NCJ Number
169571
Date Published
1992
Length
26 pages
Annotation
Policing is experiencing many kinds of changes that challenge law enforcement administrator and suggest the need for them to choose between the two broad alternatives of accreditation reform and community policing.
Abstract
Areas of change include the growth of private policing, the impact of information technology on the public sector, the increasing use of research and information to guide policy, the discussions about the need for proactive rather than reactive policing, and the development of community policing as a new police paradigm. Another significant movement in policing is the accreditation efforts by the Commission on Accreditation of Law Enforcement Agencies (CALEA). In addition, academics have been debating the concept of order-maintenance policing as an alternative to incident-driven or crime-control policing. The current movement toward new paradigms suggests two alternative futures: accreditation through CALEA and community policing. Training is central to the concerns of CALEA. Community policing also shares a commitment to human resource development, but its goals differ from that of accreditation. Accreditation reform does not require the nurturing of a new set of values for the organization. In contrast, community policing calls for a visionary kind of leader as a change agent to implement long-term basic changes in the nature of policing. The decade of the 1990's should hold the answer regarding the path that most law enforcement administrators should choose. 23 references