How Crime Affects The Community

In this assignment I will be examining and investigating the effects of crime on individuals, communities and business and discussing the role of services that support victims of crime and witness. There are a lot of people and communities that are impacted negatively by crime. However in the public service, there are approaches used in order to reduce crime, disorder and anti-social behaviour. This is done by using websites and wardens to keep track of recent crimes. Also I will be writing about how both public and third sector

Most often, this is mainly because small towns and rural areas do not have the

Community style policing is often described as a “philosophy” in which law enforcement and their officers work to build personal relationships with members of the community, according to The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe. The goal

The Community Policing era has been one of the contemporary police activities in the last 30 years. It is more of a decentralized approach to reducing crime by involving the same officer in the same community on a long term basis, so residents will develop trust and then provide information and assistance to the officer. Community Policing does not replace motorized patrol or other police tactics but instead compliments them with community partnership and problem solving (Bailey, 2011).

Community policing has evolved to be the most used strategy for policing. “It is an approach to crime detection and prevention that provides police officers and supervisors with new tools for addressing recurrent problems that plague communities and consume a majority of police agency time and resources” (Peak, 2012, 65). It has been defined by various people differently. But all the definitions have similar principles (Chappell, 2009). They focus on proactive problem solving and create relationships with the community to address any issue that may arise. Community policing is a combination of client-oriented and problem-oriented policing.

The term “problem solving” in this context implies more than just simply eliminating and preventing crime. It is a concept that assumes that crime can be reduced in an area by studying the characteristics of the problems in that area and then applying the appropriate resources. The theory behind the concept is that underlying conditions create problems, and problems created by these conditions may cause incidents. These incidents will continue as long as the problem that creates them exists. Determining the underlying causes of crime depends, in great part, on an indepth knowledge of community. Thus community partnership will be of great assistance in the problem solving process. Cooperative problem solving also builds trust, and facilitates the exchange of information, and also leads to identifying other areas that can benefit from the mutual attention of the police and community (Gaffigan, 1994).

Although many may find community policing and problem-oriented policing to fall in the same category, there is (surprisingly) a difference between the two. For one, community policing has many definitions. For some, it means instituting foot and bicycle patrols and doing acts pertaining to the ideal bond between police officers and their community. While for others it means maintaining order and cleaning up neighborhoods in desperate need of repair (Dunham & Alpert, 2005). However, an idyllic definition of community policing is altering the traditional definition of crime control to community problem-solving and promising to transform the way police do their job. Within the past two decades, there has been much research on community

Community relation issues across the nation have been increasing and causing many conflicts between law enforcement and communities. There has been so much disorder between communities and law enforcements not agreeing on how situation have been handled. Both the community and law enforcements having different perspectives on making decisions without ever looking at the others side and acknowledging each other’s reasoning behind their actions. Racism, responsibility and morals are some of many terms that are yet to be sorted out within all these communities that have on going conflicts. The relationships between a community and its law enforcement is important, although it is the police job to enforce, it is also the communities job to enforce all day and everyday (Russell).

Urban centers throughout the United States of America and the world have experienced violence within the inner city communities. Many of the inner city communities are low-income and are poverty stricken. The spread of gang membership within the communities has influenced many young adolescents. Activities such as drug dealing, theft, assaults, and murders drive law enforcement to prevent crime. The justice system is also being changed due to the increase in minor violence. One of the reasons is due to people being part of minority groups. The charges pushed by the judicial

The effects that gangs have on communities is very large, especially since gangs contribute to up to about eighty percent of our nation's crimes. Gangs tear apart communities and disrupt schools, obviously, due to violence (like fighting each other), carrying weapons and/or drugs, and even their clothing can disrupt other students from learning. Also communities are affected because gangs influence their members and others into using and/or distributing all different types of drugs. Not only drugs, but the easy access to deadly firearms make gangs a lot more intimidating and dangerous to our society, and not just the inner city because gangs are in the suburbs and rural areas as well.

First, community policing can be identified or known in numerous ways, one being the broken windows theory. An overview of broken windows theory through policing is known that because of “lack of social order” or policing neighborhoods are unkempt and vandalized. As a result, with the help of community policing, programs are evaluated, crime patterns are analyzed, and information is shared with organizations and other municipal agencies and with the community to help build stronger bonds with the community(Reisig,

Large communities, with a population larger then 50,000 are at the greatest risk of significant gang activity, and community members face with high fears that gangs will take over with their families, schools can or business. Will become victims of theft and/ or violence. Further, communities with gang activity are disproportionately affected by theft, negative economic, impact, vandalism, assault, gun violence, illegal drugs trade, and homicide.

Community policing is a policy and a strategy aimed at achieving more effective and efficient crime control, reduced fear of crime, improved quality of life, improved police services and police legitimacy, through a proactive reliance on community resources that seeks to change crime causing conditions. This assumes a need for greater accountability of police, greater public share in decision-making and greater concern for civil rights and liberties.

The effects of crime on victim can have a mixed feeling about making a victim impact statement. They may want to tell the judge or parole hearing officer how the crime affected their life and yet they may be anxious because you don't know how to prepare an impact statement or you don't want to bring back bad memories by describing how the crime has hurt you. The victim impact statements may include descriptions of:

The focus of this paper will be based upon different crime prevention strategies implemented by members of the communities, local and government authorities.