Problem-Oriented Policing

The Basic Premises Underlying Problem-Oriented Policing

Problem-oriented policing builds upon some basic lessons learned about policing over the past several decades. Among the most critical of those lessons are the following:

• The function of the police is, and always has been, much broader than merely enforcing criminal laws. Police are expected to address a wide range of community problems that threaten public safety and order. Enforcement of the criminal law, often thought to be the basic purpose of the police, is better understood as but one means to achieving the ends of public safety and order.
• The police exercise a tremendous amount of discretion, at all levels of their hierarchy, in carrying out their function. Problem-oriented policing represents a significant effort to harness and guide that discretion toward more effective and fair policing.
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• The police, as an institution, operate not merely as the front end of the criminal justice system, but as a key institution in a web of social institutions that share responsibility for providing for public safety and order. Problem-oriented policing encourages police to collaborate both within and outside the criminal justice system to address public safety problems.
• For various reasons, the police have been compelled to rely excessively on the criminal justice system as a means for addressing crime and disorder. The overuse and misuse of the criminal law has contributed to major problems in policing. Problem-oriented policing promotes the use of alternatives to arrest as a means of addressing problems.
• Police have long used formal and informal alternatives to criminal arrest to address problems, but the use of those alternatives has not always been officially sanctioned or even acknowledged. Police officers have long been left to improvise in situations where the use of criminal law is inadequate. Problem-oriented policing stresses the importance of giving formal sanction to legitimate alternative methods of dealing with problems.
• The main strategies employed by the police—rapid response to citizen calls for service, criminal investigation, and random preventive patrol—have proven far more limited in their capacity to provide for the public's safety than commonly believed. Consequently, although these strategies remain important aspects of police service, they are insufficient for achieving the entire police mission. Problem-oriented policing acknowledges the practical limitations of these main strategies while capitalizing on their benefits. It urges police to explore a much wider range of responses to problems beyond the conventional strategies.
• Police managers and others who shape police policy and practice have become preoccupied with the administration of police organizations to the exclusion of focusing on how police organizations can best deliver services to address public safety problems and meet community needs. Problem-ori-ented policing serves as a corrective to this means-over-ends syndrome.
• Line-level police officers, as well as community members, have a reservoir of knowledge, talent, and resources that can be better tapped by police managers for understanding and responding to public safety problems. Problem-oriented policing promotes new styles of working relationships between the police and the public, and between police management and line officers—relationships that can make better use of line officers and community members than have conventional police management approaches.

These and other conclusions helped form a much more realistic understanding of the police institution, with all its flaws and limitations, than existed before. It was upon this foundation of knowledge that problem-oriented policing was built.

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