NCJ Number
97276
Date Published
1984
Length
16 pages
Annotation
After a brief review of community policing in Western liberal democracies this paper examines community policing in New Zealand, with attention to neighborhood support groups, the neighborhood watch program, and other crime prevention efforts.
Abstract
Neighborhood support groups, which are extensions of neighborhood watch programs, reduce the police workload by providing group members with information on support services such as marriage guidance, rape crisis services, and women's refuges. The input required from the police is identified, and factors that determine a support group's survival are discussed. The neighborhood watch program, directed primarily at property protection, is also described. First introduced in New Zealand in 1980, the program has been the subject of community services advertising in the news media, radio, and television. A survey of persons who were not members of the program is discussed, and their reasons for not participating are delineated. Police attitudes about the program's effectiveness are reported: 10 percent find the program ineffective; 36 percent slightly effective; 45 percent, moderately effective; and 9 percent, very effective. An executive summary of an experiment designed to measure police presumptions about the effectiveness of the neighborhood watch program is included. Additional crime prevention efforts, including the New Zealand police school liaison program, the police aid youth section, and the law related education program are also described. Efforts to prevent burglaries of chemist shops are also reported. Finally, policing by consent is addressed, and the problems associated with determining how that consent is to be interpreted are identified.