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This article examines and discusses the assumptions and principles underlying the concept of ‘community policing’ within the context of Northern Ireland and the Patten Report on policing. It raises questions as to the applicability of the ‘community policing’ concept in the context of alienation and conflict.

The delivery of neighbourhood policing across England and Wales relies heavily on the increasing number of police community support officers (PCSOs). This study focused on the residents' perceptions of PCSOs and on their views of the impact these officers had on the level of crime and antisocial behaviour (ASB) within the Halton Borough Council area, a unitary local authority in the northwest of England. It used a self‐completion postal questionnaire, which was distributed to 2,100 randomly selected, residential addresses across the borough. In the main, the residents who responded did not know their local PCSO, and felt that locally, crime was not as big an issue as that identified in the British Crime Survey (BCS) 2007‐08 (Kershaw et al, 2008:10). They did feel, however, that six of the seven quality of life issues surveyed by this local survey were worse in Halton than the national picture portrayed by the BCS. The residents did not know that PCSOs impacted on the issues concerning them locally, or perceived that they did not. Despite these perceptions, the vast majority of the respondents would welcome greater numbers of PCSOs.

In Trinidad and Tobago, there is significant reliance on the traditional and centralized police service to engage in crime response and suppression in urban and rural areas. In this regard, policing scholarship has largely focused on the impact of policing within urban areas, producing a gap in knowledge on what policing rural spaces entails. Despite this, there is some understanding that policing rural spaces can engender diverse challenges and calls for variability in policing strategies. The current study examines the lived experiences of police officers stationed in rural communities in Trinidad and Tobago.

Using the descriptive phenomenological approach, semi-structured interviews were conducted with eleven police officers stationed in rural communities throughout the country.

Interviewees narrated the importance of community dynamics and community-specific needs in shaping their roles and functions when operating in and serving these communities. Three major themes were identified: (1) network activity in policing; (2) engagement in localistic and service-oriented approaches and (3) community-specific challenges.

The findings suggest that while there is an emphasis on traditional law enforcement responsibilities, in the rural context, police responsibilities and duties are constantly being redefined, reframed and broadened to meet the contextual community and geographic-specific diversities and demands.

We explore the relationship between urbanicity and police officers’ perceptions of changes in their reactive and proactive work during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Using the 2021 survey of 1,262 Croatian police offices (436 police officers from a large urban community, 471 police officers from small towns and 155 from rural communities), we examine the perceived changes in their reactive activities (e.g. responses to the calls for service, arrests for minor crimes) and proactive activities (e.g. community policing activities, directed patrols) during the peak month of the pandemic compared to before the pandemic.

The majority of police officers in the study, regardless of the size of the community where they lived, reported no changes before and during the pandemic in reactive and proactive activities. Police officers from urban communities and small towns were more likely to note an increase in domestic violence calls for service. Police officers from urban communities were also more likely than the respondents from small towns and rural communities to report an increase in the responses to the disturbances of public order. Finally, police officers from small communities were most likely to observe a change in the frequency of traffic stops during the pandemic.

This study is the first one to explore the differences in perceptions of COVID-19-related changes in reactive and proactive police activities in a centralized police system.

Crime has declined in the United States over the past 25 years; however, the decrease in victimization has not been equal across all communities. As a result, many law enforcement agencies have concentrated their efforts in high-risk areas, and this concentration of policing can lead to resentment among members of the community, especially if they feel the officers are disrespectful, use excessive force, or disregard their civil rights. These residents are in double jeopardy – experiencing the negative consequences of living in dangerous communities and enduring the direct and indirect costs of aggressive policing. The purpose of this chapter is to discuss community policing as a potential means to increase police legitimacy, strengthen community resilience, and promote prosocial interactions between officers and residents. Community policing is a philosophy that advances organizational approaches designed to leverage citizen engagement and problem solving as proactive strategies to deal with public safety issues, including crime, disorder, and fear of crime. Because community policing is grounded in trust, cooperation, and problem solving, it has the potential to improve residents’ quality of life by developing and strengthening mechanisms of social control and support. Community policing can increase police legitimacy by providing opportunities for community members to examine the actions and policies of the police, assess the alignment of these state-sanctioned activities with residents’ values and needs, and bring the two into agreement. In this chapter the basic principles of community policing will be discussed within the context of how these concepts are related to the exercise of social control and residents’ perceptions of police legitimacy.

This chapter explores the competing perspectives (i.e., the “community advocates” and the “community skeptics”) on the recent move toward community in an attempt to conceptualize what this “move” means for social control. An examination of the inclusiveness of community initiatives with a focus on community policing is used to demonstrate that the move toward community contains elements of both empowerment and responsibilization. In particular, the move toward community is paradoxical in that empowerment and responsibilization occurs simultaneously and to varying degrees within inclusive community initiatives. It is argued that a socially inclusive approach to community-police partnerships works to enhance society's web of social control. However, at the same time, community members hold the potential to work together to shape this web of social control.

This paper aims to explore police perspectives on community engagement strategies within the context of crime prevention in South Africa, focusing on Johannesburg metropolitan police stations. The study’s objective is to scrutinise the effectiveness and challenges of community policing strategies.

Through a qualitative research approach, this study conducted unstructured interviews with station commanders and visible policing officers across 10 Johannesburg metropolitan police stations.

The findings reveal that community policing strategies, such as community–policing forums, sector policing, street patrollers and social media utilisation, can effectively engage communities as partners in crime prevention. However, certain challenges such as resource limitations and difficulties in policing-specific regions, were also identified.

This study contributes to the broader understanding of community–policing partnerships and the practical implications of community–policing strategies in South Africa, suggesting areas for improvement and adaptation to the unique South African context. This knowledge can help optimise efforts to foster stronger relationships between police and communities, bolster public trust and ultimately improve crime prevention outcomes.