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Implementation Issues in Community Policing

NCJ Number
150550
Journal
Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice Volume: 10 Issue: 1 Dated: (March 1994) Pages: complete issue
Editor(s)
G W Sykes
Date Published
1994
Length
84 pages
Annotation
These four articles examine community policing in terms of implementation issues and their implications for the administration and management of police agencies.
Abstract
The first paper examines the trend in police agencies to try to use community policing to form more sensitive and closer partnerships with the communities they served and notes that the accreditation movement will be one complication that community policing must place in proper perspective. The author concludes that a change in police management practices will largely determine whether community policing changes the basic paradigm in law enforcement or simply becomes an improvement to the status quo. Focusing on implementation issues, the second paper discusses the eight steps that police agencies should follow when changing to community policing. These include the awareness of a performance gap, recognition of a need for change, creating a proper climate for change, diagnosing the problem, identifying alternative strategies, selecting the strategy, determining and developing an implementation strategy, and evaluating the modifying the strategy. The third article reviews arguments made by advocates of community policing concerning the need for organizational changes in the structure of police agencies from the large command-and-control bureaucracy that deemphasized citizen concerns. The paper also considers some of the internal and external consequences of these developments. The final paper considers the ethical challenges that community policing will present to police agencies and the need for police agencies to anticipate and avoid unintended consequences. The journal issue also includes several book reviews. Chapter reference lists