One of the buzzwords circulating through community policing discussions today is the concept of problem-oriented policing. While the community expects government to solve problems (or at least not make them worse), the approach of having police responsible for solving community problems is not well understood.
The concept of problem-oriented policing was created in 1979 by a man named Herman Goldstein. He suggested the police need to look at crime and disorder in a different way than traditional views of the day. Instead of looking at individual calls for service as separate incidents and then responding to each incident in a repetitive approach, the police should look for commonalities and group similar crime calls together as a "problem."
Once common features of crime were identified and grouped by similarities, the next step is to determine the root cause of the problem giving rise to the crimes. In theory the police should seek ways to eliminate the underlying root cause. Doing so just might eliminate or reduce the problem and the multiple calls for service.
To use a medical analogy, do you want a doctor to treat your symptoms or the underlying cause of the symptoms? Applying this analogy to crime and disorder, do you want the police to treat the symptoms (individual crime incidents) or attack the underlying root cause?
The second aspect of problem solving is to find creative long-term solutions to the problem that may or may not involve making arrests. This requires the police to go beyond the traditional problem fixes of arrests and find ways to prevent crime before it happens, find ways to reduce the frequency of crime, or minimize the extent of harm caused by crime. Additionally, the police may not be in the best position to craft solutions that do not involve arrests, and so this is where community partners can bring various solutions to the problem-solving process.
For example, a pattern of night time burglaries may often be the work of single subject who the police seemingly cannot catch in the act or link to a crime by physical evidence. These suspects are often on probation with restrictions as to when they must be home at night. Work with Probation Officers to enforce the terms and conditions of probation and you solve the problem - without having to make another arrest.
Of course any real discussion of problem-oriented policing goes much deeper than this overview and the complexity of preventing crime is not so simple, but you get the idea when we talk about solving crime and disorder problems.
In the final analysis, the police will always be expected to arrest offenders for incapacitation is a proven deterrent to crime - making arrests is what we do. However, society simply cannot afford put everyone who commits a crime in jail or prison. Smart policing will look to develop alternative responses to crime problems that do not always require an arrest because the true measure of police effectiveness is the absence of required police action.
- Asst Chief Bill LePere
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