Stratified Policing

Rachel Santos is professor of criminal justice and director of the Center for Police Practice, Policy and Research at Radford University. The center facilitates collaboration among researchers and police practitioners to foster a unique blend of evidence-based and practice-based police policy and research. Santos has been working with police organizations since 1994 and conducts practice-based research on police organizational change, transparency, and communications as well as on the institutionalization and sustainability of problem solving, crime analysis, and accountability in police agencies to support their crime reduction efforts. She cocreated, with Roberto Santos, the concept of stratified policing and assists police agencies around the country and internationally implementing the organizational approach to institutionalize evidence-based crime reduction practices. She has recently completed two experiments partnering with a police agency to test the effectiveness of systematic police response in both short-term and long-term property crime hot spots. Since 2000, she has lead federally funded research and technical assistance projects in these areas for the National Institute of Justice, the Office of Community Policing Services, and the Bureau of Justice Assistance. From these projects, she has published many final reports, practitioner guidebooks, and articles for both academic and professional journals. She has one of the only sole authored books on crime analysis in its fourth edition, Crime Analysis with Crime Mapping which has also been translated in Chinese. She has also coauthored with Marcus Felson Crime and Everyday Life . Roberto Santos is assistant professor of criminal justice and associate director of the Center for Police Practice, Policy and Research at Radford University. The purpose of the Center is to facilitate collaboration among researchers and police practitioners to foster a unique blend of evidence-based and practice-based police policy and research. Dr. Santos is a retired police commander from the Port St. Lucie, FL Police Department (236 sworn personnel) where after 22 years worked in, supervised, and commanded every division within the agency. He co-created a crime reduction approach called Stratified Policing that standardizes crime analysis, the problem-solving process, and accountability and provides the means for a police organization to systematize and sustain evidence-based practices taking “what works” and “makes it work” within the police organization. He assists police agencies around the U.S. and internationally in organizational change, evaluation, and sustainability processes for institutionalizing crime reduction strategies and was the catalyst in leading the successful implementation of Stratified Policing in his own department. In 2014, he was inducted into George Mason University’s Evidence-Based Policing Hall of Fame for this work and for leading rigorous research and the implementation of evidence-based practices into day-to-day police operations. Dr. Santos is currently involved in a COPS Office funded Collaborative Reform Initiative to assist a police department in California and Pennsylvania in improving their use of force, training, crime reduction, and community engagement practices. He is a graduate of the FBI National Academy (Class 239), earned his Master of Science in Criminology and Criminal Justice from Florida Atlantic University and Doctor of Philosophy in Criminal Justice with a concentration in organizational leadership from Nova Southeastern University. His 200+ page dissertation entitled, A Quasi-Experimental Test and Examination of Police Effectiveness in Residential Burglary and Theft from Vehicle Micro-Time Hot Spots, was a quantitative analysis, using propensity score matching, that tested the effects of one component of Stratified Policing (i.e., response to short-term crime patterns) on crime.