Recommendations for Integrating Compstat and Community Policing

Community policing and Compstat are two of the most popular policing reforms in the USA and abroad, but little attention has been paid to how these reforms work together when implemented in the same police organization and whether they could be more fully integrated. Using fieldwork data from site visits to seven police agencies in the USA, this paper addresses this issue. Our principal finding that these reforms operated largely independently suggested to us that there were opportunities for making them work more closely with one another in ways that promise greater benefits than having them operate separately. We provide an empirical basis for the paper’s major purpose, namely to make four key recommendations for integration. The primary purpose of our proposals is to challenge policy makers, practitioners, and scholars to reconsider the current relationship between Compstat and community policing and conceive of more innovative approaches to their co-implementation.

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