Implementing a Problem-Oriented Policing Crime Reduction Program in the City of Nashville, Tennessee

Statement of the Problem
Law enforcement agencies have made substantial progress in reducing violent crime and property crime rates in many municipalities across the country, and the United States can be regarded as being significantly safer for its citizenry today compared to the alarmingly high crime rates in the 1990s (Gramlich, 2020). Nevertheless, pockets of high crime rates remain firmly in place in some American cities despite ongoing efforts by law enforcement agencies to address these trends. As the research that follows will show, combating property and violent crime is a challenging enterprise at any time, but the devastating effects of the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic have adversely affected employment levels in many cities and a growing number of Americans are facing eviction and hunger. It is not surprising, then, that crime rates remain intractable in cities where unemployment rates were already a problem, and this has been the case with Nashville, Tennessee where unemployment skyrocketed from just under 5% to 15% during the height of the pandemic (Unemployment rate in Nashville-Davidson-Murfreesboro, 2021). The overarching purpose of the study proposed herein is to identify optimal strategies for implementing a problem-oriented policing intervention to help reduce the crime rates in Nashville today and in the future based on the rationale that is presented below.
Literature Review
Background and overview
With a population of about 700,000 people, Nashville is Tennessee’s state capital and the home of the world-famous entertainment venue the Grand Ole Opry. At present, though, Nashville, is also a relatively dangerous place to live compared to national averages (Crime in Nashville, 2020). As shown in Figure 1 at Appendix A and like much of the rest of the country, property crime remains much more common in Nashville compared to violent crime (Gramlich, 2020), but one in 90 residents are still likely to become to victim of violent crime each year and another one in 24 are probable victims of property crimes (Nashville crime rates, 2021). While the economic costs of property crimes are readily quantifiable, the costs that are associated with violent crimes transcend the individual economic calculus and extend to include harm to entire neighborhoods and communities.
Description of problem-oriented policing
Although there are no magic law enforcement bullets available to that can completely eliminate violent crime (Giwa, 2018), a growing body of scholarship confirms that problem-oriented policing represents an evidence-based approach to combatting this societal issue (Braga et al., 1999. In response to an increasing violent crime problem in some American cities, there have been a number of implementations of problem-oriented policing initiatives over the past 40 years (Giwa, 2018). Originally developed by Herman Goldstein in the late 1970s, problem?oriented policing is a framework in which law enforcement authorities apply community-based strategic and tactics that are focused on providing proactive solutions to chronic sources of violent crime rather than using conventional policing techniques (Hinkle, Weisburd & Telep, 2020). As originally conceptualized and applied at in police departments across the country at present, the overarching objective of problem-oriented policing is to concentrate available law enforcement resources on improving community safety and reducing violent crime rather than focusing strictly on the quantifiable factors that are associated with violent crime such as average response time to crime scenes and the number and types of arrests made during a set period of time (Reisig, 2010).
Evaluation of the appropriateness of problem-oriented policing for Nashville
During a period in American history where misguided calls for defunding the police have become commonplace, determining which criminal justice research and evaluation methods are most effective represents a timely and valuable enterprise, especially because taxpayer resources are by definition scarce (Jacobs & Kim, 2020). Therefore, any perception on the part of the general public that their monies are being squandered on ineffective or obsolete law enforcement methods is a significant and justifiable source of concern for police leaders (Boyce, 2019). In addition to conventional law enforcement practices, the problem-oriented policing model also provides useful evaluations methods that can help identify opportunities for community-based interventions that are specifically focused on violent crime (Schnobrich-Davis & Block, 2020). Furthermore, in a larger sense, problem-oriented policing evaluation methods are also highly congruent with other recent trends in criminology (Wooditch, 2021). The SARA model used by the problem-oriented policing approach is applied to Nashville’s current situation at Appendix B.
Research Questions
The proposed study will be guided by the following research questions:
Q1: What neighborhoods in Nashville are currently experienced the highest violent crime rates?
Q2: What are the current policing strategies in place in Nashville?
Q3: Are the current policing strategies used in Nashville viewed positively or negatively by police officers on the street?
Q4: What are the best lessons learned from previous applications of the problem-oriented policing approach in other American cities of comparable size to Nashville (i.e., populations of between 500,000 to 1 million)?
Q5: What actions do local business leaders, civic groups and organizations believe need to be taken to address the crime problem in Nashville.
Subjects for Study
Because there are hundreds of thousands of stakeholders that are directly involved in the envisioned study, it will be essential to canvass a representative sample of the local population in Nashville that can help develop timely and informed answers to the above-listed research questions. Therefore, the subjects for the study proposed herein will include police patrol officers (e.g., “street” or “beat cops”); district police commanders; local business owners; representatives of civic groups and organizations; victims of violent crime; adjudicated violent criminals; and other stakeholders to be determined.
Measurement
The quantitative metrics that will be used to evaluate the effectiveness of a problem-oriented policing strategy for Nashville are straightforward with respect to the following guiding research question, “What neighborhoods in Nashville are currently experienced the highest violent crime rates?” Developing a timely and informed answer to this research question can be accomplished by statistically analyzing benchmark data from the Nashville police department, U.S. Department of Justice and other relevant law enforcement resources. Likewise, the research questions, “What are the current policing strategies in place in Nashville?” and “What are the best lessons learned from previous applications of the problem-oriented policing approach in other American cities of comparable size to Nashville (i.e., populations of between 500,000 to 1 million)?” will be answered through a systematic review of the relevant literature concerning what types of policing strategies are in place in Nashville at present as discussed further in the Data Collection Methods section that follows below. Conversely, the other research questions will require qualitative measures as described at Appendix C.
Data Collection Methods
As noted above, the proposed study will use a mixed data collection methodology that includes both quantitative and qualitative measures, as well as different data collection methods to gather and analyze this data. As also noted above, a systematic review of the relevant secondary literature will be used to develop answers to the corresponding research questions that can be answered in this fashion. In addition, the above-described custom questionnaire will be administered online using a survey service such as SurveyMonkey to facilitate data collection and analysis (discussed in the following section). The custom questionnaire will be piloted using a sample of 10 police officers who will not be included in the final administration of the instrument and will be used to evaluate the questionnaire’s face validity (Neuman, 2008).
Analysis
Just as the different research questions which will guide the proposed study differ in terms of the methods that are used for data collection, the analyses of these data will also require different analytical methods. The analytical methods that will be used for the qualitative research questions are described in Table 1 below.
Table 1
Description of analytical methods for qualitative research questions
Research question
Analytical method
Supporting rationale
Q2: What are the current policing strategies in place in Nashville?
Narrative analysis
Using a systematic review of the relevant literature, a narrative analysis of historic and current law enforcement data concerning the existing policing strategies in Nashville can provide the timely information that is needed to develop an informed answer to this research question (Wood & Ellis, 2003).
Q4: What are the best lessons learned from previous applications of the problem-oriented policing approach in other American cities of comparable size to Nashville (i.e., populations of between 500,000 to 1 million)?
Content analysis.
According to Neuman (2008), this qualitative analytical method is one in which the social science researchers “examines patterns of meaning within written texts, audio, visual, or other communication medium” (p. 531), making is especially appropriate for developing an informed answer to this research question.
The quantitative data for the remaining research questions will be analyzed as set forth in Table 2 below.
Table 2
Description of analytical methods for quantitative research questions and rationale
Research question
Analytical method
Supporting rationale
Q1: What neighborhoods in Nashville are currently experienced the highest violent crime rates?
Trend analysis.
A trend analysis is highly appropriate for answering this research question since this approach will help identify the most significant increases and decreases in violent crime rates which are the explanatory variables of interest for this research question among the neighborhoods in Nashville with the highest historic violent crime rates (Neuman, 2008).
Q3: Are the current policing strategies used in Nashville viewed positively or negatively by police officers on the street?
Percentile analysis.
Because the perceptions about the current policing strategies representing the explanatory variable of interest for this research question that are currently in place in Nashville will exist along a continuum ranging from “strongly dislike” to “strongly like,” it will be important to determine how strongly the law enforcement respondents view these policing strategies using a percentile analysis. This type of analysis can help determine whether a majority (for example: 35% of Nashville police officers either strongly agreed [12%] or agreed [23%] of police officers view the current strategies positively” (or negatively) that …”) and to what extent this agreement or disagreement exists within the percentile analysis (Frost, 2019).
Q5: What actions do local business leaders, civic groups and organizations believe need to be taken to address the crime problem in Nashville.
Descriptive analysis
This is a commonly used quantitative analysis method that uses general statistics to identify basic patterns in explanatory variables (Neuman, 2008) which in this instance concern what types of actions are viewed as most necessary to addressing Nashville’s violent crime problem.
Some of the more significant roadblocks or difficulties that are anticipated in proposing and justifying statistical tests for Nashville, TN and criminal justice research topic include a lack of information concerning the extent to which especially important stakeholders such as patrol police officers and adjudicated violent criminals will be available – and willing – to participate in a study of this nature. In addition, the nature of the research problem and the corresponding research questions may make other stakeholder respondents reluctant to participate since many citizens are wary of sharing any information about violent crime in their neighborhoods out of legitimate fear of reprisals.
References
Boyce, A. (2019). A re-imagining of evaluation as social justice: A discussion of the education justice program. Critical Education, 10, 37-42.
Braga, A. A. (2008). Problem-oriented policing and crime prevention. Munsey, NY: Criminal Justice Press.
Braga, A. A., Weisburd, D. L. & Waring, E. J. (1999). Problem-oriented policing in violent crime places: A randomized controlled experiment. Criminology, 37(3), 541-555.
Crime in Nashville. (2020). https://www.areavibes.com/nashville-tn/crime/#:~:text=In%20Nashville%2C%20TN%20you%20have,theft%20and%20motor%20vehicle%20theft.
Crime and violence. (2020). U.S. Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion. Retrieved from https://www.healthypeople.gov/.
Giwa, S. (2018). Community policing in racialized communities: A potential role for police social work, Journal of Human Behavior in the Social Environment, 1-17.
Gramlich, J. (2020, November 20). What the data says (and doesn’t say) about crime in the United States. Pew Research Center. Retrieved from https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/11/20/facts-about-crime-in-the-u-s/.
Hinkle, J. C., Weisburd, D. & Telep, C. W. (2020, June 15). Problem?oriented policing for reducing crime and disorder: An updated systematic review and meta?analysis. Campbell Systematic Reviews, 16(2), 37-44.
Jacobs, L. A., Kim, M. E. & Whitfield, D. L. (2020). Defund the police: Moving towards an anti-carceral social work. Journal of Progressive Human Services, 32(1), 19-22.
Kollar, L. (2017, May 2). Ten reasons why you should visit Nashville. Culture Trip. Retrieved from https://theculturetrip.com/north-america/usa/tennessee/articles/10-reasons-why-you-should-visit-nashville/.
Nashville crime rates. (2021). Neighborhood Scout. Retrieved from https://www.neighborhood scout.com/tn/nashville/crime,
Neuman, W. L. (2008). Social research methods: Qualitative and quantitative approaches. New York: Allyn & Bacon.
Reisig, M. D. (2010). Community and problem-oriented policing. Crime and Justice, 39, 1-18.
Schnobrich-Davis, J. & Block, S. (2020, September). Analysis of Herman Goldstein problem-oriented policing awards from 1993-2017. Policing: A Journal of Policy and Practice, 14(3), 616–629.
Survey toolkit. (2021). Strategies for Policing Innovation. Retrieved from https://www.strategies forpolicinginnovation.com/sites/default/files/Survey%20Toolkit_5_SARA%20Survey%20Demo.pdf.
Unemployment rate in Nashville-Davidson-Murfreesboro. (2021). Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis Economic Research. Retrieved from https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/ NASH947URN.
Wilkes, N., Anderson, V. R. & Johnson, C. L. (2021). Mixed methods research in criminology and criminal justice: a systematic review. American Journal of Criminal Justice, 37(3), 41-50.
Wood, G. D. & Ellis, R. C. (2003). Risk management practices of leading UK cost consultants. Engineering, Construction and Architectural Management, 10(4), 254-262.
Wooditch, A. (2021). The potential of spatiotemporal methods to improve criminal justice policy and program evaluation. Mason Archival Repository Service. Retrieved from http://jbox. gmu.edu/xmlui/handle/1920/10983.
Appendix A
Figure 1. Daily crime in Nashville (per 100,000 people)
Source: https://www.areavibes.com/nashville-tn/crime
Appendix B
Application of the problem-oriented policing strategic and tactics to Nashville
SARA component
Description of application
Scan
Increased police patrols of high-crime areas are most effective at night, while community-based interventions that include participation by community leaders are most effective during the daytime (Braga, 2008). Therefore, police departments should collaborate with community leaders in those neighborhoods in Nashville that have historically high violent crime rates (i.e., West Meade, Salemtown, Heron Walk, Glencliff and Bordeaux) to enhance relations and improve the ability of police to proactively prevent violent crimes rather than respond to them after the fact.
Analysis
This step involves narrowing the focus of the problem-oriented policing interventions to specific high-crime areas. In addition, research to learn as much as possible about the neighborhood is also essential at this stage.
Response
While conventional law enforcement analytical techniques that draw on quantifiable metrics such as arrest type, time and location, a problem-oriented policing intervention would also include feedback from the above-mentioned community leaders and other stakeholders to determine if additional measures are required.
Assessment
Finally, any problem-oriented policing intervention must be evaluated on a regular basis to determine how effective it was in achieving its intended outcomes by comparing benchmarked violent crimes rates.
Source: Adapted from The Sara Model (2020), Arizona State University Center for Problem-Oriented Policing at https://popcenter.asu.edu/content/sara-model-0
Appendix C
Qualitative measures for proposed study
Research question
Qualitative measure(s)
Key Variables and Supporting Rationale
Are the current policing strategies used in Nashville viewed positively or negatively by police officers on the street?
The answer to this research question will require a subjective analysis using a custom questionnaire that will evaluate police officers’ current views about what types of policing strategies that in use at present. The custom questionnaire will be divided into three sections: 1) a demographic section that will be used to collect data concerning time on the job, occupational title, age, and other relevant information; 2) a series of Likert-scaled statements that will be used to quantitatively analyze police officers’ views about their current policing strategies; and 3) an open-ended comment section that will be used to solicit additional insights and feedback from respondents that were not identified in section two.
The key variables of interest are the prevailing views of Nashville’s police force, drawing on the answer that was developed in response to the above-described research question, “What are the current policing strategies in place in Nashville?”
The use of a custom questionnaire is consistent with the guidance provide by Neuman (2008) concerning the collection of primary data but will require a pilot test using a sample of police officers that will not be included in the final administration of the questionnaire in order to evaluate the instrument’s trustworthiness.
What actions do local business leaders, civic groups and organizations believe need to be taken to address the crime problem in Nashville.
This research question will require a community survey of these stakeholders.
The key variables of interest for this research question concern the prevailing views of primary stakeholders in identifying optimal policing strategies for Nashville.
The use of a community survey is highly consistent with the guidance provided by the Strategies for Policing Innovation (SPI) organization, one of the key proponents of problem-oriented policing. For example, according to the SPI, “Community surveys can play a key role in POP and implementation of the SARA model [see description at Appendix A above].
• During the Scanning phase, surveys can used to identify ongoing or emerging public safety problems that affect the local community. This often uncovers issues that are not fully documented in official police data systems. Community surveys can help to narrow the scope of a problem during the Analysis phase, including gathering data regarding temporal and geographic patterns as well as why the problem may be occurring.
• There are several benefits of community surveys when it comes to brainstorming and prioritizing intervention strategies during the Response phase. Community members may suggest novel or innovative approaches to a problem.
• Likewise, surveys are useful for gauging community support for intervention strategies proposed by the police. Practices that anger or alienate large sections of the community are unlikely to be productive in the end. Asking people for input on a problem, usually increases their commitment to collaboration, and most efforts to prevent crime require some degree of community engagement.
• Finally, when it comes to Assessing the outcomes of a POP project, community surveys can be invaluable. Researches can ask community members about changes they observed in the target problem, their perceived safety, and their satisfaction with police efforts to address the issue (Survey toolkit, 2021, p. 2).