Relational continuity in community policing: Insights from a human-centred design perspective

Signori, Roberta; Heinrich, Dagmar P; Wootton, Andrew; Davey, Caroline

Abstract

Community policing prioritises building positive relationships between police officers and local communities. The approach focuses on working with communities to identify and address the causes of crime and disorder, rather than just reacting to calls for service. Officer’s continuity in community policing has been a concern, with calls for greater consistency in the posting of officers to local neighbourhoods. Through the Cutting Crime Impact (CCI) project, Greater Manchester Police (GMP) identified that when community police officers leave their post, knowledge and relationships they've built with the community are lost. This jeopardises citizens' trust and perceptions of the police. To preserve the important connections that community policing officers build in their neighbourhoods, GMP adopted a human-centred design approach to research and develop a novel handover protocol. This work has enabled development of a conceptual framework for 'relational continuity' in community policing, inspired by research into therapeutic relationships in health care disciplines.

Citation

Signori, R., Heinrich, D. P., Wootton, A., & Davey, C. (2023). Relational continuity in community policing: Insights from a human-centred design perspective. Policing, 17, https://doi.org/10.1093/police/paad038

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Jun 13, 2023
• Online Publication Date: Jun 30, 2023
• Publication Date: Jun 30, 2023
• Deposit Date: Jul 4, 2023
• Publicly Available Date: Jul 4, 2023
• Journal: Policing: A Journal of Policy and Practice
• Print ISSN: 1752-4512
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 17
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/police/paad038
• Keywords: Law