6 - Solving problems

Summary

Introduction

Problem-solving was the third of the main ‘mechanisms’ identified through the early pilots of reassurance and then neighbourhood policing. As seen in Chapter 3, the results of the National Reassurance Policing Programme (NRPP) showed that problem-solving could make a big difference to communities, particularly if they were involved in the process, or if the problem was rooted in anti-social behaviour (Tuffin et al, 2006). Problemsolving was adopted as one of the three central processes of the new Neighbourhood Policing Programme in 2005.

‘Problem-solving’ as a model of policing has a longer history. Models of problem-oriented policing (POP) were developed in the US in the 1970s and 1980s to encourage forces to move away from reactive responses to crime, and instead consider more proactive work. This was intended to encourage police to think of the ‘unit’ of police activities as problems, rather than crimes (Goldstein, 1979). This pre-dated the move towards community policing; and indeed, the early prescriptions for POP had little requirement for community input.

The new neighbourhoods thrust in the UK, by contrast, did insist that communities be involved. Problem-solving was intended to be an integrated process involving police and other agencies as well as local communities, at every step of the process. However, ensuring this happened in practice was more difficult. Not only did the early evaluations suggest that problemsolving activity might take longer to establish, and to ‘cut through’ with residents than other elements of neighbourhood policing (Quinton and Morris, 2008), there have been repeated accounts of difficulties with problem-solving, and many of these issues have been exacerbated by austerity. Problem-solving requires a long-term engagement with communities, strong relationships with partners, and the capacity and resources to focus on issues which may not appear high on strategic priorities: all this mitigates against problem-solving as a mechanism when budgets are tight.

However, more recently there has been a reinvigoration of problem-solving as an approach. This is in part due to the renaissance of the neighbourhood model, discussed in Chapter 2, and also as a result of a wider recognition that reactive models of policing fail to cope well with the range of demands on modern policing (Sidebottom et al, 2020).