Community Crime Reduction: Activating Formal and Informal Control (From Handbook of Crime Prevention and Community Safety, P 107-142, 2005, Nick Tilley, ed, -- See NCJ-214069)

• NCJ Number: 214074
• Author(s): George L. Kelling
• Date Published: 2005
• Length: 36 pages
• Sale Source: Willan Publishing
• Publication Format: Book Chapter
• Publication Type: Program/Project Description
• Language: English
• Country: United Kingdom

Annotation

This chapter describes the development of the Greater Newark Safer Cities Initiative (Safer Cities), a crime prevention program designed to curb violent crime in Newark, NJ.

Abstract

The focus of the chapter, aside from describing the development of a major crime prevention program, is to highlight the importance of community involvement and interorganizational relationships in reducing crime problems. The chapter begins with a discussion of the role of police in shifting the crime control emphasis to prevention rather than reaction and discusses the movement toward community policing efforts and community involvement in crime prevention. The author next focuses on his experiences working with the Newark Police Department (NPD) and other stakeholders, such as the United States Attorney and the Essex County Prosecutor, in the mid- to late-1990s on the development of a crime prevention effort that would help reduce the city’s violent crime rate. The NPD had already experienced success in reducing other types of crimes through its implementation of the Comstat crime analysis and accountability program but needed help impacting the violent crime rate. The author describes the Safer Cities program development as comprised of four administrative processes, a problem analysis function, and five treatment modalities. Treatment modalities include notification sessions, accountability sessions, ‘rev’-up sessions, enhanced services and supervision, and the gun strategy. A table is presented that offers a detailed description of the chronology of the Safer Cities development, which included three phases: a start-up phase that involved establishing critical partnerships, a building operational support phase that involved the development of procedures, and a strategy building and implementation phase involving the evaluation of outcomes. The author presents a discussion on the importance of defining the terms of the relationship in any community-involvement, interorganizational effort and presents lessons learned from the experience of developing Safer Cities. Lessons learned include the necessity of organizing around an urgent problem rather than around a systems change and the importance of respecting agency discretion. Table, box, notes, references