Nice story from 2018 on how Columbia, the second largest city in South Carolina, in 1999 introduced community policing, inspired by and modeled on the Japanese neighborhood Police Box, the Koban, system. columbiavoice.cic.sc.edu/love-affair-be…
The Koban system was introduced via Japan to Brazil, and from there to El Salvador, Guatemala, Costa Rica and Honduras. In San Pedro Sula, Honduras, murders dropped from 9 to 1 in one year. "In Tegucigalpa, the number of murders was nearly halved 2012-13." jica.go.jp/english/news/f…
The Koban system—there are 6,300 in Japan—functions as police infrastructure that not only handles low level everyday crimes but also, from a social viewpoint, the important function of handling lost and found objects. citylab.com/life/2020/02/j…
In the 1970s and 1980s Singapore was in the midst of a serious crime wave they could not handle. They sent a study group to learn about the Koban system, implemented it at home, and saw crime rates drop, along with better local traffic, happier residents. mha.gov.sg/hometeamnews/o…
An British journalist writes on his experiences with the Japanese Koban system, and compares it (very favorably) with British response oriented automobile policing. spectator.co.uk/article/what-b…
Cambodia is also on the verge of adapting part of the Japanese Koban system, a training program has been ongoing in Phnom Penh since 2017. phnompenhpost.com/special-report…
Everyone will encounter police sometime in their life, would it not better that a child's first police encounter is "lost and found"? bbc.com/future/article…
We already know that community policing works, yet very few countries adopt it. Why? Here is an example from the UK.
Community police is tricky to implement in the West because there literally are no communities (despite what fancy journalists like to claim) any more. We gave that up when we gave our cities and neighborhoods over to the car, to give one example.
So here is my recipe for better policing:
1, Build human scaled walkable cities where people own their homes, work where they live, let people form communities, that means a mixture of social classes. Get rid of cars.
2, The backbone of policing should be local and on foot.
1, Build human scaled walkable cities where people own their homes, work where they live, let people form communities, that means a mixture of social classes. Get rid of cars.
2, The backbone of policing should be local and on foot.
