Useful to any police or sheriff's agency. Also useful to citizens and law enforcement officials in rural and small town settings. Prepared to aid participants in a national demonstration program - Innovative Neighborhood- Oriented Policing in Rural Jurisdictions. Focuses on redirecting the use of policing resources to achieve greater effectiveness in handling public safety problems such as crime, fear of crime, drug abuse, violence, and disorder. Contains charts and references.
The authors provide stepping stones for rural and small-town agencies to make the organizational changes needed for community policing to take hold. The book introduces the concept of community policing and its many benefits to the agencies and communities that adopt it. Important issues discussed include the challenge of organizational change, as well as examples of community policing obstacles and successes, and the future of community policing in the 21st century.
This monograph is targeted at citizens and law enforcement officials in rural and small town settings who are working to redirect police resources to achieve greater effectiveness in handling public safety problems including crime and fear of crime, drug abuse, violence, and disorder. Although different variations of neighborhood-oriented policing have emerged, most incorporate the same two important ingredients, namely, community engagement and problemsolving. In this monograph, following the introduction, two chapters have an external focus, explaining from the police agency's perspective, how to initiate greater community participation and how to identify and analyze community needs. The two following chapters describe, from a more internal focus, how to take stock and asses police organizational needs and how to implement the decisionmaking process. The final two chapters integrate the external and internal viewpoints and focus on planning, implementation, and evaluation. The monograph also contains information including suggested reading, national resource agencies, problemsolving guides, a sample policy agency mission statement, and suggestions for planning and management.
Proactive policing, as a strategic approach used by police agencies to prevent crime, is a relatively new phenomenon in the United States. It developed from a crisis in confidence in policing that began to emerge in the 1960s because of social unrest, rising crime rates, and growing skepticism regarding the effectiveness of standard approaches to policing. In response, beginning in the 1980s and 1990s, innovative police practices and policies that took a more proactive approach began to develop. This report uses the term "proactive policing" to refer to all policing strategies that have as one of their goals the prevention or reduction of crime and disorder and that are not reactive in terms of focusing primarily on uncovering ongoing crime or on investigating or responding to crimes once they have occurred. Proactive policing is distinguished from the everyday decisions of police officers to be proactive in specific situations and instead refers to a strategic decision by police agencies to use proactive police responses in a programmatic way to reduce crime. Today, proactive policing strategies are used widely in the United States. They are not isolated programs used by a select group of agencies but rather a set of ideas that have spread across the landscape of policing. Proactive Policing reviews the evidence and discusses the data and methodological gaps on: (1) the effects of different forms of proactive policing on crime; (2) whether they are applied in a discriminatory manner; (3) whether they are being used in a legal fashion; and (4) community reaction. This report offers a comprehensive evaluation of proactive policing that includes not only its crime prevention impacts but also its broader implications for justice and U.S. communities.
While most researchers see the urban setting as being the only laboratory for studying crime problems throughout the United States, Crime and Policing in Rural and Small-Town America directly challenges this notion with an authoritative look at crime and the criminal justice system in rural America today. The assumption that rural crime is rare and comparable across various communities has led to incompatible theories and irrelevant practices. In order to transform this misconstruction, the Third Edition offers a clear outline of the definition of rural and provides a vital argument for why rural and small-town crime should be studied more than it is. The book also explores the individual nature of issues that emerge in these communities, including illegal drug production, domestic violence, agricultural crimes, rural poverty, and gangs, in addition to the training needs of rural police, probation in rural areas, and rural jails and prisons. Responding to rural crime requires an awareness of its context and how justice is carried out, as well as an appreciation of how features vary across rural areas. Understanding the relationships among crime, geography, and culture in the rural setting can reveal useful ideas and implications for crime and justice in communities across the United States.
The movement toward community policing has gained momentum in recent years as police and community leaders search for more effective ways to promote public safety and to enhance the quality of life in their neighborhoods. Chiefs, sheriffs, and other policing officials are currently assessing what changes in orientation, organization, and operations will allow them to benefit the communities they serve by improving the quality of the services they provide.Community policing encompasses a variety of philosophical and practical approaches and is still evolving rapidly. Community policing strategies vary depending on the needs and responses of the communities involved; however, certain basic principles and considerations are common to all community policing efforts.To date, no succinct overview of community policing exists for practitioners who want to learn to use this wide-ranging approach to address the problems of crime and disorder in their communities. Understanding Community Policing, prepared by the Community Policing Consortium, is the beginning of an effort to bring community policing into focus. The document, while not a final product, assembles and examines the critical components of community policing to help foster the learning process and to structure the experimentation and modification required to make community policing work.Established and funded by the U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA), the Community Policing Consortium includes representatives from the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP), the National Sheriffs' Association, the Police Executive Research Forum (PERF), and the Police Foundation. BJA gave the Consortium the task of developing a conceptual framework for community policing and assisting agencies in implementing community policing. The process was designed to be a learning experience, allowing police, community members, and policymakers to assess the effectiveness of different implementation procedures and the impact of community policing on local levels of crime, violence, fear, and other public-safety problems.
Community policing is a philosophy and organizational strategy that expands the traditional police mandate of fighting crime to include forming partnerships with citizenry that endorse mutual support and participation. The first textbook of its kind, Community Policing: A Contemporary Perspective delineates this progressive approach, combining the accrued wisdom and experience of its established authors with the latest research based insights to help students apply what is on the page to the world beyond. ’Spotlight on Community Policing Practice’ sections feature real-life community policing programs in various cities, and problem-solving case studies cover special topics. The text has been revised throughout to include the most current developments in the field such as how the current climate of suspicion associated with terrorism threats affects the trust so necessary for community policing, and how the newest technologies can be harnessed to facilitate police interactions with citizens. Additionally, the book now explores the fragmentation of authority and emphasizes the importance of partnerships among the numerous law enforcement agencies, government agencies, and private social service agencies. * Each chapter contains learning objectives, key terms, and discussion questions that encourage comprehension * Video and Internet links provide additional coverage of topics discussed throughout the text. * Includes a 'Ten Principles of Community Policing' addendum
Crime is often perceived as an urban issue rather than a problem that occurs in rural areas, but how far is this view tenable? This book explores the relationship between crime and community in rural areas and addresses the notion of safety as part of the community dynamics in such areas. Rural Crime and Community Safety makes a significant contribution to crime science and integrates a range of theories to understand patterns of crime and perceived safety in rural contexts. Based on a wealth of original research, Ceccato combines spatial methods with qualitative analysis to examine, in detail, farm and wildlife crime, youth related crimes and gendered violence in rural settings. Making the most of the expanding field of Criminology and of the growing professional inquiry into crime and crime prevention in rural areas; rural development; and the social sustainability of rural areas, this book builds a bridge by connecting Criminology and Human Geography. This book will be suitable for academics, students and practitioners in the fields of criminology, community safety, rural studies, rural development and gender studies.
