Why Should Police Be Concerned about the Issue of Police Legitimacy?

The public’s confidence in the police force is referred to as police legitimacy. It is a crucial component of the concept behind community policing. A system known as “community policing” promotes organizing tactics that support collaboration between the public and the police in resolving problems that have an impact on a community’s safety. The relationships forged between the police and residents of the neighborhood are essential to the system of community policing’s success. In order to achieve community safety, the police should be worried about the level of confidence that exists between them and the general public. Public trust and police legitimacy have both long-term and short-term effect on the installation of community policing. The freedom of people in most democratic countries such as the USA to defer or obey the decisions that are made by a certain institution has a massive effect on the policing department in the USA and other western countries. Legitimacy does not only mean having confidence and trust in something but also having moral alignment as well as having the responsibility to obey the rules. Police can gain legitimacy by ensuring that they undertake their job well without bias. If the police fail to undertake their roles in the society, there is the likelihood that there will be legitimacy. For example, police are expected to prevent crime and ensure that law and order are maintained in the society, if they fail to fulfill these roles, they stand a high risk of facing rebellion from the members of the public. Another way that the police can use to gain legitimacy is through procedural justice.

Procedural justice while police are undertaking their duties can be categorized into neutrality, respect, voice, and trustworthy. When the police incorporate all these elements in their duties, they will be considered trustworthy and will earn respect from members of the public. Engaging people in decision-making is also an important aspect that can be used by the police to develop close ties with members of the public who are will then build confidence. Different researchers have revealed that in a society whereby police departments use procedural justice effectively, the society responds to them positively and build a link between them and the police. Police have to be concerned of public legitimacy owing to various reasons that affect their operations.

People tend to be obedient to the laws whether the authorities are present or not. The work of the police becomes simple when people comply with the laws because they will not waste time on handling cases or struggle moving up and down trying to maintain law and order in the society. Members of the public know what is usually against the law of the land and what they should avoid doing. People know that it is unacceptable by the law to attack a neighbor or a friend or drive while drunk. It has been proven that the compliance of the members of the public with the laws is not only for fear of being punished. The legitimacy of the police can help people to be cooperative with the police and comply with the laws even when the police are absent. In some cases, one may be in a situation that he or she faces minimal chances of apprehension but chooses to comply with the rules. Therefore, it is easier for the police to perform their duties while the public fully trusts them.

Secondly, police should be concerned of legitimacy because they will need the help of the members of the public. Community policing is the involvement of the members of the public in ensuring that there is safety within the community. Police will always need information on people who are perpetrators of crime in the society. Such kind of information will only be available to the police if they regularly interact with the members of the public. Legitimacy helps the public cooperate with the police willingly which makes a big difference for the police. Members of the public are the eyes and ears of the police, which means they should be their informers. Passage of information can be easily transmitted between the two parties when the cordial relationship is upheld. The relationship can be made stronger for future benefits if the members of the public are confidence that police will work on the information relayed to them. In cases where there is no close relationship between the police and the members of the public, there will be the minimal passage of information, which will result in an increase in crime.

The third reason is the need to reduce the use of force by police when executing their duties. When there is legitimacy, there will be less force that will be used by the police to ensure that there are law and order. Police are entitled to use force by making use of weapons, sanctions and restraining people to ensure that law and order are maintained. However, the recent events across the globe have proven that there is rising need for the police to reduce the force they use. Civil right groups have come out and raised their voices against the use of voice by the police. In addition, the public has proved resistant to give information when police use extra force. Therefore, the need to have legitimacy helps the public to understand and ensure that they maintain law and order in their daily activities, which in turn reduce the use of force by the police. In other countries, where the police have not gained public legitimacy, there is the use of force causing even the deaths of members of the public.

Bibliography

Greene, Jack R. “Community policing in America: Changing the nature, structure, and function of the police.” Criminal justice 3, no. 3 (2000): 299-370.

Hinds, Lyn, and Jenny Fleming. “Crime victimisation and police legitimacy: The importance of beliefs and experience.” In APSA Conference, p. EJ15. 2006.

Hinds, Lyn, and Kristina Murphy. “Public satisfaction with police: Using procedural justice to improve police legitimacy.” Australian & New Zealand Journal of Criminology 40, no. 1 (2007): 27-42.

Mazerolle, Lorraine, Elise Sargeant, Adrian Cherney, Sarah Bennett, Kristina Murphy, Emma Antrobus, and Peter Martin. “Why Police Should Care About Procedural Justice and Legitimacy.” In Procedural Justice and Legitimacy in Policing, pp. 1-11. Springer International Publishing, 2014.

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Tilley, Nick. “Modern approaches to policing: community, problem-oriented and intelligence-led.” Handbook of policing 2 (2008).

Tyler, Tom R., and Jeffrey Fagan. “Legitimacy and cooperation: Why do people help the police fight crime in their communities?” Ohio St. J. Crim. L. 6 (2008): 231

Tyler, Tom R., and Yuen Huo. Trust in the law: Encouraging public cooperation with the police and courts through. Russell Sage Foundation, 2002.

Question 2: Is Community Policing Effective?

Community policing has helped change the reputation that the police had in the society. Most of the countries in the world especially those in Eastern and Central Europe used to have totalitarian governments that used the police as a tool of intimidating the citizens. These governments used the police to impose policies and rules to their citizens even if they were unfavorable to them. However, with most of the governments embracing democracy and allowing their citizens to have freedom of expression, religion as well as freedom of association, there was a need to change the perception that the public had towards police.

Community policing has been effective in enhancing democracy in most of the countries that have embraced it. Most citizens in these countries would feel that their democracy had been curtailed through police officers who used force. Civil rights groups questioned countries that practiced a democratic form of government while at the same time using the police to use the police to enforce policies and laws. The two positions of the government neutralized the democracy that most of these countries seemed to be embracing. Therefore, there was a need to embrace community policing which complemented well with democracy practicing governments.

Community policing has been effective in reducing the level of crime rate in most of the countries that have embraced this form of policing. Members of the public have the ability to carry out a patrol of other members of their community and identify those who are involved in crime. Without the valuable role that the members of the public play, it becomes hard for the police to arrest them. Crimes rate increase when the perpetrators of crime are not arrested and charged. Therefore, community policing has effectively helped to reduce the number of people who are involved in crime.

The adoption of community policing has helped the society to monitor the activities of the police. Community policing has enabled the locals to countercheck the activities of the police officers who are in charge of them. Through monitoring of their activities, police officers have become more responsible for their discipline and reduced incidents that might have led to a bad reputation of the police service. The change of attitudes from both the police and the members of the public has helped the two parties to work closely and ensure that the safety of the society is improved. Police are not viewed by the members of the public as an enemy to fellow members of the society but as someone who is concerned for their safety. The appreciation has come as an encouragement for the police officers who were in the past used as tools of intimidating the members of the public.

Community policing has effectively brought out other aspects of policing such as communication policing which had faded away. The close ties that exist between the police and the members of the public in societies that have embraced community policing have enabled communication between the police departments and the local leaders. The follow of information between the two parties has caused a reduction in crime rates as well made it easier for the police to help the members of the community. Unlike in the past that the police were trained on the grounds of militarism, legalism, professionalism, and communitarianism, the police of today who operate under community policing system need to use their consensus in trying to make the communities they serve to be cooperative. The use of this approach to policing has eliminated the various conflicts that might have aroused by disagreements between the police and the members of the public. Therefore, community policing has been effective in terms of bonding the police and the members of the society and eliminated a number of cases that might have resulted in serious.

Community policing has also protected the interests of both the police officers and the members of the society. In the past, the police were only concerned with the enforcing laws to the public. However, the through community policing the police are more engaged in the social activities as they go by their duties, which has made them live the normal life like any other citizen. The time for police officers to be too insecure in a community policing society has ended. Community policing has eliminated the worry that a police office had that they would be attacked by a member of the society at some point for being seen as the thief. In societies, where police use force all the time to administer law and order they are mostly attacked, and some of them even killed. In contrast, police officers who work in societies that have embraced community policing and enjoy a close working relationship with the members of the society rarely do they suffer such cases as their counterparts in other parts of the world.

However, there have been various challenges that have been associated with this system of policing. Community policing has termed as expensive to the governments that have adopted this system of policing. The system requires a large number of officers who will need to be assigned to various communities or villages, which makes expensive. Their engagement with the locals also makes it expensive for the governments. For those who are against it have argued that the benefits are minimal compared to the expenses that the various governments that are in charge. The tactics claim that the dominant policing helps to initiate policies and laws directly at a cost-effective cost as compared to the community policing. Others argue that criminals manipulate the officers while pretending to be informers of the officers. There have been claims that community policing needs a lot of consulting, which may cause delays in emergency cases unlike in a dominant policing system.

Bibliography

Cordner, Gary. “Community policing.” The Oxford handbook of police and policing (2014): 148-171

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Question 3: Problem Oriented Policing vs. Intelligence Led Policing, which Is a More Viable Strategy to Improve Police Effectiveness

Problem-oriented policing, and intelligence have some similarities and differences. First, the two aims at achieving reforms in the police. The need for reform movements in the police has been addressed by the two policies, and there is minimal difference in both schools of thought when it comes to achieving reforms in movements of the police. The two employ greater use of information, unlike other policing policies strategies that did not make use of the available information. The two have perceived as the smart way of the police performing their duties without having to use much force to get things done.

The two forms of policing have all embraced technology. There is greater use of Information Technology (IT) by the two forms of policing. These police use latest technologies to collect and analyses data that will help them in their operation. Analyses of fingerprints, blood, and DNA can be helpful to establish various issues that the police may require when investigating a crime or a criminal. All these can be done through the use of technological devices that enable the police to execute such activities without struggling.

Both Problem-oriented policing, and intelligence-led policing use a wide range of information in the execution of the various tasks that is ahead of the officers. Both POP and ILP suggest a concern with repeat victims. For POP repeat victimization comprises a major pattern of problem events requiring systematic attention. Both POP and ILP require specialist analysts. They both make much greater and much more systematic use of information. They will often call for information collection as well as the use of information already at hand. The focus of the information collection and analysis in ILP is on offenders and networks of offenders, to inform smart enforcement focused on serious and prolific offending patterns. The analysis in ILP tends naturally to focus on current or very recent offending patterns. The intelligence used is often elicited from informants. Its collection and use are often covert. ILP leaves little if any space for analysis of non-crime problems.

For ILP the major information task is thus finding and drawing together ways of tracking offender and offending patterns as they emerge, better to disrupt them through targeted enforcement. Analysis tends to focus on enduring problems that are not responsive to standard forms of policing. Its focus thus spans relatively long periods and relatively wide spaces. Much analysis can use data that should be readily available from records if kept and recorded conscientiously. Covertly collected information and information from informants is rarely needed. POP analyses police relevant problematic behavior even when it is not criminal.

Crackdown and consolidation strategies are plausible candidates for many problems addressed in POP. The crackdown side sits well with ILP. It involves efforts to target intensive, well-publicized enforcement to incapacitate and deter offenders generating problems; an approach often found to have beneficial side-effects beyond the temporal operation of the crackdown itself. POP, however, will be equally concerned with consolidation the introduction of measure.

It is certainly the case that the details of the NIM allow some space for work which is not simply within the domain of ILP, as described here, though the accounts of this other work are brief and underdeveloped. The main emphasis is on the servicing, conduct, and coordination of intelligence-led work, as foreshadowed in the introductory paragraphs of the NCIS document. It might well be, though, that the NIM business model, with its provision for collecting and analyzing information to deal with problems at different levels, orchestrating informed responses to problems, and tracking outputs and outcomes, could be deployed for problem-oriented work. The analytic processes, data used, forms of the issue addressed, and characteristic modes of response to problems would differ quite radically from what would be done if the business model were being used primarily to deliver ILP. Whether the NIM comprises the optimum model for delivering POP is unclear. It is, in any case, so far largely untested.

A POP-focused NIM would begin with a broad array of police-relevant problems, would commission their analyses with an eye to any of a broad range of responses. It would task in the light of the conclusions from the analysis about the most effective response or suite of responses (which may or may not include enforcement). It also monitors and evaluates effectiveness in terms of the reduction, elimination, or harm-lessening effects.

An ILP-focused NIM would target serious and prolific offenders, commission analyses with an eye to finding out who was involved with whom, where and with what crime plans. In addition, it is tasked in the light of conclusions about who needed to be targeted with efforts at enforcement and would track performance in terms primarily of successes in detection, arrest, and prosecution of serious and prolific offenders. Both POP and ILP involve making greater and more systematic use of information than has historically been the case in most policing. They require new specialists with new techniques. Inferences have to be drawn from information about what to do, where to do it, and who to target. There is a host of assumptions or tacit theories relating to hot spots, criminal organization, attributes of prolific offenders and their offending patterns, criminal careers, recruitment into crime, co-offending patterns, the role of opportunity in crime, displacement by person and place and so on. It is critical that these are brought to the surface and tested. We may otherwise misuse information and fail to yield the expected benefits. Moreover, improvements in ILP and POP can be expected with developments in understanding, tested in the field. Both POP and ILP need in these senses to be underpinned by crime science.

Bibliography

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Ratcliffe, Jerry H. Intelligence-led policing. Routledge, 2016.

Ratcliffe, Jerry H., and Ray Guidetti. “State police investigative structure and the adoption of intelligence-led policing.” Policing: An International Journal of Police Strategies & Management 31, no. 1 (2008): 109-128.

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Question 4: How Does Police Culture Influence Police Use of Discretion?

Police culture has a tendency to be seen contrarily, as an opposite and unreasonable impact upon the “correct” exercise of police prudence. It is seen, accurately, as regularly subversive of the beliefs and requests of lawfulness. However most present day social orders are basically needy upon rule‐based types of police responsibility. This paper recommends that the police culture should be moved toward all the more decidedly, as a potential asset in the plan of principles representing police powers and practices. This requires police managers and cops take part in arranged rulemaking, a procedure like aggregate bartering, in which police culture points of view are attracted after figuring rules controlling parts of police practice.

The very way of police work is greatly perplexing to today’s general public. Cops assume a critical part including a wide range of errands concerning; upholding the criminal law, performing request support and different various administrations. It is through these obligations and administrations that police are continually crossing and connecting with the group once a day. In this way, they hold an unmistakable and intense position in the public arena that obliges them to ensure these individuals’ ethics, standards, and qualities. The path in which cops approach their obligations and authorizing the law ought to mirror these ethics, standards, and values in a developing, element, and complex society.

Tact assumes a part in about each feature of the criminal law. The criminal equity framework in the United States allows the utilization of prudence generally through the police, prosecutors, judges, resistance lawyers, prison guards, and probation officers. In any case, it begins at the very bleeding edge of the criminal equity framework with the “guardians.” These protectors are the police, and they are the ones who choose whether to make a move, where the circumstance fits in the plan of law, tenets, and which official reaction is fitting for them to take Discretion requires settling on troublesome decisions subject to investigation while practicing great sound judgment for that cops.

The reason for this paper is to look at a dubious theme in criminal equity, for example, that of police prudence. The explanation behind this is, there are two encompassing contentions that should be routed to make an adjusted viewpoint for both sides, which this paper will appear. The first is the requirement for caution in law implementation on one side and second, the confinement, or abolishment of this practice on the other.

Attentiveness alludes to an official move that is made by a criminal equity authority, for example, cop, legal counsellor or judge and so forth in which they utilize their own particular individual judgment, to choose the best game-plan. In principle, the criminal equity official considers the totality of conditions before deciding if lawful move ought to be made against an individual(s). What exactly kind and degree that move will be made for instance issuing a notice, or really capturing an individual(s) because of law implementation authorities. It ought to likewise be noticed, that circumspection is further “an authorization, benefit, or privilege to utilize judgment about how to make a reasonable assurance. There are implanted limitations” Thus, criminal equity authorities, for example, the police can’t simply go out and uninhibitedly settle on decisions without results. Laws, tenets, standards, and rules when practicing tact bind them.

Attentiveness in law requirement created from an essential portrayal to out and out clarification. Before the 1950’s for all intents and purposes nothing was thought about police circumspection. It was accepted that it was non-existent inside the criminal equity field, and the individuals who practiced it unquestionably did not admit to it. Evidently, when cops watched infringement of the law, they composed a reference or made a capture. Prosecutors would then arraign the case to the letter of the law, and judges would hand down firm sentences that were the same for each guilty party paying little respect to station in life or conditions. This was to a great extent because of the way that watchfulness in policing and besides, the criminal equity framework was viewed as illicit and shameful. Cops were there to work “by the book” in a manner of speaking, by upholding the full letter of the law. With all the defilement continuing amid this day and age in the criminal equity framework, perceiving that carefulness was clear and had a vast and critical impact in ordinary police work was recently not satisfactory.

It wasn’t until 1956, when The American Bar Foundation (ABF) led a study finding that tact worked at all levels of the criminal equity framework, that circumspection was “found” and truly became visible. This study was done in Kansas, Michigan, and Wisconsin, depending vigorously on low-level basic leadership by criminal equity authorities, for example, police, and prison guards and so on. The outcomes for the benefit of law implementation demonstrated that “police work is mind boggling, that police utilize colossal tact, that attentiveness is at the centre of police working, and that police utilize criminal law to deal with horde issues” .Furthermore, it was additionally found that police utilize a considerably higher measure of prudence than most other criminal equity authorities. This is on account of as already expressed; the police are the principal purpose of call going about as the guardians of any criminal equity framework. In this way, they are among the most essential approach producers inside society, since they settle on much more optional choices concerning residents inside the group once a day. Managing such a variety of various individual cases, it ends up plainly perceived that law authorization officers could not generally entirely take after all guidelines and directions as stipulated by law.

Bibliography

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