COMMUNITY POLICING

1 CJMCEMLNAL JUSTICE MIKCOMMUNITY POLICINGC ontinuing support forcommunity policingThere are not many people who wouldsay that they do not want communitypolicing. It would be similar to saying thatyou do not want inter-agency cooperationor that you do not want partnerships incrime prevention. It is almost like sayingthat you do not want the world to be abetter place. The reason for this supportseems to lie less in the years of experienceof practical benefits from communitypolicing than in the comforting imagerythat the concept conveys. Manning (1984)believes that COMMUNITY POLICING evokesa sense of nostalgia and represents anattempt to recapture an imagined et al. (1993) note the importanceof the word ' COMMUNITY ' which they ar-gue is a 'hurrah word' which seems neverto be used of support for commu-nity POLICING are wide ranging. The gov-ernment gave official support for com-munity POLICING in its White Paper PoliceReform (HMSO, 1993).

2 The police havepledged support for COMMUNITY policingin the Operational Police Review (TheJoint Consultative Committee, 1990) andin the ACPO Strategic Policy Document(ACPO, 1990) in which the authors stressthe importance of the service role of thepolice and the commitment of the policeto reflect the priorities of the public in theactions that they take. The public haveoffered their support for COMMUNITY po-licing in their demands for more footpatrol officers on the beat and their inter-est in more collaborative POLICING respon-sive to local are three important problemswhich currently hinder efforts to convertthe obvious support for COMMUNITY polic-ing into practice: the first is that it is notclear what COMMUNITY POLICING is; thesecond is that it is not clear what commu-nity POLICING is supposed to achieve; andthe third is that it is not clear whethercommunity POLICING is effective in achiev-ing any of its possible is it?

3 It is perhaps surprising that, despite thefact that everyone seems to want commu-nity POLICING , there is relatively little agree-ment about what COMMUNITY POLICING books and articles containing theterm ' COMMUNITY POLICING ' in their titlescover a wide range of conceptions ofcommunity POLICING including: commu-nity POLICING as public relations, commu-nity POLICING as information brokerage,and COMMUNITY POLICING as empty rheto-ric; andcovera wide range of programmesincluding: COMMUNITY meetings, foot pa-trols and COMMUNITY crime most recent reports on commu-nity POLICING in the academic literatureseem to converge on the idea that commu-nity POLICING is fundamentally a philoso-phy of POLICING which defines the natureof a new kind of relationship between thepolice and the public. Some writers haveinterpreted this relationship to be largelysymbolic, as described above.

4 However,others have identified more practical com-ponents of this relationship including theview that the police should consult andcollaborate with the public on policingmatters (Bennett, 1994).While COMMUNITY POLICING is seenfundamentally as a POLICING philosophy,it is believed to be implemented throughpractical organisation and operationalstrategies. The most popular organisa-tional strategy is 'decentralisation', whichin Britain at the moment comes under theheading of 'sectorisation' or 'sector po-licing'. The Metropolitan Police havebegun a process of implementing sectorpolicing force-wide and many otherforceshave begun implementing either force-wide or local versions of sector POLICING (Bennett and Lupton, 1992). The mostpopular operational strategies imple-mented within COMMUNITY POLICING are:foot patrols, COMMUNITY beat officers, COMMUNITY meetings, contact strategies(such as police shops and mini-stations),and COMMUNITY crime is it supposed to achieve?

5 Informal conversations with police offic-ers suggest that the aims of communitypolicing in many police forces are de-fined very broadly and often vary be-tween and within forces. Comments onthe aims of foot patrol officers and com-munity constables found in the literatureinclude: public contact, public reassur-ance, deterrence, prevention, and intelli-gence gathering (Bennett and Lupton,1992). Statements of the aims of commu-nity POLICING (or related concepts) foundin police force annual reports typicallyrefer to crime and fear prevention alongwith more general notions of creating atranquil and safe environment (Bennett,1994).Does it work?It would be reasonable to assume that theimmense interest and support for com-munity POLICING is a product of its proveneffectiveness. However, more than a dec-ade of research on COMMUNITY policinghas generated very little evidence to showthat COMMUNITY POLICING can be imple-mented effectively or that it can achieveits outcome POLICINGCJMCRiMISAL JUSTICE MATTERSOne of the earliest attempts at imple-menting sectorpolicing in Britain (at leastin its modern form) found substantialevidence of implementation failure at alllevels of the programme (Irving et al.)

6 ,1989). An evaluation of one of the newpolicing sectors in the Metropolitan Po-lice District concluded that the programmefailed to be implemented properly as of-ficers were frequently taken off their sec-tors to conduct duties in other parts of thedivision and had little time to develop anysense of loyalty to theirown sector (Dixonand Stanko, 1993). Other studies haveshown that it is difficult to change exist-ing POLICING philosophies and practicesand attempts to do so often result in pas-sive resistance or even sabotage amonglower-ranking issue of whether COMMUNITY po-licing can reduce crime and fear of crimehas not yet been adequately resolved inthe research literature. The study of neigh-bourhood POLICING in Notting Hill in Lon-don mentioned earlier found that thenumber of victimisations increased fol-lowing the implementation of the pro-gramme (Irving et al.

7 , 1989). A recentevaluation of sector POLICING and prob-lem-oriented POLICING in thames Valleyshowed no reduction in crime during thefirst 18 months of the programme (Bennettand Kemp, 1994). Research on the crimeprevention effectiveness of decentralisa-tion and team POLICING in the United Stateshas also produced few positive would be wrong to conclude that theresults of research on COMMUNITY polic-ing are wholly negative, as there are ex-amples of programmes which have beenimplemented well and which haveachieved some evidence of success. How-ever, the results are sufficiently discour-aging and throw up a sufficient number ofquestions to suggest that what is said andwhat is done in relation to communitypolicing should be considered very care-fully. The obvious attractions of the ideaand the comforting imagery of the con-cept should not be allowed to detract fromthe serious task of deciding the best pos-sible future direction for POLICING in thiscountry.

8 These developments would beassisted most effectively by controlledtrials and dissemination of results. With-out the former, it would be difficult todetermine what works, where, and underwhat conditions; and without the latterthere would be little chance to learn frommistakes. Without either the future ofcommunity POLICING is in danger of fall-ing on the wrong side of the divide be-tween comforting rhetoric and harsh Bennett is lecturer in criminologyat the University of Cambridge, Instituteof (1990) ACPO Strategic PolicyDocument: Setting the Standards forPolicing: Meeting CommunityExpectations. Report of an ACPOW orking Party, london : , and Kemp, C. (1994). AnEvaluation of Sector-Based Problem-Oriented POLICING in thames valley PoliceForce area . Report to the Home OfficeResearch and Planning Unit. Cambridge:Institute of , (1994) 'Communitypolicing on the ground: developments inBritain'.

9 In: Rosenbaum, D. (Ed.) TheChallenge of COMMUNITY POLICING :Testing the Promises. london : , and Lupton, R. (1992). Asurvey of the allocation and use ofcommunity constables in England andWales. British Journal of Criminology,32, 2, , B. and Stanko, E. (1993) Servingthe People: Sector POLICING and PublicAccountability. Middlesex: Centre forCriminal Justice Research, , R. (1993) ' COMMUNITY Policingas Communications Policing1. In: and T. Feltes (Eds.) ComparativeAspects of COMMUNITY -Oriented PoliceWork. Holzkirchen: (1993) Police Reform: A PoliceService for the Twenty-First White Paper. Command2281, london : , B., Bird, C, Hibberd, M. andWillmore, J. (1989) NeighbourhoodPolicing: The Natural History of aPolicing Experiment. london : The , (1984) 'CommunityPolicing', American Journal of Police,Vol.

10 3, No. 2, pp. Joint Consultative Committee (1990)Operational POLICING Review. Surrey: TheJoint Consultative Committee.