A conceptual framework for police functions and services

Police functions and services are currently based on three implicit basic conceptual units: the person, the process, and the product. Each one of these was the fundamental assumption for one of the three historical models of police science: the Personal Qualities Model, the Community Relations Model, and the Scientific Management Model. Although none of these models has ever been implemented in a pure form, modern police science is implicitly based on their three basic conceptual units which are applied to different but specific areas of police functions and services. However, these conceptual units have never been explicitly reconciled with each other, thus at times resulting in contradictory proposals. A comprehensive theory of police functions and services requires a conceptual framework for explicitly relating the person, the process, and the product. A two-dimensional framework is proposed based on a psychological and a sociological level of analysis.