The Chronicle: Colloquy: Responses

Order increases, crime decreases. Perhaps disorder is merely derivative of "root" factors such as poverty and instability. Nonetheless, disorder is factor that police can identify, address and reduce, with positive impacts on crime levels and, just as importantly, the safety citizens perceive. With "law and order" as the job, and the political careers of their superiors advanced by the safety the public feels, police departments will continue to pursue order. Police executives would be foolhardy to reduce their pursuit of order when it is central to their mission, politically popular and empirically connected--the debate seems over how much not whether--to crime reduction.

: -- Patrick O'Hara, John Jay College of Criminal Justice (posted 2/6, 1:25 p.m., U.S. Eastern time)

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