THE EFFECT OF POLICING PRACTICES ON COMMUNITIES PERCEPTIONS AND COOPERATION

The Effect of Policing Practices on Communities Perceptions and Cooperation

Table of Contents

I. INTRODUCTION3

II. CHANGING CONCEPTIONS OF THE POLICE FUNCTION5

A. GOALS AND PRINCIPLES5

B. TACTICAL CHOICES: TOUGHNESS VERSUS FAIRNESS6

C. LEGITIMACY AS A PSYCHOLOGICAL ATTRIBUTE6

III. THE PROCEDURAL JUSTICE MODEL7

IV. CONTROLLING ORDINARY CRIME9

V. CONCLUSION11

References12

The Effect of Policing Practices on Communities Perceptions and Cooperation

I. INTRODUCTION

As victimization rates have fallen, public preoccupation with policing and its crime control impact has receded. Terrorism has become the new focal point of public concern. But the apparent satisfaction with ordinary police practices hides deep problems.

Public order successes have been achieved at great cost to politically powerless communities. As the controversy surrounding the recent arrest of Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates illustrated, our laws and the way they are enforced have resulted in public attitudes sharply polarized along racial lines (Richard, 2000), a division that is scarcely surprising in a nation marked by conspicuous racial disparities in its prison populations. And the costs of current strategic choices are no longer confined to minorities and the poor. Through its criminogenic impact, imprisonment has cross-cutting effects for the wider population, promising safety through deterrence at the same time as it increases victimization at the hands of former inmates (Jeffrey et al, 2003). These costs are compounded by fiscal consequences that are now impossible to ignore. In California, reliance on long-term imprisonment as a crime-control strategy has choked off funds for education and pushed the state to the brink of insolvency. Budget imperatives are forcing the state to reduce its prison population by 6,500 inmates, even in the face of recidivism rates of nearly 40%, among the highest in the nation. One prisoner brought home the dilemma and triggered widespread alarm when he was released early but then promptly re-arrested for attempted rape. In other places, incarceration policies generate fiscal burdens that, if less dire, are nonetheless patently unsustainable. Highly stretched police forces from New York City to Tulsa, Oakland, Los Angeles, and elsewhere are facing cuts in personnel, even in their high priority units. (Joel, 2010)

The pressures have become especially acute because we can no longer subordinate conventional law enforcement to the newer preoccupation with terrorism. That domain was long seen as far removed from everyday policing. But government measures in this once-distant arena increasingly intersect with local efforts to control ordinary crime. And, as we discuss below, the local policing practices currently favored in much of America not only have hidden costs for effective crime prevention but also can directly undermine sound responses to the threat of terrorism.

The time is ripe, therefore, for rethinking the assumptions that have guided American police for most of the past two decades. Zero-tolerance policies and the order-maintenance model, as well as their various cousins, for all of their apparent success must be reoriented to make room for different priorities. We see no need for a radical restructuring of the police function, but what we propose is nonetheless a significant shift in emphasis, a ...