Policing” , it is a Criminal Justice course offered at Athabasca University . I will upload the questions and course material. You can use as many references as you want, as long as it is academically acceptable .
Journal Exercise 1
ASSIGNMENT
Journal Exercise 1
Your journal exercises are worth 15% of your total mark.
Instructions
For Journal Exercise 1, you are to write a journal entry that answers only one (1) of the two questions given below. Your journal entry should be about 250 words, written in paragraph form. Submit your completed journal entry as an MS Word document through this online drop box.
Topic
A. The assigned readings in Unit 1 provide key insight into the initial development and growth of the London Metropolitan Police in the early 1800s. In the first assigned reading, J. L. Lyman opens discussion with the following statement:
The Metropolitan Police Act of 1829 introduced a centralized and unified system of police in England. The Act constituted a revolution in traditional methods of law enforcement. (Lyman, 1964, p. 141)
In the second assigned reading, Susan Lentz and Robert Chaires illustrate the prevalence of social chaos in industrial-era England and the government’s approach to creating a formal police organization under the guidance of Sir Robert Peel.
Once you have read both articles, think about Peel’s principles and their original purpose. Many police agencies continue to make reference to these principles. Keeping in mind that these principles were created more than 170 years ago, are they still relevant in a post-industrial society?
B. Arthur Woods served as Commissioner of the New York Police Department from 1914 to 1918. His efforts to involve the police in a community-oriented approach to crime prevention were recorded in Raymond Fosdick’s American Police Systems, written in 1920, just before the beginning of the Reform era.
Read the four excerpts that follow below and comment on the social responsibilities of the NYPD as mandated by Commissioner Woods from 1914 to 1918. Then ask yourself what might have been lost in the subsequent movement to “professionalize” police agencies like the NYPD. Note Fosdick’s belief in the necessity of police and community partnerships to attack the root causes of crime and to work collaboratively to reduce crime.
1. Community Involvement
The plan of Christmas parties in the precinct station houses for the children of the neighborhood was adopted in New York in 1915 and was followed in other cities, notably in Detroit. Lists of children were made up by precinct commanding officers through information furnished to them by patrolmen on post. As far as possible these lists were composed of children who would not otherwise be provided for on Christmas day. . . . The station houses were decorated and each had a large Christmas tree. Instead of prisoners, the cells contained holly and toys and fruit. On Christmas day the stations were filled with happy mothers and laughing children instead of the usual procession of deserted mothers and crying children. The police captain in each precinct acted as Santa Claus and the program of entertainment frequently was run in shifts to take care of all the children in the neighborhood.
Over 40,000 children were entertained in this fashion in New York during the Christmas of 1916. As one beaming, perspiring patrolman said to Commissioner Woods: “Well, Commissioner, I believe those kids will believe now, when we tell ’em to cut out hitching on wagons, that it’s a friend that’s talking!”
(Fosdick, 1920, p. 370)
2. Crime Prevention
One further method of socializing the relations of the police department with the children was developed by Commissioner Woods in the institution of so-called “welfare officers.” In January 1917, ten precincts were selected for this experiment, a carefully chosen patrolman being assigned in each precinct with the single duty of looking after boys and girls who seemed to be going wrong. “Think of the gain to the city,” said Commissioner Woods, “if we can take a boy who would otherwise become a burglar, who has started to master that profession, and turn him into a self-respecting, self-supporting citizen. That is what these welfare officers are working for.” Gradually the system was extended until 47 precincts were covered. By the end of 1917, 9,300 cases had been investigated and some action had been taken in each instance. These cases often involved truancy and were frequently the result of destitute home conditions that could be corrected by enlisting the aid of some private welfare association . . . in only two per cent of cases was it found necessary to make arrests. The solution of the difficulty was obtained sometimes by the mere friendship of a big brother policeman, sometimes by connecting the child with the home through the authoritative but kindly influence of a man in uniform.
(Fosdick, 1920, p. 371)
3. Police and Partnerships
Police work cannot be isolated from other welfare agencies of the community concerned with social problems. It cannot be divorced from all the organized influences that are working for better conditions in city life. Indeed unless the police are in a position to invoke the cooperation of schools, clinics, churches and other public and private institutions to supplement repression and if possible to supplant it with education and diversion, they cannot effectively handle the task which society has given them. The new policing demands a type of officer interested and trained in social service. With representatives of this character the police department should presently be able to stimulate every other community agency in dealing aggressively with untoward community conditions.
(Fosdick, 1920, p. 373)
4. Root Causes of Crime
The average police department is still too much merely an agency of law enforcement, divorced from responsibility for the causes of crime. Its energies are consumed in defensive measures, in efforts to correct the manifestations of crime rather than attack its roots. So long as this is the case, the policeman will continue to represent . . . the city’s bewildered and futile attempt to beat back the spasmodic outcroppings of disorder which are continually in process of manufacture in the inner currents of city life.
(Fosdick, 1920, p. 356)
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