journal of criminal justice volume 20 issue 4 1992 [doi 10.1016%2f0047-2352%2892%2990020-a] david h....

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j o u r n a l o f r im i n a l u s t i ceVol. 20, pp. 367-372 (1992)

All rights reserved. Printed in U.S.A.

Community Policing: A Contemporary

Perspective by Robert Trojanowicz and

Bonnie Bucqueroux

Anderson Publishing Co, (2035 Reading Road,

Cincinnati, Ohio 45202), 1990, 458 pp.,

softcover- 23.95.

This book is a forceful extended argument

that American society requires a transfor-

mation in the customary way in which polic-

ing is viewed, organized, and conducted.

While examining the origins, development,

and forms of community policing in the United

States, these authors go beyond description

to argue repeatedly and concretely that com-

munity policing, according to their formula-

tion, is the best hope for solving problems of

crime and disorder, knitting together the

fraying fabric of urban communities, and re-

vitalizing the police. Their approach is hor-

tatory rather than empirical. Although aware

of the varied evidence for the effectiveness

of community policing programs, they prefer

to specify what the community policing ap-

proach involves, to lay it against descriptions

of crime and disorder problems, and then to

argue for the potential promise of adopting

the community policing approach.

Although the book is long, over 400 pages,

it is readable and accessible. The table of

contents is informative and major points are

presented as “bullets” for emphasis and ready

review. Not only do the authors know all there

is to know about community policing, they

are wonderfully knowledgeable about the so-

cial context within which policing must op-

erate, and they describe crime problems in

modem America thoroughly and sensitively.

OOK REVIEWS

The scholarship of Trojanowicz and Buc-

queroux is prodigious, drawing not only upon

empirical research but on fiction, biogra-

phies, and the mass media. The writing is

straightforward, unjargonized, and filled with

vivid illustrations and analogies that help to

make points clear. The only criticism I have

of the book’s presentation is that it needed a

bibliography. Readers interested in further

information must thumb through pages of

references given at the end of each chapter.

After a short foreword by George L. Kell-

ing and a preface by the authors, the book

begins with a listing of “The Ten Principles

of Community Policing. n The substantive

discussion is organized into five sections.

Section One,

“What Community Policing

Means,” contains three chapters devoted to

an elaboration of the basic tenets of com-

munity policing, its origins, and its relevance

to the changes in American society.

Section Two, “What Community Policing

Does,

explains in two chapters why com-

munity policing, as these authors have ex-

plained it, offers a more promising approach

to dealing, first, with the objective incidence

of crime and, second, with the debilitating

fear of it.

Section Three, “What the Research Shows,”

contains two chapters. The first, “Methods

and Measures,

” is by David L. Carter, whose

presence in the book, curiously, is never ex-

plained. Belying the title, the chapter does

not examine how community policing might

be evaluated but instead summarizes research

findings from the President’s Commission on

Law Enforcement and the Administration of

Justice, 1967 to the present time on the fail-

ures and shortcomings of traditional police

strategies. The second chapter discusses Tro-

janowicz’s initial and extensive experience

367

0047-2352/92 5.00 + .OO

Copyright 01992 Pergamon Press Ltd.



368

ook Reviews

with foot patrol, later called community po-

licing, in Flint, Michigan. It also briefly

summarizes notable community policing ex-

perience in Newport News, Virginia; Madi-

son, Wisconsin; Baltimore County, Mary-

land; Houston, Texas; Newark, New Jersey,

and Detroit, Michigan.

In Section Four,

“Special People/Special

Problems,” Trojanowicz and Bucqueroux ar-

gue that community policing can be much

more successful than traditional policing in

addressing the unique security problems of

groups such as the homeless, juveniles, and

minorities, but most especially in coping with

the troubling and vexing problem of drug use

and drug trafficking. Both in the single chap-

ter on special people and the two chapters on

drug abuse, their discussion begins with an

insightful description of the problem and then

outlines the presumptive benefits of adopting

a community policing approach. In the case

of drug abuse, the usefulness of standard po-

lice strategies also is reviewed.

The three chapters of Section Five, “The

Future of Community Policing,” discuss, first,

the value of community policing for moti-

vating and utilizing police officers to their full

potential; second, the problems of building

support for community policing; and, third,

how competition between public and private

police and erosion of tax bases in urban areas

make the adoption of the community ap-

proach by local public police agencies ur-

gently necessary. True to its visionary theme,

the book concludes with two concrete and

ambitious proposals for expanding commu-

nity policing throughout the country-first,

by creating a special fund, through special tax

check-offs or the issuance of bonds, for com-

munity policing; second, by establishing and

then gradually transforming neighborhood

community-police centers into community

resource-centers staffed by both public and

private service providers for the reorganiza-

tion ,

revitalization,

and reintegration of

communities.

As lagniappe at the end of the book, one-

and two-page descriptions of community po-

licing are given by nine chiefs of police or

their assistants in Philadelphia, Los Angeles,

Baltimore County, New York City, Madi-

son, McAllen (Texas), Newport News, Ed-

monton (Alberta, Canada), and Evanston

(Illinois).

Although the authors are well informed and

practical in much that they say about com-

munity policing, the hortatory tone of the book

often leads to what seem like inflated, or at

least unsupported, claims for community po-

licing. Not only is the argumentation for par-

ticular benefits presumptive, but community

policing seems to constitute all that is crea-

tive and promising in policing. One gets the

impression that if it’s smart, it must be com-

munity policing.

This impression is encouraged by the au-

thors’ failure to distinguish between com-

munity policing as they conceive it to be and

community policing as it has emerged oper-

ationally in the real world. Faced with po-

tential problems in community policing, such

as overselling it as a panacea, using it exclu-

sively as a public relations slogan, or creating

the impression that enforcement is not needed,

Trojanowicz and Bucqueroux simply dismiss

them as not being “community policing.” The

problems are defined out of existence, rather

than treated as impediments to the institu-

tionalization of community policing that need

to be addressed. The authors do in fact know

better, but they often come across as being

uncritical about the process of implementa-

tion. I also think they work too hard to dis-

tinguish community policing from problem-

oriented policing, which is part of the turf war

that has grown up around these conceptions.

I’m one of those who “mistakenly think they

are identical,

at least as a matter of practice

in the field (8).

Although the book refers to several eval-

uations of community policing programs, it

never examines the strength of these efforts.

It uncritically accepts evaluation results, as in

the Flint case, even though serious doubts have

been raised about them. It is even more sur-

prising that the authors do not discuss whether

evaluation really is a particularly difficult

problem for community policing, as many

police officers believe-mistakenly, in my

view. Altogether, this sidestepping of issues

of evaluation, especially in the chapter by



ook Reviews

369

Carter devoted to “methods and measures,”

seems disingenuous, as if there were some-

thing to hide. Admittedly, the evaluation re-

sults have not been compelling, but then nei-

ther have those from traditional police

methods. Evaluation is critical to the credi-

bility of community policing, and it needed

to be discussed.

In conclusion, this book is the fullest pre-

sentation to date of the idea of community

policing, its potential benefits, and the rea-

sons for its arrival on the scene at this point

in American history. With power and intel-

ligence, the book shows what policing in

America might become if only the police, and

we, had greater vision and the courage.

David H. Bayley

State University of New York at Albany

School of Criminal Justice

Albany, N.Y. 12222

Courts Corrections and the Constitution:

The Impact of J udicial Intervention on

Prisons and J ails edited by John J. DiIulio,

Jr.

Oxford University Press, (2001 Evans Road,

Cary, North Carolina 27513), 1990, 338 pp.,

hardcover- 32.50

This is an edited volume of eleven essays

by various contributors addressing one or an-

other aspect of the “prisoner litigation” that

has become a permanent feature of the op-

eration of jails and prisons in the United States

since the late 1960s. As in any edited vol-

ume, it is difficult to judge the volume as a

whole, since it is made up of several distinct,

although interrelated, topics and styles.

However, in this instance, without waiving

any objections or criticisms, it is easy to rec-

ommend this book on the basis of its serious

treatment of the uneasy relationship between

federal courts and the institutions created to

hold persons against their will.

The eleven essays address a number of dif-

ferent topics, but in the main they fall into

two groups. The six essays in the first group

discuss the specific impact of four major “to-

tal prison conditions” cases that came before

federal district courts in the 1970s and 1980s.

These four cases are: Ruiz v. Estelle chal-

lenging the operation of the Texas Depart-

ment of Corrections; Guthrie v. Evans which

concerned conditions at the Georgia State

Prison at Reidsville; Rhem v. Malcolm ad-

dressing conditions at the Manhattan House

of Detention for Men (the Tombs) and later

at the House of Detention for Men on Rikers

Island; and Crain v. Bordenkircher which

attacked physical conditions at the West Vir-

ginia Penitentiary. Three essays address the

Ruiz litigation and one essay discusses each

of the remaining three cases.

The five essays in the second group con-

cern various features of prison administration

or evaluate the process and effect of prison

litigation, whether on corrections, the courts,

or that most nebulous of all concepts-jus-

tice. Thus, Feeley and Hanson lead off the

volume with an overview of prisoner litiga-

tion, which attempts to provide a framework

for assessing the impact of these cases on

various institutions. Edward Rhine provides

a much more detailed and empirical evalua-

tion of disciplinary practices at a New Jersey

state prison before and after the Supreme

Court’s leading case on disciplinary due pro-

cess, Wolff v. McDonnell. Clair Cripe, gen-

eral counsel of the Federal Bureau of Prisons,

offers his evaluation of the effects of prisoner

litigation and the proper role of the courts from

the standpoint of a partisan practitioner, as

does DiIulio, from his observation post, in a

concluding essay. Robert Bradley attempts a

statistical background analysis of federal

judges in an effort to determine whether there

is any support for the view that the party af-

filiation of the appointing president has a sig-

nificant impact on the policymaking behavior

of the judges in prisoner cases.

The three essays describing and assessing

the Ruiz litigation and its impact on the Texas

Department of Corrections offer competing

analyses of what is the largest “total condi-

tions” case ever tried in an American court.

While the authors of the three essays agree

on some of the facts, and certainly share

common aspirations for better prisons in Texas

and elsewhere, they are substantially at odds

over other facts and over what conclusions to

journal of criminal justice volume 20 issue 4 1992 [doi 10.1016%2f0047-2352%2892%2990020-a] david h....

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