Developing a Rapport with Communities: Perception in Law Enforcement Public Relations

Instructions The old adage that perception is in the eye of the beholder holds true in law enforcement public relations today.

How can you as a law enforcement professional develop and retain a rapport with all citizens in your community to the level that they welcome your contributions to their safety and security?

How does this improve your agency’s goodwill? Explain.

Unit Lesson

Welcome to this criminology course! This course provides you with insight relating to studies concerning why some people turn to a life of crime while others choose to remain in complete alignment with social standards. This is especially interesting when one considers the fact that many offenders develop from seemingly perfect, normal, family life situations, while their siblings move forward with productive lives as contributors to their communities, countries, and to the world.

Why does this dilemma exist? How can some individuals endure the same trials and tribulations as well as the nurturing and encouragement to properly mature as their siblings evolve into criminals? How often have we witnessed parents portrayed by the media as the epitome of the model parent devoted to the welfare and success of their children? They try vainly to explain why their child chose to purchase a firearm without their knowledge to facilitate his or her plan to walk into a nearby shopping center with the intent to murder as many people as possible before finalizing the heinous crime by taking his or her own life. Does the structure of the family or the culture in which we live serve to create its own monsters?

People who turn to crime may simply be suffering from some level of mental illness that derails any efforts to enable them to cope with the trials and tribulations in their personal lives. There may be some truth to this concern based on U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) (2018) research that shows 95% of America’s incarcerated offenders suffer from some level of mental illness with only 4% requiring out-patient care. However, that does not exclude the number of inmates who require constant care from mental health caregivers within the prisons and jails. Each form of culture or society creates opportunities for people to become offenders based on one individual’s inherent negative emotional or psychological response to any given set of rules, laws, regulations, and established societal norms. Can we structure societies to eliminate crime entirely with no need for a criminal justice system? Obviously, if that were true, our societies would have already evolved into crime-free societies. However, some level of answer may lie within our ability to better structure response to needs within our societies before a person turns toward crime.

Leaders in society must develop studies that help governments understand the mental and physical needs of the average citizen to help them to refrain from turning to a life of crime. We must identify those offenders of heinous crimes before they evolve to the point where they commit the crime. Some do so without providing any prior clues about their criminal tendencies; however, others truly cry out for help before they turn to their decision to commit that final act.

As leaders in criminology research, we must determine at what point in a person’s life does he or she make the decision to become a criminal, and why? The methodologies to ascertain this knowledge and the development of empirical studies to identify key methods relative to specific cures and challenges arising from criminal behavior must be identified. Only through this process can we expect to proceed with working knowledge that may truly rehabilitate an offender.

The science of criminology attempts to provide research through peer-reviewed studies designed to discover the answers we seemingly search for in vain. Throughout the past century, various elements exist and have evolved within the realm of criminology. These include the following:

• criminal statistics and crime measurement;
• sociology of law;
• law and society;
• sociolegal studies;
• theories of crime causation;
• explanation of criminal behavior;
• penology: punishment, sanctions, and corrections; and
• victimology