Divisions | Division of Training and Education | Academy Evaluation
Over the past two years, faculty at Yale University's Institution for Social and Policy Studies have monitored the effects of the New Haven Police Academy's curriculum on five different cohorts of students. Academy students were given a written questionnaire describing a range of criminal conduct which might be found in and around New Haven. The questionnaire asked them to evaluate points of law and to express their views about the seriousness of particular sorts of criminal conduct. The content of the scenarios was manipulated experimentally, to assess the influence of particular aspects of the scenario on responses. Comparisons of survey responses before, shortly after, and several months after the training show quite clearly that the New Haven Police Academy's curriculum not only imparts awareness of the law as it affects issues of diversity and tolerance, but also shapes the personal views of student officers with respect to the seriousness of hate crime. After classes in the area of bias and hate crime, students were more likely to identify correctly cases in which bias charges could appropriately be brought; they were also more likely to state that, in accordance with Connecticut's sentence-enhancing bias crime statute, perpetrators deserve more serious punishments. Follow-up surveys will allow us to assess the extent to which the philosophy imparted in the classroom continues to leave its imprint on new officers after they have been socialized into the rest of the police department.
This type of evaluation, is, in some sense, a model for the ways in which one might go about detecting the effectiveness with which the new norms of community policing are communicated to students. If the curriculum is to be successful, at a minimum it must convey the overall message behind the new perspective. The long-term success of the initiative further depends on new officers retaining this new ethos and either winning over their veteran colleagues or gradually replacing these officers through retirement. If this training initiative is successful, what we should see, then, is that the views of the typical police officer change over time. At the same time, we should witness a shift in the priorities of police supervisors and managers: the norms that they convey in, for example, their memoranda should emphasize different policing priorities. Researchers at universities in the New Haven area are just beginning to track these aspects of organizational change.
Researchers have also been tracking the spatial distribution of crime in the wake of the shift to community policing. Researchers at the Institute for Social and Policy Studies, educational partner on our TREE (Training, Research Education and Evaluation grant), have compiled a state-of-the-art database linking criminological, economic, demographic, housing and land-use data into a publicly-accessible archive known as New Haven On-Line. ISPS houses the City Room, where researchers and members of the community can gain free access to this computerized information, as well as geo-coding software and statistical consulting. New Haven On-Line has been not only a great planning resource for public officials; it provides an opportunity for both police and members of the community to participate in the planning process.
