Volume 1 Issue 1, August 2006

Community Policing: What Makes It Work?

Although law enforcement officials have long recognized the need to cooperate with the communities they serve, recent efforts to enhance performance and maximize resources have resulted in a more strategic approach to collaboration among police, local governments, and community members.  The goal of these so-called “community policing” initiatives is to prevent neighborhood crime, reduce the fear of crime, and enhance the quality of life in communities. The federal Office of Community Oriented Policing Services has provided approximately $11.3 billion to local police agencies to facilitate these collaborative efforts.

Despite this growing national interest in and support for community policing, relatively little is known about what makes it work. The extent to which the implementation of community policing varies across time and place is uncertain. The factors that influence its implementation are unclear, and statistically sensitive measures of implementation are lacking. While it is well recognized that building effective community policing partnerships will require changes in the organizational structure of policing, to date, the relationship between community policing and organizational structure has been largely unexplored.

Drawing on data from nearly every major U.S. municipal police force, Community Policing in America is the first comprehensive study to examine how the organizational context and structure of police organizations impact the implementation of community policing. The book offers a unique theoretical framework within which to consider community policing, and identifies key internal and external factors that can facilitate or impede this process, including community characteristics, geographical region, police chief turnover, structural complexity and control, and other environmental and organizational characteristics. It also provides a simple tool that practitioners, policymakers, and researchers can use to measure community policing in specific police organizations.

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Police Personnel Crisis Needs Federal Leadership

Police agencies across the U.S. are short staffed and finding it increasingly difficult to recruit and retain police officers. Changing workforce requirements, shifts in the eligible candidate pool, large numbers of anticipated retirements, and shrinking resources further complicate their efforts to maintain the appropriate number and skill mix of officers. In two recent commentaries, RAND researchers from the Center on Quality Policing call for greater federal government leadership in forecasting and planning for police personnel needs around the country. Such efforts would help ensure that local police departments have the requisite personnel to perform not only their traditional tasks, but also the expanded set of homeland security duties they have been asked to take on since 9/11.

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