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Chapter 11: Community Policing and Problem Solving

What is a Community?

  • Community: A geographical area that has multiple aspects such as racial diversity, socioeconomic composition, organizational participation, etc.

    • Socioeconomic Composition: People or families are separated into 3 levels; lower class, middle class, and upper class. It is usually based on one's income, education, or occupation.

    • Residential Stability: The percentage of people who still resided in the same house as they did a year ago

    • Racial/Ethnic Heterogeneity: A distributional characteristic that is unaffected by the identities of the groups within a community and solely depends on the number and proportion of each.

    • Local friendship relational networks: These are groups or friends who are connected through friendship or some sort of relationship within a community.

    • Organizational Participation: This is a group that works based on participation from the public rather than hiring contracted workers.

    • Supervisory Capacity: These are the responsibilities that allow someone to hire, transfer, promote, demote, or terminate employees.

  • 8 Attributes of a community:

    • Particular geographic area or location

    • Recognized legal entity

    • Social interactions within have a division of labor and interdependence

    • Citizens share a culture or perspective

    • Values are spread

    • Social interactions within creating a shape for itself

    • There is inclusion and exclusion present

    • Citizens have a shared sentiment, sense of belonging, and interdependence

Theoretical Underpinnings of Community Policing

  • Community Ownership: The degree to which a community feels responsible for maintaining a good quality of life in the community.

  • Broken Windows Theory: The understanding that even minor infractions or quality-of-life transgressions can encourage or breed more major crimes in a neighborhood by luring more criminals and driving away more law-abiding citizens

  • Contagion Proposition: As the quality of life decreases in geographical location more fear and crime is generated over time.

  • Public Health Model: Attempts to find risk factors in order to avoid or lessen a certain illness or social issue in a community.

Community Partnership and Problem Solving

  • Community Policing: A collaboration between the police and the community that identifies and solves community problems.

  • Partnership: When a police department and community work together to make the community better. The community becomes the officer’s “eyes and ears”

  • Elements of a partnership:

    • Working together on a goal

    • Identifying common goals

    • Constant communication and sharing of information

    • Having deadlines and views of the problem similar to one another

    • Everyone equally works together to find a solution

  • Empowerment: When everyone in a group feels like they have a similar input and are on the same level as everyone else in the group.

  • Police departments can work with multiple organizations such as:

    • Merchant associations

    • Neighborhood and civic groups

    • Youth-serving agencies

    • Tenant associations

    • Block associations

    • Community development corporation

  • Problem Solving: Identifying and finding the causes of problems and researching rather than directly responding to a problem.

  • Reactive: Acting after a problem occurs to prevent it

  • Proactive: Acting before a problem occurs to prevent it

  • Problems: 2 or more problems that the community and police can work together and solve.

  • Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED): Recognizing that crime can be stopped by manipulating location dynamics such as target vulnerability.

Community-Oriented and Problem-Oriented Policing

  • Community-Oriented Policing: Organizational strategies as well as using partnerships and problem-solving techniques are included in this.

  • Problem-Oriented Policing: Proactive policing strategies that focus on the causes of a problem and how to prevent it in the future.

The SARA Model

  • SARA: Used by community policing agencies to identify and solve repeat crime and community problems.

    • Scanning: Identifying problems that are common in the community that is concerning.

    • Analysis: Recognizing and comprehending the circumstances and events that lead up to and around the issue

    • Response or Strategy: Brainstorming new ideas and implementing the solutions

    • Assessment: We collect data to identify if there was a change when the solution was implemented.

  • Crime Triangle: Displays the three elements necessary in order to take place a victim, offender, and location.

  • Serious Habitual Offender Criminal Apprehension Program (SHOCAP): A study that allowed us to identify the 3 facts that help the crime triangle begin.

  • 3 known facts the crime triangle begins from:

    • 10% of offenders account for 55% of all crimes

    • 10% of victims account for 42% of all victimization

    • 10% of all locations account for 60% of all call loads to the police

Focusing on Problem Locations

  • Repeat Victimization: When someone has been victimized multiple times.

  • Crime Analysis: The analysis of people involved in crimes, particularly repeat offenders, repeat victims, and criminal organizations

  • Prevalence: The overall incidence of a problem in a geographical location.

  • Target Area: An area where problems occur the most and so the officers and community work together more to solve the problems there.

  • Hot Spots: Specific area that has the most crime within the community.

Management Implications of Community Policing

The Strategic Dimension

  • Structural Changes: The transformation in the structure of society.

  • Decentralization: Delegation of government responsibilities, authority, and resources to lower levels of government.

  • Despecialization: Making an organization less specialized and making line officers take on more of these responsibilities as generalists.

  • Team Policing: Assigning police officers to a small geographical area.

  • Participatory Management Model: Encourages farmers to employ an adaptive management approach in order to interact with the complex systems in which they live and work in a sustainable manner.

The Programmatic Dimension

  • Programmatic Dimension: Implementing a series of programs to gradually incorporate community policing into department operations.

Barriers to Implementing Community Policing:

  • Community Mobilization: Used by law enforcement to involve people from all sectors of the community.

The Relationship Between Causes of Crime and Strategy :

  • Needs Assessment: To develop a proactive police approach, problems and their sources must be identified in local communities.

Implications of Criminology Theory for Law Enforcement Practice:

  • Risk Factors: Things are found to increase crime.

  • Individual Factors

    • Pregnancy and obesity complications

    • Low resting heart rate

    • Internalizing disorders:

    • Hyperactivity, concentration problems, restlessness, and risk-taking

    • Aggressiveness

    • Early initiation of violent behavior

    • Involvement in other forms of antisocial behavior

    • Beliefs and attitudes favorable to deviant or antisocial behavior

  • Family Factors

    • Parental criminality

    • Child maltreatment

    • Poor family management practices

    • Low levels of parental involvement

    • Parental attitudes favorable to substance use and violence

    • Parent-child separation

  • School Factors

    • Academic failures

    • Low bonding to school

    • Dropping out of school

    • Moving schools frequently

  • Peer-related Factors

    • Delinquent siblings

    • Delinquent peers

    • Gang member

  • Community and Neighborhood Factors

    • Poverty

    • Community disorganization

    • Availability of drugs and firearms

    • Neighborhood adults involved in crime

    • Exposure to violence and racial prejudice

  • Resiliency Theory: The more risk factors that are present the greater the criminal activity or behavior will be.

  • Comprehensive Plans: Outlines a vision for the community's future and the steps necessary to turn that vision become reality.

  • Suppression Strategies: These strategies are used to keep cases as low as possible.

  • Prevention Strategies: Put into place so that it does not happen in the future.

  • Routine activities theory: For a crime to occur there has to be a motivated offender, a suitable target, and an absence of capable guardianship. All three of these must intersect at the same time and place.

Chapter 11: Community Policing and Problem Solving

What is a Community?

  • Community: A geographical area that has multiple aspects such as racial diversity, socioeconomic composition, organizational participation, etc.

    • Socioeconomic Composition: People or families are separated into 3 levels; lower class, middle class, and upper class. It is usually based on one's income, education, or occupation.

    • Residential Stability: The percentage of people who still resided in the same house as they did a year ago

    • Racial/Ethnic Heterogeneity: A distributional characteristic that is unaffected by the identities of the groups within a community and solely depends on the number and proportion of each.

    • Local friendship relational networks: These are groups or friends who are connected through friendship or some sort of relationship within a community.

    • Organizational Participation: This is a group that works based on participation from the public rather than hiring contracted workers.

    • Supervisory Capacity: These are the responsibilities that allow someone to hire, transfer, promote, demote, or terminate employees.

  • 8 Attributes of a community:

    • Particular geographic area or location

    • Recognized legal entity

    • Social interactions within have a division of labor and interdependence

    • Citizens share a culture or perspective

    • Values are spread

    • Social interactions within creating a shape for itself

    • There is inclusion and exclusion present

    • Citizens have a shared sentiment, sense of belonging, and interdependence

Theoretical Underpinnings of Community Policing

  • Community Ownership: The degree to which a community feels responsible for maintaining a good quality of life in the community.

  • Broken Windows Theory: The understanding that even minor infractions or quality-of-life transgressions can encourage or breed more major crimes in a neighborhood by luring more criminals and driving away more law-abiding citizens

  • Contagion Proposition: As the quality of life decreases in geographical location more fear and crime is generated over time.

  • Public Health Model: Attempts to find risk factors in order to avoid or lessen a certain illness or social issue in a community.

Community Partnership and Problem Solving

  • Community Policing: A collaboration between the police and the community that identifies and solves community problems.

  • Partnership: When a police department and community work together to make the community better. The community becomes the officer’s “eyes and ears”

  • Elements of a partnership:

    • Working together on a goal

    • Identifying common goals

    • Constant communication and sharing of information

    • Having deadlines and views of the problem similar to one another

    • Everyone equally works together to find a solution

  • Empowerment: When everyone in a group feels like they have a similar input and are on the same level as everyone else in the group.

  • Police departments can work with multiple organizations such as:

    • Merchant associations

    • Neighborhood and civic groups

    • Youth-serving agencies

    • Tenant associations

    • Block associations

    • Community development corporation

  • Problem Solving: Identifying and finding the causes of problems and researching rather than directly responding to a problem.

  • Reactive: Acting after a problem occurs to prevent it

  • Proactive: Acting before a problem occurs to prevent it

  • Problems: 2 or more problems that the community and police can work together and solve.

  • Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED): Recognizing that crime can be stopped by manipulating location dynamics such as target vulnerability.

Community-Oriented and Problem-Oriented Policing

  • Community-Oriented Policing: Organizational strategies as well as using partnerships and problem-solving techniques are included in this.

  • Problem-Oriented Policing: Proactive policing strategies that focus on the causes of a problem and how to prevent it in the future.

The SARA Model

  • SARA: Used by community policing agencies to identify and solve repeat crime and community problems.

    • Scanning: Identifying problems that are common in the community that is concerning.

    • Analysis: Recognizing and comprehending the circumstances and events that lead up to and around the issue

    • Response or Strategy: Brainstorming new ideas and implementing the solutions

    • Assessment: We collect data to identify if there was a change when the solution was implemented.

  • Crime Triangle: Displays the three elements necessary in order to take place a victim, offender, and location.

  • Serious Habitual Offender Criminal Apprehension Program (SHOCAP): A study that allowed us to identify the 3 facts that help the crime triangle begin.

  • 3 known facts the crime triangle begins from:

    • 10% of offenders account for 55% of all crimes

    • 10% of victims account for 42% of all victimization

    • 10% of all locations account for 60% of all call loads to the police

Focusing on Problem Locations

  • Repeat Victimization: When someone has been victimized multiple times.

  • Crime Analysis: The analysis of people involved in crimes, particularly repeat offenders, repeat victims, and criminal organizations

  • Prevalence: The overall incidence of a problem in a geographical location.

  • Target Area: An area where problems occur the most and so the officers and community work together more to solve the problems there.

  • Hot Spots: Specific area that has the most crime within the community.

Management Implications of Community Policing

The Strategic Dimension

  • Structural Changes: The transformation in the structure of society.

  • Decentralization: Delegation of government responsibilities, authority, and resources to lower levels of government.

  • Despecialization: Making an organization less specialized and making line officers take on more of these responsibilities as generalists.

  • Team Policing: Assigning police officers to a small geographical area.

  • Participatory Management Model: Encourages farmers to employ an adaptive management approach in order to interact with the complex systems in which they live and work in a sustainable manner.

The Programmatic Dimension

  • Programmatic Dimension: Implementing a series of programs to gradually incorporate community policing into department operations.

Barriers to Implementing Community Policing:

  • Community Mobilization: Used by law enforcement to involve people from all sectors of the community.

The Relationship Between Causes of Crime and Strategy :

  • Needs Assessment: To develop a proactive police approach, problems and their sources must be identified in local communities.

Implications of Criminology Theory for Law Enforcement Practice:

  • Risk Factors: Things are found to increase crime.

  • Individual Factors

    • Pregnancy and obesity complications

    • Low resting heart rate

    • Internalizing disorders:

    • Hyperactivity, concentration problems, restlessness, and risk-taking

    • Aggressiveness

    • Early initiation of violent behavior

    • Involvement in other forms of antisocial behavior

    • Beliefs and attitudes favorable to deviant or antisocial behavior

  • Family Factors

    • Parental criminality

    • Child maltreatment

    • Poor family management practices

    • Low levels of parental involvement

    • Parental attitudes favorable to substance use and violence

    • Parent-child separation

  • School Factors

    • Academic failures

    • Low bonding to school

    • Dropping out of school

    • Moving schools frequently

  • Peer-related Factors

    • Delinquent siblings

    • Delinquent peers

    • Gang member

  • Community and Neighborhood Factors

    • Poverty

    • Community disorganization

    • Availability of drugs and firearms

    • Neighborhood adults involved in crime

    • Exposure to violence and racial prejudice

  • Resiliency Theory: The more risk factors that are present the greater the criminal activity or behavior will be.

  • Comprehensive Plans: Outlines a vision for the community's future and the steps necessary to turn that vision become reality.

  • Suppression Strategies: These strategies are used to keep cases as low as possible.

  • Prevention Strategies: Put into place so that it does not happen in the future.

  • Routine activities theory: For a crime to occur there has to be a motivated offender, a suitable target, and an absence of capable guardianship. All three of these must intersect at the same time and place.

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