ABSTRACT
The policing of communities, their monitoring, regulation and control, is carried out at a number of different levels and by various organisations. This chapter looks at the formal policing role and the ways in which this role has been described as either consensus or conflict-based. It examines the concept of community policing and the techniques which have been employed to incorporate community as a partner in policing. However, the police are considered as socially or politically repressive by the policed community, which might at times show open hostility to the police. The police should move closer to and work in partnership with the community was established as an innovative practice which would achieve better results in the prevention of crime. The chapter also looks at the ways in which the state interacts with communities but also at more recent insights into governance which have created the expectation that communities will monitor, regulate and control themselves.
