Community Policing as a Public Policy : Challenges and Recommendations

Keeping in view the role of the police in a modern society, the respect for the rule of law and the trust of the community as a critical resource, more and more police organizations around the world have embraced Community Policing with the objective of making the police sensitive to the needs of the community.

However, in the absence of an institutional and legal framework and a resultant lack of understanding of the dynamics of policy processes, many such initiatives failed to stand the test of time.Against this backdrop, this book explains community policing from the perspective of public policy, not merely as an organisational philosophy to be adopted by police departments in a piecemeal manner, but as a long term, sustainable and robust organizational strategy.

A model has been developed by triangulating the theories and praxis of Community Policing and organising them in a Context-Process-Outcome matrix in respect of pre-implementation, implementation and impact phases.

As the net outcome of the field study, a set of challenges and recommendations have been spelled out to serve as guidelines for both policy makers and implementers in their efforts to introduce community policing as a public policy.