conflict and interactionist

Conflict and Interactionist Approaches to Policing
When it comes to policing the community two approaches that are important to study are conflict and the interactionist approaches. In this paper, I will discuss why these two approaches are of great importance in policing.
The first approach I will discuss is going to be the conflict theory. “The conflict theory is based upon the view that the fundamental causes of crime are the social and economic forces operating within society.”( http://www.criminology.fsu.edu/crimtheory/conflict.htm) The book states that conflict theory believes that society is composed of competing groups, interested in which group benefits from social arrangements, as they exist, identify the powerful as the ones who gain by police having social control, inequalities in police priorities are a major concern and conclude that police are biased in their enforcement of the law. It is important to study this to figure out where the conflict happens. This could also be the reason that police are sometimes accused of being racist when they profile individuals due to their color and or location of where they live. An example of this would be “The first, a lower class group of boys, was hounded by the local police and labeled by teachers as delinquents and future criminals, while the upper-middle class boys were equally deviant, but their actions were written off as youthful indiscretions and learning experiences.”(http://www.criminology.fsu.edu/crimtheory/conflict.htm) In an article by Rick Ruddell he states that “Conflict theories are inherently political. The ‘tough on crime’ policy agenda that emerged in the 1980s has led local, state, and national politicians to advocate to put more officers on the street and impose tough sanctions on offenders” (Ruddell, R., & Thomas, M. Minority threat and police strength: an examination of the Golden State) I feel that this type of approach is probably not the best to use it can cause riffs between groups of people and have people losing respect for authority so that when they really need them they will call them.
The second approach that we will be discussing is the interactionist approach.“Interactionist perspectives tend to concentrate on relatively small-scale levels of social interaction and, for this reason, they are sometimes referred-to as a "micro level of sociological analysis"” (http://www.sociology.org.uk/devtint1.htm) The power point notes states that the interactionist approach is as follows. “Pays attention to the micro-level of human behavior, social control is made up of many interactions, situational characteristics are important, interactions between humans involve costs and rewards for parties involved, citizens cooperate with police if it is rewarding for them, less rewarding, more costly interactions get less cooperation and it makes sense for police to enlist citizens’ assistance.” This approach sounds like it would the best approach to use if you were policing a community, it seems to use everybody and does not single people out for what they look like rather if you do the crime then you get busted.
After reading about both of these approaches, I see why it is important to study both of them. You need to be able to understand the them and be able to use the one that best fits the situation that arises.