How Can My Community Reduce Crime? - Essay Example

My community can reduce the chances of burglaries and home invasion by implementing a proactive strategy that concentrates on stopping crime before it happens, and knowing how to properly respond when you are a victim of crime. Proactive members of a community that participate in the neighborhood watch, community policing activities, and know how to handle themselves when victimized by a burglar serve as a force multiplier for law enforcement and will drastically decrease crime rates.

Community participation in the context of crime prevention remains a phenomenon that has gained overwhelming embrace by anti-crime institutions, terming it as a panacea for the crime menace. Community participation in reducing crime garnered its preeminent status following governments realization that mere law enforcement is not capable of reducing crimes without involving the communities. In other words, community involvement in the context of crime prevention comes as a supplementary approach to the traditional law enforcement.

Through this realization, governments have resorted to mobilizing as well as integrating local communities in their crime prevention programs, aiming to build strong collaboration amid police along with ordinary civilians. My community participation towards crime prevention dates decades ago, and in America, it started during settlement period where local communities served as the first peace officers whereby they patrolled streets as volunteers.

The level at which members of my community are willing to take part in crime prevention programs is manipulated by context as well as a social organization. It is a common observable phenomenon that communities sharing common understandings along with values have a propensity of being more willing to accomplish common interests which include maintaining safety along with the order. The social organization serves as a reflection of a communitys capacity to self-regulate. Consequently, the social organization acts as a prerequisite for communities in the attempt to achieve meaningful participation in as far as crime prevention programs are concerned. In America, citizen involvement in the exercise of law enforcement is not a new phenomenon, and this can be evidenced by the various vigilante movements that have been established, especially in the recent past. Vigilante groups have played a significant role in promoting peace. However, citizen withdrawal is another approach adopted by my community, especially when they feel humiliated by the authority. The latter approach does not promote peace in a community as citizens fear persons in authority, thus mistrust.

My community members ought to communicate with police officer commanders so that police officers can be availed for the policing mission. However, neighborhood schedules are in most instances interrupted owing to unavailability of officers. This challenge can be addressed by increasing the number of police officers within police stations. Elsewhere, involving communities in crime prevention programs is an appropriate way of enhancing the participants capacity to address crime problems without the reliance on external elements. However, the challenge barricading this move is the struggle in mobilizing local communities so that they can participate voluntarily.

Most of my community members are not willing to volunteer in street patrols, thus challenge of shortage of volunteers. This challenge can be addressed through conducting community civic education on the importance of my community participation in policing. Alleged corruption together with the ineptitude of the criminal justice system is also a notable challenge towards community involvement (Dolling & Feltes, 1993). In some instances, police officers release criminals without charging them. Subsequently, community members are demoralized taking part in future policing activities. This can avert through educating the public some basic functions of the criminal justice system so that the public can know the evidence to present when handing criminals to police officers.

Over the last two decades, police experts in America have been developing new philosophies aimed at tackling the heightened crime problems (Dolling & Feltes, 1993). Worth noting is that policing aims at improving the cooperation between the population and the police and to augment the trust within the police. A meaningful cooperation amid the citizens and police is the crucial factor here. The aim of problem oriented policing is formulating structural changes within the organization as well as the police procedures within the public domain. The police are required to investigate hidden conflicts and problems of a personal offense prior creating proactive and long term concepts intended for the social area of conflicts away from the particular case. It is uncertain whether these American based philosophies can be implemented in Germany. This is because the legality principle forbids meaningful and trustworthy relations amid citizens and police officers.

As we talk, nearly no system that adheres to the principle of legality like Germany administers it in practice in the strict conventional way anymore (Dolling & Feltes, 1993). However, there were partly official laws that introduced exceptions, in part leeway opened by decisions of court or practitioner guidelines. Through this development, prosecutors and judges were given new possibilities of dealing with cases as well as suspects through discretionary manner. However, the police in Germany lack the legal power of deciding by themselves the criterion of proceeding with a case.

According to my opinion, implementation of community-oriented policing does not necessarily entail additional costs. In essence, there is not sufficient money in the world that can be rendered into paying community policing. However, this does not imply that community-oriented policing does not require an enhanced level of resources. All the resources in the globe cannot cause community policing to happen. The implication of the above statements is that community-oriented policing is more of a value-driven philosophy that can be likened to a friendship of human affection (Rosenbaum, 1994).

This means that community policing cannot be bought. Instead, it ought to come from within, and officers were taking part in the exercise must be convinced that it is the appropriate thing to do. The officers must want to engage in the exercise. Through controlling the time of the officers while giving them the opportunity of experiencing community oriented policing, it has consistently been due to ownership together with positive response they receive when working with the community. Administrators ought to focus on innovative ways of accomplishing community policing through freeing the time up of their officers to work in communities.

Successful community-oriented has a lot of implication in how administrators control the patrol time of their officers. If officers assigned particular geographic areas to solve community involvement problems, it is incumbent on the supervisor to offer the necessary resources including time needed in performing the tasks. If accomplishing the tasks is possible, it means that creative ways of acquiring equipment along with other resources will surface. If officers can afford the time to deal with challenges, they are more likely to take more ownership to solve the problem. The officers also start working more collectively as a team. Administrators who frequently worry about paying for community policing are more likely to be slowly transitioning their agency to the philosophy since their concern is more about fundraising as opposed to changing their organizations.

The philosophy of community-oriented policing has impacted on an array of a phenomenon. Through community policing, fear within a community has been reduced. Increased police presence in a neighborhood has led to residents feeling more secure (Nalla & Newman, 2013). Subsequently, the feeling of security helps the police in establishing trust within the community. The moment citizens become more active in mind the welfare of their community; they start understanding what police officers engage in on a daily basis, which enhances the relations between police and community. In the end, there is an improvement of life in a community as well as crime reduction. Either, community policing is not only flexible but also capable of changing. The strategies and solutions change as community changes. This implies that is a sure plan works for a given community; it does not necessarily have to work for another.

In future, community policing is even more likely to allow the community to formulate more efficient solutions to address the problems in the community. Community policing provides a myriad of advantages. However, going forward, there should be established partnership amid police officers and the community. The community involvement should be based on trust since, without trust, community policing will be deemed to fail.

Reference

Kyed, H. M. (2010). The Contested Role of Community Policing: "new" Non-state Actors in the Plural Legal Landscape of Mozambique. New York: Danish Institute for International Studies.

Dolling, D., & Feltes, T. (1993). Community Policing: Comparative Aspects of Community Oriented Police Work. New Jersey: Felix-Verlag.

Nalla, M. K., & Newman, G. R. (2013). Community Policing in Indigenous Communities. New York: CRC Press.

Rosenbaum, D. P. (1994). The Challenge of Community Policing. Washington: SAGE.