New Policing: Confronting Complexity

• NCJ Number: 145157
• Author(s): H Goldstein
• Date Published: 1993
• Length: 6 pages
• Sponsoring Agency: US Dept of Justice NIJ Pub
• Corporate Author: National Institute of Justice (NIJ)
• Sale Source: National Institute of Justice/; NCJRS Photocopy Services
• Publication Format: Document
• Publication Type: Survey
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America
• Note: Research in Brief, December, 1993

Annotation

While progressive police administrators and involved citizens have been working to design and implement a forms of policing -- commonly known as community policing -- that will better meet the evolving demands on police, many times this concept is used without any regard for its substance.

Abstract

Community policing is touted as an immediate solution for the problems of crime, racial tension, and social disorder, and as result, carefully developed initiatives bearing the community policing label are often open to attack. To illustrate the complexity of change in policing, this article examines five spheres in which change is now occurring. These spheres include the refinement of the police function and public expectations, citizen involvement in the substance of policing, a redefinition of the relationship between the police and the criminal justice system, a search for alternative law enforcement responses, and a reformulation of the police working environment.