcome measures based on two dimensions:
their association with police discretion and the number of post-treatment days
incorporated into the measure (ranging from 7 to 120 days). It was expected that, if: (1)
greater differences between targeted and non-targeted offenders would emerge for
measures that assessed discretionary police contact (contact for lesser infractions where
the police could choose not to respond), and (2) due to decreasing salience of targets over
time, treatment effects would diminish, such that greater effects would emerge for
measures that assessed shorter post-treatment time periods. Evidence supported the
former prediction, but not the latter. Of the 30 outcome analyses that involved a
discretionary measure of police contact, 23 yielded significant differences between
targeted and non-targeted offenders, whereas of the 14 analyses involving a less
discretionary measure, only 4 yielded a significant effect. On the other hand, effects did
not diminish over time. Effects were either sustained across all time-based measures, or
only yielded significant effects for measures that assessed longer time periods. Overall,
these results suggest that, when police seek to unilaterally deliver a deterrence message to
an offender, they are able to do so.

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I. INTRODUCTION
Tasked with responding to crime, urban police agencies receive a great deal of
scrutiny. Elected government officials expect the actions and, more broadly, the strategies
of police agencies to yield crime reduction benefits. In the last several decades, police
administrators have implemented numerous innovations designed to improve police
effectiveness and efficiency. Several of these innovations have received scholarly
attention (see Braga & Weisburd, 2006; Telep & Weisburd, 2012). Intelligence-led
policing is one such innovation (Ratcliffe, 2008a, 2008b), pulling levers policing another
(Kennedy, Braga, & Piehl, 2001; Kennedy, 1997).
The research described in this document examined a policing strategy
implemented by the Chicago Police Department (CPD) from approximately June 2003
through November 2007. The CPD strategy, labeled the “violence reduction initiatives”,
incorporated elements of multiple police innovations – most notably hot spots policing
(e.g., Braga & Weisburd, 2010), intelligence-led policing, and pulling levers policing. A
recent evaluation examined geographically-based aspects of the CPD strategy,
associating these aspects with hot spots policing (Alderden et al., 2009). For this study,
offender-based aspects of the CPD strategy were examined, and associated with
intelligence-led policing and pulling levers policing.
The present research is evaluative, examining implementation of the CPD
strategy. The research will allow for discussion of the conditions under which
intelligence-led policing and pulling levers policing are effective. The next section
provides a more detailed overview of the proposed research.
1
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A. Overview: Intelligence-Led Policing and Pulling Levers Policing
Those who support the various brands of police innovation strike a common
chord: they uniformly encourage changes to traditional police practices. Scholars have
long maintained that the “standard model” of policing (Weisburd & Eck, 2004) is not
effective at reducing crime or enhancing citizen perceptions of security. A major critique
of the standard model is its emphasis on preventive patrol, whereby police officers
remain on the streets, moving across the geographic landscape looking out for criminal
behavior or, at minimum, suspicious activity. In principle, this constant movement
creates a visible police presence that deters criminal activity. By this logic, a potential
offender, not knowing where the police may appear, will refrain from criminal activity.
Buoyed by results of the Kansas City Preventive Patrol Experiment (Kelling et al.,
1974), scholars have critiqued the guiding logic of preventive patrol. In particular, two
critiques shaped the development of alternate strategies. First, preventive patrol was
characterized as overly generic. In practice, preventive patrol addresses all manner of
crime problems through basic law enforcement (visible police presence, arrest and
subsequent court processing), ignoring nuanced solutions to particular problems. Second,
preventive patrol was characterized as overly diffuse. Evidence suggests that crime is
highly concentrated. A disproportionate number of criminal events occur at relatively few
locations (Sherman, Gartin, & Buerger, 1989), and are committed by relatively few
offenders (Wolfgang, Figlio, & Sellin, 1972). Critics of preventive patrol acknowledge
that police officers are often acutely aware of problem locations and repeat offenders
within their geographic realm, and often respond accordingly; preventive patrol is by no
means completely “random.” Nonetheless, critics claim that these informal responses to
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problem locations and chronic offenders maximize neither effectiveness nor efficiency.
Because crime is highly concentrated, police agencies should adopt approaches that
explicitly, and as a guiding framework, target persons and places. By steering resources
to problem locations and repeat offenders, police agencies can achieve greater crime
reduction effects with fewer resources. And, by reining in the scope of police efforts, it
becomes easier to develop tailored strategies that address particular problems.
Recently, two policing models – intelligence-led policing and pulling levers
policing – have gained traction among scholars and practitioners. Conceptually, both
models address these two critiques of preventive patrol. Intelligence-led policing, while
still evolving as a policing model (Ratcliffe, 2008a, 2008b), involves the use of
intelligence to identify, and respond to, targets – usually, but not necessarily, repeat
offenders. Pulling levers policing relies on “focused deterrence”: identifying a core group
of serious or repeat offenders and, through tailored problem-solving strategies,
heightening the risks and consequences associated with further criminality. The purported
advantages of the two approaches are similar. Both approaches are characterized as
proactive; application requires identification and targeting of the most problematic
persons. Both approaches are characterized as effective; if targeted offenders halt their
criminal behavior then, because they are the most prolific offenders, crime reduction
benefits are maximized.
Despite the similarities, pulling levers policing has received considerably more
attention in American criminological circles. In part, this attention may be attributed to
the American origins of the approach, and to initial successes in Boston. Criminological
emphasis on pulling levers policing can also be attributed to the efforts of its architects,