Community Policing and Resident Safety in Contemporary Urban China: The Role of Getting Residents Involved

One important component of community policing is to get residents involved in effort to secure community safety. The present study examines the effect of such a component on resident safety and security for the Chinese community policing. It adopts a multilevel approach to assess the effects of individual-level and neighborhood-level measures using data collected from surveys of residents, neighborhood police officers, and neighborhood committee chairpersons in a city of China in 2018. The data indicates that the individual-level and neighborhood-level measures of getting residents involved in policing have no impact on perceived criminal activity and neighborhood disorder. In contrast, the individual-level measures of reported police door-to-door visits and perceived effectiveness of volunteer activities are significantly and negatively associated with fear of crime. In addition, these two measures and the individual-level measure of reported participation in police community meetings increase residents’ overall perceptions of safety and security. These findings imply that the general effect pattern is similar to that discovered in the West, although China has unique social and political systems that significantly differ from those in the West.