Anchor Points

Answer

Relationship Between Community Crime Prevention and Problem-Oriented Policing

Crime prevention is one of the primary roles of policing. Notably, crime prevention entails different strategies and approaches adopted to reduce the risks of crime from occurring and alleviate the potentially harmful effects of the same on both individuals and the society (Maguire, Uchida, and Hassell 72). Some of the mechanisms for community prevention include community crime prevention and problem-oriented policing. Whereas community crime prevention focuses on the prevention of crime using community culture and infrastructure as well as the engagement of community residents, problem-oriented policing focuses on crime hotspots and anchor points for the source of crime.

Although people often confuse community crime prevention from problem-oriented policing, the two are different. One of the differences lies in the key focus of prevention measures. For instance, in community crime prevention, the major focus is on the entirety of the community residents without paying majorly focusing on the crime hotspots (Gill et al. 400) However, in problem-oriented policing, the focus of crime prevention measures is on the anchor points and areas considered to be the crime hotspots in the community. Additionally, some of the examples of community crime prevention approaches include community policing, urban and physical design, and other multi-disciplinary approaches (Maguire, Uchida, and Hassell 72). Problem-oriented policing examples, on the other hand, include the installation of cameras on areas that the police consider to have some underlying problems (Cozens and Love 393). Specifically, the police will mostly target the areas where there is a high likelihood of crime occurring and hence, apply their crime preventive measures towards those anchor points (Porter and Graycar 423). Moreover, whereas in community crime prevention there is a cooperation between the police and the local community residents to prevent crime, in problem-oriented policing, the police only cooperate with the community members to identify the hotspots.

Despite the differences in the two forms of community policing, they have different similarities in the manner in which they identify and address crime from the so-called anchor points. For instance, in community crime prevention, strategies devised for the mitigation of crime are aimed at areas in the community where there is a likelihood of crime occurring (Gill et al. 399). For instance, in areas where there is low lighting and only a few people, the community crime prevention strategies are used to ensure that such anchor points are the focus of crime prevention (Maguire, Uchida, and Hassell 73). However, in the case of problem-oriented policing, the police identify the underlying problems in a community from different areas. After such identification, they then choose the most appropriate preventive measures, which can be applied in such targeted areas and anchor points to ensure increased monitoring and hence deterrence of crime (Porter and Graycar 423). As such, both types of crime prevention ensures that crime anchor points are addressed to create an environment that deters crime.

In conclusion, although people may use the words community crime prevention and problem-oriented policing interchangeably, the two have differences. Specifically, whereas community crime prevention focuses on the entirely of the community in the prevention of crime, problem-oriented policing focuses on special underlying problems in a community and hence adopt targeted crime anchor points. However, both forms of community policing ensure that more attention is paid to crime anchor points through different measures that increase monitoring and deter any criminal activities from happening.