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Policing in the Community

NCJ Number
193020
Author(s)
Dean J. Champion; George E. Rush
Date Published
1997
Length
507 pages
Annotation
This textbook focuses on community policing and also details police operations, police management, police personnel issues, and policing innovation.
Abstract
The first of the book’s four main parts examines the background of policing in society, the concept of police subculture, reasons for studying community policing as part of a criminal justice and criminology background, police organization and administration, and the police officer mystique generated by the subculture of policing. The second part presents chapters on police discretion and police professionalism. Individual chapters discuss innovative patrol styles such as sector patrolling and team policing, the manifest and latent functions of community policing, and the sociolegal and political implications of community policing. They also examine police recruitment, training, and professionalism; minority police recruitment; police roles and their actual role performance; police occupational stress and burnout; police discretion; and the nature of police understanding of constitutional laws and the rights of citizens. The book’s third section discusses police misconduct and its impacts on different populations. Sections focus on police brutality; police use of deadly force; racial discrimination in law enforcement; police interactions with drug abusers and homosexuals; and police relations and actions related to legally disenfranchised persons, including low-income people, homeless people, undocumented people, and people with mental illnesses. The final three chapters examine police-juvenile relations and the extent of community policing on an international scale. Chapters discuss programs for dealing with juveniles, legal and extralegal factors that influence the police-juvenile relationship, juvenile gangs and gang violence, and police efforts to address gang violence. Further chapters describe community policing in England, Canada, and France and describe cultural universals about community policing. The final chapter summarizes major trends in police-community relations and discusses the political and social implications of increasing political influences on policing. Chapter review questions, lists of major terms for each chapter, suggested readings for each chapter, glossary, name and subject indexes, and approximately 500 references