Meaning, features and popularity

Question 1

What is the link to week two?

Answer 1

• Police introduced in 19th century
• 60s: economic and social crisis and crime rates peaking - moral panics
  60s to 70s: police relationship with certain groups became very strained such as the young, ethnic minorities
• Riots in Brixton (1981)
  Struggled with legitimacy and as a result turned to new strategies like community policing…
  (60s and 70s saw increasing concerns on crime to gain reassurance Stan Cohen and moral panics: concern with young ppl/80s public police relationship worsens e.g thatcher, brixton riots/people had a lack of trust in the police (thatcher intro brutal policing), new scandals, Stephen Lawrence)

Question 2

What is it?

Answer 2

• Community policing is a contemporary reform program part of reassurance policing.
• The three-year Neighbourhood Policing Programme (NPP) was officially launched in April 2005 as part of the Government’s commitment for every neighbourhood in England and Wales to have a neighbourhood policing team by 2008. In London it was the ‘Safer Neighbourhoods policing.
• A strategy to allow residents and police to work together in new ways to solve problems of crime, fear of crime, physical and social disorder and neighbourhood decay (Trojanowicz and Bucqueroux, 1990)
• An outcome of the damaged relationship between police and public
• Why did it take this long? Because from 90s lots of crime but then crime fell dramatically - but confidence in police was falling when it was introduced. People still thought police doing a bad job so they wanted to reassure them and educate them about crime reality and police. Essentially to regain confidence and regain legitimacy

Question 3

What does it achieve and what are its key features? The latest developments?

Answer 3

Three key components:

• Visible policing
• Signal crimes (which triggered crimes)
• Partnerships

Key features:

1. Foot patrol - two way communication, more approachable, engaging
2. Police community engagement: listen to locals about issues and concerns and take action and provide feedback to locals about it
3. Easily accessible: approachable, friendly, helpful, humorous, act ‘human’
4. Proactive demonstration of responsiveness, transparency and accountability
5. Assist nhoods in prevention of crime and deal with local issues themselves
6. Organisational decentralisation: make it smaller areas or wards and tackle things on a smaller level
7. Dedicated safer nhoods pcs and police community support officers: sole task to engage in the community
8. Public confidence monitored by METPAS and SNS and police performance target
9. Police communicate to the public via newsletters, websites, surgeries, ward meetings
10. Ward priorities set by the locals but now being abandoned

Latest developments:

Election of Police and Crime Commissioners for all police forces in England and Wales, except London– 15 November 2012
• Responsibilities
– Hold (some) police funds
– Responsible for “police and crime” plan
– Responsible for appointing/dismissal of Chief Constables

Question 4

Why chosen in UK?

Answer 4

• Always had an idea of policing by consent
• Can be traced by to Sir Robert Peel (beg. of the police in the 19th century) in terms of foot patrols and closed community relationships
• But by the 1960s these elements had been
  marginalised; a greater emphasis was placed upon the development
  of a professional, bureaucratic, specialised, and technologically advanced
  force which focused on law enforcement. In this context,
  police-community relationships diminished. However, increasing crime
  rates, and the militarised-style policing of public disorder in the 1980s
  – particularly in the heavy-handed response to race-related riots – led
  to a recognition that closer police-community relationships were
  needed. Community policing in the UK, while not clearly defined,
  encompasses the ethos of policing for and with the community.

Question 5

Innes (2004) and reassurance

Answer 5

• Reassurance lacks a cohesive and consensus in definition of concept
  
  • Enhanced reassurance is a composite construct consistuted by a combination of security And order - people are reassured when they feel that a sense of order prevails and security is present
  • Reassurance is a product of policing that is visible accessible and familiar
  • RP can be seen as a type pf policing strategy designed to improve the public’s sense of security
  • For the nrpp the RP is the delivery of enhanced ‘neighbourhood security’
  • RP connects the role of the public with public police
  • Factors that can shape material insecurity: media, individual, community and environment
  • Four key factors that can be associated with the forms of insecurity: crime, physical disorder, social disorder and social control

Question 6

Skogan and decentralisation

Answer 6

• Decentralisation:
• Closely linked to the implementation of CP
• More responsibility given to Identifying and responding to chronic crime and disorder problems is delegated to mid-level
• Idea is to devolve authority and responsibility further down the organisational hierarchy – encourages the development of local solutions to locally defined problems
• Moves made to flatten the structure of the organisation by compressing the rank structure and to shed layers of bureaucracy within the police organisation to speed communication and decision making
• CP leads to departments assigning officers to fixed geographical areas and to keep them there during the course of their day – turf orientation
• Decen. Encourages communication between officers and neighbourhood residents and to build awareness of local problems among officers
• BUT decentralisation can take too many people and is labour-intensive.
• Finding money to hire and train more staff
• Can it live up to its promises? There has not been enough research to address how effective itsbeen

Question 7

Skogan and community involvement `

Answer 7

• Community involvement:
• Engage with the public as they set priorities and achieve them via tactics
• To be EFFECTIVE they need input from the public so they can help meet their needs
• Learn what the public are worried about which is usually signal crimes and not incidents that have already happened – learning how to PREVENT
• Public worries about social decay, graffiti, disorder – things that are low-level which may not allow the public to ring the police directly
• Police and public are co-producers of safety in a sense: it has been established since the 70s that police cannot fight crime entirely on their own – they need support and assistance
• Need ‘face time’ with public in meetings etc to build solid relationship and to survey them
• Benefits can then lie in increasing trust of the public and not feel like police are threats
• CP can encourage public to not be bystanders and report more
• BUT not so accepted in minority groups. E.g. in America, African American groups and immigrants have fallen in trust with police (relate to now with Eric Garner etc) and see them as corrupt or racist
• BUT police don’t actually see CP as a direct route to decrease crime
• Research may show that a combination of trust among neighbourhood residents and the expectation that neighbours will intervene when things go wrong) plays an important role in inhibiting urban crime.
  However, the same work indicates that it is mostly white, home-owning neighbourhoods that currently have it
• In practice CP not easy to achieve esp in areas where they need it the most – in high crime areas public suspicious of one another and fear of gangs undermine public involvement. Studies in Chicago in 90s saw that 22% of public did not want to work with police/ residents think police part of problem/ think CP as a broken promise
• Also: White middle class people reap most benefits in easily cooperating with the police
• Excessive force or killings by police damages trust (like today 2015)
• Police prefer fighting crime and not doing ‘social work’
• Some police don’t like working with civilians

Question 8

Skogan and problem solving

Answer 8

• Problem solving:
• Shift from reactive patrol to problem solving to develop crime reduction strategies
• Highlights importance of discovering situations that produce calls for police and causes behind them and designing tactics
• Counterpoint to traditional police work
• Helps to deal with incidents proactively
• Facilitated by the computer analyses of hot spots that concentrate large amount of complaints and calls
• Prob solving can proceed without help of community