Abstract
Many police organizations in western democracies have experienced reductions in street and violent crime rates over the last two decades. This enhanced effectiveness, which has been observed in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom since the mid-1990s, has been correlated with the increased use of technology and the employment of proactive, arrest-oriented strategies. In many jurisdictions, resources have been transitioned away from highly touted community policing efforts to investigative and enforcement units. While many law enforcement experts and administrators have viewed these initiatives as a ‘smarter’ form of policing, some advocates for predominantly minority neighborhoods have frequently alleged racial and ethnic bias and other abusive conduct at the hands of the police, most notably in larger metropolitan centers. The purpose of this paper will be to examine and identify practical options for direct community and victim engagement after highlighting legislation and practices that have been shown to increase transparency and police legitimacy in some western democracies. The findings of this review will support the need to enhance public and victim involvement in criminal justice processes as emphasized within the ‘left realism’ theory of justice and will examine options for incorporating this theory into practice.
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- 1.
In 2019, the NYPD consisted of approximately 36, 000 police officers and an additional 9000 unarmed traffic enforcement and school safety officers.
- 2.
Quality of life issues included begging, public intoxication, loud noise, street level drug dealing and usage, graffiti, etc.
- 3.
It was noted that front line patrol and community police officers had difficulty in developing lasting solutions to reported problems and crime trends due to their general levels of police inexperience. In addition, it was clearly much easier for the tenured police station commander to re-deploy resources and develop long term strategies than it was for a new police officer to develop effective problem-solving strategies for local crime and disorder complaints.
- 4.
The tri-state area includes New York City and the New York, New Jersey and Connecticut commuter regions.
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Albrecht, J.F. (2019). Promoting Enhanced Public Participation and Community Engagement in Policing. In: Albrecht, J.F., den Heyer, G., Stanislas, P. (eds) Policing and Minority Communities. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-19182-5_4
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