Policing and Communities - Essay Example

Department

Introduction

Along with the legal system and governance, promoting and maintaining order in communities has always been an integral part of socio-political context. While every community is a complex and diverse social entity which is, of course, vulnerable to deviances, policing has gradually become crucial for keeping society functioning in the most balanced and orderly way. As Tupman & Tupman (1999, p.17) note, the modern conception of policing is a rather blurred and multifaceted one, incorporating the whole range of duties and actions performed by the police: from mediating disputes to tackling the problem of noisy neighbours. Thereby, “the cultivation of stable legal orders […] has gone hand in hand with the emergence of formal and informal methods of policing, which function to enforce legal entitlements and preserve institutional and societal order” (Smith, 2016, p.136). This means that the policing as an institutionalised societal and legal process is marked by complexity and related to the considerable amount of theoretical aspects, ethical considerations, strategies, ethical considerations and social as well as legal implications.

Modern legal and political communities depend greatly on policing not just in terms of order maintenance, but also in “collective” sense of identity. However, policing in the form which is usual for us today did not exist always; instead, policing as a practice of order maintenance and police as an institution enforcing legal and communal norms formed roughly in the nineteenth century.

Today, being a vital part of society as a system, policing serves as a system mitigating public fear of crime, promoting order and performing a range of other functions. Given the multifaceted nature of policing as the essential subject of political, governmental and public discourses, the present paper is aimed to investigate the key issues underpinning policing in relation to communities: theoretical foundations and strategies, ethical issues, policy and governance implications, experiences of different parties, and remarkable case studies characterising the UK’s context.

Theoretical perspectives and functions

Policing agencies were originally formed as a response to the emerging social trends and problems of the nineteenth century including urbanisation, industrialisation, revolts of the Industrial Revolution and others; though the twentieth century was marked by the dramatic increase of the governmental involvement in policing of communities and citizens (Palmiotto & Unnithan, 2010, p.2). Yet, policing also became multilaterilised due to emergence of multiple nongovernmental formations providing policing services to the communities: private security companies, video surveillance, gated communities etc., though police is still an institution associated with policing of communities most often.

The notion of democratic policing

Definitely, the most popular general view of policing that has been adopted by the democratic world is democratic policing. While policing is intertwined with the style and form of governance, the surge of democratic policing is naturally connected with the overall democratization of society. The modern view of policing does not focus on aggressive surveillance, USSR-style tortures and exiles or attempts of authoritative control. According to Travis (2002, p.9), democratic policing “is limited by historical and legal traditions, eschews terrorism and counter-terrorism, and ensures minimal damage to civility”.

At the same time, the democratic perspective distinguishes between the police and policing, for policing is believed to be the task of multiple agencies working together to insure order and maintain stability with the minimal damage to citizens. Therefore, the notion of democratic police arises, defining the broad and complex formation: “The police, constituted by many agencies, are authoritatively coordinated and legitimate organizations that stand ready to apply force up to and including fatal force in specified territories to sustain politically defined ordering” (Travis, 2002, p.4).

Sociological perspectives

In the sociological discourse, policing and police function within a complex system, while their role as well as relationships with the community could be viewed from a number of sociological theories. Looking at policing through the lens of functionalism, one would consider police in relation to the social order. That is, the theory of functionalism views every element of the social system and every institution perform specific functions intended to insure the society’s lasting survival. Crime, in its turn, is considered a dysfunctional element endangering social wellbeing.

Therefore, policing emerges as a practice contributing to law enforcement, maintaining public order, nurturing obedience in the younger generation, cutting crime and protecting civilian communities from the perpetrators. At the same time, the latent function of the police is described as employment for thousands of people whom the institution supplies with “the means of livelihood”: these people do not only receive benefits from their work in the policing domain (both police officers and civilian support workers) but also form beliefs in the ideals and laws they enforce (Palmiotto & Unnithan, 2010, p.6).

Interactionist theory is also widely used to explain the role of the police and policing in society. Within the paradigm of symbolic interactionism, policing is considered to be dependent on the officers’ discretion and symbolic interpretations of information, while any instance of criminal behaviour will not receive a direct response. Thereby, crime statistics and the instances of crime themselves (i.e. ‘proved’ ones) reflect the police officers’ discretion in resolving the dilemma.

The third sociological theory dealing with policing is, of course, the conflict theory: the theory describes crime and deviance as forms of the social conflict between those who have more resources and power and those who have less power and resources. In this framework, the police is an instrument used by the upper class to protect their interests and enforce their rules. As norms and rules are created by the ruling class, its members tend to violate these norms and thus policing becomes aimed at preservation of order among the lower classes: “the police represent the interests of the elite in any given society” (Palmiotto & Unnithan, 2010, p.14). However, there has been a tendency to combine different perspectives for providing the fullest interpretation of policing for a given society.

Relying on the historical perspective, Tupman and Tupman (1999, p.19) list a wide range of functions assigned to policing in historical tradition and in modern days: watchmen, palace guards, economic organisations, guardians of the truth, gendarmeries and others. All these guises are assumed by the modern systems of policing and each of them undertakes policing of a certain societal domain: there are customs to police economic affairs, private security services watching order and safety at the non-governmental level, political police protecting the elite of the community, police support units assigned with the so-called ‘reactive’ policing, and others. The modern society implements policing of political views, legal and economic behaviours, relationships between the individuals and organisations, and even of sexual domain (when it comes to prostitution). Respectively, policing turns out to address various aspects of the community’s life and receive different responses to the strategies and approaches used to fulfil this task.

Notably, the scholarly community often distinguishes between high and low policing, as it has been suggested by Brodeur (1983). In fact, these two functional domains could be interpreted via the level of interaction with particular communities and the broadness of the picture. High policing is commonly understood as the form of order maintenance relying on intelligence services, counterterrorism activities and special governmental agencies: high policing function on a broader scale. At the same time, low policing is related to services and policing activities performed in communities and – most often – by the uniform police officers. This means that the tasks performed by the low policing are more specific and focus on the cases of deviance at hand as well as particular communities the police are attached to.

Strategies of policing of communities

In the course of social and political development, different nations and societies have been experimenting and deploying various policing strategies to find an optimal way of addressing and preventing the problems of the communities at hand. The strategies vary greatly among the countries, though they all are expected to meet the international standards of human rights protection.

Zero tolerance in policing

One of the ‘extreme’ policing strategies is that applying the principle of zero tolerance. Although the term is somewhat misleading, this approach to policing purports a combination of the three strategic points, as defined by Dixon and Coffin: “Police focus on disorder and street offences with the expectation that doing so will reduce serious crime”; “their priority is improvement of quality of life in local areas”; “police engage in proactive, intensive operations directed at people, places and property identified by risk assessment techniques” (Dixon & Coffin, 1999, p.478). In other words, the approach characterized by ‘zero tolerance’ is marked by high intensity of policing initiatives and rather harsh responses to deviances and even minor offenses.

A good example of its application could be identified in New York of mid-1990s with its new mayor Rudolph Giuliani and “his personally-appointed police chief, William Bratton” (Gimber, 2007, p.18). Constructing the strategy of policing upon the belief that minor offenses could be the trampoline for more serious deviances threatening the community, the New York Police Department intensified control of the minor offenses which would go unpoliced previously. This period in New York policing practice is commonly referred to as ‘broken-windows policing’.

Eventually, New York saw “a crackdown on turnstile-jumping, aggressive panhandling, public urination and the so-called ‘squeegee men’”, and the rate of serious crimes also decreased (Gimber, 2007, p.18). However, ‘zero tolerance’ policing is rather susceptible to corruption and malpractice due to its aggressive approach.

As Dammert and Malone (2006, p.37) note, ‘zero tolerance’ policing is at risk of degenerating “into police abuses of power and racial profiling”, developing repressive attitudes, and “miscarriages of justice emanating from police malpractice” (Stephenson, 1993, p.87). Moreover, the risk of such system failure is especially high for the communities where policing lacks adequate resources and funding.

Preventive policing

Preventive policing, in turn, is a strategy deploying careful analytical and predictive techniques of law enforcement in order to predict and prevent crime and deviance before it could occur. In other words, this strategy aims to literally stop crimes before they can be committed via calculations and predictions concerning potential crimes, offenders, identities of perpetrators, crime victims or areas with the increased risk of crime and deviance. Making predictions about crimes, the police can direct patrolling and resources to the areas of potential criminal activity and hence use the available resources for order maintenance in the best possible way. In UK, such strategy was implemented in Kent, resulting in successful prediction of street crimes (via the PredPol software system). However, predictive policing is most efficient for such crimes as vehicle thefts and burglaries.

Community policing

The strategy of policing which is widely applied nowadays and has a potential for the long-term improvements in communities is the community policing. This approach could be described rather as a whole cluster of different strategies and methods synthesized and combined to achieve the best results and benefit both the governance and communities. A wide range of scholarly works has been devoted to the issues and methodologies of community policing due to its growing popularity worldwide. Ray (2014) elucidates the roots of community policing in the deliberative democratic theory which is, in its essence, aimed at construction of the new relationships between the administrative state and the citizen, between the governed and the government.

According to this theoretical framework, the new type of community engagement should be attained: “Rather than simply engaging citizens for the purposes of aggregating preferences, [the theory] proposes community engagement for the purposes of forming and discerning preferences across groups through discourse and deliberation” (Ray, 2014, p.41). In other words, the theory stresses importance of the community’s engagement and the citizens’ consent to be governed.

Community policing is defined as “a philosophy that promotes organizational strategies, which support the systematic use of partnerships and problem-solving techniques, to proactively address the immediate conditions that give rise to public safety issues such as crime, social disorder, and fear of crime (Burke, 2010, p.43). Thereby, community policing is largely based on establishment of productive and long-term partnerships between the police and the communities under their supervision: the latter may include specific community members of groups, other governmental agencies, private businesses, non-profit service providers or media.

Community policing framework recognises that “police rarely can solve public safety problems alone” and thus stresses importance of interactive partnerships “with relevant stakeholders” of the communities (Burke, 2010, p.45). Naturally, all these collaborations and partnerships with different community ‘units’ (from individual residents and tourists to child support services) pursue one large-scale aim – resolution of problems and threats jeopardising the communities.

Private citizens and nongovernmental organisations work together with police officers in order to help solve the relevant community problems related to physical/social disorder, neighbourhood conditions, fear of crime and crime itself (Wilson, 2006, p.8). Thus, the model of community policing is marked by the higher level of involvement for the community members: active participation of the community members in the process of order maintenance enhances trust in police and insures fruitful results in terms of law enforcement and crime prevention. In other words, this approach could be described as the most ‘community-friendly’ due to the decreased distance between the police and the policed communities.

Referring to Kelling and Coles (1996), Wilson (2006, p.8) lists the major principles of community-oriented policing: a) police relies on the community members in many aspects; b) the functions of policing are broader than law enforcement alone; c) “police work is complex knowledge, skill, and discretion”; d) preference of community-specific policing tactics rather than general preventive measures; e) police authority is decreased to the lower level to meet community needs and encourage citizens to cooperate; f) “commitment of police to serve multiple aims from reducing crime and fear to helping citizens manage problems”. As it can be concluded from these principles, community policing is highly ‘democratic’ in terms of participation in preventive and protective activities. That is, community-based policing is preventive in its nature, yet the emphasis is laid on participation of the community and focus of the preventive initiatives on this specific community or area.

Ethical issues of policing

There is hardly any domain of governance requiring higher ethical standards that the domain of law enforcement, and policing is an integral part of law enforcement system. Due to its nature, policing is a rather sensitive and important process relying heavily on the values promoted by the society. That is, policing is expected to be a practical expression of the values and beliefs of the particular community and a tool for their defence and promotion.

“The police are among the most powerful agents of the state” (Neyroud & Beckley, 2001, p.21), and policing is always placed in the wide normative and ethical discourses which define the concerns related to the behavioural aspect and ethical standards attached to the profession. Ethical issues are of exceptional importance in the modern days due to resurgence of corruption in policing, racialization of social relationships, and ongoing debates concerning the limits to powers of police. In the United Kingdom, policing ethical issues have been emerging in relation to constitution, law, accountability and culture. The society relies on police as an institution possessing sufficient skills and common sense as well as the ability to balance between upholding the laws and maintaining order in communities. In this respect, many scholars argued about the balance between respect for human rights and order maintenance for police, with this aspect being especially relevant for aggressive policing strategies.

As Neyroud and Beckley define it, policing ethics is defined by the way “police officers and police leaders make the right judgements and do the right things, for the right reasons” (Neyroud & Beckley, 2001, p.27). Interestingly, these criteria measuring ethical aspects of policing are most often viewed through the prism of crisis rather than everyday casual situations. Thereby, a good example of crisis situations is provided by the civil protests: in such cases, dealing with the threat to public order acquires a different form rather than the traditional way of mitigating threats from criminals. Particularly, “provision of security during demonstrations usually involves coordination and negotiation with protest organizers and local authorities on the course of public actions and safety measures” (Juska & Woolfson, 2012, p.12).

Dealing with such delicate situations as riots and civil protests, police is expected to demonstrate strict adherence to the law and respect of human rights along with the maintenance and restoration of order.

Overall, the ethical context of policing is believed to incorporate three major aspects: police culture, the institution of policing and styles of policing (Neyroud, 2006, p.20) which are especially relevant for community policing. The latter aspect is related to the impacts of covert policing, i.e. ethical management of deception for the noble cause, and the impacts various crime-fighting approaches might have on communities. Meanwhile, the institutional aspect of policing is commonly related to the ethical concerns of corruption, for corruption decreases the public’s confidence in police, trust and hence recognition of the authority exercised by the police. Quite naturally, “a belief that the police are not acting in a just and fair manner” decreases “support for their authority” (Bain et al., 2014, p.268) and makes the community members cautious and reluctant to get involved. Such issues have long been faced by the policing system in America’s troubled communities, for the two groups which are expected to collaborate have a rather poor history of “getting along”.

As Skogan and colleagues (1999) note, “especially in poor and disenfranchised neighbourhoods, residents often have a history of antagonistic relationships with the police”, perceiving them as brutal, arrogant, uncaring or overtly aggressive (Skogan et al., 1999, p.111). Such fears give rise to the third aspect of policing ethics mentioned by Neyroud (2006), police culture. In the aforementioned communities, trust to the police as the primary agents of the policing system and law enforcement is undermined due to the flaws in police culture: lack of discretion and discrimination.

Community policing in the UK context

The context of policing in the United Kingdom is rich in controversies and popular among the researchers in sociology and criminology. First of all, the distinctive trait of the British policing system is the rejection of paramilitary models of armed police officers popularised across Europe and America. As Waddington (2013) explains, British policing was initially created as the system using no arms. Unlike others, British policemen have been lightly armed, carrying only rattles and truncheons. In this way, British policing system has been demonstrating repudiation of paramilitary policing culture and purporting that policemen carrying no guns “could not win the compliance of the civil population by fear and coercion”, “their authority would rest upon respect rather than fear” (Waddington, 2013, p.155). Respectively, such approach could be a projection of the community policing model which has been popularised in the recent decades not just in the U.S. but also in Britain.

In Britain, the police have a wide range of policing duties and are given certain powers for performing these duties. At the same time, the democratic pattern is generally realised through the framework of ‘policing by consent’: the police fulfil their peacekeeping mission exercising their powers upon the implicit consent of the community members. British policing is viewed as legitimate from the perspective of the public and the right to exercise their powers is given to the police upon the conditions of their integrity, transparency, discretion and accountability. However, this model of policing has long been underpinned by certain challenges, with the issue of racialisation and discrimination being one of the most serious in the British multicultural environment.

The concerns related to racialized policing in the British communities have been expressed by numerous scholars, while Holdaway (2013) provides a rather comprehensive account of racial relations in the British context of policing. Thereby, policing in Britain became racialized in only a couple of decades ago, and the pivotal point in this process is certainly the Brixton incident of 1981. During the riots in the London borough of Brixton, the police abused their powers during the stop-and-search operation, paying more attention to the local ethnic minorities: “The operation spiraled into conflict between local police and residents, who felt oppressed as they were stopped with increasing frequency” (Holdaway, 2013, p.54). The police retreated from the peacekeeping style of policing demanding impartiality and discretion and deployed a rather authoritative control reinforced by the discriminatory perceptions of racial minorities. Moreover, Holdaway (2013, p.55) refers to a study conducted in Metropolitan Police area, i.e. the area of 1981 disturbances, stating that “when on foot, black men were four times more likely to be stopped than were people from other ethnic groups; 49 percent of West Indians who owned or said that they had regular use of a vehicle said they had been stopped by the police”. Thereby, the so-called institutionalised racism is considered a serious issue of the British policing system along with abuse of powers, lack of impartiality, application of force leading to deaths of civilians, controversial shootings and many others.

One of the most recent examples illustrating the disruption of community policing strategy in the British community is the case of Mark Duggan’s death on August 4, 2011, which later sparked mass riots in England and particularly in all parts of London. According to the investigation report of the Independent Police Complaints Commission (2011), Mark Duggan had been placed under surveillance long before the incident within the policing operation Trident aimed against serious and gang crime, because his criminal record and the intelligence hinted at his potential for illegitimate firearm use against others.

The report findings are rather fragmented in terms of the situation’s modelling, but it is well-known that Duggan was tracked and stopped under the reasonable conditions and due to reasonable concerns about his connections with the local criminal groups. However, although the report found the officers’ actions quite reasonable because of the perceived threat and the careful consideration of time and place of the minicab stopping, there overall character of shooting; the findings indicated that the man did not shoot at the policemen and was either unarmed or was dropping the gun he had purchased previously. The policing methods deployed by the Metropolitan Police Service during Duggan’s detention and after the riots sparked turned out to be far from the ideals of community policing.

First of all, the policemen’s approach to detention of the ethnic minority member could be perceived as racialized, while the strategy of policing in this domain is far from community policing, because the police did not establish collaborative trustful relationships with the minorities and, at the same time, revealed themselves as rather aggressive rather than using force (and particularly firearms) as the last resort. Although the approach adopted by the Metropolitan Police group could be described as highly predictive, the law enforcement process grew rather brutal, and racist attitudes of the ‘white’ police must have played their role.

In this incident, policing spilt beyond the strategy of community policing and construction of trustful relationships with the policed community. Consequently, fearing the proliferation of the overly sensitive race issue, the police lost control over the rioters. As Green (2011) reasonably mentions, one of the crucial reasons for the failure of policing in Duggan’s incident is the inability to strike roots in the local communities and involve them in order to create the conditions for the low-crime safe environment. In other words, the police did not spend much effort on encouragement of the locals to be involved in community policing. It was especially visible in the multicultural communities with the large shares of ethnic minorities (for instance, Tottenham is marked by nearly the largest population of Afro-Carribeans).

The case of Duggan and the following riots has literally demonstrated flaws in the system of community policing. The officers who worked in the community did not integrate into it or encouraged community members to participate. While policing – and especially community policing – is basically viewed as the matter of prevention, proactive measures and visible presence, the case of 2011 has illustrated the shortcomings in the system. Pressured to be – or appear – more authoritative or efficient, the police gradually switched to reaction and detection and tried to overtake absolute control over the assigned territories.

Conclusion

The topic of policing is extremely broad, incorporating a handful of strategic approaches, ethical concerns, theoretical perspectives and governance models. As it has been demonstrated, policing is assigned with a number of functions, while maintenance of social order and prevention of deviance are definitely the most common ones. Respectively, all policing practices and strategies target the impact on and responses of the policed communities, which might be both rewarding and negative. In the UK context, the recent decades have been marked by the increase in ethical and cultural challenges which are derived from the complex ethnic situation and the general issues of policies, corruption and governance. Among others, racialisation is certainly one of the most serious issues haunting policing not just in the UK but in the U.S. as well. Grounding policing styles in racialized or authoritative perceptions, the police arrive at the risk of receiving adverse responses from the communities, though the key value of the modern democratic community policing lies in the trustful cooperation between citizens and police as the primary agents of the state for the sake of safety, crime reduction and long-term peacekeeping effects.