Community Policing. International Patterns and Comparative Perspectives

CRC PRESS, London, 2009

Edited by
Dominique Wisler (Coginta) et Ihekwoaba D. Onwudiwe (University of Southern Texas)

A Revealing Exposé from Esteemed Scholars

Community-oriented policing (COP) is the ideology and policy model espoused in the mission statements of nearly all policing forces throughout the world. However, the COP philosophy is interpreted differently by different countries and police forces, resulting in practices that may in fact run far afield of the community-based themes of partnership, responsiveness, and transparency. Community Policing: International Patterns and Comparative Perspectives provides a comprehensive survey of purported practices of COP, clarifying the concept and differentiating true COP from other models which follow the ideology in name only.

International contributors profile practices in five continents

Using a case study approach, this eye-opening discourse reveals and examines contemporary patterns of alleged community policing across five continents. Providing insiders’ insight into the myriad practices in a variety of communities, the authors highlight the fact that policing in the countries profiled is heavily influenced by several factors. No matter how strongly the vision of COP permeates a police force’s mission, the significant factors that influence the policing culture are the degree of modernization of the state, conventional methods already in place, the cultural and ideological language that sustains these practices, the efforts of entrepreneurs to argue for or against new ways of policing, and the social capital base found in the society.

Africa is a fertile ground for a unilateral actions of communities claiming portions of the state, policing themselves, enjoying popularity in a context of legal pluralism; in the West, community policing is a new strategy of police emphasizing notions of local governance, service, and better productivity; elsewhere, community policing is akin to social control, better intelligence, and might even become a tool for counterinsurgency strategists. The detailed analysis in this volume makes the absence of agreement about the definition of COP abundantly clear. Separating rhetoric from reality, this illuminating study is a practical, realistic contribution to the expanding literature on community-oriented policing.

flyer of Community Policing book