Beat System
Definition
The division of a police jurisdiction into fixed local patrol areas, each assigned to an officer expected to build familiarity with residents; in India, beat constables are often paired with beat committees of local residents.
Related terms
- Community-Based Crime Prevention
- Any prevention approach that relies on residents themselves, rather than police or situational design alone, to reduce crime and disorder in a...
- Community Policing
- A policing model that builds sustained partnerships between officers and residents through foot patrols, neighbourhood liaison, and joint problem identification. Emphasises prevention...
- Neighbourhood Watch
- A scheme in which residents of a street or small area agree to watch out for suspicious activity, report it to the...
- Selection Bias
- A distortion that arises when the group being studied is not a random sample of the wider population; in Neighbourhood Watch research,...
- Collective Efficacy
- A concept developed by Robert Sampson referring to the combination of social cohesion among neighbours and their shared willingness to intervene in...
- Exclusionary Surveillance
- Watching or reporting that treats unfamiliar people, particularly on the basis of race, age, or class, as inherently suspicious, turning a crime-reporting...
- Informal Social Control
- The regulation of behaviour through neighbours noticing, commenting on, or reporting on one another, rather than through police or courts.
- Mohalla Committee
- A local resident committee, prominent in Mumbai and Bhiwandi from the early 1990s, that meets periodically with a beat constable to flag...
Explained in these topics
- Neighbourhood Involvement in Crime Prevention (UGC-NET Unit II)A policing arrangement, used in most Indian state police manuals, in which a constable is assigned to a fixed local patrol area and expected to build familiari...
- Neighbourhood Watch and Resident-Led Crime Prevention