Perspective on Policing Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3250 words

Perspective on Policing - Essay ExampleAccording to Wilson and Kelling, venial disorders (like littering, loitering, public drinking, panhandling, and prostitution) if tolerated, produce an environment that is likely to attract abhorrence. They signal to potential culpables that delinquent behavior volition not be reported or controlled -- that no one is in charge. One broken window, left-hand(a) unrepaired, invites other broken windows. These progressively break down community standards, leaving the community vulnerable to hatred.A stable neighborhood of families who care for their homes, mind each others children, and confidently frown on unwanted intruders stand change, in a few years or even a few months, to an inhospitable and scare jungle. A piece of property is abandoned, weeds grow up, a window is smashed. Adults stop scolding hood children the children, emboldened, become much rowdy. Families move out, unattached adults move in. Teenagers gather in front of the com er store. The merchant asks them to move they refuse. Fights occur. Litter accumulates. People start drinking in front of the grocery in time, an drench slumps to the sidewalk and is allowed to sleep it off. Pedestrians are approached by panhandlers.At this point it is not inevitable that serious crime leave alone flourish or violent attacks on strangers will occur. But many residents will call in that crime, especially violent crime, is on the rise, and they will modify their behavior accordingly.Such an area is vulnerable to criminal invasion. Though it is not inevitable, it is more likely that here... drugs will change hands, prostitutes will solicit, and cars will be stripped. That the drunks will be robbed by boys who do it as a lark, and the prostitutes customers will be robbed by men who do it purposefully and perhaps violently.The loving subject matter in question is the meaning of order and disorder. Order heart and soul that the community cares about its neighborhood and is prepared to enforce norms of orderliness. Social norm proponents suggest that some social meanings are constructed. Those that are, are socially constructed through the interrelationship of action and context -- the context being veritable expectations or understandings that are often unquestioned. Social meanings are the frameworks of understanding within which individuals live a focus to describe what they take or understand various actions, or inactions, or statuses to be and a instruction to understand how the understandings change.(n66) When these understandings are uncontested, the related social meanings acquire more power and appear unavoidable.Social lure Social meanings can have social influence, which is to say that they can influence the behavior of individuals in society. In the broken windows context, the social meaning of disorder influences the disorderly to commit crimes and law abiders to leave the neighborhood. Conversely, the social meaning of order i nfluences the disorderly not to follow their inclination to commit crime and law abiders to walk more freely in the streets at night. The relationship between social meaning, social influence and social norms is illustrated in the following figure In the context of order-maintenance policing, this suggests that, by encouraging the social norm of orderliness, major crime may decline because (a)