Description
There are some expected and unexpected perils in writing scholarly books. If the issue one picks is of no interest to scholars and professionals, the book may remain obscure and will not find a wide readership. There is, however, the dubious advantage of having the possibility of contributing to a breakthrough in the field. If, on the other hand, the topic of preference is one that is well-discussed and has been extensively researched and written about it, benefiting from the availability of considerable reference material may yet have the impact of, well, just another book.
Apparently, such considerations are secondary in the areas of art and science where writers and creative artists are, in fact, well- trained in producing dissertations that have the shelf life of three to five readers (depending on the size of the doctoral committee) or attempting to add some unknown layers to scientific knowledge by succumbing to the publish-or-perish rules of university life and producing, at times, some impact-laden products. The topic of community policing is certainly one on which a plethora of publications exist, so my challenge in this case was to make a contribution to the mountain that is already there. This is import- ant for adding meaningful knowledge to scholars, planners and practitioners alike. I am not pretentious in terms of offering new theories in policing, or delineating new programmes. Rather, the book is more of a consolidated after thought that attempts to put the vast amount of experiments, experiences, plans and concepts relevant to community policing into some meaningful framework to assist in placing what we know into a reasonably well- proportioned perspective. The book is intended for the scholar who is interested in community policing, for students of police and community and for the police professionals (ranking officers, planners and officers alike). Admittedly, this is not a 'cookbook which offers appealing detailed recipes or prescriptions to improve policing in someone's approaching shift. Rather, it is an attempt to provide perspective, context and guidance, and as such make reflective sense of what community policing is and what it could and even should be. The book also points to what community policing is not and what should not be expected of it. In this sense it should be as valuable to the police professional as it is to the academic reader.
ISBN: 9780745012605
