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Community engagement in policing: Lessons from the literature

Community engagement has become increasingly prominent in policing and wider government policy in the last five years. Initial thinking around what effective community engagement looks like for the Police Service appears in the police reform White Paper (November 2004). There is agreement between Home Office policy units on the core aspects of community engagement, although this has never been captured in a written, public-facing definition. This report tries to plug that gap.

Title: Community engagement in policing: Lessons from the literature
Author: Andy Myhill
Number of pages: 70
Date published: February 2006
Availability: Download full report PDF 800Kb

Defining community engagement

The review suggests the following definition of community engagement for policing policy:

The process of enabling the participation of citizens and communities in policing at their chosen level, ranging from providing information and reassurance, to empowering them to identify and implement solutions to local problems and influence strategic priorities and decisions.

The police, citizens, and communities must have the willingness, capacity and opportunity to participate. The Police Service and partner organisations must have a responsibility to engage and, unless there is a justifiable reason, the presumption is that they must respond to community input.

Community engagement can operate at three principal levels

1. the 'democratic mandate' level, which sets the dominant philosophy for policing

2. the neighbourhood level, which focuses on local priorities and problems

3. an intermediate strategic level, focusing on wider force, regional and national issues and priorities

The term 'community engagement' is used less frequently in the US, where 'community policing' is the all-encompassing philosophy, reflecting elements of both 'citizen focus' and 'neighbourhood policing' that have been adopted in the UK. The majority of evidence in the review comes from evaluations of community policing programmes in the US.

Concepts such as 'engagement', 'involvement', and 'participation' are often used interchangeably in the UK.

The theory of community engagement

There is a strong theoretical case for community engagement in policing. Informal mechanisms of social control may play a greater role than formal mechanisms based on traditional, reactive, enforcement-based policing. Greater community participation in policing is likely to have benefits for both police-community relations and actual levels of crime and disorder.

The review assesses the evidence to support the following potential benefits: reduced crime; reduced disorder; increased feelings of safety; improved police-community relations and community perceptions; greater community capacity; and changing officer attitudes and behaviour.

The review also makes an assessment of the evidence relating to the quality of community participation in policing, including a separate assessment of 'problem-solving'.

Community engagement in practice

There is evidence to support the benefits of community engagement in policing. However, evaluation has been restricted to specific projects and programmes. Most evaluation evidence comes from the US. In the UK, the review found only an evaluation of a neighbourhood policing experiment in London in the 1980s, which suffered implementation failure, and the recent evaluation of the National Reassurance Policing Programme (NRPP). All major evaluations of community policing in the US have recognised some degree of implementation failure. The ability of police agencies to implement effective, sustained engagement at an organisational level remains unproven.

Existing reviews of US community policing outcome evaluations and the evaluation of the NRPP were used to assess consistency of evidence for potential benefits of community engagement.

Benefit	Evidence	Findings
Reducing crime	weak positive evidence	some positive findings, some neutral, no negative
Reducing disorder/anti-social behaviour	fairly strong positive evidence	mostly positive findings, some neutral, no negative
Increasing feelings of safety	fairly strong positive evidence	mostly positive findings, some neutral, no negative
Improving police community relations and community perceptions	strong positive evidence	almost all positive findings, minimal neutral, no negative
Increasing community capacity	unknown. This is a gap in the evidence.
Changing police officers' attitudes and behaviour	fairly strong positive evidence on attitudes; mixed evidence on behaviour

The review examined evidence from wider sources to assess the quality of community participation in policing and problem-solving.

In the UK, most evaluation has focused on participation at a strategic level – which has been found to be highly variable. Traditional forms of strategic consultation – Police Community Consultation Groups – are widely regarded not to fulfil their aims.

In the US, most evaluation activity has been focused on the tactical dimension. There is widespread self-reported implementation of community policing; evidence on quality is less clear. There is positive evidence that problem-solving is effective, but this is confined to case-studies of specific areas. There is no evidence of police agencies having sustained effective problem-solving or problem-oriented policing across the organisation.

Implementation issues for community engagement

A range of issues must be addressed to prevent implementation failure. Key implementation issues are listed below.

• Organisational commitment and culture change
  The police service is still some way from accepting certain aspects of 'community engagement philosophy'.
   

• Mainstreaming
  Community engagement has to be part of core work, not confined to specialist teams or one-off programmes.
   

• Sharing power with communities
  Engagement is not something to be done 'to' communities; they must participate in planning and choosing approaches and feel equal ownership of the process.
   

• Tailoring and local flexibility
  There is no 'one size fits all' approach; decision-making needs to be devolved to neighbourhoods to allow beat officers flexibility in tailoring approaches.
   

• Performance management
  Key performance indicators need to reward effective community engagement, at both national and local levels.
   

• Training and capacity building
  Both the police and communities need to have a clearly defined role and be given the skills and resources to carry it out.
   

• Confidence and trust
  The police should not underestimate the effect of previous poor relations, especially with minority communities.
   

• Communication
  Partnerships must involve two-way dialogue and good quality information and feedback; the police must value community input.
   

• Partnership working
  The police alone cannot tackle 'quality of life issues' that arise during problem-solving activity.
   

• Resources
  These are likely to be required for training and capacity building but may be generated through reallocation, from partners, or by greater use of auxiliaries and volunteers.

The future of community engagement in policing

The Government is committed to the principle of community engagement in policing, and to delivering 'neighbourhood policing'. The interface between these two concepts is crucial. In the UK context, 'citizen focus' is the broad philosophy for policing; neighbourhood policing is a programme, focused specifically on crime, disorder, feelings of safety, and service delivery in local areas. The two together are akin to community policing in the US. Community engagement needs to ensure community participation at all levels of policing: in neighbourhood focused problem-solving initiatives, and at a more strategic level. Delivering a successful programme of neighbourhood policing will not automatically deliver community engagement.

Effective community engagement is not achieved quickly. It is a long-term process. Ultimate success is likely to depend on three key factors.

1. Political will and commitment
   The positive theoretical benefits of community engagement and neighbourhood policing may not be immediately apparent and the approach must be sustained.

2. Organisational change in the police and partner agencies
   The police and other service providers have to be committed to the engagement philosophy at all levels and accept the need to co-operate with each other to ensure efficient and effective delivery.

3. Performance management and leadership
   Leaders of police forces and partner agencies have to be genuinely committed to delivering engagement and articulate aims and objectives clearly throughout their organisations. This commitment needs to be reflected in the way performance is measured and rewarded.

Getting a copy

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Last update: 23 February 2006