The Police and Weapons Offenses

Mark H. Moore
Additional contact information
Mark H. Moore: Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University

The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 1980, vol. 452, issue 1, 22-32

Abstract: To control violence committed among strangers in public locations, police departments have increasingly turned to tactics of "directed patrol" focused on particular dangerous places or activities. Arguably, a suitable focus for directed patrol is illegal carrying or possession of weapons in public locations. Questions arise concerning the methods of weapons enforcement, the effectiveness of such a focus, and its administrative feasibility. Preliminary results of em pirical investigations into police practices with respect to weapons enforcement reveal that weapons arrests typically occur as a by-product of other enforcement activities and that the most important factor determining aggregate levels of weapons arrests is the general proactivity of the police department. Further, some empirical results suggest that police departments can shift to proactive strategies—and increase the level of weapons arrests—without dramatically changing the demographic characteristics of those arrested. Crucial unanswered questions include the effectiveness of such a strategy in reducing violent crime and the adminis trative means of changing police strategies against weapons offenses.

Date: 1980
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/000271628045200103 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:anname:v:452:y:1980:i:1:p:22-32

DOI: 10.1177/000271628045200103

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().