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Conflicting Values in Community Policing

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 April 2024

David Thacher
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Abstract

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Police reformers in the early 21st century place great importance on the development of police-community partnerships, but they have not recognized the deep obstacles that these relationships face. This study argues that the central problems of working in partnership involve conflict over values: Different organizations advance different social values, and when the partners who cling to them try to collaborate, conflict flares up at the point of contact. I draw on several case studies to describe how these conflicts surface and potentially undermine partnerships, and I analyze the strategies that police agencies have developed to respond to them. This analysis reveals that community policing has fundamental (and probably desirable) implications for police practice because it forces police to attend to many neglected dimensions of their mandate. The article thereby offers a new interpretation of community policing's implications for practice and a new interpretation of its value as a reform movement.

Type
Papers of General Interest
Information
Law & Society Review , Volume 35 , Issue 4 , 2001 , pp. 765 - 798
Copyright
Copyright © 2001 Law and Society Association.

Footnotes

I would like to thank the editor and the anonymous reviewers at Law & Society Revierv for very helpful comments on an earlier draft of this article. Research for the case studies described here was supported by grant no. 95-IJ-CX-0073, awarded by the National Institute of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, U.S. Department of Justice. Points of view in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.

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