Problems in Administering Community Policing: Some Lessons from Implementation Analysis

Abstract

Research focusing on policing is a relatively new phenomenon. Studies purporting to discuss the role of police in society (Alderson 1979; Banton 1973; Cain 1973; Holdaway 1979 and 1983; Whitaker 1979) have pursued that objective without adequately discussing what the term means. Even within the police force itself there remains dispute over the definition of policing (Jones 1980) and since the Police Act of 1829 there has been little examination of the concept. Studies of the community, however, are well documented but the problem here is that the numerous definitions (Hillary 1955) have caused Stacey (1969) to consider it ‘a non concept’ and Halsey to argue that community, ‘has so many meanings as to be meaningless’ (Halsey 1978, p. 149). Ironically, two such vague concepts as community and policing have been used as a descriptive term for one style of policing in modern British society. This vagueness appears to have affected research on community policing. The literature has tended to analyse various community policing schemes (Brown 1982; Moore and Brown 1981; Schaffer 1980) without either starting with, or arriving at, a precise definition of the concept.