Title: A contemporary public affairs approach to changing and improving police services in Puerto Rico: the administration, organisation, and community triumvirate

Authors: Jeffrey W. Goltz

Addresses: Criminal Justice Institute at Valencia College, 8600 Valencia College Lane, Orlando, Florida 32825, USA

Abstract: In 2011, the Civil Rights Division within the US Department of Justice published a report that summarised an investigation of the Puerto Rico Police Department (PRPD). The report states that the PRPD is broken in a number of critical and fundamental respects. Moreover, Puerto Rico has experienced a significant increase in violent crime over the past few years. To create a new public safety paradigm in Puerto Rico, this complex, extraordinary public issue requires a comprehensive public affairs framework. This article presents a multi-dimensional approach that discusses police services management research and a public affairs triumvirate that includes administrative, organisational, and community sciences. The concepts and theories of social control, the public administrative integrative and boundary-exchange process, governance, rational and open systems, contingency, institutional theory and isomorphic forces, social construction, community policing, organisational reframing, and a confirmatory model are presented in an effort to create a social architecture to guide and influence public safety policy and practice in Puerto Rico.

Keywords: police services management research; PSMR; administrative science; organisational science; community science; public administrative integrative process; boundary exchange process; governance; rational systems; open systems; contingency theory; institutional theory; isomorphism; social construction theory; social control theory; community policing; organisational reframing; public safety; Puerto Rico.

DOI: 10.1504/IJPP.2014.063080

International Journal of Public Policy, 2014 Vol.10 No.4/5, pp.257 - 278

Received: 09 Jan 2013
Accepted: 11 Jul 2013
Published online: 19 Jul 2014 *

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