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Assimilation of child protection strategies in contemporary community policing efforts
Abstract
Since the first acknowledgment of child abuse as a social concern three decades ago, policymakers and others concerned with child welfare have struggled to fashion an appropriate response to the problem. Beset by fundamental differences of opinion as to underlying causes and plagued by the complexity of the phenomenon, child welfare policy historically has been lacking in direction and focus. In recent years scholars and policymakers have called for a child-centered, family-focused, neighborhood-based child protection strategy that targets multiple systems affecting children and families. During the 1960s as government officials in the United States were becoming aware that the official response to child abuse was inadequate, police policy analysts were discovering that the reactive, crime-control orientation that characterized most law enforcement agencies also was lacking. Denominated variously, for example, as problem-oriented policing and community policing, a new trend in policing developed. This movement emphasized neighborhood-base strategies focused on specific problems. Because law enforcement is one of the major institutions involved in the child protection effort, these contemporaneous developments toward more neighborhood-based and community-oriented approaches have paved the way conceptually for increased integration of child protection efforts into policing strategies. This is especially important because the police historically have been reluctant participants in efforts toward child protection. To assess the extent to which child protection efforts have been incorporated into community policing strategies, surveys were mailed to 200 law enforcement agencies in the State of Texas. The agencies surveyed employ approximately 73% of all sworn peace officers in the state. Results suggest that law enforcement agencies in Texas have implemented a variety of innovative policing programs, but that these programs fail to incorporate child protection efforts and fail to meet formal definitional criteria for community policing. Thus, notwithstanding their philosophical similarity in approach and their coterminous substantive foci, child protection efforts and community policing efforts are evolving along parallel but separate lines.
Subject Area
Psychotherapy|Welfare|Families & family life|Personal relationships|Sociology|Criminology
Recommended Citation
Lyons, Phillip Mitchell, "Assimilation of child protection strategies in contemporary community policing efforts" (1997). ETD collection for University of Nebraska-Lincoln. AAI9720840.
https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/dissertations/AAI9720840