Integrating Eastern Programme Features in Western Community Policing: Balancing Individual Freedom and Collective Wellbeing
| Author | Richard Lumb,Yumin R. Wang |
| DOI | 10.1350/ijps.2012.14.4.287 |
| Published date | 01 December 2012 |
| Date | 01 December 2012 |
| Subject Matter | Paper |
Integrating Eastern programme features in
Western community policing: balancing
individual freedom and collective
wellbeing
Yumin R. Wang†and Richard Lumb‡
†(Corresponding author) Department of Social Work, Meiho University, Taiwan, 23 Ping-
Kuang Rd., Nei-pu, Pingtung 912, Taiwan. Tel: +011 886 8 779 0501 or +011 886 987 696
768; email: authorwang57@gmail.com
‡Department of Criminal Justice, SUNY Brockport, Wilton, ME 04294, USA
Submitted 10 October 2011; revision submitted 18 June 2012; accepted
21 July 2012
Keywords: community policing, koban, politics and policing, communism,
terrorism
Yumin R. Wang
completed his doctorate degree
at the School of Criminal Justice, SUNY at
Albany. He was an assistant professor of the
Department of Criminal Justice, SUNY Brockport
and the Department of Police Administration,
Keimyung University (Korea). He currently serves
as an associate professor of the Department of
Social Work, Meiho University (Taiwan). Prior to
that career, he served as a police officer and a
police lieutenant in three departments of the
National Police Agency of Taiwan.
Richard Lumb
completed his doctorate degree
at Florida State University. He is a former asso-
ciate professor at the University of North Caro-
lina Charlotte and Emeritus Associate Professor
and Chair at SUNY Brockport, both in Criminal
Justice. Prior to that career, he was a police
officer and Chief of Police in two departments.
A
BSTRACT
The community policing innovation was con-
ceptualised on the basis of the Japanese koban
system. It was introduced to the USA to demo-
cratise policing. However, the Empire of Japan
initially learned modern policing from Western
countries. In collaboration with the intelligence
services, koban community policing effectively
prevented crime as well as anti-government activ-
ities. The strategy was successfully replicated in
Taiwan and Korea, the two colonies of Japan
before World War II. The koban system has been
transformed to become a strategy that delivers
police services to citizens and simultaneously
sustains national security while collaborating with
the intelligence services. Western community
policing programmes intensify police service deliv-
ery to citizens. In the post-9/11 era, the influ-
ence of federal law enforcement has expanded to
include a collaborative and occasionally super-
seding role. If balancing individual freedom and
collective wellbeing becomes possible in Western
countries, Eastern community policing models
may serve to enlighten the path in this quest.
INTRODUCTION
In his book Forces of Order, Bayley (1976)
compared policing in Japan and the USA,
and determined the reform agenda mani-
festing the importance of involving the
community in crime-campaign endeavours.
It has been three decades since the debut of
International Journal of Police Science & Management Volume 14 Number 4
International Journal of Police
Science and Management,
Vol. 14 No. 4, 2012, pp. 343–361.
DOI: 10.1350/ijps.2012.14.4.287
Page 343
that innovation in the USA, which subse-
quently became prevalent across the world.
While attention has generally been paid
to the service orientation of the strategy
that denotes most of the programmes
implemented in the West, few have cared
about how it was variously provided in
communities in the East. Literature exam-
ining the difference has been absent.
Research can be attempted taking a political
perspective because both eastern and west-
ern hemispheres, policing has been a means
of serving the political purposes of the
government in different ways.
This study scrutinises how citizens living in
Eastern and Western societies where there
are community policing programmes are
policed and served. Moreover, it discusses
the features of community policing in the
East that can be integrated in the West to
promote effectiveness.
Politics and policing
The political system of a country deter-
mines how its government interacts with its
citizens, which, in turn, influences how
communities are policed. The particularity
of the social milieu in which police across
the world operate causes forces to differ
from one another in many characteristic
ways (Bayley, 1977). Environmental change,
especially when it comes to transforming
the political system of a country, contri-
butes to the evolution of its policing.
Early in the last century, when modern
police forces were in place, Fosdick (1915)
observed the British police:
In Great Britain the police are the ser-
vant of the community. Their official
existence would be impossible if their
acts persistently ran counter to the
expressed wishes of the people . . . A
policeman has no right superior to that
of a private person in making arrest or
asking questions or compelling the
attendance of witnesses. (pp. 28–29)
Flynt (1903) described the residents of
London at that time:
The mass of the inhabitants are law-
observing citizens who not only make
every effort not to break the law them-
selves, but who also take a friendly
interest in helping the police to carry out
their orders. (p. 438)
Across the Atlantic, there appeared a sig-
nificantly different world of policing. ‘In
New York it is a notorious fact that superior
officers, as well as patrolmen, have taken a
very active part in electioneering.’ By con-
trast, in London, ‘when a policeman is
caught electioneering, or in any way mak-
ing use of his office for political purposes,
he is discharged from the force instanter’
(Flynt, 1903, p. 449).
Politics has long been involved in Amer-
ican policing. As early as 1910, in advocat-
ing police professionalisation, Richard
Sylvester, the chief of police of Washington
DC, made the point that ‘in order to carry
effect this system the department must be
free from political appointments or control,
and, aside from having and expressing
opinion, the men should not be permitted
to participate in politics’ (Sylvester, 1910,
p. 413). The endeavour has not been fruit-
ful, however, because in the USA, as
McBain (1921) points out, ‘the police func-
tion is not simply a matter of technical
administration’. Moreover, ‘politics will play
with and upon the American police func-
tion as long as it is possible for elected
officers to apply varying policies in the
matter of law enforcement by the police’
(pp. 143, 144).
Chaney and Saltzstein (1998) argue that
the police have always been bureaucratic
subordinates of their political superiors in
government. The arrest of domestic vio-
lence abusers, for example, is mainly a deci-
sion made under the influence of the local
politics where the police department is
Integrating Eastern programme features in Western community policing
Page 344
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