Community Policing
Definition
A policing model that builds sustained partnerships between officers and residents through foot patrols, neighbourhood liaison, and joint problem identification. Emphasises prevention over reactive response and gives front-line officers discretion to address local concerns.
- Core methods
- Foot patrol, neighbourhood liaison, joint problem identification
- Emphasis
- Prevention over reactive response
- Officer role
- Greater local discretion
- Contrast
- Reactive, incident-driven patrol policing
Common questions
How does community policing differ from problem-oriented policing?+
Community policing centres on building sustained relationships and trust between officers and residents as the mechanism for reducing crime, while problem-oriented policing centres on analysing recurring problems and designing targeted interventions; the two overlap and are often combined in practice but rest on different core mechanisms.
What is a common criticism of community policing?+
Critics point to measurement difficulty, since its effects on trust and legitimacy are harder to quantify than arrest or clearance rates, and to the risk that discretion given to officers on the ground produces inconsistent enforcement across neighbourhoods.
Related terms
- Beat System
- The division of a police jurisdiction into fixed local patrol areas, each assigned to an officer expected to build familiarity with residents;...
- 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...
- Discretion
- The latitude police officers exercise in deciding whether and how to act. Studies by James Q. Wilson showed that street-level discretion shapes...
- 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...
- Hot-Spots Policing
- A tactic that concentrates patrol resources on small high-crime micro-locations (street segments, addresses, or intersections). Supported by consistent evidence from randomised controlled...
- Neighbourhood Watch
- A scheme in which residents of a street or small area agree to watch out for suspicious activity, report it to the...
- Police Legitimacy
- The public belief that police authority is rightful and deserving of voluntary compliance. Distinguished from compliance secured through fear of sanctions. Legitimacy...
- Problem-Oriented Policing
- A model developed by Herman Goldstein in which police identify and address the specific conditions generating recurring crime or disorder, using the...
- Procedural Justice
- The perceived fairness of how police make decisions and exercise authority. Four components: voice (people feel heard), neutrality (consistent, unbiased decisions), respectful...
- Selection Bias
- A distortion that arises when the group being studied is not a random sample of the wider population; in Neighbourhood Watch research,...
Explained in these topics
- Neighbourhood Watch and Resident-Led Crime PreventionA policing strategy built around sustained partnership between police and residents to identify and solve local problems, rather than reactive patrol and respo...
- Policing Styles and Legitimacy