Criminal Justice. Reactive Policing Nationwide. Law

Criminal Justice Name  Institutional Affiliation 
Criminal Justice Reactive Policing Nationwide Reactive policing is a type of patrol that involves police responding to requests from specific persons or groups, and it encompasses immediate response to calls, follow-up investigations and routine patrols (Mark et al., 1988). Reactive policing offers help in a way to ensure that police officers respond to emergency calls immediately and in an effective and timely manner. Moreover, reactive policing encompasses the follow-up investigations that are aimed at obtaining additional information to prosecute the offender. Unlike proactive patrol that basically involves preventing crime from occurring, reactive policing is applied in instances where the crime is or has already been committed or reported (Mark et al., 1988). Reactive policing tactics have some virtues because police officers only go to crime scenes when they are summoned by the people in the community. Otherwise they normally do not intrude. They keep distance from the society and thus, they retain their impartiality. In this type of patrol, police officers do not develop any kind of relationship with citizens that may result in bias in their responses to crime events. They maintain such virtues in their duties to protect people from too much intrusion, subsequently preventing them from becoming too familiar with police. However, the reactive tactics have some sort of preventive effect, at least in theory (Mark et al., 1988). For instance, police officers may respond to calls of crime in progress and arrive at the crime scene to prevent them from occurring further. Moreover, police successfully prosecuting offenders after conducting a retrospective investigation may be termed as a preventive tactic as it deters crimes from occurring further. Although it does not prevent, a successfully prosecuted investigation debilitates criminals who would otherwise commit further crimes. A study by the Department of Justice indicates that about 51% of police officers perform both reactive and proactive duties (The US Department of Justice, 2015). A considerable number of police officers confirmed that they may respond to calls in a reactive manner, but when possible, they try to resolve the incident in a proactive manner. Only 40% of the police officers participating in this research indicated that they mostly respond to crime calls reactively. Most of police officers under this category are likely to be either in GIS or patrol. However, it does not mean that police in this category do not engage in proactive activities but merely reflect the fact that the majority of their activities entail the use of reactive tactics. Effectiveness of Reactive PolicingIn comparison with the proactive patrol, reactive policing is less effective as far as detecting and deterring crime is concerned and the police do not depend on the public in the fight against crime (The US Department of Justice, 2015). Using reactive tactics, police officers are able to respond to crimes happening in many private areas including people’s homes and businesses. If such crime incidents are not reported by members of the community, it would be impossible for police officers to know the time and place where the crimes are happening. Also, patrolling the target area either by foot or car also give police a chance to detect and prevent individuals from committing offenses, including vandalism, burglary and fighting, the objective being to keep peace in that particular area. The advocates of reactive patrol contend that the mere presence of police in a particular area scares any individual who would otherwise commit crime in the absence of a police officer (The US Department of Justice, 2015). They have great fear of being discovered committing offenses, and therefore the rate of crime in such areas is low. Moreover, in reactive patrol, every activity is done in the public eye, and the chances of breaking ethical guidelines are immensely minimized. However, reactive policing is not as effective as proactive policing when it comes to the prevention of crimes. Prevention is better that cure and reactive policing is not effective in preventing crimes compared to proactive patrolling. Eliminating cause prior to the occurrence of the crime is better than dealing with the consequences. Therefore, reactive policing does not play a crucial role in the mitigation of crimes as it does aim at disrupting illegal organizations and activities. Waiting for the calls to respond to crimes in progress or the ones that have already happened may give criminals a chance to escape since police officers may take time to arrive at the crime scene (The US Department of Justice, 2015). The volume of crime often overwhelms police officers who are provided with limited resources and always engage in endless paperwork, meaning that there is limited time for proactive work, leading to the actual offenders getting away with the offenses they have committed. Subsequently, the public loses confidence in the police capacity in deterring crimes and as such the clear up rate decline tremendously. Also, reactive policing has little impact on more serious and professional offenders, and the method tend to focus more on small crimes. Since reactive policing consumes more time, proactive policing is usually squeezed into remaining time which does not guarantee success in prosecuting the offender (The US Department of Justice, 2015). As indicated above reactive policing should be abandoned for a more effective, proactive policing strategy that conducts research on crimes and prevents them from occurring rather than waiting for them to occur and deal with the consequences thereafter.  Proactive Policing and Some ExamplesContrary to reactive policing, proactive policing is a patrol strategy that involves acting before crimes happen in a bid to prevent them from occurring and working along with members of the community to reduce the crime rate in a particular area (Weisburd, 2017). This type of policing has a great potential in the prevention and reduction of crime rate and improve the police-community relation. Proactive policing covers a number of strategies that are exclusively intended to preventing or reducing crime (David et al., 2017). It may focus on places, people as well as community disorder whereby police may apply various problem-solving strategies and engage non-police actors including agents of social and regulatory agencies. Some of the strategies include hot spots policing, surveillance of criminal organizations of people such as probationers/parolee, stop question and frisk (SQF) policing and the Broken Windows policing (Ferrandino, 2018).    Hot spots policingHot spots policing technique is one of the proactive policing strategies applied by the United States Police Department, and it entails police conducting research and investigations in small geographic regions, particularly in urban areas where the rate of crime is high (Ratcliffe et al., 2015). The sole purpose of carrying out a prior investigation is to detect a potential crime and prevent it from occurring. A hotspot is defined as a small geographic area with the high probability of a crime occurrence than other places. In hot spots, crimes often happen during a period of one year compared to other places within the same period of time. By applying hot spot policing strategy, law enforcement agencies including police forces, allocate more resources to the regions where crimes are more likely to occur than areas they do not happen frequently. The rationale behind allocating more resources in areas with a high crime rate is that when crime is reduced in hot spots, the overall crime rate across a certain geographical region will also reduce. Hot spots may include smaller units such as a building, or a street segment or bigger units such as block faces, clusters of addresses or even several street segments (Merigan, 2013). Mapping of crime hot spots can be done using various techniques such as use of software including ArcGIS. Also, hot spots can be displayed in a number of formats such as spatial ellipses and point mapping. Nevertheless, there has been no set standard for defining and identifying crime hot spots, instead, the entire process involves combining technology and knowledge of crime analysts or police officers to map the areas with higher likelihood of occurrence of crimes.  Broken Window PolicingBroken window policing is based on the fact that petty crimes such as public drinking, vandalism as well as fare evasion may play a critical role in creating more serious crimes such as bank or residential robberies or even murder crimes (Wilson & Kelling, 2015). The Broken Windows Theory suggests that policing methods that target small crimes have the potential of creating an atmosphere of order and lawfulness, consequently preventing more severe crimes.  The theory focuses on the role of a particular disorder in generating and sustaining a more serious crime. Normally, a minor crime is not directly related to a serious crime; rather, it results in increased fear and withdrawal of the individuals living in a certain geographical area, which afterwards allows more severe crimes to occur as a result of decreased levels of informal social control (Ren et al., 2017). For proactive policing, police officers have a prominent role in disrupting the processes that may lead to more serious crimes. The strategy is based on a rationale that when the police focus on minor crimes occurring in neighborhoods, they can help reduce fear and residential withdrawal which will, in turn, reduce the likelihood of serious crimes occurring. Engaging members of the community, promote high levels of informal social control which helps people to take control of their neighborhood and prevent occurrence of serious crimes (Ren et al., 2017). The theory of Broken Windows has been applied successfully in the New York City. In the early 90s, authorities in New York City implanted Broken Theory, principles in their policing strategies with greater success. William Bratton applied various policies that utilized the ideas of Broken Window Theory to reduce the rate of crime in New York. Such policies focused on the crimes that adversely affected the quality of life of the residents. Specifically, Bratton directed police officers to enforce stringent laws on public drinking, fare evasion graffiti, and public urination. After the introduction of these policies, the incidents of both minor and serious crimes reduced dramatically. The decline in the rate of crimes in New York suggests that the application of principles of the Broken Windows ...