An Evaluation of a Community-Oriented Policing Program in Taiwan

This study was conducted to evaluate the effect of a community-oriented policing (COP) by documenting results for 16 quantitative outcome variables, including crime incidents, crime clearance, residents' subjective feelings regarding police performance and community safety, and job satisfaction among police officers. The statistical techniques used to analyze the data involved ARIMA interrupted time series, t tests, the Wilcoxon paired signed-rank test, and Pearson's correlation. The quantitative results observed indicated that the program had a positive effect on resident's perceptions for some police performance outcomes and for job satisfaction among police officers. However, there was only a minimal program effect on crime occurrence, crime clearance, and residents' perceptions of crime. Using a combination of review of prior research and qualitative interview data collected from 10 local stakeholders, we provided insightful informed actor-based and temporal contextual explanations for the unexpected quantitative findings.