NCJ Number
209564
Journal
Research in Crime and Delinquency Volume: 42 Issue: 2 Dated: May 2005 Pages: 147-186
Date Published
May 2005
Length
40 pages
Annotation
This study examined the structure, mechanisms, and efficacy of community policing and its impact on perceived disorder, crime, quality of life in the community, citizens' fear, and satisfaction with the police.
Abstract
The comparison of traditional and community policing paradigms on goals, outcome measures, and approach to crime concluded that community policing has a comprehensive, community-oriented goal; targets both disorder and crime; and emphasizes organizational and community measures in police evaluation. This study focused on the impact of community policing on the empirically documented link between disorder, crime, and the fear of crime. Data were obtained from the Citizen Survey conducted by the Colorado Springs Police Department in 2001. The survey obtained citizen views on issues such as neighborhood disorder, crime, victimization, citizens' fear, perceptions of community environment, and their evaluations of police effectiveness and accountability. The dataset contained 121 variables and 904 cases. This study supports the "broken windows" thesis that the physical and moral decay of a community leads to increased criminality. It also found that community policing favorably impacted, albeit indirectly, disorder and ultimately crime and fear of crime. Further, the findings generally supported the impact of community policing on quality of citizens' life by reducing disorder and fear of crime. Citizens' satisfaction with the police was dependent on the levels of citizens' fear and the perceived quality of life in the community. These findings are used to counter some of the major criticisms of community policing. 3 figures, 2 tables, 11 notes, 82 references, and appended fit indexes for structural equation models