Neighborhood Watch and Citizen Patrols: Evaluation

from Community Change: Theories, Practice, and Evidence (pdf). Amie M. Schuck and Dennis P. Rosenbaum. Edited by Karen Fulbright-Anderson and Patricia Auspos. The Aspen Institute.

Neighborhood watch/block groups. Neighborhood Watch or Block Watch programs have been the primary form of collective citizen crime prevention over the last twenty-five years. Neighborhood watch-type activities are intended to provide an organizational framework for citizen participation in local crime prevention activities. These programs are based on the belief that neighborhood residents are in the best position to monitor individuals and activities in their communities. Such programs typically involve “citizens coming together in relatively small groups (usually block clubs) to share information about local crime problems, exchange crime prevention tips, and make plans for engaging in surveillance (‘watching’) of the neighborhood and crime-reporting activities.”

Neighborhood watch-type programs across America involve a wide variety of activities. James Garofalo and Maureen McLeod’s national survey, which collected information from 550 neighborhood watch programs, found the most popular activity was a property-marking program called Operation Identification (80.6 percent), followed by home security surveys by local police identifying security weaknesses (67.9 percent). Interestingly, 38 percent of the groups reported participating in more general community-oriented activities, such as insurance premium deduction surveys, quality-of-life measures, and medical emergency measures.

Theoretically, neighborhood watch-type activities address crime through the causal processes of informal social control and opportunity reduction. Through increased social contact and interaction, these programs are intended to reduce crime and fear of crime by increasing residents’ social bonding, support, and cohesion. Additionally, through increased surveillance and monitoring of the neighborhood, these social groups seek to reduce opportunities for crime.

Evaluations of neighborhood watch-type programs have shown mixed empirical support.  The best data on the effectiveness of neighborhood watch-type programs comes from four large-scale evaluations in Chicago, Minneapolis, Seattle, and London. The general pattern of results can be summarized as follows:

• An increased awareness of and participation in program
• No change in crime rates
• No change in resident’s fear of crime
• No change in resident’s social cohesion
• No change in other intermediate social processes

Further, mobilizing and maintaining citizen participation is most difficult in neighborhoods where it is most needed. Participation levels remain low in high-crime, low-income, predominantly minority, heterogeneous neighborhoods, even after substantial organizing efforts. Additionally, in neighborhoods defined by high levels of disorder, crime, mutual distrust, transience, and a history of poor police-community relations it seems unrealistic to ask residents to work together as a team, keep an eye out for suspicious persons, and report crime to police.

Citizen patrols. Another community mobilization strategy is the active patrolling of neighborhoods by citizens who are not sworn law enforcement officers. Citizen patrols represent a straightforward attempt by neighborhood residents to increase surveillance and send a message to deviant residents, especially drug dealers, that “we control this area.” Today, citizen patrols address a wide range of problems, function in a variety of neighborhoods, and can be distinguished along several dimensions:

• Function: protection of individual residents, deterrence of crime and disorder, identification of problem areas, reporting of incidents to the police
• Surveillance area: buildings, neighborhood streets, public transportation, and college campuses
• Mode of transportation: foot, bicycle, horse, scooter, or motorized patrol
• Policies about responding to incidents: reporting versus intervention or arrest
• Size: local, citywide, national

Evaluations of citizen patrols have produced mixed results. In the only national study, Yin (pdf) and his colleagues concluded that citizen patrols “may be” effective in increasing residents’ perception of safety. However, the study relied primarily on anecdotal evidence. In an evaluation of a well-organized paid citizen foot patrol in Columbus, Ohio, Edward Latessa and Harry Allen reported that the targeted areas experienced a reduction in crime. More recently, citizen patrols appeared to have reduced violence and increased feelings of safety in the Netherlands. In contrast, evaluations of the Guardian Angels in San Diego neighborhoods (and on New York City subways) revealed little impact on levels of crime. Caution must be exercised when interpreting these findings because of limitations in the research designs.

Another important question is how the public and the police view citizen patrols. In general, local citizens have given favorable ratings to citizen patrols, while local police have been less accepting. Although the reservation of police administrators to endorse citizen patrols is due, in part, to turf issues and control of the crime-fighter role, they also voice legitimate concerns about vigilantism, and the more subtle racism possibly generated by citizen patrols. With a long history of vigilantism, the United States has plenty of room for concern that certain subgroups of the community will attempt to enforce norms that are prejudicial to other groups. When citizens organize to stop crime and crime nonetheless continues to get worse, they naturally ask why. The answer may often be ill-informed, leading citizens to stereotype and blame certain groups and individuals for the problem.

Nonetheless, citizen patrols can be a positive force in the community. For those citizens who are invested in the neighborhood and care about maintaining its quality of life, patrols offer a vehicle for deterring crime and establishing social control over contested physical space. Yet local organizers must be ever mindful of the purpose and methods of the patrol. They must also be careful to avoid cooptation by the police or risk becoming indiscriminate defenders of police actions. The problem of racial profiling among police officers applies equally well to citizen patrols.

Is it worthwhile? Despite growing participation in neighborhood watch programs and citizen patrols, scientifically rigorous evaluation has failed to find consistent crime reduction benefits or significant increases in quality-of-life measures. While these programs may provide additional eyes and ears for the police, improve police-community relations, reduce crime and disorder, and strengthen social control and social support mechanisms, evaluators have yet to document such results. The lack of scientific evidence for surveillance-type programs may be attributed to poor evaluations. There have been very few scientifically rigorous evaluations of these types of crime prevention activities. A series of well-controlled experiments might well produce more promising results.

The failure of neighborhood watch programs, however, may reflect a deeper problem with the underlying theory. That is, these programs may be based on false assumptions about the social ecology of high-crime neighborhoods. The cookiecutter approach to neighborhood crime prevention has promoted watch-type organizations widely, even in neighborhoods where they appear to be inappropriate. In heterogeneous neighborhoods where there is high population turnover, for example, asking residents to come together in mutual support and trust to develop a system of surveillance against strangers and suspicious persons makes little sense.

Even in neighborhoods where neighborhood watch programs seem more appropriate, organizers need to address factors that contribute to the maintenance of successful programs. Stated simply, most watch-type programs do not last. They are organized to respond to a public safety crisis, and members generally lose interest when the crisis is over. Successful maintenance of collective community action requires leadership, continuous group structure, resources, a full agenda, and regular rewards for members. For this reason, multi-issued community organizations that address a wide range of neighborhood problems are encouraged over single-issue surveillance programs.