Community Policing as a Drama of Control (From Community Policing: Rhetoric or Reality, P 27-45, 1988, Jack R Greene and Stephen D Mastrofski, eds. -- See NCJ-115735)

• NCJ Number: 115737
• Author(s): P K Manning
• Date Published: 1988
• Length: 19 pages
• Sale Source: Praeger Publishers
• Publication Type: Issue Overview
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America
• Note: *This document is currently unavailable from NCJRS.

Annotation

The concept of community policing can be interpreted as a major dramatic device that is designed to control how people think and feel about their police. It has arisen because the police and their reformers feel the need to address obvious social, cultural, and economic schisms in a heterogeneous society.

Abstract

Community policing should be considered within the context of the police reform movement. In theory it contrasts with the bureaucratic model in that it involves visible, available, and personal officers. It also rests on the broad notions of community as a form of integration and moral solidarity. However, it is supposed to achieve a wide variety of goals, which may be mutually exclusive or conflicting. These include reducing the costs of policing, increasing crime control, renewing and restoring the morality and integrity of communities, reducing turnover within police organizations, reducing crime and the fear of crime, and restoring urban government to its proper role in maintaining community well-being. The concept of community policing may have many positive impacts on policing and police organizations by promoting evaluations, resource shifts, political dialogue, and police re-examinations of their roles. Notes.