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Problem solving has been used within policing for almost 30 years but progress in developing problem solving has been slow and the outcomes mixed. In this article, Barrie Irving provides an overview of the debate on problem solving and argues that there has been too much emphasis on techniques and processes and not enough on the management of their implementation. He argues that the police operational culture and training seem to create a hostile environment for the development of problem solving. His recommendations for moving forward include trying to make the methodology fit the police culture it often operates in, rather than trying to make the culture fit the methodology. He also emphasises the need for more efficient human resource management.

Research shows that crime and disorder tend to concentrate in small, geographic locations and that place-based and problem-solving policing strategies can impact crime and disorder without displacing it to neighboring areas. However, implementation of problem-solving is a challenge. Loosely defined locations, shallow problem analysis, and distractions to problem-solving are cited implementation shortcomings. These shortcomings may be overcome by using the Case of Place approach, a case management strategy focused on documenting and analyzing place-based dynamics and characteristics to inform and direct policing strategies. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

The current study describes the adoption of the Case of Place approach in an urban police agency’s operations and performance management system. The authors utilize implementation theory to explore and explain the adoption of this new place-based strategy.

Key findings reveal important structural and cultural challenges to implementation. Structural challenges included modifying supervision structures, creating new positions, decentralizing analytical functions, and redirecting resources to problem-solving. Cultural challenges observed included emphasizing problem-solving as an organizational priority, integrating crime analysts into neighborhood precincts, and centering performance management processes around problem-solving.

The authors explore how implementation dynamics impact the adoption of new policies and practices, and offer a number of propositions for the use of the Case of Place approach within a place-based strategy portfolio.

The purpose of this paper is to determine the extent to which traditional field training incorporates community‐oriented policing and problem solving in its formal evaluation process. Can community policing be successfully integrated into the San Jose field training model as a formal component of training and evaluation of police recruits?

The paper analyzes formal field training evaluations and narratives in one police agency that uses the San Jose Field Training Officer Program. The agency endorses and practices community policing and problem solving.

Field training in this agency did not successfully integrate community policing and problem solving into the formal evaluation process.

Because field training occurs immediately after the academy, it is the best place to expose recruits to community policing and problem solving in practice, thus linking training with practice. If police agencies are truly committed to community policing, they must update their field training curricula to reflect the new philosophy and practice.

Though there has been considerable research in the area of community policing, little of it focuses on training, especially field training. Ironically, even though most agencies claim to practice community policing, they have failed to prepare their officers in the philosophies and skills necessary to perform the tasks well. Police academies are beginning to train recruits in community policing, but most agencies still use the San Jose FTO model, which was developed before contemporary community policing existed. Because field training is such an important part of police socialization, it must teach recruits the skills of community policing.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how various policing innovations, including problem‐oriented policing, broken windows, intelligence‐led policing, Compstat, third‐party policing, and hot spots, could be integrated into the community policing philosophy.

The paper provides a definition of community policing and individually examines each policing innovation to determine how they fit within the community policing philosophy.

The findings suggest that various policing innovations are wholly compatible with the community policing philosophy and that incorporating these innovations into community policing may improve their overall utility and the likelihood of their adoption.

The paper highlights the need for new ideas in policing to be built into existing policing innovations rather than developed in isolation.

The findings have implications for how law enforcement agencies fundamentally approach their work and come to understand and use policing innovations and how they are developed by scholars.

The paper is valuable to scholars and police practitioners because it clarifies the community policing philosophy and unifies various ideas regarding policing under one framework.

The purpose of this article is to examine how Compstat and community policing, two of the most highly‐touted police reforms to have emerged in the US over the last 25 years, might be integrated to help enhance police organizational legitimacy.

The article provides a conceptual framework to illuminate the different ways that each of these reforms, at least in theory, tries to promote legitimacy. In doing so, it proposes that Compstat's focus on outcomes might be more tightly linked to community policing's emphasis on the processes through which police interact with community members.

The article suggests three possible ways for police organizations to develop public trust and support: systematic reporting of community problems at Compstat meetings; involving the community in problem‐solving efforts; and using Compstat maps and statistics to help mitigate perceptions of unfairness.

The article highlights the value of alternative conceptualizations for co‐implementing Compstat and community policing and the need for testing these ideas.

Identifying some different ways that Compstat and community policing may help foster favorable social judgments of police organizations could lead law enforcement agencies to reconsider how these reforms are currently co‐implemented in their departments.

A more integrated Compstat and community policing model could potentially contribute to fairer and more responsive policing practices.

The paper is valuable to scholars, practitioners, and policymakers because it lays out a framework for understanding the legitimacy‐conferring benefits of these reforms and provides some practical suggestions for how they might be more closely linked.

Crime has declined in the United States over the past 25 years; however, the decrease in victimization has not been equal across all communities. As a result, many law enforcement agencies have concentrated their efforts in high-risk areas, and this concentration of policing can lead to resentment among members of the community, especially if they feel the officers are disrespectful, use excessive force, or disregard their civil rights. These residents are in double jeopardy – experiencing the negative consequences of living in dangerous communities and enduring the direct and indirect costs of aggressive policing. The purpose of this chapter is to discuss community policing as a potential means to increase police legitimacy, strengthen community resilience, and promote prosocial interactions between officers and residents. Community policing is a philosophy that advances organizational approaches designed to leverage citizen engagement and problem solving as proactive strategies to deal with public safety issues, including crime, disorder, and fear of crime. Because community policing is grounded in trust, cooperation, and problem solving, it has the potential to improve residents’ quality of life by developing and strengthening mechanisms of social control and support. Community policing can increase police legitimacy by providing opportunities for community members to examine the actions and policies of the police, assess the alignment of these state-sanctioned activities with residents’ values and needs, and bring the two into agreement. In this chapter the basic principles of community policing will be discussed within the context of how these concepts are related to the exercise of social control and residents’ perceptions of police legitimacy.

This paper aims to examine the impact of the implementation of community‐oriented policing and problem solving in a small city.

Citizen surveys that measure perceptions and activities of the police are completed before and three years after broader implementation of community policing. Because the existing literature supports the influence of a number of individual, neighborhood, and situational characteristics, several variables are included and controlled.

The results show that although the police invest a great deal of time building partnerships with and problem solving in neighborhoods, there are no significant differences over time in citizen satisfaction with police or in fear of crime. Personal contact with police mediates the influence of individual and neighborhood characteristics on citizen satisfaction. Police presence remains a common significant predictor of citizen satisfaction.

Ensuring anonymity of subjects requires different samples between data collection periods; however, the same stratified random sampling process is used both times. The pre/post research design allows for measuring changes over time, but the lack of a control city threatens internal and external validity.

Citizen satisfaction is an important concern for all police and local governmental administrators; therefore, the findings of this study are useful for smaller agencies that are implementing or planning to implement community‐oriented policing.

With its focus on a small city and the capability to survey citizens before department‐wide implementation, this article expands research conducted on citizen satisfaction with police in a small town.

To measure the practice and management of proactive policing in local American police agencies and assess them in comparison to recommendations of the National Academies of Sciences (NAS) Committee on Proactive Policing.

A survey was conducted with a national sample of American police agencies having 100 or more sworn officers to obtain detailed information about the types of proactive work that officers engage in, to quantify their proactive work and to understand how the agencies measure and manage those activities. Responding agencies (n = 180) were geographically diverse and served populations of approximately half a million persons on average.

Proactivity as practiced is much more limited in scope than what the NAS envisions. Most agencies track only a few forms of proactivity and cannot readily estimate how much uncommitted time officers have available for proactive work. Measured proactivity is mostly limited to traffic stops, business and property checks and some form of directed or general preventive patrol. Many agencies have no formal policy in place to define or guide proactive activities, nor do they evaluate officer performance on proactivity with a detailed and deliberate rubric.

This is the first national survey that attempts to quantify proactive policing as practiced broadly in the United States. It provides context to the NAS recommendations and provides knowledge about the gap between practice and those recommendations.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how initial frameworks for understanding police problems influence how police analyze and address those problems in the context of problem-oriented policing. The paper shows why researchers, and police, should pay more attention to problem theories.

Data for this case study were obtained from the Middletown, Ohio Police Department, the Middletown housing authority, and the Butler County auditor. Frequency tables and simple graphs were used to identify patterns in the calls for service. Discussions with police officials were used to describe how police originally conceptualized the problem described.

The paper found that initial problem framing has a significant impact on the available interventions and that problem solvers should be vigilant against errors of problem identification.

Caution must be taken when generalizing from a single case study. Nevertheless, more attention needs to be placed on problem identification and framing in the problem-solving process.

Police problem solvers should be vigilant against errors in problem identification, particularly when the original problem identification is broad or when interventions based on the original problem frame do not produce the desired effect.

There are few studies that specifically examine the problem identification and definition process. This paper adds to the literature on problem-oriented policing by examining the critical yet understudied process of problem framing. It also adds to our knowledge of place-specific analysis.

This study aims to address two interrelated research questions. First, to compare the academy performance of police recruits trained under a traditional academy curriculum with the performance of those trained under a new academy curriculum based on community policing. Second, to investigate whether a different “type” of recruit performs better in the community policing curriculum compared with the traditional curriculum.

Regression analysis is used to estimate the effects of independent variables on three dependent variables that indicate academy success: average academy scores, failure experiences, and post‐academy employment.

Results suggest that more highly educated recruits and female recruits fared better in the community policing curriculum but that, overall, recruits in the community policing curriculum performed similarly to their traditional counterparts.

The findings suggest that newer police training models may be rewarding skills consistent with the community policing philosophy, such as education. This is a study of one police training center that has instituted a new training curriculum, so results cannot be generalized to other training centers. The community policing curriculum was in the early stages of implementation when data were collected and was therefore not yet standardized. Finally, the analysis is limited to predicting the success of police recruits in the academy, rather than predicting their job performance.

Few studies have examined academy training in community policing. This study is a first step to broadening understanding of the impact of academy training in community policing on police recruits.