Custom essays on Community based policies concepts and its benefits.

Community based policing have three main components:
1. Community partnership understands the value of bringing people into the public safety condition.
2. Problem solving identifies the concerns of community members are most important to their safety and well-being.
3. Change management recognizes that police department will have the change its organizational structure to force partnerships and implement problem-solving efforts.
The main benefits of the community based policing are:
– The usage of the community’s resources effectively helps to use less of police resources.
– Citizens get a voice in defense and prioritize of their law enforcement needs. Public’s satisfaction with police services increases.
– Officers who find solutions to the problems of community also enjoy increased satisfaction from the job.
– Crime rate has decreased since the early 1990s. Police and government officers, who are involved in community based policing contribute to that decline (Fyfe 1997).
At the same time, the department which establishes community based policing also gets its benefits:
1. The way to more efficiently and effectively use the resources of department;
2. The possibility to be more responsive to the community and respected by the public;
3. Access to better intelligence about criminal activities;
4. Better communications with public;
5. More support of Department programs from the community (Fitzgerald 1989).

Fundamental Principles of Community-Based Policing
1. Policing by consent, not coercion.
2. The police act as part of a community.
3. The police and community work together in order to find out the needs of communities.
4. The police, citizens and different agencies work together in partnership and cooperation.
5. Adaptation the work of policing to fit community needs (Eterno 2001).
Community based policing is a philosophy (a way of thinking) and an organizational strategy (a means that can be used) which allow the police and community to cooperate together in different ways in order to solve problems of safety, crime and disorder in the society. It is based on two main elements, such as: making changes in methods and practice of the police and establishing a relationship between the police and the public.
The philosophy of community based policing is based on the belief that the public deserves an input into policing, and indeed, has a right to it. It also rests on the view that in order to find solutions to community problems, the police and the public must move beyond a focusing attention on individual incidents and crimes, and instead consider innovative ways of addressing community concerns (Lindholt 2003).
The main point in the community-based policing is the recognition that the police are much more than mere crime fighters and can be public servants in other ways. The end purpose is the creation of a professional, accountable, and representative organization or institution which works in partnership with the public. These ‘peace officers’ are a service rather than a force, and an institution that only criminals need rightly fear.
Achieving these goals requires taking action at three levels: individual, institutional, and societal (Lindholt 2003). Even as the values of service and competency are imparted at the level of the individual officer, an appropriate management structure, capable of embedding and sustaining these values, must be created as well. Reform to the police alone, however, is insufficient; community support and assistance are also necessary to achieving the basic goals of the police. Community based policing, therefore, also encompasses strategies to reorient the public who, for frequently good reasons, have been leery and distrustful of the police. Building partnership relationships between the police and communities is a major challenge that confronts aspirant reformers, but thus far, international reform efforts have given little recognition to this challenge — not one of the mandates for UN missions mentions engagement with local communities as a reform priority (Cordner 1995).
The philosophy of community based policing asks of both the police and the public a leap of faith and a commitment to effect change. It is a complex process that requires contemporaneous action to be taken at multiple levels meaning that detailed strategic planning necessary to translate philosophy into practice within the police organization and among the public. A detailed plan has often proved lacking in internationally inspired police reform plans however. Beyond a rhetorical commitment to police reform there has been little sense of how to operationalize a reform process to achieve the changes sought (Eterno 2007).