Working with the assumption that you have been hired as consultants to implement and evaluate a community policing effort for a fictitious mid-sized municipal police agency. Here is the article: 6 Bringing Victims into Community Policing
prevention" is something that police organizations tend to
do at a community or group level. Victim service
organizations are often hesitant to focus on crime
prevention because they are usually focused exclusively on
the aftermath of crime. However, victim service
organizations, especially those working on domestic
violence and stalking, often assist individual victims with
"safety planning" to develop strategies to maximize the
victim's safety. Collaborative efforts using both these
approaches could prove to be very effective.
In summary, our overall project has reinforced for us the
importance of closer collaboration between crime victims,
crime victim organizations, and the police. It is time to bring
the victim into community policing.
Our work shows that community policing can be greatly
enhanced by working to prevent repeat victimization and
building collaborative problem solving relationships with
victims and victim organizations. The information and tools
included in this package are a distillation of all that we have
learned over the last 18 months about the relationship
between police and crime victims. We hope that these
materials will help police organizations enhance the practice
of community policing by building stronger problem solving
relationships with crime victims and the organizations that
serve them.The Promise of Preventing Repeat Victimization
A fundamental tenet of community policing holds that police
should work with community-based partners to solve
problems. The most difficult aspect of problem solving is the
identification and effective analysis of problems. Police
organizations use an array of macro-level tactics to identify
and analyze crime problems. Data are collected, crime maps
are analyzed, patrol officers are surveyed, and community
organizations are consulted. This approach depends on a high
level of resources and tends to only identify problems once
they have become big enough to draw police attention.
In contrast, identifying and preventing repeat victimization is
problem solving that starts at the micro level. Because repeat
victimization affects individual people and targets, effective
problem solving begins at an individual level and moves to
larger groups when appropriate.
To fully understand the nature of repeat victimization and
develop effective responses, law enforcement agencies must
capitalize on non-traditional as well as traditional sources of
information. It's essential, for example, to look beyond arrest
data and calls for service and consider residential, business
and environmental surveys, victim and offender interviews,
mapping/GIS data, and social services data. The next task is
to analyze this data.
Thorough data analysis can yield surprising information about
underlying causes, illuminating problems and pointing the way
to solutions. Only through sound analysis can the detailed
picture needed to fashion effective responses emerge. Without
it, opportunities to develop alternative, non-traditional
responses are likely to be missed and strategies to prevent
repeat victimization are likely to fail.
One final point. Effective first response is vital to address the
problem of repeat victimization. But, it can also reduce
reliance on resource-intensive problem identification methods,
enabling the early resolution of crime problems.
Implications of a Policy to Prevent Repeat
Victimization
This policy creates an approach to preventing repeat
victimization that focuses on victim safety and strengthens the
foundation of community policing: partnering and problem
solving. Creating an organizational focus on preventing repeat
victimization of individuals will affect many principles
governing police operations. Okay...and? |
