Police patrol work in the Netherlands

Foreword Summary 1. Introduction 1.1 The importance of what police officers do 1.2 Relevance of information about police patrol work 1.3 Positioning of present-day patrol work: a short history 1.4 The implementation of the organizational concept ‘community policing’ 1.5 A parallel development: the formation of regions 1.6 Research questions and structure of this study 2. A description of the cities involved and the methods of research 2.1 A brief sketch of the four cities 2.2 Official police strength in the four cities 2.3 Official organisation of the basic police work in the four cities 2.4 A look at police patrol work 2.5 Study method, implementation and data 3. Emergency Patrol 3.1 What is involved in police patrol work 3.2 Initiative to take action 3.3 Knowledge of the people in the neighbourhood 3.4 The outcome of incidents 3.5 Emergency patrol … more than incidents? 4. Community Policing 4.1 What is involved in community policing patrol work 4.2 Initiative to take action 4.3 Knowing the people in the neighbourhood 4.4 The outcome of incidents: community beat officers and repressive action 4.5 Community policing … a structural approach to problems? 5. Emergency patrol and community policing in context 5.1 Intrinsic differences and similarities 5.2 Cooperation 5.3 Community beat officers and autonomy 5.4 Conclusions about emergency patrol and community policing in 2001 6. Changes since the nineties 6.1 Introduction: the available material 6.2 Changes in emergency patrol work: observations 6.3 Officers about the changes since 1991 6.4 Conclusion 7. Patrol work: main features, explanations – management 7.1 Introduction 7.2 International patterns in patrol work 7.3 What determines what police officers do 7.4 A conceptual model for police patrol work 7.5 Discussion: implications for management and controlling the police Bibliography Appendix This book is about police patrol work, especially emergency patrol and community policing in The Netherlands. The authors first give an empirical based picture of everyday policing and then examine one of the core problems of policing: the question what determines what is involved in police patrol work. Although the fieldwork is carried out in The Netherlands, this study also is of importance for policing in other countries. By looking across borders, we do not only learn about policing in a foreign country but we also learn what are the distinctive characteristics of policing in our home country. Furthermore, the authors explicitly place their findings in an international context by comparing their observations with research that has been carried out in Belgium, Sweden, Germany, Denmark, Canada and the United States. Based on their findings the authors provide the reader with an empirical grounded explanation model that can be used by police chiefs to better understand what is effective in police management as well as by social scientists to design future research.