Community, intelligence-led policing and crime control

Abstract

This article examines the relationship between community policing, intelligence-led policing and crime control. Whilst community and intelligence-led policing have developed as distinctive reform movements within contemporary UK policing there have been calls for the two to interact in practice. In particularly, aspects of community policing are operationalised through the frameworks of intelligence-led policing. This article unpicks the structures and processes of (community) intelligence processes in detail. It focuses on the nature of information generated from community policing; how analytical products are constructed; and the nature of the officer tasking and briefing process. It is argued that community policing was conceived, at least in part, as an alternative to traditional reactive policing styles which coalesce around patrol, rapid response to incidents and enforcement of the criminal law. However, as community policing has evolved in practice it has become firmly embedded in conventional police-centric notions of ‘efficiency’, law enforcement and crime control.