Policing and Crime Reduction Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Policing and Crime Reduction - Essay Example It became necessary for the police force to use criminal intelligence the crime analysts to find out the criminals and all information about them to solve the problem. Both the models have got its own distinctive features and the present essay is intended to analyse these features in an effort to see whether both the models are compatible with each other. There was wide spread criticism of the way of policing adopted through 1970's to 1980. During this period policing was more concentrated on crimes and paid little attention to the problems that created a situation for such cases. Their activities were mainly divided into two. Preventive patrol and patrol in response to emergency calls. These activities could not bring crime control. Police was using random patrol, follow up of criminal investigations and sudden actions as the basis of their investigation. It was found that such a system was less efficient because there were many community problems, which did not have a criminal background and arrests and prosecutions did not solve most of the problems. The number of arrests did not increase as the crime increased, mainly because of the lack of infrastructure to keep and prosecute these people. Moreover, it was felt that most of the community problems without a criminal nature could be solved without any arrest through mere police in volvement to address those problems. According to Goldstein, the police were more concentrated on their own internal politics and management and they were little concerned about their actual duties (Goldstein, 1979). He initiated a change in the usual policing by urging them to concentrate on the problems that lead to most of the crimes and to solve these problems so as to take out crime from its roots. He called it problem-oriented policing and this drive was internationally accepted and has been very effective in crime control (Weisburd et. al., 2007). Problem oriented policing involves analysis of similar incidents by the crime analysts as well as experienced police officials in a effort to understand something new from these problems so as to device strategy to deal with those problems (Weisburd et. al., 2007). The system has a preventive nature, which incorporates the use of public and private agencies and community for crime reduction or its prevention. Once a strategy is developed it would be implemented and evaluated and this would be reported so that it would form the basis for developing a pool of knowledge that would help police in their profession (Goldstein, 2001). So there would not be any secrecy in dealing with each and every case. The problems would be openly discussed and the strategy developed would be published in the community. Cooperation of community and other government agencies were sought to implement strategies and to solve the problems so as to reduce incidents of crimes. Based on this idea Eck And Spelman (1987) developed SARA model of problem oriented policing. SARA denoted four steps in its operation namely, Scanning, Analysis, Response and Assessment. Scanning in the process in which police identify problems in their area that are leading to crimes. The next step "Analysis" involves, analysis of these problems so