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... response strategies is given greater weight and importance under problem-oriented policing than under community policing. Problem-oriented policing specifically promotes using alternatives to the formal criminal justice system, redefining the nature of the police's relationship to this and other systems; community policing does not explicitly address this relationship. Community policing strongly emphasizes organizing and mobilizing the community, almost to the point that doing so becomes a central function of the police; problem-oriented policing advocates such efforts only if they are warranted in the specific context of addressing a particular problem. Under community policing, certain features of police organizational structure and policy, like geographic decentralization and continuity in officer assignments to neighborhoods, are deemed essential; under problem-oriented policing, many of these features are seen as helpful, but not essential problem-oriented policing can be done under a variety of organizational arrangements. Community policing emphasizes that the police share more decision-making authority with the community; problem-oriented policing seeks to preserve more ultimate decision-making authority for the police, even while encouraging the police to solicit input from outside the department.
Problem-oriented policing emphasizes officers intellectual and analytical skills; community policing emphasizes their interpersonal skills. Finally, community policing expands the polices role to advance large and ambitious social objectives, such as promoting peaceful coexistence, enhancing neighborhood quality of life, promoting racial and ethnic harmony, and strengthening democratic community governance; problem-oriented policing is more cautious, emphasizing that the police are more limited in their capacity to achieve these goals than many people imagine, and guards against unrealistic expectations of the police (Goldstein 1991). From the perspective of those committed to problem-oriented policing as a framework for police reform, the community policing movement has been a mixed blessing. On the positive side, the general idea of community policing has been enormously popular with the general public and, consequently, with elected officials.
More specifically, the promise to the public of more access to the police, more police presence in the community, and greater police responsiveness to community concerns largely accounts for community policing popular appeal. This popularity has translated into substantial financial and authoritative support for a wide range of programs, policies, training, and research, some of which has also benefited the problem-oriented policing movement. As noted above, to the extent that problem-solving has become at least a central feature of most conceptualizations of community policing, problem-oriented policing has benefited from greater attention to this analytical aspect of police work. Community policing emphasizes on improving the general relationship of the police to the community at large, to minority communities and to organized community groups has undoubtedly helped the police be more effective in their efforts to address particular community problems in a problem-oriented framework.
This is no small achievement of the community policing movement. On the negative side, the most politically popular features of community policing have not been the behind-the-scenes analyses of community problems, but the more visible programs that put police officers in all kinds of unconventional settings on foot and bicycles, in classrooms, in community meetings, at youth recreation functions, etc. and that have police officers providing unconventional services to the public, such as educating, mentoring and relating to youth. The attraction to these aspects of community policing has drawn some financial and authoritative support away from the analytical aspects of problem-oriented policing. The popularity of community policing has helped problem-oriented policing gain a degree of attention it might otherwise not have so quickly, but has reduced it to the level of a simplified analytical process for guiding police activities. The challenge for problem-oriented policing advocates will be to maintain support for the further development of the concepts less visible, but more critical, elements.
Problem-oriented policing has its roots in public administration and political science. It starts from an intellectual interest in how to get the police to be more effective in carrying out their functions in democratic societies. Problem-oriented policing as a distinct model of police reform evolved out of Herman Goldstein's early involvement in the American Bar Foundation Survey of Criminal Justice of the 1950 s. Thus, in one sense problem-oriented policing is only 20 years old, but its intellectual heritage is several decades older. The findings and conclusions that emerged from the survey provided much of the intellectual foundation for problem-oriented policing (Goldstein 1991). Problem-oriented policing has at times been criticized for lacking a criminological theory for its foundation.
This criticism presumes that a theory for improving police service must first set forth a theory for preventing crime. This, however, is a far more ambitious, and perhaps unrealistic, goal to which problem-oriented policing never aspired. Moreover, any proposal to improve the quality of policing must address the full range of police tasks and responsibilities, and not merely the control of serious crime. Problem-oriented policing is best understood as a framework for organizing the police and their activities so that the police are better positioned to learn how to prevent crime and disorder, and to apply that knowledge.
It has no explicit preference for one criminological theory over others. It seeks to leave the police open to understanding various criminological theories, and experimenting with practical applications of those theories to determine what works best under what circumstances. This is not to say that problem-oriented policing proponents do not have favored criminological theories. Indeed, among the reasons there has been so much cross-fertilization of ideas between problem-oriented policing and situational crime prevention is that problem-oriented proponents have found merit in the theories underlying situational crime prevention, and police practitioners find the situational crime prevention studies relevant to their own work. But if those theories were ultimately proven wrong, it is unlikely that problem-oriented policing advocates would similarly conclude that the problem-oriented approach was also wrong.
It would merely add to the knowledge base from which police practitioners could draw to guide their strategic decisions. Many police agencies have systematically analyzed reported crime data for a number of reasons to identify potential suspects in specific crimes, to spot geographic and temporal crime trends, and to generally report crime and account for police responses to it. However, crime analysis, as it has conventionally been practiced, is quite different from problem analysis in several respects. Crime analysis was used principally to identify offenders or predict the next crime in a pattern. Problem analysis is used to bring about more permanent reductions in the levels or severity of problems. Crime analysis concentrated on police activities to address crime.
Problem analysis explores the whole community's response to the problem. Some agencies now have their crime analysts engaged in broader problem analysis, though mainly by providing, on request, statistical reports and analyses to those line officers leading problem solving initiatives. Problem-oriented policing specifically calls for a broad inquiry into many types of community problems demanding police attention. It also calls for analyzing multiple sources of information to develop a fuller understanding of each problem. Where a Compstat-style method results in commanders selecting from among a limited and conventional set of responses to address problems, such as extra patrol or increased enforcement, it also departs radically from a problem-oriented methodology. Problem-oriented policing calls for a broad and uninhibited search for responses to particular problems, placing special emphasis on responses that minimize the need for the police to use force and large-scale arrest campaigns.
A Compstat-style method can foster a hostile atmosphere, more like an inquisition than an inquiry; in this sense, it also differs from problem-oriented policing. Problem-oriented policing, while stressing accountability also places a high priority on the free exchange of ideas, an exchange that is difficult to achieve in a tension-filled and rigidly hierarchical setting. Finally, a Compstat-style method relies exclusively on police analysis of data and results in decisions made exclusively by the police; in this sense, it also does not resemble problem-oriented policing. Problem- oriented policing puts a high premium on communication, consultation and collaboration with entities outside the police department at all stages of the planning process. Ideally, a Compstat-style method would be entirely consistent with problem-oriented policing. As one way to identify specific problems, a computer-generated pattern of crimes would be only the beginning of a more in-depth and broader analysis of the nature of the problems, their underlying conditions and the limits of current responses.
For example, if computerized systems recognized a sudden spate of incidents classified as robberies in a police precinct, this information would not be used merely to mobilize conventional police responses like stakeouts and extra patrol, but instead might launch a closer analysis of the incidents that could reveal several discrete forms of problems, all related to the crime of robbery, each calling for a different set of responses. This should not be understood as an attack on the Compstat method. For many police agencies, this method is a significant advancement in the use of crime data to inform operational decisions. Problem-oriented policing, however, is a considerably more sophisticated and involved approach to handling police business than a Compstat method simplistically practiced. Problem-oriented policing specifically calls for, among other things, an analysis of police incidents in terms of location as a potentially useful way to aggregate incidents into clusters.
A spatial incident pattern can help stimulate a better understanding of the underlying causes of certain community problems. Crime mapping also fits well with situational crime prevention, in which understanding crime in the specific context of its location is critical. For example, crime maps might reveal a pattern of storage-facility burglaries, and that revelation might then prompt a closer analysis of those facilities physical layout and management. Seldom will crime mapping alone suffice as problem analysis, but it is a potentially useful analytical tool.
The spatial and temporal concentration of crime and disorder has led some scholars to propose what they call hot-spot policing. Hot-spot policing, in essence, requires that the police concentrate their attention and resources on places where and times when there is a significantly high volume of demand for police services. At this basic level of understanding, the idea also is compatible with problem-oriented policing. Crime mapping and hot-spot policing, however, are not comprehensive approaches to policing, as is problem-oriented policing. Using mapping as an exclusive means to identify and analyze community problems would leave many problems hidden, and artificially limit the analysis of even those problems with some spatial patterns. Many problems the police must contend with do not lend themselves to spatial concentrations, and thus will not show up on any hot-spot maps.
Crimes such as credit card fraud, domestic violence or child abuse are prevalent throughout jurisdictions. Over reliance on mapping limits police inquiries to data that can be mapped, and much of the information the police need to get a complete and accurate picture of community problems is not readily captured in data that are mapped. To the extent that those who use computerized maps to analyze problems become fascinated by the technology itself, there is a risk that the reliability of the data underlying the maps will be taken for granted. In fact, a lot of police data relating to the location of crimes and incidents are ripe for misinterpretation.
All policing movements in the realm where policing, crime prevention and research intersect, from community policing to zero tolerance, have influenced, and been influenced by, problem-oriented policing. Some of these movements can be said to be variations on themes found in problem-oriented policing, emphasizing one or another element. Much of what is referred to as community policing or community-oriented policing is but a variation on problem-oriented policing themes. Other movements are more properly understood not as rival comprehensive theories of policing, but as specialized trends that, properly used, support a problem-oriented approach. Crime mapping is such an example. Yet other movements, like zero tolerance, while purporting to be a variation on problem-oriented policing, in practice are counter movements that reject problem-oriented policing's most basic premises.
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