S.A.R.a

S.A.R.A

The history of policing seems to be riddled with trial and error models of policing. During the years “Traditional Policing”, almost all of the police departments and other law enforcement agencies were more focused on handling situations and or crime if you will, after the fact. With a strong belief that rapid response times to CFS and addressing the problem at hand and showing a strong police presence with deter and therefore eliminate crime and the fear of crime in those areas. Herman Goldstein was an individual that could see policing did not work efficiently for police or the communities in question as it was being applied. As a direct result of his work and others, came “Problem oriented policing”. The concept of problem solving is by no means a new concept to police. Goldstein recognized that there were deficiencies surrounding the concept. The community policing models gave the police and the community a new direction to go. Realizing in order to be more efficient the police and the community needed to combine their resources and work together in order to have long-term success in reducing crime.

Through the works of Herman Goldstein, emerged a problem-solving process called S.A.R.A which is the acronym for scanning, analysis, response and assessment. This model has the four critical stages of problem solving. Each step relies on the prior step or steps to be successful. Here are the four steps in the S.A.R.A model. Each step is crucial to the next, but remember that analysis is the most important of the four steps.

Scanning is the first step to be applied for the identification of problem or if a problem even exists. First we need to understand the definition of a problem. Peak & Glensor define a problem as being “A group of two or more incidents that are similar in one or more respects, causing harm and therefore being a concern to the police and to the public”. There are different ways that incidents may be similar which include;...