At the start of the reform era of policing in 1930, a dire need for something new and effective to combat rising crime rates and ineffective police training led law enforcement to begin implementing tactics and procedures to improve how they protected society and maintained order within our country. As time and technology progressed, more strategies and methods began to arise in order to improve the overall effectiveness of law enforcement. Around the country, the policing methods used from city to city dramatically affect not only crime rates, but also the relationship between law enforcement and a city.
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In recent years, law enforcement has focused on two policing models. Proactive policing, sometimes referred to as predictive policing, is a method aimed at using technology and data in order to help prevent and catch crime at an earlier stage. The other major model is reactive policing, which focuses on dealing with the major problems that arise in a community and methods that law enforcement can use to address these issues. While both are effective under certain conditions, they cannot exist on their own. The effectiveness of each model by themselves has proven to be ineffective and more problems have begun to surface from the individual use of each model.
Proactive/predictive policing first arose at the turn of the century when data and statistics on computers and technology began to advance. Place-based policing–the most common use of predictive policing–involves gathering copious amounts of statistical data on crime and disorder in certain areas. Its primary goal is to use historical data and evidence to help prevent crime in areas that historically have high crime rates.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, reactive policing focuses more on a communal approach. Reactive policing relies on responding to crime after it has already been committed. This has been the major policing model for a large piece of history because the introduction of technology is extremely new and still actively being implemented in law enforcement and policing communities.
While these two models have been heavily relied on by the police, there are clear problems with both modes of policing. Predictive policing uses their data to create “hotspots,” areas that accumulate copious amounts of crime. By analyzing this data, police are theoretically able to further stop and prevent crime from occurring. But there are naturally problems with solely using this policing model. Racial profiling has always been a problem in law enforcement, and with statistical data used through predictive policing to mark certain people or areas (usually home to ethnic and racial minorities) as more at risk of committing a crime poses an extreme danger to our constitutional rights as American citizens. Researchers have found that the data used by law enforcement can be extremely biased because the information used was gathered during a time of extreme racism in our country, leading to a biased approach where police focus unfairly on policing minorities. When law enforcement is actively and openly basing their questionable methods of policing on certain groups, this raises major questions about the constitutionality of predictive policing.
With reactive policing, the major problems arise from the actual effectiveness of crime control. This approach relies on crime response to ensure it is dealt with swiftly and effectively but does not necessarily use means to prevent crime. This reinforces the idea that crime will not go unnoticed and unpunished. Another crucial aspect of reactive policing is a community focus. Because officers with training emphasized in reactive policing, they develop skills better suited to communicating with the community and handling situations. While this is effective from a communal perspective, this model cannot solely be used by law enforcement because it does not fully utilize new advancements in technology and it also does set up systems to prevent future crimes.
There needs to be an effective implementation of both models’s benefits in law enforcement. Predictive policing takes advantage of technology to effectively help cut the crime rate, at the cost of risking the violation of constitutional rights on the basis of discrimination and unjust profiling. Reactive policing, as discussed earlier, thrives on swift execution of handling crimes at hand, at the cost of not relying on technology as well as not focusing on means of preventing crime. While these models seem as though to be opposites, they clearly complement each other.
Law enforcement must use predictive policing to gather and rely on more current data, as well as policing methods that aim to create a safer environment through surveillance. While doing this, police need to implement the communal focus of reactive policing into their strategies as well. This means that there must be a shift from viewing people as more or less likely to commit crimes, to a more caretaker role for the people. We see through predictive policing there is too much reliance on often biased and outdated statistics, often leading to the targeting of specific areas and groups of people. This is where reactive policing takes over, as the community-based values of reactive policing can help heal and strengthen the relationship between law enforcement and the people. With reactive policing, it is clear that this method is becoming outdated because it does not rely on technology as strongly as predictive policing. As the implementation of technology into our everyday lives increases, the implementation of more technology in aiding the police in dealing with crime needs to be increased as well. These two models essentially need what the other naturally flourishes in.
Because the capabilities of technology have increased exponentially over the last thirty years, we have seen a decrease in trust between the community and law enforcement due to the shift in reliance from community-based methods to technology. This has been further polarized due to recent events of police brutality and misconduct. Although this problem is becoming increasingly evident, police departments are working to combat these problems with outreach programs aimed at rebuilding and reinforcing their relationships with the community.
While neither model can fully and effectively exist on its own, rather than seeing the differences between these models, choosing to view them as complementary and implementing both models into law enforcement provides the most effective means of balancing preventing and handling crime with tending to the needs of the community. By using both, it can be further ensured the technological advantage of reactive policing is kept in check and balanced by the communal focus of reactive policing.