Volunteerism And Community Crime Prevention

Abstract

Volunteerism is a social phenomenon involving people as individual and group who offer their services helping, learning and actively participating in communities as a part of civic engagement. Community participation in crime prevention activities has been an important efforts made by the community especially in a high crime rate community where the law enforcement is ineffective. One of the ideal approaches could be voluntary involvement of citizen for crime prevention and reduction. Community policing is an initiative of police to established a joint vigilance of the police and the general public or community to identify and solves crime within a particular community. Community Crime prevention emerged as a mechanism for maintaining law and order at community level. So Community policing emerge to legitimize relationship between police and public. Volunteering offers important benefits to individuals, communities and society as a whole. The feeling of responsibility towards safety of community and commitment to community based organization is the main driving force of volunteerism where motivation is without remuneration. Personal enhancement and the need for volunteers are not observed at a greater level and volunteerism in Mizoram is managed volunteerism in the mean time it is also bears unmanaged volunteerism in terms of characteristics. Moreover the support of the government or community based organization is also minimal in terms of training and equipments and there is no proper insurance for volunteers which increase the risk taken by volunteers. Volunteerism towards crime prevention in Mizoram is entirely based on intrinsic and traditional Mizo values called ‘tlawmngaihna’ meaning altruism.