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Community Prosecution
Community prosecution is a proactive approach to the business of prosecution. It is based on five principles. Community prosecution:
- Gives members of the community a greater voice in solving problems that plague their neighborhoods.
- Provides prosecutors a greater opportunity to be proactive in fighting crime.
- Changes the focus of prosecution from simply obtaining convictions on assigned cases to solving problems in neighborhoods, so that crime problems will not reoccur.
- Assists law enforcement agencies in their community policing efforts.
- Assists law enforcement and residents of the community in their fight against crime by involving local citizen's groups that can provide information to police regarding crime evidence.
Problem-oriented community prosecution is highly effective because it broadens the mission of prosecution from simply prosecuting to preventing and reducing crime. The mission becomes eliminating problems rather than merely processing cases. This redefined approach to crime is driven by a new commitments to pursing the priorities of the citizens themselves, which considers the relationship between the community's fear of crime and crime itself. This broadened focus leads prosecutors to emphasize those cases and offenders that residents identity as high priority, or having a significant impact on the quality of life in their neighborhoods.
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