What officers spend their shifts doing turns out to differ sharply from what most people assume they do. The Police in America: An Introduction, 9th Edition by Samuel Walker is built on that gap, testing popular beliefs about crime fighting, response time and patrol against the research record. Its questions reward students who can state a finding and the study behind it, and they penalize the confident common-sense answer.
Why this test bank helps
An exam in this course frequently offers the intuitive option and the evidenced one side by side. Choosing correctly means knowing what was actually measured. Each rationale here identifies the evidence: how the police role has been described in call-for-service studies, what force reporting shows about frequency, why clearance rates behave the way they do. Explaining the finding, not just recognizing it, is what the short-answer questions ask for.
What’s inside
- Items grouped chapter by chapter, following the order in which the book presents the material.
- Question formats vary — multiple choice, true/false, matching and short written items.
- A rationale beneath each question that explains the answer instead of simply stating it.
- Items drawn from the research findings this text is organized around, alongside the accountability and community chapters.
- One tidy PDF, ready the instant checkout completes.
Topics covered
- The American police system — thousands of independent local, county, state and federal agencies and what fragmentation causes
- History and reform — the political, reform and community eras and the research that discredited old assumptions
- The police role — the balance of crime control, order maintenance and service in actual calls for service
- Patrol — allocation, preventive patrol research, response time findings and hot-spot deployment
- Criminal investigation — solvability factors, clearance rates and the limits of detective work
- Discretion — the decision to arrest, factors that shape it, and control through written policy
- Use of force — patterns, reporting, deadly force policy and the effects of policy change
- Accountability and community relations — citizen complaints, external oversight, race, legitimacy and procedural justice
Who it’s for
Undergraduates in an introduction to policing course taught from this edition, and criminal justice majors who need the research-based chapters on the police role, discretion and accountability for an exam or a paper.
How to use it (the right way)
Read the chapter and work through the book’s own examples first; practice questions diagnose understanding, they do not create it. Then attempt a block closed-book, flag every item you were unsure of even when you got it right, and read the rationale for all of them. This is a study aid. Use it in line with your institution’s academic-integrity policy — as preparation and self-testing, never as a substitute for the coursework or as material taken into a graded assessment.
Sample question (shows the format — your download contains the full set)
Q. Research on how patrol officers spend their time most consistently supports which conclusion?
- A. Most calls involve violent crimes in progress
- B. A large share of patrol work is order maintenance and service rather than crime fighting
- C. Officers spend the majority of a shift making arrests
- D. Random preventive patrol reliably prevents crime across a beat
Answer: B. Call-for-service studies consistently show that disturbances, disputes, traffic problems and assistance requests dominate the workload, while serious crimes in progress are a small fraction of it. A inverts that distribution. C is inconsistent with arrest rates per officer, which are far lower than the crime-fighting image suggests. D was the assumption the Kansas City experiment tested and failed to support.
Edition & format
- Matches: The Police in America: An Introduction, 9th Edition, by Samuel Walker.
- Format: Digital PDF, delivered instantly after checkout.
- Access: Lifetime — re-download from your account whenever you need it.
Chapter order and question numbering change between editions. Please confirm the edition and ISBN above match the ones your course assigned before you buy.
Frequently asked questions
Which printing is this matched to? The 9th Edition, ISBN 9781259140761. If your course lists a different edition, use that listing instead, since coverage moves between editions.
How do I receive it? The download appears on your order confirmation page and in your account as soon as checkout completes. Nothing is shipped and there is no waiting period.
Does every question come with reasoning? Yes — each item is followed by an explanation of why the keyed answer holds and where the other options go wrong.
Am I allowed to use this? Treat it as revision material, in the same way as a workbook or a study group. Your institution’s academic-integrity policy governs how practice material may be used, so follow it.
You can browse the rest of the subject in Criminal Justice Test Banks.
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