The New Nation - Internet Edition

Razzak Raza

The modern concept of policing engages the community in the police- work at the basis of equal partnership. Each and every service that a police department may offer must be aimed at the welfare of the community .So, police are expected to prioritize their serviecs according to the needs of the community. For this reason, police must know the community members --- both individually and in groups. The philosophy of community policeing, therefore, emphesizes mobilizing the community and the social organizations to engage them in problem solving practice.

Police departments implementing community policing develop partnership with the community groups as their necessary operational imperative. To shape the community-partnership some practical measuers are undertaken by the police. They form some forums with the praticiapation of the community members. These forums are called Community Policing Forums (in South Africa), Liaison Council (in Japan), District Policing Partnerships (in Ireland), Community and Police Engagement Groups(in UK), etc. Through these forums representatives from each cross-section of the community meet and sit together with police to scan and analyze the community problems with a view to finding out enduring solutions.

But, in this process the police, as well as, the community are neglecting the younger generation of the society. The police are busy with making friendship with the grown-ups, the aged or with the guardians of the society. The community leaders, influential persons, elected leaders, business groups, etc. are getting less or more importance in the partnership-building initiatives. On the other hand, the young and juvenile community is always being kept beyond the police initiatives. But there is no denying the fact that the juvenile comprise nearly the half of the population of any community.

Experiences across the world revealed that the police are somewhat hostile to the young people as a group. At the juncture of departre of boyhood and turning into the new leaf of adulthood, the human nature is very much prone to welcoming adventures.But the problem is that the young people may not still differentiate the right from the wrong. They may not realize the consiquences of their wrong doings. So, they are vulnerable to antisocial and criminal activities.

At this period young people charish to come out from their parental guidence and are highly influenced by the peer groups. But neither the guardians nor the police understand the juvenile-mind. Nobody hounour and value the tender- traits of the juvenile.

Police are used to thinking young people as potential law brakers. For example,at the dead of night coming across an old man in the urban street ,the police patrol team may not arrest him. But if the same police team takes sight of a young man of 20 years, they are sure to handcuff him. The old man can show hundreds of causes of his walking in the midnight street, and, police may beleive in at least one of them. But the young man may have not many excuses, and, the blatant fact is that police are going not to beleive in any of them.

But this ubiquitous police attitue towards the juvenile has remarkably been changed in recent days. Police departments of many countries have singled out it as a major barrier against sound police community relation. The young people comprise not only the half of the population of the community, but they occupy a considerable space in the realm of police consern also.The police and the social workers have now realized that juvenile emotions bear more constructive values than they manifest the destructive traits. Juvenile ideas may show a community the way out of social disorder and degradation. The juvenile have, by default, longer future than that of the older. So,it is fairly desireable to give the juvenile chances to shape their own future. The juvenile should be given proper position in the problem solving process of the community policing initiatives.

It is needless to say that there are many areas and institutions where policing means to police the juvenile and problem-solving means to solve the problems of the juvenile. The schools, colleges, universites and other educational institutions are, invariably, the sensetive conserns to the police. In many countiries like Bangladesh, student-unrest is a sever headache to the police authority. So,if community policing is to work in these areas,the students must be considered as a community not less important than the grown-ups.That is, the police can neither ignore the young community's potentials to be better partners of crime fighing, nor it is prudent from the part of the police to keep the young people out of the community policing initiatives.

However, the worth of youth has duly been recognized by the police in many countries. The police are now taking proper initiatives to bind the juvenile in durable friendship/partnership. Plethoras of programs are on the card of many police departments across the world.Some of the programs are as old as the modern concept of community policing.

To fight crimes like drug dealing/ addiction, bullying, gang-star activites, etc. the American police agencies, in the late 60s introduced school-based programs .They began sending police officers in the schools as teachers as well as to ensure uniformed presence for preventing campus related crimes. American idea of School Resource Offices (SRO) spread all over the world. Police agencies across the globe learnt seminal lessons from the USA school-based programs. Governments of many countries asked their police organizations to integrate young generations to their crime prevention strategies. Regional associations like the Council of Europe urged its member states to undertake American-type youth programs focusing on school campuses.

School-Based programmes in Europe started much later than those of the USA.In Germany police-school projects were initiated in 1990 while in the United Kingdom Safer School Partnerships was intruduced only in 2002. The Netherlands introduced community policing programs in schools in 1995.Community Policing officers assigned for schools were known as the 'Adoption Agents'. They usually teach crime prevention techniques in the elementary schools. The Netherlands police are focusing their attention to the younger generation to build a long lasting police- public partnership. The motto behind targeting the school kids is that 'You better build a child, than repair an adult. The Dutch-model of 'Adoption Agents' soon imported by Belgium, Slovakia, Poland ,Estonia and some other adjacent European countries.

The Hong Kong police launched a social program focusing the young generation to educate them in the police way. In 1974 they started bringing the young people under an organization named the Junior Police Call (JPC) under the direct supervision of the Police Public Relations Branch (PPRB). The JPC drew the attention of the young people and soon became one of the largest youth organizations in the world with strong police ties.

In Austrelia, the potentials of the young community are duly valued by the police. In the state level as well as in the federal level they have school-based programs where the police engage huge resources and man power to foster the police-pupils friendship. The Tasmaian police formed Police & Community Youth Clubs (PCYC). First formed in 1946 they have now 13 such club statewide. The Clubs have historically provided a wide range of sporting and recreational activities for youth including gymnastics, trampolining, boxing, self defense classes and most indoor games.

The most recent youth program under taken by Australian police is the Police Scouts which was started in 1999. "Police Scouts is an organisation that provides opportunities for young people from 11 to 18, to participate in challenging and rewarding activities that promote self-esteem, teamwork and respect within a safe environment. Police scouts develop positive relationships between young people and police''. However, it operates under the traditional scouting model. But in addition it attracts the young people who are not the members of the ongoing scouting activities. The defining feature that makes the police scouts different is that, it undertakes crime prevention and police awarness as an additional area of interest.

A school-based program as an effective tool for building partnership with the young progeny is an urgent need for Bangladesh Police. Analytical reports of some newspapers claim that some 25,000 young people are involved in criminal activities across the country. Among them 10,000 juvenile criminals are active in the Dhaka Metropolitan City of Dhaka. These young have hardly crossed their teens. The Detectives of the Dhaka Metropolitan Police enlisted as many as 1658 young gang stars.

Many of these juveniles come from respectable families . A top terror detained in India claimed that he had 10 thousand juvenile accomplices most of them are students of English medium schools of the capital. The religious extremists and terrorist organizations recruit their field operators from the juvenile. The suicide bombers of the JMB were found to be teen-ager students either from madrashas or from schools.

While the bad elements of the society motivating the juvenile from education institutions in the antisocial, inhuman and terrorist activities, the police are still maintaining a traditional gap from them. It would not be much sweeping to comment that most of the policemen of Bangladesh are prejudicially hostile to the young people especially to the students. The vice-versa is also true. Young people of the country have little respect on the police. The historical anti-people role of the police who performed their government duties in this land is the prime contributing factor behind it. Police have the history of taking the unjust sides of the ruling classes stampeding the democratic rights of the common masses. The students and the young people depicting the popular voices of the common people are always subject to police high handedness. It is the undue behaviors of our police which have been widening the gap between the young and the police.

But it is the time to bridge the gaps between the police and the juvenile. Bangladesh police are committed to a participatory policing philosophy. Partnership with the community members whom the police serve is one of the defining features of the community policing philosophy. Police will now proactively address the underlying causes of the community problems which give rise to community concern. Police will no longer be strangers to the community.

The police and the public through their representatives will sit together, discuss their concerns, share their experiences and realisations and work out possible and effective solutions of the community problems.

But the police efforts of involving the community in problem solving will be effective only if they include the juvenile and young people into the community policing reproach.

Bangladesh police should immediately undertake school-based programs to build the partnership with the young community. All the educational institutions should be brought under separate clusters of community policing. Community policing forums should be constituted with the participation of the representatives from the students, teachers, guardians and other members of the campuses. These forums will solve the problems of campus-based crimes. However, the primary and elementary educational institutions would be treated differently. Police officers should visit the primary schools with definite intervals and make the students familiar with police roles, crime preventions, general safety, traffic rules, effect of illegal drugs, etc. They will serve as teachers as well as law enforcers while visiting the schools. It is also advisable that the police bosses should think seriously to start a police scout of Australian model or they could take up the existing boy scout-model for modification. The Junior Police Call (JPC) is also a proven model of binding the juvenile in police friendship. The Tasmaian model of Police & Community Youth Clubs (PCYC) could foster police-juvenile friendship. This model may include the young people who are currently not in schools.

The era of high handed traditional policing no more prevails in the developed and many of the developing countries. Police in the 21st century are no more a distant government functionary with distinct power of arrest and of curtailing civil liberty. They are now the members of the community.

They are no more merely the law enforcing machineries of the executives. They are, now, the educators of laws and procedures. Moreover, the success of policing in a democracy largely depends on the consensus of the citizens on how to police them. It is the duty of the police to make the consensus by building trust among the community members. If the young people are given due importance, the trust-building would be easier making the police expectedly effective.