Proposals for the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) were based on arguments for a need to separate the investigatory and prosecutorial functions and to find a fundamental balance between the interests of the community and the rights and liberties of individual citizens. The CPS was conceived as a system of checks and balances in which the wider police powers perceived necessary to combat crimes were to be offset by increased safeguards against abuse. Not surprisingly, police powers were spelled out in uncompromising detail, while safeguards, including the CPS, were left vague and ambiguous. From this perspective the establishment of the CPS can be viewed in terms of a crude trade off for increased police authority. The CPS also represents a transformation of the conception of policing as concerned with combatting crime to a concern with preserving public order. Within this conception, police are cast in the role of repressive social workers. The distinctive character of community policing strategies is proactive, preventive, and pre-emptive. Community policing is not an alternative, but a compliment to reactive modes of policing in that it is an attempt at surveillance and control that centralizes the function of different agencies of the State under overarching police supervision. 14 notes and 44 references.