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9 Criminology & Pub. Pol'y 183 (2010)
Whither Problem-Oriented Policing

handle is hein.journals/crpp9 and id is 185 raw text is: POLICY ESSAY PROBLEM-ORIENTED POLICING Whither problem-oriented policing Nick Tilley University College London Herman Goldstein's (1979, 1990) vision of problem-oriented policing (POP) has not been difficult to sell, at least in principle, and in the 30 years since he first mooted it many scholars and police agencies have bought into it. POP promises a move away from managerial priorities, standardized (and often ineffective) ways of working, and law enforcement as an end in itself It focuses instead on relevant community concerns, the open- minded pursuit of ethical and effective solutions to recurrent problems, and attention to results to learn better how to deal with similar problems in the future. It also suggests an efficient and effective way of handling heavy demands on police time, by resolving problems rather than simply by responding to them incident by incident. The idea of focusing on real recurrent problems, working out why they have persisted despite conventional responses, analyzing their underlying sources, figuring out what might be done to ameliorate or remove them on the basis of that analysis, and then checking whether the strategy has produced its expected benefits, seems like plain common sense. Who could disagree? POP is also appealing because of its associations with evidence-based practice and with the application of scientific methods to deal with real community problems (Laycock, 2004). POP's core concern is with what works practically to deal with specific problems, whether the response is delivered by the police or some other agency or both, provided that what works is also ethical. It eschews the authority of tradition, convention or superstition. It comprises a thoroughly modern approach to policing. POP has been widely attempted on both sides of the Atlantic. In the United States many police agencies have adopted it (Scott, 2000). In the United Kingdom it has also been popular (Read and Tilley, 2000), albeit that following the Crime and Disorder Act (1998), which has broadened the responsibility for crime and disorder to a range of local agencies beyond the police, the second P now generally refers to partnership rather than policing. The thinking Karen Bullock, Gloria Laycock, and Aiden Sidebottom kindly read and commented on earlier versions of this essay. Their help is gratefully acknowledged. Direct correspondence to NickTilley, Department of Security and Crime Science, University College London, Second Floor Brook House, 16 Torrington Place, London WC1 E 7HN, United Kingdom (e-mail: n.tilley@ucl.ac.uk). © 2010 American Society of Criminology 183 Criminology d Public Policy * Volume 9 * Issue 1