NCJ Number
87730
Journal
Police Magazine Volume: 6 Issue: 2 Dated: (March 1983) Pages: 49-54
Date Published
1983
Length
6 pages
Annotation
If community crime prevention officers are to avoid alienation from their peers and job burn-out, they must gain the support of the department and the community so that crime prevention activities are shared by the full department and by volunteer citizens.
Abstract
A number of police crime prevention officers have begun their work with a personal conviction about the value of their work, but they have been unable to sell police administrators and patrol officers on the value of their work. In other cases, crime prevention officers have sought to draw attention to themselves by giving the appearance that they shoulder the full burden of crime prevention in the department. These tendencies foster burn-out and alienation from patrol officers. If the crime prevention officer is to be effective and maintain job satisfaction, he/she must begin with strong police administrative support and develop a policy at the outset that will involve patrol officers in daily crime prevention activities. Further, alienation is especially likely where crime prevention is seen as the special domain of one person or a few persons. Experts argue that crime prevention efforts should be spread throughout the force, and crime prevention leadership should be regularly rotated among the officers. Patrol officer support of crime prevention programs is most likely where citizen cooperation with the police is enhanced and the police image in the community is upgraded. Toward this end, crime prevention training of citizens should focus upon how not only to act independently to help prevent crime but how to facilitate the patrol officers' performing their duties more effectively.