Sozer, M. (n.d.). Crime and Community Policing (Criminal justice (LFB Scholarly Publishing
LLC)). El Paso: LFB Scholarly Pub. LLC.
There are a number of innovative policing strategies aimed at improving police
performance, such as “community policing”, “broken-windows theory”, “hot spots policing” and
“third-party policing”. The author argues that community policing, has not found to be effective
in preventing crime, if it does not have a clear focus on a specific problem. It is further
demonstrated that police can do little to control crime: this view offers some support to
criminological theories which contend that other factors generate crime and overshadow the role
of police in dealing with crime. Traditional policing, can also, do little about the root causes of
crime such as poverty, unemployment, child rearing, family structure and gun & drug policies.
Sozer discusses and examines specific problems that have identified by both the
community policing and militarized policing approaches in the last century. He focuses on the
idea that community policing stresses that police can prevent crime while enhancing their
relationships with the communities they serve, which is not being done. He further suggests that
police departments, as single agencies, cannot respond to all problems related to crime as the
term “crime” encompasses a variety of causes, factors and correlations.
Leighton, Barry N. (1991). Visions of community policing: Rhetoric and reality in Canada.
(Police and Society in Canada). Canadian Journal of Criminology, 33(3 4), 485-522.
Leighton presents a solid definition and description of community policing, focusing on
the four primary components to various visions of community policing: police-community
reciprocity, areal decentralization of command, reorientation of patrol and civilization. He
demonstrates that today's approach to policing focuses primarily on enforcing criminal law,
solving crime and apprehending criminals. The performance of Canadian police services, starting
in the 1990s, using the community policing approach is difficult to assess because there are
few evaluations of community policing, most forces have implemented only a few, if any, tactics