Old wine in new bottles?, an exploratory analysis of community-based policing in rural Alberta

Abstract

In recent years police organizations around the world have made a shift in their philosophy and style of policing service delivery. This shift has been away from the reactive, incident driven style of police work largely referred to as the professional, bureaucratic, or traditional model of policing. Instead, police agencies have adopted a community-based approach which emphasizes a police-community partnership in order to facilitate a long-term problem solving approach for dealing with community problems. As a progressive and modern police organization, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police has also made this shift in their mode of policing service delivery. Since 1989 the RCMP has made the adoption and implementation of community-based policing one of its top priorities. The purpose of this thesis is to conduct an exploratory analysis of RCMP community-based policing by seeking to answer three primary questions surrounding this issue. The study itself is composed of three distinct stages of research using a qualitative research methodology. This study is facilitated by way of an analysis of RCMP policy documents, telephone interviews with key informants, and in-person interviews with front-line RCMP respondents in rural Alberta. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)