Policing and Changing Perceptions of Neighbourhood Security

This chapter adopts a longitudinal perspective to track the impacts of the delivery of Neighbourhood Policing over an extended period of time. Working with the Safer Neighbourhood Teams in the London Borough of Sutton for over a decade, the delivery and impacts of Neighbourhood Policing in the area were tracked longitudinally, generating a unique empirically informed perspective that measures public perceptions and experiences of crime, disorder, and policing in fine-grained detail. The data show how the number of concerns being raised by the public reduced significantly over the monitoring period, and whilst the type of problem varied from year to year, some ‘wicked’ problems proved more persistent. Respondents also talked far less often about issues in their immediate neighbourhoods, recalibrating their concerns to more generic public spaces with high footfall. Taken together, these data provide some sense of what Neighbourhood Policing can and cannot accomplish in terms of its impacts upon often complex social problems and situations.

The Public Understanding of Crime and Policing

This chapter situates Neighbourhood Policing in a social and policing context, arguing that in order to understand how and why it gained traction at the particular moment when it did, it is necessary to establish how it relates to a longer and deeper history of policing ideas. It proposes that, as a particular iteration of the community policing philosophy, Neighbourhood Policing reflects a defining tension in the police mission as to whether the principal focus should be upon crime management, or a broader notion of community support and order maintenance. This analysis develops a detailed discussion of the community policing tradition and how it has ebbed and flowed over time in terms of its popularity, outlining a theoretical framework for thinking about how and why community policing interventions impact upon public perceptions and experiences of crime, disorder, and security.

From Neighbourhood to National Security

This chapter explores how developments in Neighbourhood Policing articulate with other aspects of the police function. In particular, it examines the ways in which Neighbourhood Policing type approaches have influenced attempts to tackle serious and organized crime, and the evolution of the Prevent strand of the United Kingdom’s counter-terrorism programme. The channels of communication afforded by the Neighbourhood Policing model afford a unique opportunity to access and acquire community intelligence, which might otherwise be difficult for police to acquire by more traditional or covert methods. Informed by this focus, the chapter goes on to explore the concept of the co-production of social control, utilizing empirical case studies to illustrate how a more ‘blended policing’ approach from neighbourhood officers can lend itself to supporting interventions directed towards broader risks and threats.

Police Support versus Community Support

This chapter provides a detailed examination of the role of the Police Community Support Officer (PCSO), to understand how and why it differs to that of the police constable in the conduct and delivery of Neighbourhood Policing. Drawing upon an extensive empirical base dating from when PCSOs were first introduced in England and Wales, it evidences how PCSOs are routinely engaged in a delicate balancing act between supporting the community and the wider policing mission. Set against the contemporary backdrop of austerity, the authors provide a critical account of the extent to which Neighbourhood Policing Teams perform effectively in different localities in terms of: public perceptions; providing a visible police presence; engaging with communities to identify their priorities; and co-producing solutions to local problems.

The Story of Reassurance Policing and How it Became Neighbourhood Policing

What became established as Neighbourhood Policing in the United Kingdom was, to a significant extent, informed by its quasi-experimental predecessor the National Reassurance Policing Programme. In this chapter the key conceptual and practical contributions that the National Reassurance Policing Programme made to the formulation of Neighbourhood Policing are laid out. It is asserted that what the trialling of Reassurance Policing did was to establish a more structured and systematic delivery model, when compared with previous iterations of community policing. In engaging with these themes, the chapter also explores how and why the initial moves to revive this style of community policing engendered resistance in some sectors and how this was overcome.

Conclusions

This final chapter in a volume charting the development and implementation of Neighbourhood Policing brings together a number of aspects of this policing model that have been described and considered in depth in earlier chapters. In concluding the volume, it considers the relative decline of Neighbourhood Policing as a consequence of reductions to public spending, together with a sense of ‘moral disinvestment’ as a result of falling rates of crime and disorder. It is argued that whilst some within policing have tried to maintain the Neighbourhood Policing ‘brand’, the hollowing out of neighbourhood-based capacity means that its defining qualities have not always be retained. In its place we have a rather looser and less defined notion of local policing. Instead of doing ‘more with less’—a phrase that has been the austerity mantra of a number of senior police leaders—police need to think about ‘doing less with more’. That is, intervening less often but with more impact.

The Cardiff Community Engagement Experiment

In order to develop insights into the conduct of Neighbourhood Policing ‘on the ground’, this chapter focuses in upon the findings from a significant attempt to establish a structured and systematic approach to police–community engagement, first in Cardiff and then across South Wales. Working in collaboration with South Wales Police, the authors conducted in excess of 700 face-to-face interviews with members of the public across most neighbourhoods in the police force area. Using the concept of signal crimes, the data derived are interpreted to understand what matters most to people in their local area and how they utilize these concerns to construct their sense of security. The implications of these findings and insights for steering and guiding the implementation of Neighbourhood Policing services are explored in depth.

Policing Interactions

This chapter discusses the interactional skills and strategies that police perform when engaging with members of the public cast in a variety of roles. In so doing, it seeks to work out the principal tenets of a dramaturgical analysis of Neighbourhood Policing, including how forms of ‘face work’ and the management of impressions are part of the art and craft of street policing. The authors entertain the idea of reframing the concept of police performance from its orthodox usage, referring to a set of measurement instruments applied to gauge police activity, to a more dramaturgically sensitive understanding of how and why police behave in particular ways in their interactions and encounters with citizens, that can influence the local social order.

Neighbourhood as a Policing Delivery Unit

This chapter explores the concept of ‘neighbourhood’ and how such constructs come to be associated with particular types of social problem, especially crime and disorder. This includes how neighbourhoods are defined and reconfigured for different audiences and for different purposes, using empirical data to show how and why members of the public choose to self-define their neighbourhood boundaries in certain ways. The discussion elaborates on why areas become labelled as ‘problem neighbourhoods’ or ‘no-go areas’ and engages in a detailed investigation of antisocial behaviour as a key focus for Neighbourhood Policing interventions. Drawing upon analysis of how victims perceive and are harmed by antisocial behaviour, it provides a critical account of how far antisocial behaviour can and should be conceptualized as ‘a neighbourhood problem of a problem neighbourhood’ that both resides in, and should be resolved by, communities and their police. We discuss the implications this approach has for the effective delivery of local policing and multi-agency problem-solving interventions within the neighbourhood unit