Community policing in Bangladesh : a conceptual framework

Community policing is a philosophy and management approach that seeks the community engagement in the policing system. The idea of community policing has gained substantiating importance in the recent years as police professionals, community members and policy makers are seeking an alternative model of policing that would be better for public safety and security. Due to the mass population and institutional limitations of police, public security has deteriorated alarmingly in recent years. On the other hand, the traditional way of policing has been ineffective as the nature ofcrime and criminals has been changing rapidly in the fast changing world.So the traditional form of policing system has not been able to manage crime and criminals efficiently, effectively and unable to maintenance of sustainable peace in our society. In the community a widening gap in mutual understanding, trust and communication between police and citizens have been in existence. Both police and the community members have been feeling to minimize the gap. The community policing is a bottom-up proactive policing system which involves the community with the police to work in partnership and mutual coordination. It is a paradigm shift from the traditional model of policing to the community based model of policing. This paper aims to establish a conceptual framework of community policing from the theoretical perspective and also the Bangladesh viewpoint.