Community Policing in Comparative Perspective

Community (oriented) policing has become one of the most popular models of policing worldwide. After its initial implementation in many Western countries, community policing has also been transferred to transitional societies, which often lack strong democratic traditions. The international diffusion of community policing should not make us forget that community policing comes in all shapes and sizes and is highly varied in its operations. After having defined the concept and analyzed its rise in Anglo-American countries, this diversity is illustrated by scrutinizing its implementation in different national configurations: a continental European country relatively open to Anglo-American influences (the Netherlands), socially homogeneous countries with a high level of trust in the police (the Nordic countries), a centralized country with an administrative Napoleonic tradition (France), and postconflict societies (South Africa and Northern Ireland). These various national trajectories highlight the common drivers and barriers in community policing reforms: political priorities (through emphasizing crime fighting or zero tolerance policing), socioeconomic disparities and ethnic tensions (which may imply a history of mistrust and vicious circles between the police and some segments of the public), professional identities and interests (disqualifying community police officers as “social workers”), and organizational resources (managerial procedures, lack of training and human resources) that may hinder the reform process. These diverse experiences also draw attention to the variety of context-dependent factors that impact the fate of community policing reforms. Political climates, police–government relations, socioeconomic inequalities, and police traditions may differ, which requires further analysis of the various political, historical, socioeconomic, and cultural contexts of specific community policing reforms.

ОСОБЛИВОСТІ ЗАСТОСУВАННЯ ПРИНЦИПУ “ZERO TOLERANCE POLICING” В РАМКАХ НАЦІОНАЛЬНОЇ БЕЗПЕКИ ДЕРЖАВИ

У статті проводиться теоретичний аналіз концепту нульової толерантності, особливостей та умов його застосування в сучасній державно-політичній практиці. Визначним напрямком дослідження є виявлення засад нульової толерантності в рамках державної політики, яка встановлює принципи легальної нетерпимості до небезпечних, антидержавних таантисоціальних проявів. Акцентується увага на особливостях та обмеженні застосування принципу нульової терпимості в рамках законодавчого визначення. У статті досліджуються механізми державно-політичного регулювання меж толерантності в контексті попередження розвитку небезпечних утворень задля забезпечення соціально-політичної стабільності в державі. Так само увага приділяється світовій практиці та національномудосвіду застосування принципу “zero tolerance policing” державою в рамках політики національної безпеки. Нульова толерантність аналізується як засіб забезпечення пильногоконтролю держави за будь-якими проявами тих явищ, які потенційно несуть небезпеку для суспільства та держави. В інакшому випадку в умовах неналежного контролю за дрібними чи початковими проявами, вірогідність їх розвитку зростатиме. Для попередження цього держава, державні органи застосовують принцип “zero tolerance policing”. В рамках національної безпеки формується певна модель реагування держави на небезпечні прояви, що допомагає попередити деструктивні явища в державі. Так само в статті автор відзначає протилежну позицію щодо застосування нульової толерантності та проблему її дискримінаційності. У статті окреслюється потреба в концептуальному визначенні нульової толерантності задля запобігання необґрунтованого її використання без меж. Автор відзначає проблему необґрунтованого застосування даного принципу, отже, концепція потребує детального розроблення як у теоретичній, так і правозастосовній практиці, й в особливості на рівні державної політики.

Complaint-Oriented Policing: Regulating Homelessness in Public Space

Over the past 30 years, cities across the United States have adopted quality-of-life ordinances aimed at policing social marginality. Scholars have documented zero-tolerance policing and emerging tactics of therapeutic policing in these efforts, but little attention has been paid to 911 calls and forms of third-party policing in governing public space and the poor. Drawing on an analysis of 3.9 million 911 and 311 call records and participant observation alongside police officers, social workers, and homeless men and women residing on the streets of San Francisco, this article elaborates a model of “complaint-oriented policing” to explain additional causes and consequences of policing visible poverty. Situating the police within a broader bureaucratic field of poverty governance, I demonstrate how policing aimed at the poor can be initiated by callers, organizations, and government agencies, and how police officers manage these complaints in collaboration and conflict with health, welfare, and sanitation agencies. Expanding the conception of the criminalization of poverty, which is often centered on incarceration or arrest, the study reveals previously unforeseen consequences of move-along orders, citations, and threats that dispossess the poor of property, create barriers to services and jobs, and increase vulnerability to violence and crime.

Broken Windows Policing

The 1980s saw sweeping changes occur in policing nationwide. Disorder (sometimes also called incivilities) rose to the top of the police agenda with the publication of studies showing that physical decay and socially undesirable behaviors inspire more fear than crime does. Crime is a relatively rare event, but physical disorder (graffiti, vandalism, and the like) and social disorder (such as aggressive panhandling or people being intoxicated in public) are far more prevalent. Broken windows theory drew from concepts embedded within criminological and social psychological theories. According to this perspective, the cause of crime is disorder that goes unchecked and is permitted to spread throughout a neighborhood or community. Disorder is theorized to scare people and makes them believe that their neighborhood is unsafe. These people subsequently withdraw from public spaces. The disorderly environment and empty streets invite crime and criminals. Offenders feel emboldened to prey on people and property because the environmental cues suggest a low likelihood that anyone will intervene or call the police. At this point, the neighborhood’s disorder problem becomes a crime problem. In the broken windows viewpoint, police are the front line of disorder reduction and control. Police are seen as needing to actively combat disorder in order to make neighborhood residents feel safe so that they will continue participating in the social fabric of their community. Broken windows theory does not contain a set of directions for precisely how police should go about preventing and eliminating disorder. Police leaders wanting to use the tenets of broken windows theory in their communities have to figure out how to put these concepts into practice. What evolved to be called order maintenance policing still varies from agency to agency. One of the most popular (and controversial) strategies is to aggressively enforce laws against nuisance and public-order offending (loitering, public drunkenness, and so on). The signature tactic of order maintenance policing is the street stop, which is a brief field detention and questioning. Police officers who have reasonable suspicion to believe an individual is engaged in criminal behavior can detain that person for questioning. Aggressive enforcement using street stops as a core tactic is not universal and there are other options (e.g., community policing, target hardening, utilizing government services, conveying reliable information) for police agencies to engage in disorder-reduction activities. The disorder-reduction strategy relying on street stops and arrests for low-level offenses goes by names such as “broken-windows policing” and “zero-tolerance policing.” The term “aggressive order-maintenance policing” is adopted for present purposes, as some broken-windows proponents have taken issue with terms like “zero tolerance.” This bibliography provides an overview of studies of broken windows theory and of some of the police efforts to employ the logic of this theory to reduce disorder, fear, and crime. Methodological rigor has been a recurrent topic in the discussion about the merits of broken windows theory and order maintenance policing, so this will be reflected in the bibliographies where relevant.