A Macro Social Analysis of Change in Police Force Size, 1972–1982: Controlling for Static and Dynamic Influences

Recently, Liska, Lawrence, and Benson (1981) and Greenberg, Kessler, and Loftin (1985) have examined the effects of static measures of social and economic characteristics of cities on changes in police force size. In brief, they report that these measures have small and inconsistent effects on changes in police force size during the previous three decades. This study extends this research by examining the influence of static and dynamic measures of social structure on the change in police force size among cities during the 1970s. The results indicate that three dynamic measures of social structure significantly affect change in police size and thereby support the contention that the failure to control for processes of change may have led to specification bias in previous attempts to model changes in police size.