Author: edited by Karen Bullock and Nick Tilley
ISBN No:
Review date: 15/12/2025
No of pages: 0
Publisher: ISBN 1 84392 050 6 (hardback) £25, 311 pages Willan Publishing, Devon. Visit www.willanpublishing.co.uk
Year of publication: 11/09/2012
Brief:
Problem-oriented policing (POP) is seen as good practice - solve a policing problem by applying scientific methods. But as Prof Gloria Laycock notes in the introduction to Crime Reduction and Problem-Oriented Policing, edited by Karen Bullock and Nick Tilley, POP does not automatically work, but can mean ‘opportunistic bidding, poor project design, hasty and inconsistent implementation, weak record keeping and disappointing results’. To take one of those failings, POP supposedly takes crime problems as the starting point, and brings in planners, architects, the private sector, and so on. However there is a limit to co-operation by others. Mike Maguire and Matt Hopkins note in their study of pub and street alcohol-related crime (tackled by projects in Nottingham, Cardiff and Cornwall) that accident and emergency departments are too stretched to log incidents. The more agencies involved, the greater the risk of committees, talking lots and agreeing on nothing. If the local probation service is keen on a POP project, but not the local hospital, will that POP be skewed towards probation, no matter the needs of the hospital' Without data, POP flounders. Yet data can work against POP. What if (as in Cardiff) there’s a rise in pub and club capacity and big sports events - meaning presumably more drinkers and more crime and disorder' How can a project then show success? Any project with two-year (or whatever) funding is under pressure to show ‘success’ (yet how do you measure it?). When funding ends, the project does too, yet the potential problem may well remain. The Cardiff project “largely failed to persuade key players in the county council, breweries or other relevant companies to adopt broader strategic approaches to the prevention of late-night violence and disorder”. Thus POP projects run the risk of being mere marketing campaigns (but good for politicians and in the media). On the plus side, the chapters - also covering property crime, Manchester and the Fens - suggest good data-collecting can lead to usefully targeted training; and mainstream policing going where it is needed most. Laycock in a closing chapter calls Labour from 1997 a ‘breath of fresh air on the crime reduction scene’ but goes on to blow some fresh air herself through assumptions - that police understood POP, could recruit the right people, and that bids could be sifted and evaluated by the Government.
