Styles Of Policing

Policing styles is the way the police department goes about handling department’s daily methods, routines and processes. Every department has different styles of doing things. In 1968 political scientist James Q. Wilson did study on policing styles. And he found three main styles of policing. The three main styles are Watchman, legalistic and service. First lets look at the legalistic style. This style emphasizes on the law, the strict enforcement of the law. So this in style of police work the police look for violations of the law. This type of department usually has large counts of arrests and traffic citations. Also they depend on the threat of arrest of actual arrest of people. They used formal methods in resolving disputes. Another
style of policing is watchman style. This style focuses on order maintenance, through informal methods. This style focuses on resolving disputes but not so much focused on preventing disputes. Now the third style is the service style. In this style the cops judge the on how serious the crime violation is by looking at the consequences, instead of the legality of the offense. The overall goal is to keep the peace. Now the last style is the service style. In this style of policing the police are not looking to arrest people. They are just there to help the citizens. They will arrest people only as the last resort. They provide assistance without order maintenance or law enforcement.