Even as community policing has emerged as the dominant paradigm, research indicates that police agencies continue to be highly militaristic and bureaucratic in structure and culture. This article reports findings from an observational study of recruit training at a police academy that had introduced a new curriculum emphasizing community policing and problem solving. The article explores the socialization that takes place there to see how the tension between traditional and community policing is resolved. The authors found that despite the philosophical emphasis on community policing and its themes of decentralization and flexibility, the most salient lessons learned in police training were those that reinforced the paramilitary structure and culture.

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Fear of crime has long been considered a significant social problem, spurring decades of academic research and leading to a variety of policy initiatives. Building on prior research, this study investigated the direct and indirect effects of demographic characteristics, social and physical disorder, and prior victimization on fear of crime. Further, it assessed the direct and indirect effects of perceived risk on fear. Finally, the research examined the extent to which social capital mediated the impact of these variables on fear. Using data from a survey of residents in a southeastern city, analyses reveal that victimization and disorder significantly predict fear of crime, and that risk perception and social capital mediate the relationship between disorder and victimization on fear. Further, structural equation models show a number of interesting indirect effects. Policy implications and directions for future research are discussed.

A limited amount of research has examined the relationship between characteristics of police organizations and policing styles. In particular, few studies have examined the link between organizational structures and police officer arrest decisions. Wilson's (1968) pioneering case study of police organizations suggested that individual police behavior is a function of departmental goals that occur within the broader political climate of a community. Wilson suggested that agencies could be classified into three typologies: the watchman style, the legalistic style, and the service style. The present study examines the influence of organizational characteristics associated with these styles on individual officers' arrest rates using nationally representative data from large police agencies. Findings suggest that police officer arrest decisions are partially explained by variations in police organizational structures. The implications of these findings for contemporary organizational explanations of police behavior are discussed.

Purpose-This study aims to address two interrelated research questions. First, to compare the academy performance of police recruits trained under a traditional academy curriculum with the performance of those trained under a new academy curriculum based on community policing. Second, to investigate whether a different "type" of recruit performs better in the community policing curriculum compared with the traditional curriculum. Design/methodology/approach-Regression analysis is used to estimate the effects of independent variables on three dependent variables that indicate academy success: average academy scores, failure experiences, and post-academy employment. Findings-Results suggest that more highly educated recruits and female recruits fared better in the community policing curriculum but that, overall, recruits in the community policing curriculum performed similarly to their traditional counterparts. Research limitations/implications-The findings suggest that newer police training models may be rewarding skills consistent with the community policing philosophy, such as education. This is a study of one police training center that has instituted a new training curriculum, so results cannot be generalized to other training centers. The community policing curriculum was in the early stages of implementation when data were collected and was therefore not yet standardized. Finally, the analysis is limited to predicting the success of police recruits in the academy, rather than predicting their job performance. Originality/value-Few studies have examined academy training in community policing. This study is a first step to broadening understanding of the impact of academy training in community policing on police recruits.