In recent decades, especially in the US, one of the main aims of the police department is to reduce the fear of crime? Why are they emphasizing so much on reducing the fear of crime? There are many plausible reasons for that. Firstly, it is the responsibility of the state to ensure that citizens feel protected and have a sense of security. They should be free to move and enjoy the protections. Apart from this basic reason, the need to reduce fear of crime has many socio-political and economic advantages. The fear of crime has a major impact on reducing the mobility of the people and making certain decisions about their living and doing the job. The presence of fear will have deleterious impacts on the lives of people and their minds. In many ways, they will certainly consider moving towards a safe place. As a result, community development and advancement will be hindered. Moreover, if people do not feel safe, it will directly impact the development of the nation in many ways. The participation in furthering the political and economic development of the nation will be lowered and minuscule. Besides this, reducing fear is and should be the responsibility of the police. It should be acknowledged that they are there so that citizens feel safe and protected. It means that reducing the fear of crime is equally, if not more, important than reducing the crime itself actually. Furthermore, the two policies tend to complement each other. The fear will be reduced when there will be actual endeavors to practically reduce crime and make society a better place to live. Reduced fear of crime is inevitably linked to reducing the crime itself. Yet, given the need to protect citizens and ensure development, the police department will endeavor to reduce the fear of crime.
In recent years, the community policing model has been introduced. The model has been successfully implemented in California and can be replicated in other parts of the country. The model builds a liaison between the law-enforcement agencies and communities to curb the crime rate. It has different features such as that builds and strengthens the relationship of trust between people and police. Due to trust relationships, people respond to people about crimes and help them to apprehend criminals. Yet, the apt feature of this model is that it encourages the community to make any criminal or would-be criminal aware of the consequences of any offense. In this way, the person is deterred from committing any crime. Along with this, the strategy has the more constructive feature of providing jobs to youth and people so that they cannot be motivated towards crime. Yet there are questions: is the model should be the only method to reduce crime? Can it be effective in virtually eliminating the crime? Given the fact, some underlying causes that prompt crimes are not eliminated, can it be effective in that sense? It has been seen that poor social and economic prospects are some of the main reasons for engendering crime, so how will the model cope with these loopholes? Well, is there a need to introduce more changes to the model to make it effective in the long term? All these questions are pertinent if the crime is to be reduced. No doubt that the community has to build a trusted relationship between the law enforcement agencies and people, but in the broader term, it should move beyond that point to take a holistic approach to curb the crime rate. This can only be ensured by making a thorough research on the above question, analyzing the implementation of models and the results achieved.
There are many crime prevention programs that have been launched. One of the programs that were introduced in our community was rehabilitation products for drug addicts. The program has multiple approaches. It has taken a different approach to ensure that people, especially youth can be deprived of this heinous habit. Firstly, it ensured that people were to be admitted to rehabilitation centers. Here, they are given education and are taught the ill –effects. Their mental health is ensured. Most important of all is that they are given different courses to make them skilled workers. They are taught and given courses in different fields which make them self-reliant and bolster their economic prospects. In this way, it indirectly reduces the probabilities for the crime. The program was effective because it shunned punitive measures, that are conventionally employed, and relied on a more visionary approach.