Community Policing

Abstract

The modern-day concept of community policing has its roots in the concept of reassurance policing, a notion proposed by the American psychologist Bahn (Criminology 12(5):338–345, 1974), who sought to define the concept in terms of a subjective feeling of safety, instead of seeking objective measures such as crime statistics or numbers of arrests (Millie, Reassurance policing and signal crimes. In G. Bruinsma, & D. Weisburd (Eds.), Encyclopaedia of criminology and criminal justice (pp. 4327–4335). New York: Springer, 2014, p. 2). Although community policing practices were not widely implemented in the years following Bahn’s writings, due to the dominance of a performance-based police culture in North America and the UK, things changed in the early 1990s when community-orientated policing started to receive strong federal support in North America (Moraff 2015) and simultaneously found favour with the Home Office in London (Singer 2004). Whilst there is little evidence to indicate that community policing in North America has gone beyond a pilot or produced a significant shift in the core activities of the police (Zhao et al. 2001), community policing (or neighbourhood policing) in England and Wales ran pilots in 16 wards across 8 forces from October 2003 under the National Reassurance Policing Programme (NRPP), which led to the national launch of the Neighbourhood Policing Programme (NPP) in April 2005 (Quinton and Morris, Neighbourhood policing: The impact of piloting and early national implementation (p. 4). London: Home Office, 2008). Both the NRPP and the NPP sought to trigger three delivery mechanisms, namely police visibility, community involvement in identifying local priorities and collaborative problem-solving in tackling those priorities (Quinton and Morris, Neighbourhood policing: The impact of piloting and early national implementation (p. 9). London: Home Office, 2008), and by 2008, the stage was set with 13,500 dedicated officers operating in 3500 neighbourhood policing teams to deliver a ‘citizen focus’ approach across England and Wales (NPIA, Safe and confident neighbourhoods strategy: Next steps in neighbourhood policing (p. 12). London: Home Office, 2010). There is a wealth of international evidence that demonstrates how neighbourhood policing reduces crime and improves public confidence in policing, particularly when the public are involved in priority setting and problem-solving (Quinton and Morris, Neighbourhood policing: The impact of piloting and early national implementation (p. 4). London: Home Office, 2008).