Neighbourhood Watch Programmes in Taiwan: Police Attitudes, Crime Rate and Community Support

This paper evaluates the impact of neighbourhood watch programmes (NWPs) on the 14 police precincts of the Taipei Metropolitan Police Department with regard to the following areas: crime rate; 911 emergency calls; citizen feeling of safety; community support; crime prevention and police-community relations. The paper examines the effects of four independent variables which include the number of NWPs in each police precinct, the precinct characteristics, officers' participation in NWPs and officers' degree of support for NWPs. Using data collected from the official data and a survey of 1,631 Taiwanese officers, the authors employed ordinary least square (OLS) regression and found that officers believed that NWPs can reduce drug, juvenile and total crimes. Regression results of the official data show that the numbers of NWPs were negatively related to drug and juvenile crimes but were positively related to burglary and the number of 911 emergency calls. However, the implementation of NWPs did not significantly affect violent crime, minor crime, robbery and total crime. This paper concludes that policies regarding NWPs in Taiwan must be consistent with the theoretical principles and values of community policing philosophy and that there is a need for more research concerning the citizen and police administrator perspectives.