Effect of Community Policing on Crime Term Paper

Broken Windows" discussed the causes of fear and crime among urban neighborhoods. Beginning with a case of police walking the beat in crime-ridden neighborhoods, the authors evolved their article to an understanding of how the presence of a patrolman on the street can make residents feel safer. By studying the effect of patrolmen, the authors began to understand the cause of crime and the effect it can have on neighborhood residents. The authors asserted that crime, and more importantly the community's perception of it, began with general disorder and evolved eventually into complete fear of the neighborhood.

While studying crime and disorder, researchers have made an interesting discovery, the "Broken Window" effect. As the authors described "if a window in a building is broken and is left unrepaired, all the rest of the windows will soon be broken." (Kelling, 1982) When applied to crime and disorder this theory states that when minor criminal acts, or "untended behavior," are not addressed in a neighborhood, a state of disorder arises and the neighborhood will soon be overridden with crime.Researchers have discovered that people's perceptions of crime can also be affected by the amount of disorder in a community, making them believe that disorderly neighborhoods are more dangerous. This belief can alter their behavior as well as their relationship to the community and other residents.

The authors assert that one way to alleviate the problems of crime and fear in a community is by having police walk beats in crime-ridden neighborhoods. In an example of this type of policing, the authors discovered that when police walked beats on the streets of Newark, New Jersey, they were able to "…elevate, to the extent….....