Neighborhood Dynamics and Situational Policing: A Conceptual Framework for Dialogue and Action

• In Event: Little City, Big Problems: A Mixed-Methods Case Study of Rising Crime and a Police Department’s Efforts to Deal with It

Abstract

Modern social scientists have found that specific policing strategies—such as problem solving, foot patrol, zero tolerance, community policing, among others-- work well in some places and not others. Officials in cities like Wilmington are often found looking for strategies that have worked elsewhere. These officials hope that evidence-based strategies can be pulled “off the shelf” and transplanted successfully to their local situations. Unfortunately, this may be more difficult than it seems. The researchers in the present study introduce a conceptual framework that first identifies a typology of neighborhoods that is based on both the level of crime and the psychodynamic properties of the neighborhood-as-a-whole—i.e., levels of dependence on the police, conflict and frustration with the police and residents, and interdependence between the police and residents. Once a neighborhood type is identified, specific strategies—new or evidence-based—may be matched to the specific type in hopes to improve rates of success. The four neighborhood types—Strong, Vulnerable, Anomic, and Responsive are established by the researchers via survey research in neighborhoods in Southwest Wilmington and are validated via dialogue with residents. The researchers discuss their findings in the context of a situational policing framework.

Authors

• James J. Nolan, West Virginia University

• Joseph P. Aviola, Wilmington University