The Changing Environment for Policing, 1985-2008, is one of a series of papers that are being published as a result of the second “Executive Session on Policing and Public Safety,” a collaboration of NIJ and Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government.
This paper explores the differences in the environment for policing between 1985 and 2008. Policing in the United States was under siege in the 1980s; crime had been rising from the early 1960s and research showed that traditional police strategies were not working (e.g., hiring more police, random motorized patrolling, foot patrols, rapid response to calls for service, and routine criminal investigation). Recent research has reconfirmed this, even though crime has declined dramatically since 1990. However, the panel found that police could reduce crime when they focused operations on particular problems or places and supplemented law enforcement with other regulatory and abatement activities.
The gradual trend of government monopolization of police functions since the early 1800s is now reversing because of the internationalization of policing, devolution of policing to local communities for public security (e.g., community policing), and the growth of private policing, which now outnumbers public policing in most locations.
February 07, 2011
