The following article discusses the subject of police community engagement, including the current government’s plan for improving current community policing practices and eight actionable ways to improve community engagement with police.
Why Is It Important For Police To Engage With Their Community?
Community engagement has been an important practice within policing since at least the early nineteenth century, when British statesman Robert Peel first created the “Principles of Democratic Policing”. It is only in recent decades however, that the idea of “policing by consent” has become integral to the way police forces across the UK conduct themselves on a day to day basis.
Effective community engagement has shown significant positive outcomes for policing including:
- Reducing crime rates, particularly antisocial behaviour and disorder;
- Challenging and changing attitudes of police towards their communities;
- Vastly improving the amount of trust the public has in the police,
- Feeling of community safety
The overwhelming evidence is that police forces are more effective and better received when they engage in community-oriented policing. In fact, officers often feel that constructive dialogue and discussion about local policing issues with the public are one of the most important components of effective local policing. However, many police forces find themselves struggling to enact good practices with limited budgets and resources.
The Government’s Planned Police Reforms
In the summer, the new government promised a number of changes in policing aimed at restoring trust in the police and improving feelings of safety and security within communities. In December 2024, the Prime Minister announced further reforms with the aim of prioritising community policing, including giving each English and Welsh neighbourhood a named and contactable police officer.
Other pledges made by the new government include specific commitments to giving “local people a say in how their local area is policed” and “ensuring the path to career progression in policing is through getting to know your community”.
It is clear that there is currently a renewed interest and commitment to community engagement in policing within government. This move has been generally well received by local councils and police and crime commissioners.
Speaking on the recent commitments to boost local police officers, Gwent PCC Jane Mudd said:
“I welcome the commitment from the UK government to recruit more officers and enable police forces to direct more resources specifically towards neighbourhood policing.”
Yet there is still considerable variation between areas in how and to what degree community policing is currently being approached. Although the extra resources for community relations and engagement promised to police forces in recent months has been widely commended, many forces struggle to find actionable examples of community engagement that they can immediately put into practice within their area.
What Are Some Examples Of Effective Police Community Engagement?
Here are eight examples of good practice in community policing, many of which can be put in place quickly and effectively:
1. Increasing The Number Of Public Consultations
Public consultations are vital to the principle of “policing by consent” and every police force in the UK participates in public consultations to some extent.
In fact, engaging in public consultations has been a legal requirement for police forces in England and Wales since 2011. This law recognises that the public must be informed of current policing activity and consulted on what they would like to see done in their communities moving forward.
Public meetings and statutory consultations on local policing models and strategies are common across the country, but their frequency and context vary significantly between areas. The most powerful innovation in recent years has been a push for public consultations to move online, as this has greatly reduced the amount of time and resources a given police force needs to devote to the task. Crucially, it also has the effect of drawing what is often a larger and more diverse group of people into the process, who may not otherwise have been willing or able to participate.
2. Implementing Citizen Juries And Assemblies
Citizen juries have been a popular tool for community engagement and policy-making since they were first introduced in 1996.
The purpose of a citizen jury – where members of the public are (usually randomly) selected to participate in a discussion and debate on a particular topic – is to closely link local voices with the decisions that are made on their behalf. In the UK, it has been used effectively to make decisions in areas such as healthcare and environmental action.
So, what is the difference between a citizen jury and a citizen assembly? Citizen assemblies followed later, and are run in a very similar fashion. However, they tend to have fewer participants and a tighter timeline, which could be ideal for a police force wishing to consult on specific local issues.
The process of implementing a citizen jury or assembly is as simple as identifying an issue that would benefit from deliberation from community members, deciding on a timescale and size that fits the issue and the capacity of the force, and recruiting a group of people that reflect the diversity within the community they are representing.
3. Using Digital Engagement For Community Policing
Both of the methods already discussed can and often are run in a digital environment. But there are also methods of digital engagement that are unique to an online environment that police forces have been taking advantage of for a number of years now.
A social media presence, for example, can be an effective way of informing the public of the day to day activities of police in their area. It is often a way to showcase the friendlier aspects of policing, where members of the public and the police have engaged in a positive manner to a widely beneficial outcome such as making roads safer, reducing anti-social behaviour, and ensuring the safety and success of community events.
4. Using Surveys For Engagement
Social media alone, however, isn’t necessarily the best way to engage members of the public online. A survey in 2018 found that more than double the amount of people who would engage with police social media would instead share their views via an online survey.
This year in Surrey, over 1300 citizens responded to a survey on antisocial behaviour. Speaking on the effect of the online survey, Joanna Grimshaw, head of ASB and Partnerships at Surrey police said:
“The results of this year’s survey will help us to look at what needs to be done in the coming year to enhance our work where they feel they are not being listened to.”
5. Police Prioritisation And Targeting Effectively
What should the police prioritise?
Violent crime, or finding missing people? Helping those in mental distress or addressing anti-social behaviour? Preventative measures and increased presence? Or following leads on crimes committed?
These are all questions that both the government and individual police forces have to regularly re-evaluate in the face of a changing world and limited resources.
Prioritising community policing is the concept of policing according to what the public feels is most important, rather than according to preconceived notions and norms. There are some limits to this, where the need for certain kinds of policing may not be immediately obvious to members of the public, but is nonetheless important for public safety or adhering to existing laws. But generally speaking, transparency is the best policy when it comes to what the police prioritise.
Police prioritisation can also help identify areas that are ‘high risk’. By identifying trends in places and times that people have felt unsafe or crimes have been committed using surveys and geospatial mapping, police can more effectively prioritise where to send officers, allowing resources to be used efficiently and greatly increasing public reassurance.
6. Using Participatory Budgeting To Engage
Participatory budgeting is another example of how that prioritisation can be used to engage local communities. Participatory budgeting allows the public to be given say over how some public money is spent. Generally speaking, participatory budgeting takes a popular proposal for a specific project from a community, and puts aside public funding to pursue it.
For the police, it may be something like wanting more money to be put towards addressing anti-social behaviour, or littering in the town centre, or outreach in local schools. Giving the community the opportunity to affect change within policing is crucial to effective policing and building community confidence.
When the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) faced budget cuts and 17% fewer officers, they used Simulator to see how residents would spend the PSNI budget, and share what they thought the impact of that would be. They received over 4000 submissions, and greatly increased both their understanding of what the public valued, and the understanding the public had of the difficult choices PSNI had to make.
7. Increasing Community Liaison Roles
Roles for liaison officers are likely to be on the rise in coming months. The announcement that each neighbourhood will soon have a named police officer demonstrates an increased focus on relationships between local communities and the police.
Liaison roles are vital to building and maintaining trust with the public, often forming a significant part of the bridge between communities and police. Community liaison roles are often taken by members of specific groups or diverse communities, like members of the LGBTQ+ community or from specific nationalities or religious groups that are common in the area. Representation and inclusivity within the police, particularly within public-facing roles, fosters a greater trust between the police and communities that may not otherwise have a positive perception of policing.
8. Holding Open Days
An open day is often associated with recruitment within policing, but some constabularies have had great success by holding open days aimed at demonstrating their day to day work to the public
In Kent, more than 18,000 people attended their open day last year, including dedicated visits from local schools and a day open to the wider community. Young people can be particularly engaged by opportunities to engage in the “fun side” of police work, like seeing how police dogs are trained, sitting inside police helicopters, and trying their hands at detective work.
However, open days can be an outreach tool for adults too. By having the opportunity to speak with police, staff and volunteers in an informal and relaxed setting, members of the community can interact with the police in a positive way. This can change potentially negative perceptions, as well as being a valuable educational tool that demonstrates exactly what their local police do.
There are of course countless other ways to approach proactive community engagement, and there is no “one size fits all” solution to community policing. The above are just common strategies that have already been successfully implemented across the country, which can – with accessible and inclusive digital tools – easily be fine-tuned to fit the needs of a specific community.
What is clear is that community engagement can make a big difference to the experience communities have with police, and what police have of their communities. We expect that there will be a great focus on community engagement strategies in police forces across the country in the years ahead.
