Reaction Paper 3

Submitted By tonicooper
Words: 692
Pages: 3

What is the best style of policing that we have talked about in this class?

There are three types of policing that we have talked about in this class. They are the Watchman style, the Legalistic style and the service style. In my opinion the Legalistic style is the best type of policing that is practiced today. The three types of policing are watchman, legalistic, and service. According to Wikipedia the “watchman style emphasizes maintaining order, usually found in communities with a declining industrial base, and a blue-collar, mixed ethnic/racial population. This form of policing is implicitly less pro-active than other styles, and certain offenses may be "overlooked" on a variety of social, legal, and cultural grounds, as long as the public order is maintained. Smith and Cole comment the broad discretion exercised in this style of policing can result in charges of discrimination, when it appears police treatment of different groups results in the perception that some groups get better treatment than others.” “The legalistic style emphasizes law enforcement and professionalism. This is usually found in reform-minded cities, with mixed socioeconomic composition. Officers are expected to generate a large number of arrests and citations, and act as if there were a single community standard for conduct, rather than different standards for different groups. However, the fact that certain groups are more likely to have law enforcement contact means this strict enforcement of laws may seem overly harsh on certain groups.” “The service style emphasizes the service functions of police work, usually found in suburban, middle-class communities where residents demand individual treatment. Police in homogeneous communities can view their work as protecting their citizens against "outsiders", with frequent but often-informal interventions against community members. The uniform make-up of the community means crimes are usually more obvious, and therefore less frequent, leaving police free to deal with service functions, and traffic control.” In my opinion not a single one of these methods are better than the others. All of the styles have their advantages as well as their disadvantages. The watchman style seems to be very politically ran. It should not matter what race or ethnicity someone is. If a white person commits a crime they should get the same punishment as a black, Hispanic, Asian, Korean, and so on. A crime should not be overlooked because of someones social status, money, race, ethnicity, or any other reason. The only advantage that I can see with the watchman style is that public order is maintained. The legalistic style is the most sensible of the three styles to me. Legalistic has a few downfalls but overall looks