The Drawbacks and Benefits of Implementing Community Policing to Aid the Criminal Justice System in Crime Deterrence - Research Proposal Example

Community policing: how effective is it Introduction and ment of Purpose Having observed its successful application by the United s andUnited Kingdom (Billante 2003), community policing has emerged in Australian crime and deterrence scene as a response to the prevalence of complex crimes around the country. Community policing have been implemented in Australia under the "Neighbourhood Watch", "Crimestoppers" and "Safety House" programmes and have been successful endeavours to deter crime by increasing police presence, reducing crime hotspots, and targeting arrests. It refers to the engagement of community members to work together with law enforcement agencies to play an active role in reducing local crime (Anderson 2005). The fundamental benefits of community policing is that it provides mobility to the law enforcement agencies to respond to criminal complaints, increase positive attitudes towards police, and reduce fears of crime (Anderson 2005). What interests this researcher is the fact that in a country where 60 police officers are entrusted with 1000 serious reported crimes (Billante 2003), community policing seems to be an ideal solution to increase police vigilance and strength at a minimal cost to the government. Experts are of the view (Grabosky 2009; Hodgson 1998; Mukherjee and Graycar 1997) that community policing is an effective method for responding to the community’s needs for security, crime deterrence and peace keeping. It involves programmes which encourage members of the community to participate actively on behalf of the police in crime detection and prevention as well as maintenance of public order. Yet, there has been little research carried out to evaluate the effectiveness and cost-efficiency of community policing. The purpose of the following proposal is to evaluate whether there is a need for investigating it in terms of value of community contribution, impact on police efficiency, cost of implementing community policing systems, and most importantly reduction in crime rates. 2. Research Questions 2.1 More specifically, the researcher is interested in investigating the following areas which, the researcher feels, would add value to the field of criminology and crime prevention in Australia: What are the drawbacks and benefits of implementing community policing to aid the criminal justice system in crime deterrence? How effective are the different types of community policing programmes, especially in addressing modern crime and disorder situations like terrorism and delinquent behaviours in the marginalised communities? And lastly, who will benefit most from community policing - the community, police department or the government? 2.2. A combination of theoretical exploration, interviews and evaluation shall enable the researcher to study the efficacy and effectiveness of community policing, the gaps therein in its implementation, and hopefully present radical solutions to the justice system, crime prevention departments, citizens community, and criminology academia. 3. Literature Review The key objective to policing is to prevent crime to ensure that individuals and the community are secure from crimes and criminals. The idea of community policing stems from the distributed efforts of the community in achieving the above objective through a formal and informal structure of crime deterrence. The success of community policing underlies the strategy of sharing information and techniques on crime prevention between the police and the community such as security surveys, crime analysis, neighbourhood watches, operational identification and other crime prevention methods (Palmiotto 2000). This approach is congruent with Reiss (1951) theory of Personal and Social Control which states that crimes are committed as a result of lack of personal and social controls. The community can make rules and norms which would mandate everyone to conform to them. From the Containment Theory (Reckless 1961) perspective this would achieve two folds objective: i. Outer containment by binding the individual to the community thereby reducing crime; and ii. Inner containment through self concept, goal orientation, tolerance approach and norm retention thereby pull the individual away from delinquent behaviours. The participation of the community in policing works as a collaborative tool for crime and disorder prevention. For example in a report by the Sydney Morning Herald the Assistant Commissioner Nick Kaldas, head of North South Wales Polices Counterterrorism Unit explains why the participation of the community is important, "The aim of terrorists is to force you to protect everything, everywhere, all the time. Obviously we cant do that, so we need to rely on the community." (Sydney Morning Herald 2007). Thus, community policing is a major shift in paradigm for the justice professionals as well as the Australian community. Furthermore, this makes policing no longer restricted to centralised, bureaucratic, and expert command organisations but an inclusive partnership between the police and community (Fleming and OReilly 2008). Fleming and OReilly (2007) further explain that community policing induces commitment, engagement and participation in policing practice. It helps the police department to develop concepts and approaches that could be scaled to the local level to effectively implement in communities. This has the effect of non-confrontational contact with the community, increased trusts of the police, and reduced government and community conflict in legislative and judicial policies (Fleming and OReilly 2007). As Hirschi (1969) explains, through Control Theory, social bonds can be created through attachment, commitment, involvement and belief. Community policing has this effect on the local community and influence their attitudes towards the justice system. Since crimes are acts of force in pursuit of self interest (Gottfredson and Hirschi 1990), it is imperative that this self-seeking behaviour be negated with similar self-interests activity. Community policing though may not in essence a replacement of family re-attachment, or elimination of low self-control it can nevertheless enable the community to participate in setting moral goals, lessen criminal opportunities, and condition other members to behave according to the rules set by them selves (Gottfredson and Hirschi 1990). The aim is thus to reduce crime yet at the same time to deter individuals from engaging in delinquent behaviours because their self-interests lie in preventing it. Disorder and chaos are also prevented from occurring as the community people are involved in activities which reflect similar values. Community policing in this context helps the authority, community and individuals in destabilising crime and deter future crimes from occurring. 4. Research Approach 4.1 The above brief preliminary literature review based on the conservative criminology theories indicates that the scope of investigating community policing is vast and worthwhile. However, due to research constraints and the fear of digressing from the main objectives of the research, the researcher shall limit this investigation to social control theories of criminology. 4.2 Discussion on research theories is incomplete without the establishment of paradigms. Paradigm is the world view of epistemology upon which the research rationale and interpretations are based. In social research like criminology the best approach is to adopt a deductive analysis as it involves the exploration of theories before confirming it with facts. There are several types of research methods under deductive reasoning but the most relevant to this research shall be quasi experiments which shall enable the researcher to generate primary data through focussed group interviews. The interviews shall be designed based on theoretical concepts discussed. This approach has the advantages of being a controlled experiment yet allow the researcher the freedom to explore information pertaining to community policing without limitations of numerical figures (Maxfield and Babbie 2008; Bachman and Schutt 2010). 4.3 Since focus groups are easy to conduct through a small sampling no pilot is required for this research. 4.4 However, what the researcher anticipates is the limitation of finding participants willing to divulge sensitive criminal information. Since the researcher aims to include criminals, community policing members, police officers, government officers in the justice department etc. in the focus group interviews, problems pertaining to authenticity, honesty and accurate facts may compromise the quality of the research outcomes. Nevertheless, the researcher shall remedy such situations through individual interviews to ensure discretion and trust with the participants. This will hopefully encourage them to provide true and accurate information. 4.5 Apart from the issues of trust and discretion, the researcher is aware that this type of research shall have dire consequences if the names, designation, relationships with organisations etc. are divulged. Nevertheless, it may be possible that the researcher have to divulge such information for which permission shall be sought from the individuals or organisations concerned to avoid legal and moral violations. 5. Timeline The researcher estimates the following timeframe for the above proposed study: Timeline Writing Research Admin June 1 Preliminary Investigation June 2 Proposal Draft June 4 Submission for review June 6 Approval/non-approval June 8 Revision of Draft Submission June 15 Literature Research June 30 Introduction and Literature Review chapters draft Submission July 15 Focussed Group interviews July 20 Compilation of results July 25 Methodology Chapter draft July 28 Data Analysis and Evaluation Chapter draft July 30 Review of Chapters Submission August 10 Analysis and Recommendations, Conclusions Chapters Submission August 20 Revision and final draft Submission 6. References Anderson, J. 2005. Community Policing — Working Together to Prevent Crime. Australian Institute of Criminology, Canberra, ACT, Australia. Online accessed on 2 June 2010 from: http://www.engagingcommunities2005.org/abstracts/Anderson-Jessica-final.pdf Author not available, 2007. Australia: Community Policing to Fight Terrorism Down Under. Sydney Morning Herald. June 26. Bachman, R. and Schutt, R.K. 2010. The Practice of Research in Criminology and Criminal Justice. SAGE. Billante, N. 2003.The Beat Goes On: Policing for Crime Prevention. The Centre for Independent Studies, Paper No 38 1 July. Online accessed on 2 June 2010 from: http://www.cis.org.au/issue_analysis/IA38/IA38.HTM Fleming, J. and OReilly, J. 2007. The ‘Small-scale Initiative’; the Rhetoric and the Reality of Community Policing in Australia. Policing Advance Access 1(2) pp. 214-222. Fleming, J. and OReilly, J. 2008. "In search of a process: community policing in Australia" in The Handbook of Knowledge Based Policing: Current Conceptions and Future by T. Williamson. John Wiley and Sons. Gottfredson, M. R., and Hirschi, T. 1994. "Aggression" in The Generality of Deviance, Competing Assumptions edited by M. R. Gottfredson and T. Hirschi. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction. Grabosky, P. 2009. Community Policing and Peacekeeping. CRC Press Hirschi, T. 1969. The causes of delinquency. Berkeley: The University of California Press. Hodgson, H.D. 1998. Community Policing: Working Together to Build Safe Communities. Emond Montgomery Publication. Maxfield, M.G. and Babbie, E.R. 2008. Basics of Research Methods for Criminal Justice and Criminology. Cengage Learning. Mukherjee, S.K. and Graycar, A. 1997. Crime and justice in Australia, 1997. Hawkins Press. Palmiotto, M. 2000. Community policing: a policing strategy for the 21st century. Jones & Bartlett Learning. Reckless, W. C. 1961. A new theory of delinquency and crime. Federal Probation, 25, 42-46. Reiss, A. 1951. Delinquency as the failure of personal and social control. American Sociological Review 16 (April): 196-207 Read More