Glossary of Key Terms

This glossary of terms aims to help understand the commonly applied terminologies and concepts that were read and assess scholarly studies in policing and social service as adopted in this study. Also included in this glossary are the general phrases and words defined within the context of their application in behavioral and social sciences and this research.

Key Terms

Police Officer(s): Specially designated citizens of the United States whose primary purpose is to provide services, including maintaining law and order and preventing crimes. They include state police officers, locate police offers, federal law enforcement officers, and sheriffs.

State Police Officers: They help statewide crime scene analysis, collect, scrutinize and disseminate information related to crime patterns, provide training to other police officers and multijurisdictional investigation in addition to basic responsibility of maintaining law and order. Local police officer: offer services ranging from order maintenance, traffic enforcement, crime investigation and prevention.Federal law enforcement officers comprise U.S. secret service and U.S marshals, protect the head of state, and investigate crimes against U.S. financial infrastructure, among other duties.

Social Service Worker(s): Social service workers are specialists primarily concerned with counselling and helping clients in vulnerable groups. They help clients deal with social and personal problems by offering counselling, social support, and community services programs, and are can also be licensed to treat mental illness. Criminal justice social service workers work in prisons, jails, primary healthcare care, and community-based organizations.

Mental health: Mental health encompasses the psychological, emotional, and social well-being of the police officers, social service workers, and the clients they serve (Fisher, Newton, & Sainsbury, 2021). 

Community Policing is a law enforcement philosophy promoting organizational strategies that support systemic adoption of partnerships or collaboration and problem-solving approaches to proactively counter the immediate conditions likely to cause public safety issues such as social disorder, crime, and fear of crime. The philosophy encourages a police officer to operate in one area for an extended duration to engage and develop a good relationship with the locals to prevent crimes from happening instead of responding after the crime has occurred.

Police Reform: It is a process aimed at transforming the culture, values, practices, and policies of the police organizations to perform their responsibilities concerning human rights, democratic values, and the rule of law. The process also targets improving how law enforcement departments interact and collaborate among themselves and other stakeholders with the justice and security sector, including courts, independent and parliamentary authorities with oversight roles, and other bodies.

Crisis intervention: Refers to approaches applied by social service workers or the police service to provide instant, short-term help to people who have experienced an event producing emotional, physical, behavioral, and physical problems or distress. The people must be open to receiving help during the crisis.

Interpersonal Skills: They denotebehaviors and strategy an individual employ to interact and socialize effectively. They include the ability of the police officers or social service workers to interact with others effectively and harmoniously, and they range from listening and communication to deportment and attitude.

Community: Community refers to a group of individuals living in a similar geographical area or who have something in common such as values, religion, norms, tradition and customs, and much more. Police operate in diverse community settings.

Reference Fisher, M., Newton, C., & Sainsbury, E. (2021). Mental health social work observed