Crime, Prevention, and Community Safety Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Crime, Prevention, and Community Safety - Essay Example It actually brings the citizens, business owners, and police officers together in a joint task force that helps to minimize and prevent many crimes from taking place before they can ever be planned (Kelling & Coles 1996). However there still is the notion that legal bodies have which state that communities do have an obligation to keep their neighborhoods crime free or at least help law enforcement in preventing crime where they live. The strongest reason for this belief is due to the statistical evidence of crime that has grown since 1867 in the UK (Macionis 1994). These statistics have long been studied by Sociologists and other well known scholars due to the relevance that they have with depicting why crime occurs, in what quantity, and in which areas. Furthermore, the crime rate of 1867 and 1987 are just as different as the cultures of the two variant time periods are. However, an interesting correlation has been noted with the crime rates of 1939-1938 and 1980-1988 (Macionis 199 4). The following chart gives a good insight into how the issue of economics can increase the statistical evidence of how crime has escalated over time since the middle 1800's. It is one of the many notions of why there has been an expressed concern with getting the communities involved with combating crime.Decade Average Decade High 1980-88 40% 44.2 %(1986) 1970-79 38% 41.3 %(1973) 1960-69 37% 38.7 %(1964) 1950-59 34% 36.0 %(1959) 1940-49 29% 33.1 %(1940) 1930-39 35% 43.1 %(1933) 1920-29 26% 29.6 %(1922) 1910-19 24% 26.6 %(1910) 1900-09 24% 26.9 %(1900) 1890-99 26% 27.9 %(1898) 1880-89 26% 28.5 %(1880) 1870-79 22% 28.7 %(1879) 1867-69 25% 28.1 %(1867) (Roberts 1994). It is believed that these statistics can be drastically lowered if a stronger partnership does develop between law enforcement and communities. Theorizations such as Kellings work to implement this type of philosophy through a mutual partnership between the law and the community, which has been proven to be necessary. This of course leads to the concept of community policing which is a philosophy that has been being highly discussed and tested for a good while now, of course following theorizations such as Kellings, and others as well. Community policing is the most common name for a set of tactics, philosophies and strategies that officers now use to resolve crime issues in urban cities. Community policing allows the police to work closely with the community to think of creative solutions to problems. This view of policing stems from the perception that the police serve a multifunctional role and act as some what of a social service agent in the community. The basic premise of community poli