Over the last five years, there has developed a heightened awareness of the benefits that would accrue to law enforcement from fashioning policy in major areas of public concern.The National Crime Commission, with its persistent exhortation to police officials "to develop and articulate clear policies aimed at guiding or governing the way policemen exercise their discretion on the street," 1 and the standards of the American Bar Association's Committee on the Urban Police Function 2 have highlighted the promise of rulemaking by police agencies.The promise is twofold: increased effectiveness in reducing rising crime rates and delivering critical community services; and, at the same time, an improved system of regulating police conduct.To those who have been disappointed by the lack of success in reducing crime, rulemaking, 3 with its more sophisticated use of the law to advance police goals, offers some hope for better crime control.
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Gerald Caplan (1971) studied this question.