Conceptual Framework

This paper takes advantage of CCO’s utility at arranging the complex community safety scenario into a robust, clear, and reputable basis for analysis. The resulting conceptual framework (please refer to the Figure 2 for a visual representation) also selectively borrows from Silverlock and Stafford’s, and Ballintyne and Fraser’s insights. Insights were selected based on their usefulness to the context of a grass-root patrol system like that of Barangay Little Baguio’s. The output of UK researchers clearly needed to be sifted because they are based on different circumstances. For example, UK’s flagship Crime and Disorder Act of 1998 and the Safer Cities Program involved greater formal, mandatory collaboration between national and local units, and far greater mobilization in the private, business, and even industrial sectors. Their efforts towards crime prevention even included forays into the overhauling of urban planning, utilization of hi-tech security platforms, demands on industries to change designs of cars and construction materials, review of cultural relations, among others – many of these are naturally reflected in their research endeavors. Clearly, a tight discussion of Little Baguio’s Patrol system will exclude factors that are absent in a Filipino barangay’s reality.

Of the 11 precursors to crime enumerated in the CCO, five are situation–related while the six are offender-related. We focus on only one situation-related precursor which is the Absence of Crime Preventers. Ekblom identifies patrolling as a crime prevention strategy to intervene with the Absence of Crime Preventers.

The patrol’s practical success is anchored on a combination of factors forwarded by Ekblom, and Silverlock and Stafford, and Ballintyne and Fraser with a partiality towards the more parsimonious work of Silverlock and Stafford. The five success factors are Leadership, Funding, Equipment, Manpower and Training, and Consultation. We include Ekblom’s “leadership” because none of Silverlock and Stafford’s success factors seems to account for leadership. We believe that Ekblom’s “technical know-how” is included in “manpower-training”. We put under one category manpower and training because they are complements; sheer manpower will not be effective without training, while training implies that there is manpower to be subjected to training. Ekblom’s reference to “money” is similar to Silverlock and Stafford’s broader term of “funding”, hence funding is used. The other success factors prescribed by the reviewed literature – like infrastructure networks – are omitted because they are remote to the realities of a barangay-level patrol system. Instead of using Silver and Stafford’s “partnership” as another success factor, we replace it with Ballintyne and Fraser’s “consultation”. “Partnership” involves more of multi-agency and industry-community linkages while “consultation” is more effective in connoting community involvement.

As mentioned in the Scope and Limitation, some of the factors discussed in the Conceptual Framework – like consultation –cannot be conveyed through the quantitative data we gathered through field work. But they are still crucial to understand the workings of a barangay-level patrol system.

Another important point in our conceptual framework is how a patrol system has two connections to community safety. First is at the practical level while the other is for conceptual clarity. Firstly, a patrol system is a practice-oriented intervention to the “Absence of Crime Preventers” precursor of crime; successful obstruction of this precursor contributes positively to Community safety.

The second connection of patrol to community safety shows the proper conceptual view of a patrol according to the internationally-acknowledged nomenclature popularized by Wiles and Pease: patrol is a kind of crime prevention while in turn, crime prevention contributes to community safety but is not equivalent to community safety. We include this conceptual clarification to align our case study to the internationally-acknowledged nomenclature in community safety research. Furthermore, a clear view of the place of patrol in the greater scheme of community safety forestalls any misconception about definition of terms and organization of concepts. This is also a reiteration to policy makers and stakeholders that a patrol system is just one of many other initiatives towards community safety.

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