The Effectiveness of Community Policing - Case Study Example

The Effectiveness of Community Policing: An Interactive Approach Submitted: Submitted of the I. Introduction Researches on community policing have been anxious with a single concern-- does it work. Generally, the responses have been negative; yet, rarely has anyone silenced to analyze the real meaning and purpose of community policing. Indeed, it has countless implications. On the police and policy-making sector, community policing provides political advantages and is eagerly accepted for motives having a minimal thing to do with police performance and tradition. The current propagation of methods based on community policing such as “sector policing, area policing, total geographic policing” (Fielding, 1995, 1) confirms to its, persistent appeal, as does the continuing finding that individuals desire more of the “bobbies on the beat” (ibid, 1). However, on the intellectual side, community policing is doubtfully considered accurately since other spectators are too passive of it and because studies propose it is not as much of effective as is stated. For people disposed towards drastic social and political reforms, community policing is simply perceived as sheer tinkering or as a masked part of an exploitive political instrumentation. Apparently, there is something lacking from the policy-related literature on community policing. Also, police and policymakers have rapidly absorbed community policing for its sporadic successes relatively than its habitual actuality. A primary concern is whether there is something typical in decision-making by community police. Theories about decision-making founded on management principles and the cost-benefit framework of homo economics generate representations with restricted descriptive value (ibid, 2). Regulatory decision-making paradigms neither take into account the organizational structure nor the sequential characteristics of the practice decision-making, which is the origin of practice and the conventions which direct and limit decision-making in organizational settings (Manning, 1983). On the other hand, frameworks of decision-making supported by quantitative figures about police conducts have inadequate value in expounding decisions such as carrying out arrest, and are even less helpful in clearing up informal acts (Black, 1971). However, qualitative approaches which scrutinize officer’s moral values and work-related practices as a source for conclusions about probable actions have not provided persuasive evidence that these clarify their judgments and behaviors (Worden & Brandl, 1990). Additionally, the illustrative value of circumstantial variables such as demography, particularities of the episode, is meek and chiefly confined to the arrest verdict (Worden, 1989). Organizations are widely synchronized through their socially-accepted function, which demands action within the limitations considered essential for its pursuit. The deed of the police organization stresses on both the responsibility to defend the law, to prevent crime, and to guarantee the stability of civil order. Within the boundaries of city policing, and particularly long term mission to a single beat, these mutually-strained elements of the agreement emphasize the implementation of police judgment. This basic concept requires officers to be active as arbitrators of opposing interests and interpreters of the law (McCabe and Wallington, 1988). This is due to the fact that the law is in black and white with isolated occurrences in mind, that is to say, specific incidences of law-transgression, whereas officers making use of the law over the progression of long-term agreement with community members view events as section of a continuous pattern. Occasionally, a solitary side dominates; sometimes another, yet both groups will still be present the next day (Fielding, 1995). The law does not put aside any harmonizing elements that are significant in these terms. Incidentally, this is not to claim that community policing is entirely a prerogative. Hence, community policing is not an isolated and simple concern to be discussed and handled. It is important to look at the various dimensions of community policing in order to evaluate its value and effectiveness. II. Community Policing Weatheritt (1983) argued that community policing is not a distinct concept. It can assume on the definition which says that, “a contrast to rapid response and enforcement-oriented resent its norms; a process by which crime control is shared with the public such as neighborhood watch; or a means of developing communication with the public and interest groups” (4-5). In the 1970s, specifically in the United States, community policing successfully illustrated short-term strategies to revamp police minority relations, a basically decorative practice disguising hesitance to produce key reforms when deep-rooted patrol and investigation techniques fall short (Bucqueroux, 1988). Most recently, it has integrated problem-definition with parts of the community, efforts to decrease anxieties over crime, and improved foot patrol. The name community policing calls to mind police-community dealings in established, consensus-ruled and homogenous districts where crime is simply an annoyance and disorder mainly composed of insignificant damages. Social control, with respect to community policing, is a community-police contract and understood sanction (Manning, 1985). This romanticized perspective is one wherein police characterize, and persevere to implement, a posited public welfare or general good. The effectiveness of community policing relies on hypotheses which are doubtful in instances of a number of communities, and advances in policing can generate unexpected outcomes. Those establishing objectives must be understandable about whether it is planned to elevate arrests, avoid probabilities for crime or deal with documented crime rates. Each generates various emphases for assessment. Moreover, an onslaught in a single area may cause dislocation so that foot patrol locations demonstrate a decrease yet motor patrol districts yield an increase. The rationale is not to understate community policing but to be sensible in evaluating its repercussions. Studies balancing beat and motor patrol have evaluated community policing since beat officers bear out neither greater nor less probability to put off crime then their coworkers in vehicles (Clarke & Hough, 1980). Nevertheless, it can also be understood as presenting that beat patrol is no less successful than vehicle patrol, and may take pleasure on the advantages of prestige and ease of access. In spite of hidden negative effects that may be related with community policing, uncertainty encompassing the concept, and dilemmas in evaluating its effectiveness, numerous claims are stated regarding its value. In the United States a primary importance is on avoiding civil disorders, and this is also the case in middle urban areas. It should be noted that the thrust to community policing has been the necessity to develop policing responsive to youths and African-Americans, and to deal with the anxiety felt by those in conflict with such groups (Trojanowicz, 1989). During the term of Trojanowicz as the director of the National Center for Community Policing, he simply acknowledged the difficulties for community policing as outreach in African-American and Hispanic interior urban areas. Age is a primary factor. In 1967, more than half of those detained in a Detroit riot were under the age bracket of 15-24 and those aged 15-35 comprise 80 per cent (ibid, 14). The present-day situation is prevailed upon by drug pushing, also an adolescent’s commerce. This group is uniquely off-putting for police endeavors. “When we look at an urban hot spot plagued by open dealing, will all the community support more aggressive police action? How far will dealers go in protecting their turf? Will they exploit racial frustrations and manipulate the community into battling the system for them? Will young people help the police, stand and watch or… pull a gun? Should trouble start, are there enough adult authority figures with sufficient clout—and motivation—to help bring the situation under control?” (ibid, 14). However, there is advantage in a policing technique incorporating long-term incidence rather than coming apart of intervention, if only in granting an apparent prevention. Trojanowicz and Bucqueroux (1989) testified that community policing takes in hand that community policing caters to trading-level drug dealing through such procedures as installing officers to position at the door of identified dealing grounds. Whenever the officer comes out the stash is washed out and it as well put off buyers (ibid, 2). Since the time of the founding of America, law enforcement has had a well-built region foundation. In the premature years of the Republic, the male populace in huge U.S. cities was compelled to be vigilant at night voluntarily, or without compensation. Throughout the greater part of America’s history, as a point in fact, citizens were anticipated to keep watch over their communities themselves, at least as a part time task, as they continue about their everyday subsistence (Fielding, 1995). The task of police officers was to assist the community in maintaining peace and order. III. Impartiality and Community Policing In the contemporary period, police reformers recognize the community with more ambivalence than initial intuition might put forward. Community policing, akin to several popular government amendments, definitely rejoices the contribution of citizens in assisting police to enhance neighborhood security. The dilemma is that the perfect model of being receptive to individual community groups frequently clash with the similarly essential ideal of impartiality, which guides police to render unbiased service to all domains of the public. The origin of the predicament is simple; the entire community by no means attends at police-community gatherings, and it is often mainly difficult to locate neighborhood organizations and other enthusiastic colleagues in underprivileged neighborhoods compared with more affluent ones. Consequently, if police are quick to respond to the community organizations that do systematize, they take the risk of ending up with off-center priorities that confer benefits to the well-off at the expense of the deprived (Thacher, 2001). Hence, the major question for community policing is whether there are possible means to mitigate the dilemma. In a humankind that is apparently unbalanced, in which several communities fall short in articulating their concerns and no group expresses the complete array of interests in the community it claims to embody, the problem that emerges is whether the police indispensably injure the notion of justice through forging partnerships with the communities that are immobile. However, an in-depth look at police performance will unveil more rationale for hopefulness. Police-community discourses can come up at mere results in an actual world of lopsided demands. Yet, for that to be realized, police should achieve two complicated tasks, namely, they must concentrate their partnerships on the concern of the public good, and they must satisfy John Dewey’s “methods and conditions of debate” (Thacher, 2001, 1). One of the most popular subject matters of the community policing movement is the officer as community-builder. It is founded on the theories that the office can function as an organizer who labors to activate the social networks of a neighborhood to avoid social mayhem and in so doing crime. Nonetheless, the procedure of the community-building is a major arrangement for the police. A conventionally protected service zone that is frequently a hub of controversy in its own right, a community-building configuration necessitates law enforcement to establish partnerships with a broad range of community-founded and other government organizations, in addition to participation in social outreach (Goetz & Mitchell, 2003). In this framework, community policing presuppose that the police will hold back their reactive, crime-combating mode to establish space for more mutual and ground-breaking crime prevention programs and troubleshooting techniques (Bureau of Justice, 1994, 17). However, the willingness of the police to keep up to these changes and their geniuses in their problem solving techniques are still issues open to questions. For instance, much has been claimed on the effectiveness of community-policing in some of the developed nations as it indicates order stability, specifically when programs are systematized around the improved guideline of public space. Trivial is known on the alternative restructuring frameworks that summon on the police to contribute a more profound role in elementary crime prevention programs, particularly those intended at the improvement of the social and economic pressures underlying felony. For instance, the repercussion of the uprising in Los Angeles in 1992 demanded community policing as an outreach approach that could enhance relationships with the Black populace and other individuals of color all over the United States (Goetz & Mitchell, 2003); considered as an important part of the outreach program was citizen active participation and involvement in crime and turmoil control as well as concerns with limiting overstated policing. (Thacher, 2001). An outreach responsibility to social services was to advance the police as a compassionate entity that could contribute a straightforward part in relating citizens with needs, even those regarded as socially unimportant and linked to petty crimes. The federal government endorsed this standpoint, claiming that police officers could direct access to urgent social services for stowaways, dispossessed individuals, and the intoxicated (Bureau of Justice Assistance, 1994, 15), and has currently commended the potential of its SHIELD program, in which law enforcement authorities recognize youths at peril of misbehavior and recommend them to the therapeutic organizations and programs (Wyrick, 2000). A number of individuals argue that the outreach objectives of community policing have been misinterpreted. According to Greene and Mclanghlin (1993), the police can facilitate communities in removing the sources of social mayhem, yet it still depends to other community organizations to sow the institutional anchors for counteractive resources. Still, community policing has been advance as an organizing system that can cater to social dilemmas underlying crime and stretch out to a broad range of citizens. The concern regarding re-integrative policing is even more significant provided the reductions in welfare state services over the previous decades (Kleinenberg, 2001) and the matching hypothesis that the police and other organizations can imagine a number of these responsibilities. IV. Conclusion The significant thing is not that community policing habitually and widely conveys what is expected of it, yet that, under some situations and in definite value, several community police did actually deliver. Contradictory to well-founded practices has most of the time provided the primary capital of creating the character of community policing and communicates this in ideal-ordinary terms. A number of points have been emphasized. First, under philosophical analysis, community policing is viewed as clearly political and officers negotiate motives. They are accountable to community and political delegates, and are confined by policy. With respect to organizational structure, the pattern in traditional policing is to acquire specialization, whilst community policing advances wide-ranging patrol-based capabilities. This intensifies the significance of community policing to trainers, as a framework and initial deployment. On the other hand, viewing management guiding principle, communication in traditional policing is derived from the top-down approach whereas community policing aims interaction between social statuses, or the grass root approach. Hence, community policing needs to work its way from the base to the apex of the hierarchy. Works Cited Black D. ( 1971), "The Social Organisation of Arrest", Stanford Law Review, 23, 1087-111. Bucqueroux B. ( 1988), "Executive Session on Community Policing", Footprints, Spring/Summer. Bureau of Justice Assistance (1994). Understanding Community Policing. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Justice Document No. 148457. Clarke R. and Hough M. ( 1980), The Effectiveness of Policing, Farnborough: Gower. Fielding, N. (1995). Community Policing. Oxford, Clarendon Press. Goetz, B. & Mitchell, R. (2003). Community-Building and Reintegrative Approaches to Community Policing. Social Justice . Kleinenberg, E. (2001). "Bowling Alone, Policing Together." Social Justice 28,3: 75-80. Manning, P. ( 1983), "Queries Concerning the Decision-making Approach to Police Research" in J. Shapland (ed.) Decision Making in the Legal System, London: British Psychological Society. ----- ( 1985), "Police: Community" in L. Radelet (ed.) The Police and the Community, 4/e. McCabe S. and Wallington P. ( 1988), Police, Public order and Civil Liberties, London: Routledge. Thacher, D. (2001). Equity and Community Policing: A New View of Community Partnerships. Criminal Justice Ethics . Trojanowicz, R. ( 1989), "Preventing Civil Disturbances: a Community Policing Approach", East Lansing MI: Michigan State University School of Criminal Justice. Weatheritt M. ( 1983), "Community Policing: Does it Work and How do We Know?" in T. Bennett (ed.) The Future of Policing, Cropwood Conference series number 15, Cambridge: Institute of Criminology. Worden R. ( 1989), "Situational and Attitudinal Explanations of Police Behaviour", Law and Society Review, 23 ( 4), 667-711. Worden R. and Brandl S. ( 1990), "Protocol Analysis of Police Decisionmaking: Toward a Theory of Police Behaviour", American Journal of Criminal Justice, XIV( 2), 287-318. Wyrick, P.A. (2000). "Law Enforcement Referral of At-Risk Youth: The SHIELD Program." Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (Novemher). U.S. Department of Justice. Read More