Police Theory in America Old Traditions and New Opportunities

The purpose of this book is to assist both police leaders and city administrators with the long-standing challenge of implementing effective and acceptable crime prevention programs. Police departments have been organized to react to crime. The police in America are not organized to prevent crime. With this protracted dilemma in mind, this book is written to facilitate change in municipal policing and to identify effective methods for the implementation of crime prevention programs. The first chapters identify the problem and the need to fully understand the dilemma. From the cost of reactive policing to the community problems created by reacting policing, the beginning chapters outline the issues and problems. The consequences of reactive policing have created a gap between inner-city neighborhood residents and municipal police departments. Within America’s police departments a value system has been established that is counter-productive to crime prevention. When the measurement of effective policing is based on a quick response to crime that has already been committed, the value of crime prevention has become an afterthought in America’s police departments. The middle chapters outline these issues and identify the strategies to improve police community relationships and adjust the measurements for effective policing. The concluding chapters identify strategies designed to facilitate police department organizational change. Using terms from the discipline of economics, a “micro” strategy and a “macro” strategy are outlined. A new theory of policing concludes the book. The book is intended primarily as a textbook for criminal justice students, but it will also prove useful to police departments, police academies, city managers, and elected officials responsible for police administration and community safety.