Police Accountability and Community Policing

• NCJ Number: 114211
• Author(s): G L Kelling; R Wasserman; H Williams
• Date Published: 1988
• Length: 7 pages
• Sponsoring Agency: US Dept of Justice NIJ Pub
• Corporate Author: National Institute of Justice (NIJ); Harvard University
• Sale Source: National Institute of Justice/; NCJRS Photocopy Services
• Publication Type: Issue Overview
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America
• Note: Perspectives on Policing, No. 7, November 1988

Annotation

Characteristics of community policing, such as organizational decentralization and increased intimacy between officers and citizens, require increased use of officer discretion and empowerment of officers.

Abstract

This, in turn, requires that police administrators devise means for ensuring the accountability of individual officers. While traditionally, command and control structures have been used to increase police effectiveness and accountability, they drive individual discretion underground, fail to reward creativity, increase officer role strain, and contribute to a police culture characterized by suspiciousness, isolation from citizens, and the perception of danger. An alternative to this approach that can manage the police culture and increase accountability includes leadership that emphasizes the values that flow from the law and represent the highest norms of the profession, responsiveness to community definitions of problems and solutions, and the use of administrative mechanisms of control. These administrative mechanisms include supervision, training, program auditing, discipline, reward, and peer control. Such an approach is compatible both with community policing and increased accountability. 9 notes.