Crime Prevention Strategy Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Crime Prevention Strategy - Essay Example d finally coming up with actionable strategies for dealing with the crime problem, to be recommended to the Tucson Police Department and all leveraging the SARA model as the overall framework for the exercise (Center for Problem-Oriented Policing, 2013; Hoffman, Legosz, and Budz, 2005; City of Tucson, 2013). The City of Tucson Police Department details incidences of major crimes in the city over a period from 1997 to 2001 and breaks down statistics for different crimes. The plots reveal a general downward trend in incidences of crimes from homicides to arson to and robberies, with some crimes peaking in some years and some in other years in the early part of the last decade, with the exception of drug-related crimes, or so-called â€Å"Narcotic Drug Law Cases†, which have been relatively sticky and persistent over the observation period, varying over a relatively narrow range and generally being intractable from 1997 all the way to 2011, with the rates actually peaking and the n returning to 1997 levels in the intervening period of time. This is the chosen crime problem for the purposes of this discussion. It is worth noting that as of 2011, the incidence of such crimes is recorded at about 1,000 per 100,000 persons living in the city, an uptick from the 900 per 100,000 persons recorded in 1997 (City of Tucson, 2013b, p. 8). II. Discussion A. The Crime Problem, Qualitative and Quantitative Measures The plot below details the occurrence of the narcotic drug law crime problem in the city of Tucson from 1997 to 2011, as earlier mentioned, showing the relative stubbornness or persistence of this crime problem over time (City of Tucson, 2013b, p. 8): Graph Source: City of Tuczon, 2013b, p. 8 In the plot above, one can see that from 1997 to 2011, there was a considerable uptick in the drug crime problem in the city, with the last set of figures from 2003 to 2011 seeing the city facing a seesaw battle with the problem over time, and with the rates stubbornly hig her compared to the rates that were recorded in the latter part of the last century (City of Tuczon, 2013b), In contrast to this crime problem, the city seems to have fared better battling other crimes, which as can be shown from corresponding plots have been on downward trends after peaking at various points in the intervening years from 1997 to 2011. From a strategic point of view, there is value in further examining this problem in hopes of helping the Tuczon Police Department deal with the stubborn drug problem and improve the statistics in line with the progress that has been made dealing and briging down the incidence of other major crimes (City of Tuczon, 2013). From the field, we are able to get qualitative counterparts to the drug statistics provided by the police department above. One can classify the drug problem in Tucson as consisting of two main parts, one having to do with prescription drug abuse, which has the aid of health care workers in some cases, and one having to do with the trade in illegal substances such as crystal meth, which