Community Policing and Crime, Article Review Example

Community policing has a nod as a potential model that is capable of bringing reforms in the criminal justice system. The community policing approaches gears at ensuring the whole criminal justice system and the community work in unison in curbing and eradicating crime in the society. This implies that courts, law enforcers and the people would team up against lawbreakers and any cause that promote law breaking in the society. This paper looks at community policing with a purpose of exploring its origin, evolution, and ways at which it assists in detection and protection of crime. The aim of this analysis is to encourage community policing and suggest any reforms that would assure its success in the criminal justice system.

In the past, the efficiency of law enforcing operations got a rank according to the success of a rapid response system. This is a system that believed in rushing of the police at the scene of crime arresting of criminal offenders or collecting evidence that would lead into an arrest. The logic of rapid response system was to arrest the culprit before he or she evades or collect evidence before its distortion. This move got a major setback when a report indicated that only one out of three crimes reach the police report office. The rest goes unreported due to ignorance or unwillingness of their involvement in legal matters. It dawned on the criminal justice system that contemporary crimes required a different approach than the rapid response system. The dawn marked the evolution of community policing to reduce the number of criminal cases, which the victims never reported.

A holistic community approach became the initial stage that saw the criminal justice system encourage the community to be holistic. The move targeted to educate the community on the importance of crime prevention and protection in the community. Then the late professor Robert Trojanowicz established the ten principles of community policing, which reinforced the idea. The basics of his principles were to ensure that the police became partners with the community in curbing crime. The policies also suggested the introduction of a Community Policing Officer who acted as a solution maker to the problems entangling a community. Professor Herman Goldstein then came with the S.A.R.A model, which was used by the Community Policing Officer to solve community problems. The model embraced Scanning, Analysis, Response, and Assessment as the best approach of embracing community policing.

The first benefit of community policing is the assistance it gives to the police and the community in protecting crimes in the society. The system generates fear among law offenders since they became aware of thousands of pairs of eyes that are watching their heinous activities. This fear makes them refrain from committing the crime thus helping in reducing crime in the community. The system also increases the number of reported crimes to the police. These results in most criminals being arrested and rehabilitated thus reduce the number of criminals and crimes in the community.

Detection efficiency gets a boost on incorporation of community policing. The community is always aware of characters and belongings of most individuals, which might speed up detection and investigation of a crime. An example is the use of evidence left at the crime scene to identify a criminal. The community would easily identify such belonging thus speeding up the investigation and arrest of the culprits.

In conclusion, community policing ought to be embraced as a model of criminal justice system. This would create a community criminal justice system that would prevent crimes and ease the investigation and arrest procedure whenever crimes occur in the community (Bucqueroux, 2011).

Reference

Bucqueroux, B. (2011, May 04). Community Criminal Justice: What Community Policing Teaches. Retrieved March 27, 2012, from Policing.com: http://www.policing.com/articles/ccj.html