Neighborhood Watch and Citizen Patrols: Evaluation

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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.

Improve the Community, Deter the Criminal

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Crime is a serious and costly social problem that touches every neighborhood in this country. The knowledge base for developing effective neighborhood crime prevention initiatives has expanded significantly in recent years. When targeting these processes, certain interventions have been fairly successful in reducing the prevalence of crime in specific areas. Whether this knowledge can be used to produce sustained reductions in neighborhood crime rates is an important social policy question.

Since the mid-1960s, the United States has been embroiled in a war against crime, and has sought to control crime though the traditional responses of deterrence, incapacitation, and (occasionally) rehabilitation. The results of this law-enforcement approach are apparent. Expanded criminal codes and enforcement have produced huge jail and prison populations, disproportionately persons of color. While many policymakers have sought to justify these actions by citing reductions in crime rates, regardless of the merits of this argument (which are debatable), the financial and human costs of these policies are enormous and underestimated.

Although the criminal justice system is a necessary component of neighborhood crime prevention, it is not sufficient and can easily be overused. Clearly, the criminal justice system, as currently structured, is extremely limited in its capacity to prevent neighborhood crime. Hence, the best bet for promoting safe and healthy neighborhoods is to achieve broad understanding of the causes and impacts of violence and work to develop a broad array of preventive responses.

One important insight to emerge from scientific inquiry into neighborhoods in the past few decades is that problem behaviors tend to cluster in geographic areas and within individuals and families. Consequently, these behaviors tend to reinforce one another. Delinquency, violence, dropping out of school, teen pregnancy, and substance abuse often co-vary. As a result, new models are emerging for improving neighborhood safety and health, beginning with the premise that organizing around broad goals at the neighborhood level will result in improved quality of life for local residents. Inherent in these new models is the belief that traditional approaches to improving social conditions are not effective at the neighborhood level and that communities and regions play a much larger role in producing real change. These new models are diverse, but mutually supportive.

  • Individual and family interventions are now giving greater attention to early intervention in the life cycle.
  • Community models now recognize the need for achieving justice through harm reduction and offender reintegration rather than through isolation and retribution.
  • Restorative and community justice models are enticing because they offer justice by linking community and agency resources through a process that may strengthen collective efficacy at the neighborhood level.
  • Technology models are seeking to empower communities with web-based information networks, while pursuing resources to close the “digital divide.”
  • Macrolevel interventions are needed to regulate the economic and government forces that have historically resulted in community decline and disinvestment and provide new opportunities that can discourage crime.

Despite gaps in knowledge, progress has been made in designing successful neighborhood crime prevention initiatives. The recent developments in neighborhood-based programming have ignited hope—a hope that crime-ridden neighborhoods can become safe and healthy places for residents to raise children and achieve a reasonable quality of life. Comprehensive community programs have shown some success and are being replicated in many locations. However, there is much more we need to understand and much more we need to do. To take the lead from Penelope Tricket and her colleagues, today’s residents deserve the best we can offer with our current knowledge; tomorrow’s deserve better.

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.

United We Serve Brings Catholics and Muslims Together, and other selections

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Serve.gov – This year during Ramadan, right before the start of the United We Serve Interfaith Week of Service, the Interfaith Committee at my church, St. Charles Borromeo Catholic Church in Arlington, Virginia, organized an iftar (dinner to break the Ramadan fast) for members of local Muslim communities. More than 60 Catholics and Muslims attended the dinner, a turnout far surpassing our expectations.

The ‘youngest headmaster in the world’

BBC News – Around the world millions of children are not getting a proper education because their families are too poor to afford to send them to school. In India, one schoolboy is trying to change that. In the first report in the BBC’s Hunger to Learn series, Damian Grammaticas meets Babar Ali, whose remarkable education project is transforming the lives of hundreds of poor children. Via Reasons to be Hopeful

Organization shares bounty

Glendale News Press – Liana Aghajanian – As cars whizzed by on a crisp, early Sunday morning on Buena Vista Street, Marie Boswell shuffled a ladder and boxes to the backyard of Burbank resident Allison Bluestein before sticking a sign on the front lawn that read “Fruit being picked by Food Forward. This all-volunteer grass-roots organization gleans fruit off trees on properties and donates 100% of the bounty to food pantries in an effort to fight urban hunger, said Boswell, one of the fruit picking coordinators.

Homes repaired, hungry fed at Hope for Gaston community festival

Gaston Gazette – Corey Friedman – Volunteers spent Saturday painting and installing bathroom fixtures in the teacher’s assistant’s North Morris Street house. Hers was one of 30 homes renovated during Hope for Gaston, a neighborhood block party and outreach festival in Gastonia’s West Highland community. “At first, I wouldn’t let anybody in because I was disappointed I didn’t have the funds to fix it up,” Brooks said. “I was ashamed. Hope for Gaston has saved my house.”

(more…)

Acclaimed conductor brings music education to neighborhood kids, and other selections

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Acclaimed conductor brings music education to neighborhood kids

Twin Cities Planet – Mckenzie Martin – In 2008, Alsop founded OrchKids, an after-school music education program in low-income neighborhoods throughout the city. Through the program, students learn musicianship with the goal of improving the students’ social, academic and behavioral skills. Last year, 30 students participated in OrchKids, where they received musical theory instruction for the first half of the year, followed by lessons on the instrument of their choice throughout the second half of the program.

Crowd-Sourced Initiatives to Create a More Livable New York City

Inhabitat (blog) – Olivia Chen – When NYC’s Mayor Bloomberg launched the Big Apps competition this past June, he invited individuals and groups to program applications that make government data sets accessible to the public — solidifying that technology can contribute to improved quality of life. Applications created in response to Bloomberg’s decisions will join the crowd-sourced initiatives that offer residents not only information, but a place to gain a sense of community, to exchange ideas and to visualize space digitally.

Building a House and Community Ties With Habitat for Humanity

CBS MoneyWatch.com – Kathy Kristof – Prior to Habitat’s arrival, Tutwiler was best known for the brutal 1950s murder of Emmett Till, a black youth who had the nerve to talk to a white woman. Now, thanks to the donation of several acres of land and the time of hundreds of volunteers, it’s a place where the privileged and impoverished work side by side to construct a neat community of homes within walking distance of a medical clinic and recreation center run by a group of Catholic nuns.

Tradition in large helpings at suppers

BurlingtonFreePress.com – Glenn Russell – “What can be better than sharing a meal with your neighbors?” asked Paulsen. “I find it a great example of what community is all about.” Communities big and small across Chittenden County and beyond will follow Richmond’s lead this weekend by hosting their own chicken pie suppers. The dinners are organized as fundraisers by churches to generate extra income and to support a variety of grass-root projects, nonprofit causes and scholarships.

Photo Gallery: Falmouth event raises funds to help prevent homelessness

Falmouth Bulletin – Sarah Murphy – A sea of people in turquoise T- shirts departed from the village green in Falmouth for an afternoon walk. But it wasn’t just any Sunday stroll. The group was participating in the 24th annual Cape Walk to End Homelessness to benefit the Housing Assistance Corporation. HAC is a nonprofit organization dedicated to serving the housing needs of all Cape Codders. It operates homeless shelters for adults and families, administers rental subsidies, offers education and training, and develops new housing affordable housing.

Initiative to transform public housing project deemed success

Knoxville News Sentinel – Mike Blackerby – The revitalization continues, but Knoxville officials and neighborhood residents deemed the HOPE VI initiative – which transformed the old barrack-style College Homes public housing project into the thriving and vibrant Mechanicsville Commons – a success during a Monday celebration at Danny Mayfield Park. Nance said the project is doing exactly what it was intended to do: enhancing neighborhood pride through home ownership, reducing crime, improving schools through better family engagement, attracting businesses and creating jobs.

Neighborhood Watch Programs Safer Than Before

Loudoun Connection – Martin Casey – In the original Neighborhood Watch programs, volunteer residents took turns cruising the neighborhood in their cars, or even on foot. Volunteers literally stood watch to help keep their neighbors safe. But today, Dep. James Spurlock says, “I don’t want any of you out on the street, possibly putting yourselves in harm’s way. I want you in your homes, but keenly alert to any suspicious activities.”

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National Night Out, Make a Difference Day In

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Lots of good stories on last night’s night out (although some got rained out and moved down)

Neighbors gather to celebrate National Night Out

San Antonio Express – Eva Ruth Moravec, Valentino Lucio – Allie Hostetter looked around the Calvary Temple parking lot as hundreds gathered to watch a local elementary school choir, grabbed a bite to eat and chatted with friends. For Hostetter and the El Chaparral-Fertile Valley Neighborhood Association, Tuesday’s inaugural National Night Out event was a complete success. “We’re really proud of all the neighbors, businesses and everyone else that have helped us,” Hostetter said. “We didn’t expect this.”

Communities gather during ‘Night Out’

Brazosport Facts – Jones Creek officials were “ecstatic” Tuesday after more than 100 adults and their children attended the city’s first National Night Out event. The front lawn of City Hall was packed with residents talking with Jones Creek marshal’s officers, volunteer firefighters, Brazoria County Sheriff Charles Wagner and Pct. 4 Constable Fred Kanter.

We met people last night from all sides of every one of these hills in our little community. And we are indeed a community, with just a few roads winding around all these hills, some houses visible from the roads, others tucked way back and hidden in the woods. Honestly, I didn’t realize that so many families were in here to begin with– so there are more houses hidden by the woods and the trees that I imagined.

More NNO news here.

Lots of buzz on Make a Difference Day

In the old news, and the new news. If you need ideas, try these: Project Ideas for Make a Difference Day, 77 ways to build community in your neighborhood, 50 ways to serve in your neighborhood, and 31 ways to create sustainable neighborhoods.

And in other news of good people doing good …

Neighborhood Harvest shares bounty

Mail Tribune – Sarah Lemon – The Ashland couple, who usually share the bounty with nearby families, decided to expand their definition of “neighbor.” Neighborhood Harvest, an organization founded in Ashland last year, picked all the plums free of charge. After the group’s volunteers kept a portion of the 30-pound harvest, local food banks received about a third, and a third was set aside for sale at the Rogue Valley Growers and Crafters Market. “At this point, we’re totally funded by the fruit sales,” says Josh Shupack, who manages the program.

Huber Heights family devoted to volunteerism

Dayton Daily News – Beth Anspach – When Brooke Davidson of Huber Heights was just 5 years old, she began an outreach to those less fortunate that continues to this day. Now 14, Brooke and her entire family are devotees of volunteerism and believe that “giving back,” should be the center of everyone’s lives. “I went with my mom to help homeless people when I was 5,” Brooke said, “And we ended up producing a play to help bring attention to homelessness.”

NORCs: Unique Havens for an Aging America

Yahoo! News – Philip Moeller – Lillian Miceli owns her home, has no plans to leave, and looks forward to many more good years. But, at 89, with knees “that are shot,” she needs a lot of help to remain independent. Fortunately, a program in the western suburbs of St. Louis sends volunteer students from Washington University in St. Louis to tend her yard. Pete Pozefsky, a Boeing engineer who lives in the area and volunteers for the program, stops by to help her solve a computer problem, then sticks around to move some heavy boxes. Other volunteers periodically assist with physically demanding chores, and staffers of this unique program provide social and community support services.