1993/08/01 by Kevin Stenson · 1 citation
Social Sciences · #Crime, Deviance, and Social Control #Policing Practices and Perceptions #Crime Patterns and Interventions
paper · doi:10.1080/03085149300000025
openalex publication_date 1993/08/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/29
Community policing and practices are rooted in British policing traditions and must be understood as attempts to deal with the internally generated dilemmas of liberal mentalities.By contrast with pre-liberal dystopian images of the totally policed society, Peel's new police signified as a historical settlement between the governmental concerns with sovereignty, disciplinary control and the knowledge and regulation of populations. This created enduring but misleading public representations of policing as law enforcement and crime control, removed from the political sphere.Although, as elsewhere, public policing agencies were involved in the whole range of governmental tasks.The politicized rhetorics of community policing signal a rejection of narrow, reactive law enforcement and depoliticized images of policing.In turn these signal a restructing of the linkages between governing agencies in both ‘public’ and ‘community’ spheres, during a period of neo-liberal reform.The elements of community policing are deployed in a range of political programmes and the a paper points to dilemmas in the tensions between law enforcement and working with the grain of local communal norms.