CityBeat: Would more police officers reduce crime? UC criminologist suggests not

At least 20 people were shot, five fatally, in several separate incidents in Cincinnati Aug. 15-16. In examining one of the city’s most violent weekends on record, CityBeat magazine turned to the research of University of Cincinnati criminologist John Eck.

Eck, a professor criminal justice in UC’s School of Criminal Justice, conducted research in 2017 that looked at both crime data and police department size data from 1968 to 2013 and found no correlation between the two. He says the key is in changing strategy, not size

“We published a study synthesizing all of the studies of police force size and crime and could not find a scintilla of evidence that expanding a police force would reduce crime,” Eck previously told CityBeat.

Read the full story here.

 

Featured image at top: Handcuffs stock image, provided by Law.com

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