Community policing combines law enforcement and civilian volunteerism to create a more cohesive and accessible law enforcement agenda. Shrinking budgets, drug trafficking, and unsupervised youth have led to a demand for community involvement. Community policing encompasses problem solving and partnerships, building trust and communication to reduce crime levels over time.
Community policing is a crime management philosophy that combines law enforcement efforts with civilian volunteerism. By making police officers and community members allies in the fight against crime, community policing can help create a more cohesive policing policy and a more transparent and accessible law enforcement agenda. Some experts suggest that a community policing framework may be a more effective tool for crime prevention and reduction in the 21st century than traditional policing methods.
There are several reasons why community policing strategies are gaining momentum in some parts of the world. Shrinking budgets due to economic problems often significantly reduce the capabilities of a police force, making them less capable of handling crime on a global basis. The spread of drug trafficking and gang activity to all levels of modern society has led to a large demand for help from community members, as they live on the ground floor of the situation. Furthermore, the prevalence of households in which all parents work full-time has created a large population of unsupervised youth, a problem that can be managed, in part, by a strong and active community. Also, while the police may be excellent at fighting crime, it may take the effort of a whole community to create effective crime prevention programs; by working together, both law enforcement and civilian efforts can be combined to create a wide-ranging strategy that reduces and prevents crime.
According to the Bureau of Justice Assistance, which is part of the United States Department of Justice, community policing encompasses two main areas: problem solving and partnerships. Partnership is the relationship created by police and civilians working together; by forming a bond of mutual purpose and demonstrating a willingness to listen and respond with action, police and community members can build a reserve of trust that may be needed in difficult situations. By partnering with the community, law enforcement can gain inside information on criminal activity that can lead to major arrests. The community can also earn money by knowing law enforcement; a bridge of trust can help reduce a natural suspicion or fear of the police and lead to community-created crime prevention programs supported by law enforcement efforts.
Problem solving is the process law enforcement and neighborhood members go through to identify, target, and solve criminal problems in the community. Through problem solving, both parties have the opportunity to suggest remedies to a problem, and both can find the specific areas where their resources are most effective. For example, if the district is facing problems of vandalism by young people who are not supervised after school, the owner of a local gymnasium could offer to start an after school sports league to help reduce the problem. Likewise, the police may offer to step up patrol efforts in the hours after the school leaves. By creating a model of working in which both parties can help each other out, community policing can help establish a trust and communication cycle that can significantly reduce crime levels in a region over time.
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