The question of how to use police resources productively, par ticularly in this era of tight municipal budgets, is a major con cern for police chiefs and others responsible for crime control. In Crime Control: The Use and Misuse of Police Resources, David J. Farmer provides new insights into this question and sug gests a practical resource allocation approach for police poli cymakers and administrators. The book documents the results of current police resource allocation practices and describes the major research studies that have identified a need to restructure police field operations. It very usefully outlines the development and nature of allocation techniques and ana lyzes the political contexts which influence resource alloca,., tion. After describing planning at the neighborhood level that should inform the allocation process, the author provides a comprehensive "planning-budgeting-resources allocation" approach to managing a productive police department. This comprehensive approach is illustrated by an account of the Manpower Allocation Review System (MARS), which the author developed and introduced in the New York City Police Department in 1972 when I was commissioner. As I can vii FOREWORD viii attest, the MARS approach had practical utility. For the author, it served as a forerunner to the more elaborate system he describes in this book.

There is good evidence that the police can control crime hot spots without simply displacing crime problems to other places. Police officers should strive to use problem-oriented policing and situational crime prevention techniques to address the place dynamics, situations, and characteristics.

Proactive policing, as a strategic approach used by police agencies to prevent crime, is a relatively new phenomenon in the United States. It developed from a crisis in confidence in policing that began to emerge in the 1960s because of social unrest, rising crime rates, and growing skepticism regarding the effectiveness of standard approaches to policing. In response, beginning in the 1980s and 1990s, innovative police practices and policies that took a more proactive approach began to develop. This report uses the term "proactive policing" to refer to all policing strategies that have as one of their goals the prevention or reduction of crime and disorder and that are not reactive in terms of focusing primarily on uncovering ongoing crime or on investigating or responding to crimes once they have occurred. Proactive policing is distinguished from the everyday decisions of police officers to be proactive in specific situations and instead refers to a strategic decision by police agencies to use proactive police responses in a programmatic way to reduce crime. Today, proactive policing strategies are used widely in the United States. They are not isolated programs used by a select group of agencies but rather a set of ideas that have spread across the landscape of policing. Proactive Policing reviews the evidence and discusses the data and methodological gaps on: (1) the effects of different forms of proactive policing on crime; (2) whether they are applied in a discriminatory manner; (3) whether they are being used in a legal fashion; and (4) community reaction. This report offers a comprehensive evaluation of proactive policing that includes not only its crime prevention impacts but also its broader implications for justice and U.S. communities.

Risk-based policing is a research advancement that improves public safety, and its applications prevent crime specifically by managing crime risks. In Risk-Based Policing, the authors analyze case studies from a variety of city agencies including Atlantic City, New Jersey; Colorado Springs, Colorado; Glendale, Arizona; Kansas City, Missouri; Newark, New Jersey; and others. They demonstrate how focusing police resources on risky places and basing police work on smart uses of data can address the worst effects of disorder and crime while improving community relations and public safety. Topics include the role of big data; the evolution of modern policing; dealing with high-risk targets; designing, implementing, and evaluating risk-based policing strategies; and the role of multiple stakeholders in risk-based policing. The book also demonstrates how risk terrain modeling can be extended to provide a comprehensive view of prevention and deterrence.