Introduction
When children spend time together, seemingly without supervision and left to their means, they mimic actions seen at home or on the street, and their created mini-society reflects their overall social experience. A game as innocent as cops and robbers is demonstrative of the lessons minors learn from interacting with adults when some may refuse to be robbers, but more may protest playing for the police.
Elders condemn children’s mischievous behavior by threats of in-uniform officers and, as they grow older and understand police brutality, generations more ready to be vigilantes than to call for help to continue existing. Cruelty, whether in the face of organized gangs or police brutality, begets savagery, which may only be combated by instilling a more human approach to those, previously deemed uncaring.
Definition
Community orienteered policing remains a vital facet of police work, which permits not only executing the chief function of peace enforcement but also integrating a certain degree of familiarity and, therefore, personal predisposition when policing. Jenkins describes it more as a “philosophy” due to its effect on the nature of police work, which turns the job into a social endeavor rather than solely a policing one (222). Through constant interaction and the building of community-wide relationships, police officers involve themselves in the life of the community, becoming a part of it rather than an outside element.
While this tactic may put a strain on the officers assigned in such a way because of both, community and workplace expectations, neighborhood crime seems to decrease when this approach is in place. Thus, community policing creates a supposedly safer living environment for residents, reducing the number and severity of committed crimes by installing familiarity between subjects and depolarizing their relationships.
The Historical Background
Police departments have made community policing a common tactic due to not only its effectiveness but also the public impact that the positive representation of officers has. This kind of approach goes back to the end of the twentieth century and possibly links to numerous social side processes, for example, racial tensions and police-community division (Cordner 148-150). America’s crime rate, as well as political, economic, and ideological factors, had altogether called for new law enforcement tactics to solve existing problems, prevent new ones, and positively demonstrate USA communities (Cordner 152).
Police departments ushered in a “problem-solving era,” relying on academic research and, thus, changing the nature of the job and making it lean more towards transgression prevention rather than post-factual law enforcement (Jenkins 221). The occurred shift marked a change in the thought process about the goal and chief function of the police, re-orienting it towards more peaceful and deterrent methods.
The Feeling of Community: How the Method Works and Fails
Police officers who come from the same community that they guard should be more ready to protect it, preventing crimes more effectively through the effect of personal investment. Citizen involvement additionally makes the general population feel involved in making their community safe, helping them find common ground with police officers (Cordner 154). People, who are not scared of the police, are more disposed to ask them for help when in need, unlike those who from a young age experience a fear of law enforcement.
The establishment of communication lines with the general population permits directly showing the positive impact the police have on a community’s inner workings while at the same time preventing their vilification. The effect of technology on police perception, such as the widespread use of cars as a guarding tactic, has resulted in the dehumanization of on-patrol officers (Walker 470). Switching to an on-foot approach when safeguarding a neighborhood, therefore, successfully brings the police force back into the public eye as approachable, useful, and a positive influence.
The same factors that make community-orienteered practices useful also constitute its drawbacks, which stem from an excess of emotional involvement, undue familiarity, and even corruption. Furthermore, despite its possible department-wide endorsement, individual officers retain the ability to be more or less predisposed to community policing tactics, with Jenkins finding that Latino officers place more importance on police-community communication lines (233).
The notion of neighborhood uniformity and, thus, the similarity of reactions towards patrolling officers, also remains under question due to the heterogeneity of urban areas and their inhabitants (Walker 477). Therefore, bringing into question the effectiveness of such an endeavor is possible, especially since community policing is not a uniform, regular system but is instead the result of individual interpretation (Cordner 161). The nonexistence of an orderly method of conducting community work within the police force leaves officers to act on their judgment and volition, and this makes the method’s effectivity debatable.
Existing Influence on Crime Levels
Assessing its consequences, either positive or negative, becomes troublesome due to each contributing officer’s different understanding of society, safeguarding, and, as a result, community policing. While this has made some researchers doubtful to attribute the drop in crime rates to police’s social work, Cordner stresses the positive difference in effect between previous choice police actions and new, broad preventive methods (162). While community policing remains without a concrete definition, researchers may evaluate the methods it uses on a case-by-case basis, keeping in mind the influence of individual factors.
Could Be Better, Could Be Worse: Criticism
Personal interpretations give way to a lack of consistency that is essential when providing a public service, creating a gap between theory and practice. This fact permits most departments to profess adherence to tenets of community orienteering while not doing anything to interact with the people (Cordner 149). The consideration of specific issues to be below them and excessive contact with “not just criminal offenders but those with multiple social problems” makes police officers apprehensive to conduct supplementary work with the public (Walker 472). Therefore, the inconsistency and obscurity of locating, documenting, and structuring community policing make it easy to declare, as maintenance is always a tactic that people tend to overlook, while aggressive transgressions become immediately apparent.
Twenty-First Century Changes
The same issues that sprouted the need for community policing have continued changing it, showing the need for constant modernization per social needs. Economically, financing a methodology that lacks structure and cannot present its results systematically seems an erroneous decision, while an increasing anti-terrorism rhetoric calls for increased contact with the general population (Cordner 165). Any changes due to political discourse affect the police’s approach towards their role, forcing them to alternate between hard and soft approaches to crime and, thus, making effective, community-level change almost impossible (Cordner 166). Thus, the longevity of the community policing approach requires convicted, neighborhood-level police who will support and upkeep the neighborhood’s needs.
Conclusion
Despite the drawbacks in the implementation of community orienteered-policing methods, its effects remain essential to understanding the nature of delinquency and its prevention. The lack of structure and inability to fit into strict guidelines is what makes methods of social guidance efficient, as they rely on the goodwill of one, responsible person, rather than an institutional duty. The humanity of the act is rooted in its voluntarism, and making it compulsory is almost impossible to implement and detrimental if set as an imperative.
Works Cited
Cordner, Gary. “Community Policing.” The Oxford Handbook of Police and Policing, edited by Michael D. Reisig and Robert J. Kane, Oxford University Press, 2014, pp. 148-171.
Jenkins, Michael J. “Police Support for Community Problem-Solving and Broken Windows Policing.” American Journal of Criminal Justice, 2016, vol. 41, no. 2, pp. 220–235. Springer. Web.
Walker, Samuel. “‘Broken Windows’ and Fractured History: The Use and Misuse of History in Recent Police Patrol Analysis.” Critical Issues in Policing: Contemporary Readings, edited by Roger G. Dunham and Geoffrey P. Alpert, 7th ed., Waveland Press, 2015, pp. 468-480.