Democracy And Policing Essay

Chapter 20 starts off describing the relationship between democracy and policing. The author stated that democracy requires widespread participation in public decisions, no matter how much time it takes to reach a conclusion. Whereas policing needs quick and independent decisions by a non-political agent of the law, especially when something must be done immediately (Bittner 1970). It is a tough line to follow as there needs to be an effective means to prevent crime and disorder quickly while maintaining the fairness of the democratic deliberation over how policing should be accomplished. These two demands have been referred to as the democratic policing dilemma. There have been two solutions to this dilemma that democracies have used, one

Democratic ideals require that ‘non-negotiably coercive force’ should be broadly accepted by the public as morally right, or ‘legitimate’. A police scholar has stated the idea of legitimacy is defined as “a property of an authority or institution that leads people to feel that that authority or institution is entitled to be deferred to and obeyed.” (Tyler 1990, 25). It represents an ‘acceptance by people of the need to bring their behavior into line with the dictates of an external authority’ (Sunshine and Tyler 2003, 514). Non-democratic policing can use the same force as the police in democracies but without a political culture in which that force must be morally justified. In other words, it is a private police department with no political

This technique was a way for police to systematically identify crime patterns and the potential causes of those patterns. One such example of this is if police think that a known tavern has had many violent calls due to the fact they are serving drinks to intoxicated people, the police can try to revoke the tavern’s liquor license. The results from such studies have shown a statistically significant average effect in reducing calls about crime and disorder, crime reports, and other measures (Weisburd et al. 2008). Even more helpful will be the results of a direct comparison of problem solving and pure patrolling in a randomized experiment currently being completed by the Police Executive Research Forum. By comparing the different techniques of routine patrols and Problem Oriented Policing in the same kinds of hot spots within the same police department, the Police Executive Research Forum experiment will provide the best evidence on the cost effectiveness of the two approaches. This may potentially dictate a direction that policing may go in the near