Introduction
Lessons are learnt from experiences and past experiences shape the future. This is true as much with the policing. However, there are many challenges while learning from the past. As far as policing is concerned, policing happens to comprise of a large number of small departments that are local and pursue their individual visions and develop responses according to local conditions and needs. Despite a rich experienced heritage, there could be very few records that show the true trends that should be actually shaping the modern policing systems. Today, the departments have become far more complex and intricate in comparison to what was even two decades ago.
While police is still responsible for some of the traditional roles that they have played, today, their role has gone way beyond to responding to crimes and investigations thereof. Their focus has changed and the contemporary policing philosophy is to prevent crimes than to respond to it after they have been committed and goes further to reducing crime rates in the society.
The history of policing in the United States is essentially a struggle between various interest groups to govern the department. Unlike the English police who is authorized by the Crown and had a central mandate, the early American police were authorized by local municipalities. Thus, the American police derived resources and authorization from ward politicians. They had definitive guidance from the law as to what they need to undertake and what powers they need to utilize.
The early policing link to local politicians and neighborhoods were so strong that they were almost next to the local political machines. The relationship was symbiotic. The political machinery recruited and maintained police and the police helped ward political leaders maintain their offices, and often even rigged elections. Because of the close connection to politicians in those political eras, they provided large services to citizens.
Police departments were always in the thick of crime prevention and control and in maintaining of the social order, while also providing a large number of social services. It was during the political era, that the departments and the political leaders were intimately connected. Police officials would be recruited from the same ethnicity as that of the dominant political group. They lived in the same community that they patrolled, and often, police priorities and progress was dictated intensely by the local political representatives. Thus, the demand for policing services not only came from citizens but also from what politicians that made demands on the organization. This essay addresses the need for improving policing strategies in view of technological and structural changes that have come upon the 21st century communities.
Discussion
The primary parading of police during the political era was to conduct policing on foot patrol. Most of the police officers walked their beats. They dealt with crime and other issues as they arouse and they were guided predominantly by political supporters and citizens. Detectives existed even in those days and they used to often operate on case load of persons rather than that offenses. Third degree interrogation methods were often used while interviewing criminals to solve crimes. Also, the erstwhile detectives were used and deployed by local politicians to gather more information and were largely used for political and personal gains rather than for purely dealing with crime and offenses.
Although apparently known to be a centralized organization and having an integrated chain of command, the police force during political era were more decentralized. Cities were segregated into small sized precincts, and each such precinct had a precinct-level manager. These managers often worked in collaboration with the ward leaders, and were known to have carried out small-scale departments, where they used to work on their own terms in relation to recruiting, dismissing, managing, as well as delegating work to the people whom they felt as being stable.
Further, this degree of decentralization was also blended with primeval communications as well as moving in order to offer considerable discretion to the police personnel in carrying out their responsibilities at an individual level.
The reforms aimed at transforming the police department during the political era through the application of intense degree of external pressures failed dramatically and it was only the similar kind of efforts carried out during the 20th century by using both internal as well as external pressures helped shape the modern day police, precisely since the late 1970s.
During the last twenty years or so, innovation in policing had been happening at a rather rapid pace and there have been great amount of development in terms of policies and practices which have actually shaped the field of policing. The police force, which was formerly regarded as being highly conservative in nature and also increasingly resistant to change, have today transformed into a model for experimentation in the criminal justice systems as well as also in innovation. The police have evolved into new arenas in terms of the development of new associations between the criminal justice system as well as the public in the field of community policing.
The credit of having thought about reforming the police department actually goes to August Vollmer, Berkeley's police chief, who was the first person to have inspired and motivated police executives between the late 1920's and ther early 1930's. The vision that Vollmer had for reforming policing was actually deemed as a proclamation whereby, police personnel in the post-flapper generation were to restate the moral vision to the millions of American citizens as well as numerous institutions of the nation, which had been instrumental in making America a great nation while also reminding them about the role each one of them should be playing in order to uphold such great vision.
Law, criminal law to be precise as well as police professionalism were recognized as being the foundations of police legitimacy. When the police personnel were asked the reason behind their actions, the most common answer was that they were performing their role of enforcing the law. Reformers prohibited politics being the foundation of police rightfulness. They strongly opined that politics as well as any kind of political involvement was the root cause behind the problems that existing in the policing system of America. Thus, the police reformers joined hands with Progressives.
Focusing heavily upon criminal law and considering it to be the basis of police legitimacy, the police reformers of the reform era went on to narrow down the police function to controlling crime and also to criminal trepidation. Police agencies transformed into law enforcement agencies and they worked with the primary objective of controlling crime. The primary tool that these law enforcement officers used was criminal law that helped them in apprehending and deterring criminals from committing such activities.
A number of new and innovative strategies have been developed, precisely in relation to controlling crime rates, introducing problem-oriented policing, as well as a plethora of other strategic innovations including the advent of a number of innovative and sophisticated technologies among others.
As part of their endeavors to modernize and transform over the last twenty years or so, the police have often solicited the assistance of academicians and experienced researchers. For instance, in the development of Compstat – an innovative tool, for New York City, academic research was not only of great help in defining the reasons behind introduction of new approaches in policing.
But having identified and assessed the progress in terms of the association that exists between research and police practice, it is realistic to state that regardless of such progress, a rudimentary disconnect amid science and policing continues to persist.
Science essentially denotes a wide range of procedures and technologies that the police department has experienced during the last five decades. This encompasses progress in forensic science, like DNA testing, digital fingerprints as well as a plethora of other technologies aimed at improving crime detection and its identification. The technological advancements also encompass social science, which had been an often neglected field by the police, but has started playing a pivotal role in the last couple of decades, both in terms of sophisticated analysis of crime as well as also in the evaluation and assessment of the conventional practices that police used to follow for years as well as the latest innovations in terms of policing strategies.
Conclusion
Policing, that essentially had passed through two different stages namely the political as well as the reform eras as discussed above, has started moving into the next phase namely the community era, where in the focus of policing is more on the well-being and safety of the community at large, rather than favoring politicians. There was an increased degree of professionalism that is visible in the contemporary policing.
Policing system has evolved from the rudimentary individual based, intuitive and erratic method to highly sophisticated, centralized, evidence-based, systematic, and highly technology-driven methodology towards crime prevention, deterrence, and improvement of positive culture in the society as a whole. The new policing culture is highly scientific and is driven by structure and methodology with strategizing and highly accelerated learning curves to meet up and be ahead of the sophisticated criminals that are the bane of the modern day society and contemporary life.
Today, there is a much enhanced respect for life and a craving for living, and providing better quality service to the modern communities as well as improving the quality of life of the policemen themselves. Modern day policing is far way beyond what it was even two decades earlier and has kept pace with technology and enhanced pace of modern day living and life.
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