Community Policing in Scotland

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Partners: The Scottish Centre for Crime and Justice Research (SCCJR)The Scottish Institute for Policing Research (SIPR)Lothian and Borders Police (LBP)KT team:Simon Mackenzie, SCCJR (KT Fellow)Alistair Henry, SIPRAdvisers:Nick Fyfe, Director, SIPRRichard Sparks, Director, SCCJRJon Bannister, SCCJRThe term 'community policing' covers a variety of different models of practice. In terms of the public experience of community policing, the common elements of the strategy tend to be: police foot patrols rather than vehicle patrols; community meetings attended by the police; beat officers who are assigned to a neighbourhood, who have responsibility for that area, and will be a point of contact for community relations in the area; and a problem-solving approach to local issues, often in partnership with other public services, which attempts to get to the root of local problems rather than simply responding to crime by arresting individual offenders.Community policing is therefore a model distinct from the more usual 'response' or 'fire-brigade' policing whereby the police answer calls for service. Community policing is part of the service the police offer in Scotland, but they are still predominantly response-oriented. Scotland's forces do, however, recognise the significant successes and public popularity of community policing in other jurisdictions, and are moving towards expanding their provision of community policing, based on an identification of best practice in comparative models. This knowledge transfer project involves academic criminologists working with the City of Edinburgh community police and their senior officers to identify and develop future directions for community policing in Scotland. The programme consists of a series of workshops, the results of which will be disseminated across Scotland's police forces, as well as UK-wide and internationally. These workshops will involve:1. discussions of current community policing practice in Scotland, including implementation difficulties2. exploration of the conceptual basis of community policing, and how the concept has been turned into practice in comparative jurisdictions (including identification of ambiguities in interpretation of the idea of community policing, and development of a focus on what is of core importance in the Scottish context, which will help in negotiating these ambiguities)3. attempts to unravel and resolve current known problems in community policing in Scotland4. identification of problems which are not widely known, and explorations of possible solutions to these problems5. dissemination of key outcomes of the workshops throughout Scotland's police, and beyond. Community policing if performed effectively can have considerable social benefits. These include reductions in crime, disorder and anti-social behaviour; increasing feelings of safety among members of the public; improvements in police-community relations; improvements in joined-up problem-solving approaches to neighbourhood problems between local councils, the police, and other agencies; and greatly increased opportunities for community members to become involved in influencing the policing agenda to meet their identified neighbourhood needs. The transformational potential of the project is captured in Skogan's (2004) ten- year evaluation of Chicago's community policing strategy, which 'was intended to be transformational: that is, it was designed to change the way in which the entire department and even city government did its business... it weaves responsibility for problem solving into the daily routine of beat officers and integrates them into the fabric of the community. It created a mechanism by which the public can influence and monitor the work of officers in their neighbourhood... immensely popular with the public, community policing has become the routine way in which Chicagoans expect police services to be delivered.'