This chapter lays out the theoretical foundations of community policing and highlights evidence gaps in evaluations of community policing’s effectiveness. Community policing is a law enforcement strategy that centers around building trust between police and citizens as well as promoting citizen engagement with authorities in order to advance public safety. The chapter describes the origins of community policing as well as the logic of how it might render the police more effective, primarily through improved information provision from citizens. Despite substantial support for community policing, a systematic review detailed in the chapter reveals significant evidence gaps in evaluations of the effectiveness of community policing interventions such as beat patrols and the police engaging in town hall meetings. The review finds that the evidence gaps are particularly acute with respect to evaluations in Global South communities.

This chapter introduces the concept of community policing and provides a brief history of the practice and its spread. The chapter then identifies a significant gap in rigorous evidence of its efficacy, especially as the practice has been adopted by police agencies in the Global South and describes the core enterprise of the research agenda: a set of coordinated, randomized-control trials evaluating the impact of community policing in Latin America, Africa, and Asia. The chapter concludes with a summary of the findings and a discussion of broader implications for the study of policing.