5 - Engaging communities

Summary

Introduction

‘A key criticism of police approaches to consultation previously is that it has been constructed within a mindset that sees its primary purpose as educating a misinformed public about the realities of policing’ (Jones and Newburn, 2001, p50). As this quote suggests, police forces want the public to understand their jobs better. However, it is the job of neighbourhood teams to understand communities better. Community engagement was one of the three core ‘mechanisms’ by which neighbourhood policing was expected to deliver improvements in public perceptions and confidence in the police. The Labour government's policy agenda prioritised the involvement of the public in the delivery of public services in general. It believed that the engagement of the public in policing had both instrumental benefits to the police, but also to communities in terms of capacity-building.

Nearly 20 years on from the original Neighbourhood Policing Programme, the necessity of community engagement is embedded in policy and College of Policing (CoP) guidance, but practice at neighbourhood level is variable. Officers struggle with resource limitations, a changing media landscape, and an often risk-averse organisational culture.

This chapter sets out the benefits of community engagement and what is known about particular methods of engaging. It begins with a discussion of the context of community engagement; the legislative requirements and the current status of guidance and training in this area, given the uncertain future of the Police Education Qualifications Framework (PEQF) and its limited reach to serving officers.

It then offers some frameworks for understanding police– community engagement. This begins with a discussion of the purposes of community engagement, and the need for officers to be clear and transparent as to why they are engaging in the first place. It discusses some different typologies for community engagement, and why some of these are more useful and others, given the restrictions within which the police operate.

The chapter then discusses the strengths and weaknesses of public meetings as a way of engaging with the public, and offers some suggestions as to how meetings can be organised and run in a way that supports the work of neighbourhood officers.