E-Policing

Abstract

Increasingly, information technology has pervaded the provision of services by police agencies in the United States. Recent research (Jones & de Guzman, 2010) has illustrated that although most police organizations maintain a web presence, these departments showed significant variations in the quality of their websites and the services they offer through the Internet. Using a sample of 162 large municipal police agencies in the United States, this research isolated the factors that contribute to the adoption of e-government practices. Environmental and organizational factors were tested as explanatory variables. The results indicated that organizational resource constraints had minimal influences on the quality and function of police websites and that officer education appeared as the primary predictor. With respect to environmental factors, population size and their levels of education were significantly related to the features and characteristics of police websites. Likewise, the research examined contingency and institutional theories to explain different features and characteristics of police websites. The data tended to support assumptions made by institutional theory.