Testing soft vs. hard approaches to community policing in England and Wales

• In Event: Community Policing II: International Applications

Abstract

What is more effective in community policing, using ‘ordinary’ police constables (PCs) or non-warranted community support officers (PCSOs) employed by the police? This question is more broadly contextualized around ‘hard’ vs. ‘soft’ community policing approaches, as well as in terms of police budgets, since employing PCSOs is believed to be cost-saving initiative. Yet while the utilization of PCSOs shows how the “police family” is expending, their effectiveness has not been empirically investigated.
We will present the results of an experiment conducted in West Yorkshire Police (UK), in which three local police units with similar characteristics were assigned to different “blends”: 80% PCSOs, 80% PCs, or 50%-50% split. Over a period of 90 days, we observed the number of crimes, calls for service and repeat calls for service in each area. While we detected non-statistically significant differences in terms of first-time calls for service and repeat calls for service, the results suggest clear crime reductions in the area with markedly more PCs than PCSOs. The findings illustrate the complexity of policing: New approaches to community policing can provide similar outcomes in some respects, however ‘hard’ approaches are still required to deal with crime and disorder in UK communities.

Authors

• Angela Williams, Cambridge University

• Barak Ariel, Cambridge University / Hebrew University