Evaluating community policing in the Netherlands

In this article we shall present an overview of research in the field of community policing in the Netherlands. Before we go into the problems of establishing the impact of community policing, we shall describe the organisation of the Dutch police system. Without at least some knowledge of the system, it is hard to follow the developments that have taken place over the last decades. After that we shall discuss the developments in community policing in the Netherlands and its current state as to, for instance, how it is organised. Next we shall look into the research that has been carried out to try and measure the results of different versions of community policing in terms of internal and external effects. The significance of the results and indicators of efficacy, as well as the current developments of community policing will be discussed in the last section.