Essay Sample on Problem-Oriented Policing

The scholarly journal I have selected for this week’s short paper is Problem-oriented policing for reducing crime and disorder: An updated systematic review and meta-analysis. This article was written recently in 2020, and the authos are all professionals in the criminology and justice fields, which as a reader lets me know that the people who wrote this article are most likley qualified to do so. Prior to reading this article, I did not have many preconceptions about problem-oriented policing, from the little I already knew about it was that this method also rejects the traditional methods of policing amd believes that focusing the attention on solutions and how well they actually work will become a measure of decreasing crime in communities. After reading this article I can make the conclusion that problem-oriented polcing take a very similar approtch to community-oriented policing. Instead of focusing on factors like number of arrests, and average response time, law enforcement could instead focus on a more proactive approtch such as researching root causes of crime, and implimenting creative solutions to solve them (Hinkle, J. C., Weisburd, D., Telep, C. W., & Petersen, K, 2020). This would be a more effective way to deter and prevent crime, thus saving time and resoucres for law enforcement professionals. 

From just reading the beginning of this academic journal a big question I have is really how is problem-oriented policing different from community-oriented policing. They seem to be both primarily focused on being more proactive than reactive, if I were to make assumptions about their differences however based off of this article I would say that community-oriented policing has much more involvement from getting intel about community problems from the community themselves where as problem-oriented policing gets their leads of community issues elsewhere. But where they get that information is still a bit lost to me, maybe they get it from collected data from overall reports that are made? For example, my city’s police department hosts an online crime map that lets anyone see what police activity is happening around town. They break down all the reports by category (property, violent, traffic, noise, disorder and other crimes) and provive even more detailed reports on the trends of these crimes overtime. It’s pretty cool from a civillian’s perspective to see, I wonder if problem-oriented policing uses this same data to come to conclusions of what crimes they need to focus more on, and I wonder if data like this helps provide them information on where solutions would be best to impliment to decrease those crimes.  

After reading the entirety of the article, it came to a suprising conclusion to me that police departments implimenting this style of policing can see a 33% decrease of crime, this study in particular saw a 34% decrease. It makes the claim that it is very cost effective when implimente because it stops repeat crimes from continuing over and over again (Hinkle, J. C., Weisburd, D., Telep, C. W., & Petersen, K, 2020). Overall, I think my outlook on this style of policing is positive, I would however like to do more research on my own time to see how it’s effectivness compares to other styles of policing. I appriciate the insight that this specific article was able to provide me on problem-oriented policing, especially that it included real data and cost impacts.  

Refrences 

Hinkle, J. C., Weisburd, D., Telep, C. W., & Petersen, K. (2020). Problem‐oriented policing for reducing crime and disorder: An updated systematic review and meta‐analysis. Campbell Systematic Reviews, 16(2), 1–86. https://doi-org.ezproxy.snhu.edu/10.1002/cl2.1089