Cultural Differences in Policing Styles - Essay Example

To keep the streets clean, the British police, except for a few disastrous experiments with ‘zero tolerance’ gravitated towards the more liberal approach.This report looks at the background and the development of the policing policies in the USA and the UK to understand the drivers and motivations that inform police activity in these countries. A comparison with the reported crime levels allows comparison of their performance and effectiveness and thus the systems.Why are the police so important in the development of democratic societies?

The police are different from any other government entity. Of all government functions, the policing function is arguably the most visible, the most immediate, the most intimately involved with the well-being of individuals and the health of the communities.Police represent a vital arm of the government and is primarily responsible for the maintenance of law and order within the political boundaries of a country. The organization, the underlying philosophy, and the way police approach their task reflects the approach to governance that the country has especially towards its citizens.

Conversely, the attitude of the community towards the police also affects the way the police approach their job. Regardless of the way the policing function is organized the result is what is important. The essential questions to ask are:While it is widely agreed that the functions of the police embrace much more than crime investigation and control as also that police are not the only institution that is responsible for crime abatement, this essay considers only the role of the police in fighting crime.

At the end of the 1980s, the change in societal environment, and the demographics of crime and drug abuse clearly indicated that the traditional police practices were inadequate to control crime (Greenwood et al 1977; Kelling et al 1974). Two decades of rising crime led to a gradual erosion of public confidence in the institution.