Community policing is a strategy that involves the creation of partnerships between the police and the members of the community (Plant & Scott, 2009). The two parties work closely together so as to prevent crime in the community. In the year 1994, the US established Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) so as to promote community policing. Community policing promotes the strategies of the organization by using techniques aimed at solving problems. The strategy used involves being proactive in addressing conditions that can jeopardize public safety. Public safety can be jeopardized by crime, fear of crime, or social disorder.
Crime prevention is the attempts that are made so as to prevent crime from taking place. Crime prevention is usually referred to the efforts carried out by the government in trying to reduce crime, maintain criminal justice, and enforcing the law (Plant et al., 2009). The government is tasked with responsibility of reducing the risk factors associated with crime. Crime prevention is seen to be less costly compared to response actions taken when a crime occurs.
Community policing and crime prevention are related because their focus is on the creation of a safe community. Community policing applies proactive strategies that enable people to stay away from crime. It involves using the people in the community to report any situation that has a likelihood of culminating into crime. The members of the community are happy to be part of the team that ensures safety in the community. The police are able to gather valuable information that enables them to reduce the rate of crimes in the community. The police and members of the community work as partners. On the other hand, crime prevention creates a safe community through the use of methods that reduce the risk factors of crime. The government invests in crime prevention methods so that crimes may be prevented. The cost of preventing crime is lower than the cost of responding to crime.
Community policing and crime prevention have some common features which include the focus on community safety; and the use of techniques that reduce crime in the communities. Some of the common results associated with the use of community policing and crime prevention include reduction of crime; reduction of fear; preservation of property and lives; and improved relationships between the police and the community (Plant et al., 2009). The people in the community are able to have peace and enjoy their lives.
CPTED means crime prevention through environmental design (McKay, 2015). CPTED is conducted by manipulating the physical environment so as to produce aspects of behavior that will lead to the reduction of crime and the fear of crime. The efforts of CPTED are aimed at improving people’s quality of life. Some of the strategies adopted by second generation CPTED include social cohesion; connectivity; community culture; and threshold capacity. The second generation CPTED has some obstacles that face its adoption into the system. One obstacle is the inability of CPTED to adapt to the changes in behavior (McKay, 2015). Human behavior is dynamic and poses a challenge to the design of CPTED. A second obstacle is that there are criminals whose actions cannot be dictated by CPTED (McKay, 2015). Some criminals feel more successful if they are able to trick the CPTED and engage in criminal activities where they can escape. They are motivated by the fact that they can manage to get away with their crimes amidst heavy surveillance.
References
Plant, J. B. & Scott, M. S., (2009). Effective Policing and Crime Prevention. COPS. Retrieved from: http://www.popcenter.org/library/reading/pdfs/mayorsguide.pdf
McKay, T., (2015). Behavioral Based Design. Peel Police. Retrieved from: http://www.peelpolice.on.ca/en/crimeprevention/resources/behaviouralbaseddesign4.pdf
