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Police and Community: In Search of a New Relationship
| Article
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20431 |
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Section : |
MODERN THOUGHT
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| Issue
Date : |
3 / 1992 |
4,518 Words |
| Author
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William F. McDonald
William F. McDonald is associate professor and chair of the
Sociology Department, and deputy director of the Institute of
criminal law and Procedure at Georgetown University in
Washington, D.C. |
Two decades of devastating studies left police executive stunned and searching. The old verities had fallen. Increasing preventive patrol had actually done more harm than good. Fear of response promised little payoff. Most serious crimes are discovered after the fact. Of the rest only half get reported to the police immediately. Improving detective work had Hollywood logic but research illogic. Clever detective work only accounts for about 3 percent of arrests for serious crime. Improvements in communications between police and prosecutors made little difference in dropout rates at court. Most arrests which result in convictions are made by a small proportion of a department's officers. The success of the 911 number tied up the police in services calls.
Where to turn? The answer being advanced in the Anglo-American world is a new "corporate strategy" loosely referred to as "community policing." The precise content of this phrase is unsettled. It ranges from neighborhood watch programs, to old fashioned foot patrol and store front police stations, to problem focused policing to various degrees of citizen control of police policy. The movement is being sold in the name of greater crime control and more democratic policing?
The "New" Police: Community Policing
Instead of constantly returning to the same address, the police should do something about the problem (e.g., have the license of the nuisance bar revoked). Instead of riding around as anonymous outsiders, the police should get to know their people. Instead of reinforcing the belief that crime control should be left to professionals, the police should engage citizens as "coproducers" of order. Citizens should watch their neighborhoods and remove the "signs of crime" like broken windows believed to foster incivilities and more crime.
Community policing incorporates some earlier ideas like "police-community relations" the 1960s answer to police brutality and race riots and "team policing" the 1970s attempt to break the barriers between patrol and detective work. But, community policing means much more. It is here that the new philosophy gets vague and dicey. In their attempt to forge a closer and more responsive relationship between the police and the community reformers are facing the perennial dilemma of policing a free society; what is the proper balance between the conflicting the values of liberty, democracy, legality, and order?
The reformers want more democratic and effective
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