Trends in Israeli policing: terrorism, community, victimization and crime control

Policing has become an important area of innovation in criminology and in practice over the last few decades. In methodology, policing has emerged as a key area of evidence-based policy in criminal justice (see Lum, Koper, & Telep, 2011; Sherman, 1998; Weisburd & Neyroud, 2011), and the police have become one of the most open agents of the criminal justice system to new ideas and new approaches (see Weisburd & Braga, 2006). The science of policing has advanced greatly, and there is now much evidence not only that the police can be effective (National Research Council, 2004; Weisburd & Eck, 2004) but also that policing and police data can play a role in advancing scientific understanding of crime and the relationships between the community and criminal justice (e.g. Gill, Weisburd, Bennett, Telep, & Vitter, in progress; Telep & Weisburd, 2012; Tyler, 2011; Weisburd, Groff, & Yang, 2012). The advances in police science over the last few decades in the US and the UK have also impacted scientific study of the police in many other countries. This special issue reports on the advancement of police research in Israel. As the papers suggest, cuttingedge methods and cutting-edge questions are being asked regarding Israeli policing. But the papers suggest as well that there is much to learn about the police enterprise by looking to Israel. Clearly, comparative studies are critical to identify whether phenomena observed in the US for example can also be found in other settings. The paper by Weisburd and Amram provides a good example of the utility of examining key findings in different contexts. Weisburd and Amram show that the concentration of crime at micro-geographic units or crime ‘hot spots,’ occurs in Tel Aviv. Indeed, their results are strikingly similar to those reported in Seattle, Washington and other American cities (e.g. Weisburd et al., 2012). They argue for a law of crime concentrations. Examining crime hot spots in Israel provides accordingly important comparative data for advancing this area of study. This is also illustrated in Aviv’s examination of attitudes of victims and non-victims towards the police. Using data from a national survey in Israel, Aviv asks whether the data on victims in Israel mirrors that of US and European studies. Her findings show the remarkable salience of performance, treatment and trust evaluations, and provide important new data in a different national context, in support of work that emphasizes not only the importance of police legitimacy but the special situation of crime victims. Factor, Castilo and Rattner broaden the examination of public evaluations of the police. While public views are often measured in Israel, the ‘legitimacy’ of the police as frequently examined today (e.g. National Research Council, 2004; Tyler, 2004, 2009), its antecedents and outcomes have rarely been examined in the Israeli context (see JonathanZamir & Weisburd, 2013, for an exception). Factor et al. replicate the process-based model