Uniform Crime Reports as Organizational Outcomes: Three Time Series Experiments

Abstract

John Kitsuse and Aaron Cicourel have suggested that official crime rates are a function of the organizational structures of police departments. In three “natural experiments,” we examine this hypothesis with time series analyses of Uniform Crime Reports. Our findings suggest that official crime rates are a function of organizational structures related to (1) formal complaint investigation; (2) hierarchial control of crime processing; and (3) dispatching routines. We propose a minimal theory of official crime rates as organizational outcomes.