Changing attitudes vs. Changing lives

Plentiful and fun community events in a Calgary neighbourhood - an essential ingredient for successful local organizations  

TOOLKIT: For the past three years, Larry Leach has penned a series of blogs forming a toolkit for neighbourhood livability. In 2023, he introduced outputs and outcomes. In 2024 he explored the nudge factor and Good Neighbourhood Agreements. A year later children and youth centres was followed by Neighbourhood Communications Plans. In this installment, Larry returns to outputs and outcomes, taking the idea further as the foundation for his upcoming presentation at the October SafeGrowth Summit in Calgary.

by Larry Leach 

One might also title this blog Outputs vs. Outcomes, a theme I first described a few years ago. It is a narrative that ends up shaping whether you collaborate or work in a silo. 

In my experience, organizations that value outputs, branding and changing attitudes, tend to be less collaborative than those that value outcomes, changing lives and doing the work. Changing attitudes is still good work, but it’s important to recognize the difference. We fail when trying to be all things to all people.

Jason Tudor, a member of our SafeGrowth Network, describes it this way: 

"I have worked with government agencies, nonprofits, businesses, neighborhood groups, and residents, and I don’t think any one sector is inherently better at collaboration. The difference is whether an organization views collaboration as a means of advancing its own work or achieving a shared community outcome."

If you value achieving a good outcome, you will collaborate with any organization to get there. After many years building community, I can identify organizations that collaborate and those that don’t. Trying to change an uncollaborative group is much harder, if it’s possible at all.

Jason adds: 

“Residents in Hollygrove confronted drug activity, cleaned neglected spaces, installed lighting, organized walking groups, addressed problem properties and businesses, and created solutions when traditional institutions could not or would not respond… but the important outcome was not successfully implementing a SafeGrowth project. It was that residents developed the capacity and confidence to act collectively.”

He describes how the most successful partners were those willing to directly join the neighborhood process rather than owning it themselves. “Collaboration became difficult when institutional procedure, jurisdiction, funding silos, or organizational ownership became more important than solving the neighborhood’s problem.”

The full Hollygrove story is covered extensively in prior blogs, such as back from the brink and a gift for the holidays, and in our forthcoming SafeGrowth book. 

Neighbourhood groups in Hollygrove were careful to choose partner organizations that shared their visions - here they conduct safety audits as part of the safety diagnoses

Another great Safegrowth partner, Pamela Daniels of The Brickerati group in Newark, New Jersey adds: 

“I think successful collaboration for us in Newark has been about leveraging partnerships to achieve mutual outcomes/impact and sometimes that impetus being funding sources themselves." 

"Funders want to see collaborations, shared resources, and less duplicated approaches to reach the same target audiences and collaborative approaches… to achieve greater impact. That synchronicity happened successfully in Newark over time because the field started to realize we aren't competitors but partners in an ecosystem.”

Great neighbourhoods have convenient and safe places to lounge. They also need local organizational methods to keep them that way.  

 

THE SQUEAKY WHEEL GETS THE GREASE

Output Organizations value branding and changing attitudes and often get the attention and funding. That is what they seek. While great for awareness campaigns, when it comes to actual community building, that focus on building a brand can cloud their ability to build relationships to make the change necessary for a good outcome. In turn, that can perpetuate rather than help solve the problem.

Non-profit prognosticators tell me how funders should change the way they look at funding, changing the process of applying and what they fund. The truth is many funders have their own outputs and may not be interested in solving a problem. They prefer to brand themselves in a cause. 

How do you determine whether an organisation is collaborative and whether they’re interested in solving a problem? 

Try these trigger questions when you are assessing partner organizations or seeking funding: 

• Are they saying “we want to collaborate”, but not following with actions?
• Are they actively resisting your ideas?
• Is the problem bureaucracy, conflicting priorities, lack of trust?
• Do you need something specific from them, or are you trying to build a longer-term partnership?

GETTING CREDIT - BUILDING TRUST

Rather than pushing them harder, consider these steps:

1. Understand their incentives. Organizations respond to what helps achieve their goals. Frame your proposal around their priorities, not yours. 
2. Lower the risk of saying yes. Start with one small, low-risk project with clear roles and a timeline. Relationships take time. 
3. Identify the decision-maker. People may appear ready to collaborate but lack the authority. Find the person who can authorize action. It makes a big difference. 
4. Track agreements in writing. After meetings, briefly summarize what was discussed, who agreed to what, and next steps. This creates clarity without confrontation. 
5. Know when to stop investing your time. After repeated delays, cancellations or silence, it may be more productive to find another partner or project.

Jason sums this up: "Perhaps the simplest test I have found for identifying a genuinely collaborative organization is this: If someone else receives the credit, but the community gets the outcome, would the organization still consider the project a success? If the answer is yes, you probably have a very good collaborator."

Pamela adds: "It takes time for guards to come down. It takes time for competitive natures to dwindle. So, funding sources as the impetus [can] speed that up and certainly ushered in new approaches in Newark when it happened."

As Stephen Covey describes in his book by the same name - change moves at the speed of trust. And that applies only when we believe that our Outcomes are more important than our Outputs.  

The curious case of the falling murder rate

Toronto, Canada - Toronto's metro is generally considered among the safest in North America, with a combined population of 7 million and a total homicide rate of less than 1 per 100,000 - photo Tamjeed, Pixels

by Gregory Saville

Two years ago, I wrote A Shot in the Dark: Murder Under U.S. Presidents about crime statistics and the curious habit of politicians taking credit when crime falls and blaming someone else when it rises.

This year, as has been the case since the 1990s, the U.S. homicide rate has continued to fall, aside from a blip during Covid. I have been writing about crime rate trends for 15 years. Five years ago, I wrote In the peaks and valleys of crime. And now, having read the latest about declining homicide rates, here we are again. 

This time, before anyone takes credit, and before researchers delve into potential causes like tough laws, crime crackdowns, more security cameras, or goodness knows what, let’s take one extra step! 

Let’s not tune into the ideological bleating about tougher incarceration or the enforcement of illegal immigration. Let’s do a little experiment. Let’s look elsewhere and consider what has been happening to homicide outside the U.S.

San Francisco, California. "The Bay" metro area comprises numerous jurisdictions just under 5 million population. Its combined homicide rate is 3 per 100,000 - three times higher than Toronto.

 

THE EXTRA STEP

Criminologists often use homicide as one of the more reliable measures for comparing crime trends. I have written previously it is not perfect. All official crime statistics are surrogates for a much more complicated reality, and reporting and recording practices differ. But homicide suffers less from the non-reporting problems than other crime statistics.

That makes the North American comparison interesting.

Between 1990 and 2007, homicide rates (the number of homicides per 100,000 people) declined in all three North American countries:

• Mexico: 17.3 → 8.1 = 53% decline
• United States: 9.3 → 5.7 = 39% decline
• Canada: 2.37 → 1.82 = 23% decline

Therefore, by the end of the 1990–2007 period, Mexico's homicide rate was actually below the homicide rate the United States had experienced during its own peaks.

 

Numerous sources were drawn for this chart, including: Canada — Statistics Canada, Homicide Survey, Table 35-10-0068-01; the United States, FBI Uniform Crime Reporting data; The United States, FBI Uniform Crime Reporting data; U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics - Homicide Trends in the United States; the UNODC Intentional-Homicide Series, distributed through the World Bank; and the Mexican historical series data.

Three countries with very different governments, policies, policing systems and social conditions. All experiencing substantial homicide declines during roughly the same period. Most strikingly, Mexico experienced the largest decline of the three! 

I wrote a while back that we should not do what Mexico is doing. This suggests I was wrong!

Mexican military in Michoacan, activated in the War Against Drug Trafficking - photo Diego Fernandez, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

 

THEN THINGS CHANGED

Then Mexico's rate explodes in 2007 from 8.12 to 23.5 in 2011. What happened? 

Beginning in late 2006, the Mexican federal government launched a massive police and military crackdown against the drug cartels. The decades-old cartel ecosystem destabilized, traditional cartels fragmented, rival groups fought over territory, and homicide exploded. In 2015, another crackdown destabilized the situation again.  

 

Mexico City - the capital of Mexico has over 20 million population and the city proper 9 million. The homicide rate in the city proper is 8 per 100,000, over twice that of San Francisco and eight times higher than Toronto - Photo Alcantara, Pixels

The upshot was after declining for almost two decades, Mexico's homicide rate nearly tripled within a few years. This unintended consequence of state action is well documented by numerous sources, including Oscar Contreras Velasco. 

 

MEANWHILE, NORTH OF BORDER... 

All this time, Canada continued its long-term downward trajectory just like the U.S. Except for a blip during Covid, the homicide rate in both countries declined. Now, Canadian and American homicide rates have again fallen dramatically in step with each other. 

This is in spite of the fact that Canada has no U.S-style community violence interrupter programs, growing incarceration rates, nor immigration crackdowns. Yet the homicide rate still declines. In spite of the fact that Canadian police have generally cleared a substantially larger proportion of homicides (70%) than police in the United States (54%), both U.S. and Canadian rates decline.

As for Mexico, note that, after the 2007 – 2017 decade of murder, homicide rates there too are falling as well, just as they were prior to the decade of murder.

Setting aside the 2007-2017 decade of unintended consequences, Mexico, Canada, and the newest U.S. figures simply add another chapter to that same story that has been going on in all three countries for a very long time.

 

With the exception of the Mexican decade of Murder, homicide rates in all three countries had an overall declining pattern - sources in above graph 

 

HOW CAN THIS BE? 

Here is the question this extra step asks: How can three different countries with very different governments, criminal-justice systems and social systems end with the same homicide reduction trend?

Let's be clear: Leaders make decisions that matter and governments implement policies that can help or hurt. Yet when similar declines appear across borders and across governments of very different political stripes, perhaps we should be cautious about congratulating the person standing beside the graph.

Here is a more interesting question: What does the graph itself tell us?

Homicide has been declining for a very long time. The crime decline began in the early 1990s and continued under leaders of all political parties and in different countries. Canada and the U.S. experienced similar long-term declines and in 2025, their homicide rates fell again.

None of this means governments and presidents are irrelevant. Policing, prevention, economics, demographics, and countless other factors matter.

Maybe macro trends within societies over the long periods of time affect crime trends beyond borders, governments and political parties. And maybe those kinds of trends are not found in national crime policies or statistical blips.

Perhaps leaders deserve a little less credit, and criminology deserves a little more curiosity.

When school safety becomes a tech race

School design matters for safety. International CPTED Association CPTED in Schools Guidebook - photo by Jeremy Bitterman Photography, Lacamas Lake ES/Mahlum Architects 

by Gregory Saville

“In May, 2022, there was a school shooting… as I watched it unfold, having been in law enforcement for 23 years, I saw the mistakes that were being made and I got angry. I got really angry!" – James Fuller, Director of Operations, Northern Star, non-profit school safety coalition.

A few years ago, my friend James Fuller uttered those words when, in response to the tragic Uvalde school shooting in Texas, he worked with other colleagues to launch Northern Star, a non-profit school safety coalition. I was invited to advise and join this group on their search for answers to this ongoing nightmare that is school violence. 

Months later there we sat, in our first leadership workshop on prevention strategies and school safety plans. I looked around the room and was impressed with all the experience: educators, police, ex-military, veterans, mental health experts, school principals, and criminologists.

Here was a volunteer group of passionate and committed souls, community members and parents among them, dedicating their considerable experience to the complex problem of school violence. James wanted answers, not a rush for public safety theatre (the use of high visible security measures with the appearance of safety, regardless of whether they reduce risk).

Their first decision: adopt school safety planning that was evidence-based, community-based and effective! What a breath of fresh air.

Then this week happened.

RISK AND REALITY

On Monday I watched a newsclip from a private school in Colorado that plans to use high-speed mini-drones that fire pepper-spray and strike active shooters. What could go wrong?

Each year, the vast majority of schools in the U.S. will never experience gun violence. Depending on how you measure the problem, there is an average risk of roughly 1 incident per 400 schools that experience a shooting incident, whether or not there is injury. Mass shootings with injuries and fatalities are much rarer at about 1 incident per 10,000 schools. 

Does the low-risk matter if drones help, even slightly? If they help, who can argue with that logic? Not the state of Georgia who has spent $500,000 to pilot the drone system in five public schools. Not Florida who has spent over $550,000 to implement the technology at three high schools. And now, not one Colorado public charter school that decided to pay for its own drones. 

Thats over a million dollars! It is never wise to argue actuarial logic when it comes to the emotional topic of child safety. Still, a million dollars might go a long way with other evidence-based mitigation and prevention strategies. 

Should school safety employ defensive technologies or socially sophisticated prevention solutions?
Photo - Minidrone ZLEA, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Let’s be crystal clear. Schools should prepare for all high-risk tragedies, no matter how rare. And I am not the Luddite in this case because I have not seen the drones up close nor seen evaluation trials on their effectiveness. 

Yet, I cannot ignore the elephant in the room! Are we yet again investing in the latest reaction technology while neglecting other forms prevention? 

Those of us with years working and researching the science of crime prevention wonder if this is a pattern we’ve seen before. SafeGrowth blogs over the past decade tell a cautionary tale about reactive suppression technologies and highly targeted response strategies. Consider:

• Predictive policing
• SQF policing
• K5 security robots, and
• ShotSpotter AI technology.

In SafeGrowth, when it comes to technology, we employ a simple principle learned over the years. Don't discard effective prevention while embracing the latest suppression technology. As the ancient German proverb warns, don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. 

Whether intended or not, highly publicized defensive technologies can contribute to the cultural script surrounding rare but highly publicized forms of violence. That doesn't mean the drones cause violence, but it does mean educators and communicators should think carefully about how these technologies are presented alongside what we know about contagion effects. 

Balancing safety - the ying/yang approach

A BALANCED RESPONSE

What if there was another approach? What it we adopted a more balanced covenant between technologically sophisticated reactive solutions and the socially sophisticated preventive solutions with evidence of success? 

Call it the ying/yang for school violence prevention.

What if school leaders decided that every dollar invested in emergency suppression technologies should be matched by equal attention to helping local schools create their own comprehensive safety approach? Like what?

Approaches like those promoted by Northern Star’s methodology for school-based safety plans. Approaches like those the International CPTED Association recommends in their CPTED in Schools Guidebook to build pro-social school cultures, encourage safer environmental designs, strengthen peer networks, and improve self-awareness and conflict management. (NOTE: Those strategies are part of this year’s ICA CPTED Conference in Calgary, Oct. 2-4) 

Perhaps, in addition to drones, there will even be an approach that forges voluntary agreements with media news conglomerates to limit the sensationalizing of tragic shooting events. Limiting crime contagion might also go a long way to prevent school shootings. 

Security technology is attractive because it promises certainty. Communities are difficult because they require patience. School violence prevention is not easy, but nothing worthwhile ever is. Imagine if spending was more balanced...what a difference that might make!