Situational Policing: A Conceptual Framework for a Reimagined Police Mandate

• In Event: National Science Foundation Build and Broaden Initiative: Reimaging the American Police Mandate

Abstract

In this paper, we can describe situational policing as a conceptual framework for a reimagined police mandate that seeks to build and maintain a community context that promotes safety and security. We describe tools that the community and the police can use together to assess progress. In a “law enforcement and crime control” policing model, PACE (and other progressive ways of think about policing and community safety such as restorative justice) are ancillary to the “real” police work of law enforcement. In the situational policing framework, PACE is the real police work.

Authors

• James Nolan, West Virginia University

• Henry H. Brownstein, West Virginia University

• Natasha Pratt-Harris, Morgan State University