effects of socioeconomic, political, and organizational factors on the implementation of community policing: A conceptual framework for an innovative policy

Community policing has emerged as the philosophical foundation for a new paradigm in American policing calling for police and community residents to work jointly in identifying and solving neighborhood problems. As an example of an innovative public policy, community policing implementation may be affected by a number of factors. This dissertation synthesized what is known about innovation in public policy and community policing. It examined how certain socioeconomic, political, and organizational factors affect and predict innovativeness in policy formulation and explored their effects on its implementation. It has implications for law enforcement agencies that have already adopted community policing and may serve as a resource to those deciding whether to begin implementation. Data reflecting the structure and organization of police departments, the nature and extent of local community policing implementation, citizen response to police activities, socioeconomic characteristics of the service area, and the local political environment were collected from 151 police departments across the United States and the local governments representing their jurisdictions. Results of the correlational, regression, and cross-tabulation analyses showed that among the socioeconomic variables, race emerged as the most interesting in relation to community policing implementation. Specifically, as the proportion of white residents increased, implementation decreased. Conversely, as the proportion of black residents increased, implementation also increased. Political variables had little relation to community policing implementation. Organizational factors made the greatest contribution to community policing processes. Reducing the ratio of administrative to patrol personnel, increasing the ratio of line to staff, making personnel more generalist than specialist, and having adequate policies and procedures to insure accountability all had a positive effect on community policing implementation. The study concluded that because the three categories of factors are so interwoven in producing innovation, the power of any of them to predict where and to what degree innovative policies will be implemented was limited. Overall, despite the fact that community policing as an innovative policy deviated in some areas, it was largely consistent with established innovation theory.