Evaluating wildlife law enforcement agent and agency effectiveness: a methodology

• Main Author: Bullard, Clifford Owen
• Other Authors: Wildlife Management
• Format: Others
• Language: en
• Published: Virginia Tech 2014
• Subjects: LD5655.V855 1992.B855; Law enforcement > Evaluation; Wildlife conservation > Law and legislation
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10919/45002; http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/theses/available/etd-10062009-020028/

A project was completed that 1) developed a list of potential primary law enforcement objectives; 2) analyzed the arrest component of agency and agent objectives; and 3) developed a computer model that produced an agent arrest score. A methodology to select law enforcement objectives using a hierarchy was developed. The objective hierarchy and example objectives are shown. A crime wildlife related list was developed. Game wardens and wildlife biologists with the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries, foresters with the Virginia Department of Forestry, and members of 2 private interest groups were surveyed to determine the relative importance of the crimes. Respondents ranked violations on a scale from 1 ("not very wrong") to 9 (livery wrong") relative to a given standard violation. The survey contained 3 sections: (A) specific violation list, (8) species list, and (C) list of violation categories. Differences among groups, consistency in responses, and relative consensus about importance of violations were analyzed. === Master of Science