NCJ Number
110384
Date Published
1988
Length
217 pages
Annotation
This analysis of policing in small towns and rural areas emphasizes the characteristics that it routinely demonstrates and that represent methods, concepts, attitudes, and a philosophy that appear fundamental to effective policing in agencies of any size.
Abstract
Personal interaction between police and citizens, an encompassing community spirit of caring and informality, the use of community-based policing, and a police philosophy of matching service to community expectations all contribute to the uniqueness, success, and effectiveness of small town and rural police. With these characteristics and unencumbered with bureaucratic requirements, small town and rural police work toward human goals of helping people police themselves. However, small town and rural police are often ignored, stereotyped, or ridiculed, while police officers in the big city are portrayed in popular television as able to solve any problem in a few minutes. In reality, the effectiveness of small town and rural policing rests on the high degree of personal interaction among police officers and between police officers and individual citizens. Thus, police in small towns and rural areas are part of the community. Departments of different sizes show differences between officers in education, physical fitness, stress, and many other characteristics. Department size is also related to differences in police-community relations, the use of community-based policing, police discretion, administration and organization, crime prevention, criminal investigation, and interactions with youths and elderly people. Small town and rural police will probably continue to provide superb policing in the future. Index, appended figures, and 106 references.