Propaganda, science, crime prevention - A New Year's Resolution

Police and prevention go together. Good crime prevention is based on evidence, not popular beliefs

by Gregory Saville

“No one marches on Washington because of a pie chart!” I heard a politician say that years ago during a campaign. So why does anyone march on Washington, or wherever? Many people march for legitimate reasons. Others don’t. Evidence informs some. Others just believe what they want.

Incredulous as it seems – despite the absurdity of magic pills – some people end up believing populist snake oil when confronted with social unrest, economic strife, or political periods of turbulence. It’s the same in crime prevention. Despite evidence that many prevention methods cut crime, some choose to believe otherwise. 

We need an objective system that depends on evidence and rational decision-making. 

Crime prevention has been a police mandate since 1829.
A 1931 family photo of Police Constable Tom Hopkin - my grandfather

WHAT WORKS?

I remember reading one of the first evaluations of Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design in the 1970s – an elegant, pre-test/post-test research design with tons of data over several years. It examined problems like the maturation effect (how the passage of time taints a strategy) and selection bias (failing to collect random samples). Evaluators examined problems that researchers seldom examine even today, like compensatory equalization, (when a city implements other programs that affect the results). It was state-of-the-art in social science evaluation.

It was a demonstration project called Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design: Final Report on Residential Demonstration, Minneapolis, Minnesota.

That study, and a series of others that followed, were the most exacting scientific studies of CPTED of such size, scope, and quality. They are unrivaled, even today. They revealed the positive results from CPTED of that era. They showed how CPTED was successful when it was holistic and participative with the community. They also showed that CPTED was complex. 

What happened? Researchers criticized CPTED as too complex. They claimed it was too difficult to parse out the effect of specific strategies and to control one prevention effect from another. They complained it was too hard to isolate the role of the community from the police and the prevention practitioners. 

You cannot please everyone! Nor, in science, should you. The point is not to please people and appease their feelings. The point of science is to learn from mistakes and move closer to truth.

Since then, hundreds of CPTED studies have shown positive prevention results. The most recent claimed: “Reviews of collections of CPTED case studies have in general indicated CPTED interventions typically reduce crime.” 

Einstein's prediction about the bending of light. Many felt he was nuts - it offended their belief about the world. Scientific experimentation proved them wrong
- photo Creative Commons

BELIEF VERSUS TRUTH

We still lack the scientific rigor to find any “ultimate” truths. That doesn’t mean we cannot find some relative truths. Good scientists say this all the time. Yet, if such flaws exist in the physical sciences, imagine the ailments afflicting social science. 

In one review, a City Journal critic of criminological statistics found that “A detailed review of every regression model published between 1968 and 2005 in Criminology, a leading peer-reviewed journal, demonstrated that these models consistently failed to explain 80 to 90 percent of the variation in crime.”

I recently read an evaluation in Sweden that was so flawed, it read like propaganda. It failed to cite any prior evaluation research, provided no methodology, and quantified nothing. CPTED evaluations from 40 years ago put it to shame. Clearly, they have learned zero.

How can we build a library of evidence about effective crime prevention when even social scientists cannot figure out how to do proper science? 

Clark Stanley's Snake Oil Liniment. One of the earliest cons in the Old West
- photo Creative Commons 

SNAKE OIL SALES 

If it is a choice between the snake oil propaganda of populist politicians (the “elites” are the problem; let’s go back to the old days), or an objective system that depends on evidence and rational decision-making, I doubt any fair-minded, democracy-loving, intelligent person, would choose the former.

There is no way to know for certain in social science how much more research is necessary. We also do not know whether more evidence, no matter how conclusive, will convince policy-makers to make rational crime policy. Regardless, none of that should dissuade the use of good research and the collection of decent evidence.

As we enter the New Year, I say we should carry on the difficult task of refining crime prevention methods, regardless of sham critics. We must remain vigilant against populist propaganda. We should continue to build, and learn from, libraries of success and failure. 

We may not know how to convince the political populists, but without efforts to learn from science, we will forever be in the clutches of one snake oil salesman or another. And, as we know from the history of violence in the 20th Century, that never ends well.

Scale is good for economies... but is it good for social policy?

Budgeting for social agencies - Lessons from Calgary 
Photo Creative Commons

GUEST BLOG: Larry Leach is Executive Director of 12 Community Safety Initiative (12CSI), a non-profit crime prevention collaborative in Calgary, Canada, one of the initial sponsors of the 2015 SafeGrowth Summit. In 2018 12CSI won the Alberta Solicitor General's Award for Community Collaboration and the Ambassador program won it in 2022. Larry has been a Huffington Post blogger and is involved in the SafeGrowth Network. He was awarded with the Queens Diamond and Platinum Jubilee medals for his contributions to community-building.

I recently started analyzing the budgets of social agencies in Calgary and the numbers may stagger many not working within the sector. While my analysis is not yet complete, it is clear that the collective budgets of agencies serving the homeless and vulnerable sectors are well over $200 Million per year. Most of those monies come from the Federal Government (some through Calgary Homeless Foundation) to agencies with budgets ranging from $10 - $40 million. 

While I wouldn’t advocate that those monies aren’t spent in a justified way or that less should be spent, we look at the scale of these local agencies with budgets over $10 million to examine their relative effectiveness. We ask the question: Can the system and the agencies employ these significant resources in a more community-centered way?

In many cases, community engagement starts and ends with a town
hall meeting. That is not enough!

COMMUNITY EXPERTS

I heard a great quote at a Crime Prevention conference recently from a registered social worker, Kassidy Green from Boyle Street Community Services: “I am a member of the community first, then a member of my profession (social worker)”. That resonates with me. 

I work with a team of Ambassadors that walk our neighbourhoods daily working with vulnerable people to help them access services. In that work, the thing we hear most is a simple thank you for speaking to them with respect and trying to help them. It is a one-to-one, person-to-person, holistic community approach.

Community action teams have direct involvement on the
streets of their own neighbourhood 

When considering CPTED and SafeGrowth, it is said many times throughout these blogs that the real experts are the people that live in these neighbourhoods. In many cases, these agencies may have once upon a time engaged communities they work in, but in practice, the relationships are nonexistent for most of them. Some of the methods they may have used to justify their approach to their funders are described in prior SafeGrowth blogs, especially They Won't Get Involved 1 and They Won't Get Involved 2.  

Like many City of Calgary engagement sessions, you do not build community relationships by standing in front of a room and telling people that live in the community how an agency is going to improve the quality of life. That may help an agency check a tick box for the funders, but it does nothing to establish positive relationships. The best way to engage a community is outlined in They Won't Get Involved blogs mentioned above.

Community engagement should also mean fun activities, socializing, and food

OUTPUTS AND OUTCOMES

Let’s go in a different direction. What if the scale of these agencies prevents them from spending time building relationships with communities? What if these monies went to smaller groups or directly to the community itself through the social agency to solve social issues one block, one person, and one community at a time?

Let’s consider outputs vs. outcomes. Often, when you look at agency reports, they speak about how many things they gave out, from food hampers to safe needles. Does that show a good outcome? How were people’s lives affected? I heard a great example at a conference by Daniel J Jones, Chair of Justice Studies, NorQuest College. When the Police hold a press conference and stand in front of a table full of illegal drugs that they confiscated on the street, does the price of cocaine go down? 

Going forward in community funding, I think we must consider the following fundamental questions: 

• How are we affecting people’s lives? 
• Are we improving people’s lives? 
• How does what we do affect the community around our work? 
• How do we empower the community to be part of the solution? 
• Is what we are doing keeping people from improving their lives? 
• Is what we are doing supporting everyone in the community?

The Japanese solution to gun crime

Tokyo from the top of the SkyTree - World's largest city - photo by Yokalica (C) 

                                                         Creative Commons license

by Greg Saville

There is a remarkable story in today’s Guardian newspaper titled “How Japan has almost eradicated gun crime”. It says in 2014 Japan had “just six gun deaths compared to 33,599 in the US.”

Six gun deaths? In the entire country of 130 million people? The US averages 10 gun deaths per 100,000 persons (both felonious and accidental). Canada is less than 2. The UK and Australia under 1. Japan's number is so low it doesn’t register!

Ah, say the naysayers, that may be six gun deaths but you cannot compare the two countries! Raw population size alone accounts for the difference! Right?

Nope. Both countries have large populations: Japan is the 10th most populous country and America the 3rd. At 130 million, Japan is just under half the US population of 325 million.

Ah, say the naysayers, there are lots of other reasons why you can't compare.

Let's consider them...

POVERTY?

Does the US have more poverty?  Nope! The US reports its relative poverty rate at 13.5%. Japan posts its relative poverty rate at 16%.

CULTURAL DIVERSITY? 

America is far more diverse and Japan is far more culturally homogenous. True, that probably leads to shared social attitudes about non-violence in Japan. But it is a fact that most American urban violence is not between different racial groups but rather within them (a truism ignored by fact-free politicians).

HISTORY? 

Perhaps American history, with a civil war and multiple overseas wars, fuels a culture of violence? Nope, Japan isn't that different! Consider Japanese militarism following the Meiji Restoration, the Sino-Japanese wars, the Russian-Japanese War, and of course WW2.

URBANIZATION? 

Perhaps there are more frustrated people who live in dense American cities and that drives them to crime (the US is 81% urban)?  Nope! Japan is 78% urban and the world’s largest city - Tokyo - is one of the densest and most urban in the world. It is also among the safest.

SECURITY TECHNOLOGY? 

The latest in criminology is to explain global crime declines via increases in security technology, DNA fingerprints, predictive policing, CCTV computer algorithms, etc.

Nope, that doesn't work either. DNA fingerprinting works after a crime, not before. It might get a chronic offender off the streets. But given DNAs investigative scarcity around the world, claiming it accounts for crime declines stretches the logic gap to Grand Canyon proportion. Predictive policing has not been around long enough to register on statistical radar screens.

And CCTV? Every time I turn on the nightly news I watch an "exclusive report" of a robbery "caught on tape"? If CCTV is so great cutting crime, why do gun robberies keep showing up on the nightly news? Obviously, research on CCTV effectiveness is spotty.

Security tech isn’t the answer.

GANGS and GUNS

John Hancock Observatory Night View
Chicago had over 700 homicides in 2016
- photo by allen McGregor (C),  Creative Commons license 

Stats are hard to come by, but rough estimates suggest there are 1.4 million gang members in the US and 100,000 Yakuza in Japan. That’s a whopping difference of .4 to .07 percent of each country’s population respectively (almost 6 times as many criminal gang members per capita in the US).

The gang theory makes some sense since Yakuza are not only fewer in number but far more disciplined than their US counterparts. But the obvious explanatory elephant in this room is simple. Guns!

CARNAGE IN FLORIDA, AGAIN

After years of blogging about mass murder, guns and gangs in places like Orlando, Connecticut, Los Angeles, and too many others, I’m not going to harp on gun control or the long-proven crime causation theory behind it. For clear thinkers, it is study-laden and it is obvious. It is also a theory well understood in places like Canada, Australia and especially Japan.

So the American carnage continues. Yesterday there was yet another mass shooting on US soil by a madman triggered by “voices” (said the FBI). This latest mass murder was a lone gunman at the Fort Lauderdale airport and in 80 seconds he shot and killed 5 and injured 11. That is more than all those killed by guns in Japan for an entire year.

Six.

SafeGrowth in the university - from the classroom to the street

Simon Fraser University main campus quadrangle - Image by Soggybread, Creative Commons

GUEST BLOG: Tarah Hodgkinson is a senior researcher in the Integrated Risk Assessment Instrument Research Group in Vancouver, Canada. She is a member of the International CPTED Association and a certified SafeGrowth instructor. She is completing her Ph.D in criminology at Simon Fraser University. 

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Last spring, I had the pleasure of teaching a fourth year university class on crime prevention at the School of Criminology at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia. The course had not been offered in several years.

I was nervous as this was my first upper year seminar course, but I wanted to provide the students with an experience rarely seen on university campuses today. I wanted them to have a chance to guide their own learning, engage with their own neighbourhoods and finally write a paper that they could use for something more than just a grade.

I set up the class to include the SafeGrowth method and created a problem-based learning (PBL) format to teach it. In PBL the students work together in teams and select a real-life, complex crime problem in a neighborhood. Their learning is based on research-in-action.

PBL IN CRIMINOLOGY

In PBL students conduct a SafeGrowth® assessment on that neighbourhood and work to address that problem. In addition to their field work, students each read a different book that had been key to informing the SafeGrowth philosophy or crime prevention. They then participate in seminars with short interactive presentations on that week’s material, presented by the students themselves.

During their field work they practiced real-life learning in the same way a professional consulting team might engage a neighborhood: they conducted site audits, contacted city officials, learned more about crime mapping and developed an evidence-based plan.

They learned about search conferences and safety audits, not by reading about them, but by actually doing them. Their final paper was a report they could give to a city counsellor or funding agency – hence, not just for a grade.

Located atop Burnaby Mountain, the university overlooks Greater Vancouver - photo SFU

I had no idea how the students would respond since they were so used to lectures and tests. I was sure they would revolt. I feared the worst, but I got the best. When I trusted them to take chances, I saw them flourish. I saw them connect with each other, connect with their neighbourhoods, and learn that they too had a voice.

A THIRST FOR REAL-LIFE LEARNING 

I asked them to write a thirty second pitch about what they learned. Their responses were shocking. Very few spoke about the content. Rather, they told me that for the first time in university they felt that they had made real connections, real friends. In an era when many lament the loss of integration and connection, they integrated and connected.

They discussed the rewards of engaging with their neighbourhoods and realized that they could do something immediately to make changes. They said they felt listened to and that they had finally learned something. In a class where I did not do any traditional teaching, the students learned something. Imagine!

Not only did they learn that learning-by-doing and this intensive collaboration style - the action-based method - is the philosophical lynchpin of SafeGrowth and successful crime prevention. They also learned when I gave up lecturing and classroom control, when I trusted them to work together on real problems that is when real learning happened. It is then when we truly start to solve community crime problems.

What's happening to our police? Part 2

The Future of Police report reminds me of something Professor Herman Goldstein warned us about years ago - confusion about the ends over the means!

The future that the public wants - the ends – is less crime and more public safety. They want to get there - the means – by more community-building, more inclusive problem-solving, and better relationship-building.

I might be wrong, but I doubt the means that the public expects from police are the technology-drenched, algorithms suggested in Future of Policing.

"These changes," says the Preface in Future, "are not just about finding new ways to reduce crime; they go deeper, to evaluating the basic mission of the police, and what people want from the police."

GOING DEEPER

Of course saying officers should “go deeper” is not the same as doing it. Nor is it the same as providing the training to teach them how. Unfortunately training programs that teach such things - problem-based learning, emotional intelligence, PTO field training – do not show up in Future (even though the COPS office and PERF promoted development of those programs).

One quote by a LAPD supervisor suggests an escape from this institutional autism:

“…when [officers] spend time in the high-probability areas, they need to be doing problem solving. There is something there that is attracting criminals; we tell officers to look for the magnets. The goal isn’t more arrests, the goal is crime prevention.”

Very true! Except throughout 45 pages of text crime prevention was cited only 9 times and never explained fully.

THE FUTURE?

In Planning in Turbulence an author concludes: “our level of ignorance about social systems is quite astounding, yet our analytical approaches…assume away this ignorance outright through the specification of incomplete models based on incomplete or often inaccurate data.” 

That was 28 years ago regarding urban planning. I wonder...is police science any better or are we facing that exact same paradox?

In SafeGrowth we overcome this by developing neighborhood teams who run their own prevention plans alongside local cops. LISC’s Community Safety Initiative publications describe how we do it.

Another workaround emerges with street cops themselves who peek inside our communities. For example consider success stories in Camden NJ and Virginia Beach.

CAMDEN N.J.

Future of Policing describes the Camden NJ police using forfeiture funds in 2011 to purchase technology and form partnerships with other law enforcement. But a year later real change exploded.

As the New York Times reported, fed up with a flood of crime, tired of strict union rules inflating costs, 30% absenteeism at work and overtime pay for basic duties, the City of Camden shut down their police force and started over.

Without union rules they rehired 150 of the 200 old officers back and hired another 250 new officers. They instituted foot patrols, had volunteers walking the streets, and expanded youth programs. They properly staffed their CCTV and ran more enforcement.

The result? Youth program involvement increased, response times plunged from 1 hour to 4 minutes, crime rates dipped and murders dropped from 21 to 6.

Virginia Beach police Chief Cervera talking to Boy Scout Explorers - photo VBPD

VIRGINIA BEACH

A national leader in both the PTO program and problem-based learning, Virginia Beach went one step further. The news clip "Ask a cop for coffee and some conversation" describes how.

Once a year Chief Jim Cervera has his officers of all ranks walk neighborhoods and knock on thousands of doors to ask what residents think of their police.

Says Cervera: "We want the surveys to prompt real conversations. There is nothing better than two people from different social, racial or ethnic backgrounds having a heart-to-heart discussion about a common goal."

NEIGHBORHOOD GOVERNANCE

No sensible person wants the mantle of anti-tech Luddite. Science is part of the way forward. But as Harvard’s Malcolm Sparrow makes clear in Governing Science, it needs careful watching. Those who champion science are not the new Lords of Truth. They are Tech Emissary’s with flashlights to find our way in the dark

Turning crime around will mean a neighborhood planning system with three equal partners: carefully governed science and technology; active neighborhood groups working directly with their local police; and cops and residents co-trained in the kinds of problem-solving methods we know work so well.

We've only dabbled in these things. Now it's time to deep dive. It's called neighborhood governance and it is our future. That also didn’t show up in the report. But it should have!

21st Century police: Times, they are a-changing

Toronto's G-20 Riots. A morphing police role? The last few years, in cities around the world, riot and SWAT cops had to control crowds more than ever in recent memory. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

Watching police leadership is like entering a Ringling circus of word games and non-sequiturs. That's because you never know what you're going to get. Leaders come in all shapes.

There's lion tamers who attempt to pacify police unions and manage unrealistic public expectations. There's clowns who entertain with their cult of personality but leave nothing behind but good feelings. There's acrobats, skilled in their craft, balancing forward-thinking and leading-by-example.

Given the current system of service delivery and the morphing of roles, policing and it's leadership cannot be separated from safety in our cities.

Case in point: Seattle papers report two controversies (common in many large cities).

1. Recent studies show over 30% of young males in America by age 23 are arrested for something more serious than a traffic violation. Are crime declines a fiction or do arrest practices need fixing?

2. There is widespread public distrust when police investigate themselves - especially when police unions get involved. This is particularly acute in Seattle after a Department of Justice probe cited a pattern of excessive force.

Last fall I created search links on the right side of this blog. Google analytics tells me policing trends belong there as well. Dylan said it best: "Times, they are a-changing".

Here are past entries on policing and leadership:

Can research help cops prevent crime
SMART Policing and the power of few - Part 1
Transforming the police - Part 2
Transforming the police - Part 1
Solving the city with math
New chairs at the compstat table
Reforming police = bending granite
Urban warriors and city cops
The guardians and the vanguard
Preventing crime in LA

Preventing crime. Like going to the doctor?

Apologies for some overindulgence. No stories this week. No new observations. Just a rant about calling a thing for what it is.

"Where does it hurt?" asks the doctor.
"Stomach".
"Let me see if I can feel where the pain is."
"It started this morning after breakfast."
"What did you eat?"
"Eggs, Here, I brought leftovers."
"I'll send them to the lab. When tests come back, we'll prescribe the right medicine."

It's called allopathic medicine. Symptoms - Diagnosis - Prescription. It's based on symptoms.

Same in crime prevention. Crime shows up. Cops or prevention folk do analysis. A strategy emerges and they try it out. Allopathic crime prevention. We all do it, me included: situational prevention, CPTED, problem-oriented policing, Design Out Crime. Symptoms first! Makes sense, right? Except for what's missing…

...prevention!

Analysis on symptoms or causes?

Allopathic prevention prevents subsequent incidents and that's good. Just like going to the doctor. But it's not really "prevention" when it hasn't prevented it.

Medicine is growing out of its allopathic adolescence. It is evolving into integrative medicine - nutrition, stress management, alternative therapies (good family medicine probably always did that). It teaches us how to live a healthy lifestyle to prevent illness.

Meanwhile, far too much crime prevention still envisions safety as a product of strategies applied to a problem. Just like allopathic medicine.

Here's the thing; most serious crime emerges from dysfunctional families, broken neighborhoods, and personal troubles like drugs. You prevent it by getting into those places to help neighborhoods help themselves.

Let's call allopathic prevention what it is - crime repression. It represses what emerges and hacks at the branches. Prevention digs at the roots.

Rant over.

Deep Diving into Creative Prevention

The ASIS Convention Exhibit Floor, Dallas, 2010

Chris Landauer, MIT aerospace scientist, challenges the story of five blind men who touch an elephant in five different places and then describe it in five different ways. It all depends, says Landauer, on our assumption there is an elephant.

There might not be.

Our traditional criminal justice system (CJS) also assumes things, for example we must punish offenders or find guilt in court. Does this kind of thinking limit creative solutions to crime? Maybe there is no elephant?

This week I was in Dallas at the American Society for Industrial Security convention, the largest security trade show of its kind. Security technology isn’t always new, creative, or the best solution. But competitive high tech can be a breeding ground for creative solutions.

Case in point: TecGarde Mobile Solutions, a firm I worked with at the show. They are an innovative, tech start-up and Blackberry alliance partner with the Blackberry folks. I enjoy working with cool outfits like TecGarde. They sport some of the most creative smart-phone devices in the world. Creativity, it seems to me, is the foundation upon which a safer future rests.

Canada-based TecGarde display

It reminds me that truly creative cultures rarely flourish in rigid hierarchies, especially CJS organizations that ooze chain-of-command thinking. Nowhere is this message truer than with Ideo, the industrial design firm featured in the ABC documentary, The Deep Dive. By deep diving, Ideo comes up with fantastically innovative ideas. Deep diving is inherently non-heirarchical. That’s what outfits like TecGarde are all about.

THE ELEPHANT

Which brings me back to the elephant. True, creativity can occasionally seep through the CJS chain-of-command. Successful problem-oriented policing projects prove it is possible (check out motel crime in California or homelessness in Colorado). But these are not the rule, they are the exception. It's hard to be creative when trapped in hierarchies. After all, elephant assumptions may not be real.

Where do we find truly innovative strategies? How do successful organizations become creative? I think we need to peek at the technology world more closely, especially how technology firms do creativity.

Postscript: On the final day a number of laptops were stolen from display exhibits. Remember - this was a security tradeshow with CCTV firms operating thousands of security cameras in plain sight at their exhibits. Unsurprisingly, the crooks were apprehended the next day and their loot was recovered quickly.

For these brash, Mensa-challenged crooks it seems the security elephant was real. In this case it sat on them.

Fighting New Orleans blues - the Hollygrove Story

Work yet to be done in Hollygrove

There are cynics who think nothing changes and nothing works, especially in regards to crime.

They are wrong. Things change and some things work. Case in point - the New Orleans neighborhood of Hollygrove.

A year ago I wrote about Hollygrove where we introduced SafeGrowth. New Orleans balances a famous, and infamous, history. A high crime rate and the Hurricane Katrina tragedy tilt one way while Bourbon Street delights and French Quarter cuisine tilt another.

Then there is Hollygrove - among the poorest and highest crime neighborhoods - a place where a quarter of the population never returned post-Katrina (exacerbating problems of abandoned, boarded-up homes).

I've just returned from Hollygrove. I am very impressed.

Much was already underway in the Hollygrove community by the time SafeGrowth showed up. Then my talented colleagues at Louisiana AARP, along with some terrific residents and service providers, thought they'd try SafeGrowth to improve conditions.

What happened?

Early days were difficult with many setbacks - a recent double homicide being the most notable. Obviously much work remains though wins seem more frequent and long-lasting (sustainable) than last year.

Community activities are on the rise. A new walking club is forming and Night Out Against Crime events are bigger than ever. I talked to residents who told me they now clean their own streets and pay for their own streetlights when they cannot get the city to do so (all the more remarkable considering this is an impoverished neighborhood, not a middle-class suburb!)

A few much needed access fences are now in place. The week I arrived residents were celebrating removal of a blighted and abandoned home. New cultural groups are emerging (the hallmark of 2nd Generation CPTED) such as the Hollygrove "Originals" who raise funds for social events in the neighborhood.

This week AARP Louisiana staff helped organize community planning sessions and safety audits. We walked the streets and surveyed conditions with residents, many whom I met last year (their passion and perseverance still continue to impress me). Also present in the workshops were police, clergy, and service providers.

On the final day planning sessions we targeted a central street and some open-space areas. I was amazed at the inventiveness and practicality of the proposals for moving forward.

It takes decades of neglect to sour communities into poor, crime-infested neighborhoods. That's why rehabilitating them takes time.

It's clear to me that in high crime communities like Hollygrove, there are three legs of neighborhood turnaround:

1. Coordinated and collaborative help from service agencies
2. Coherent, integrated planning process (e.g. SafeGrowth), and
3. The momentum, passion and persistence to carry on.

Winnipeg auto theft solutions

Image via Wikipedia

I've covered Winnipeg's innovative efforts to tackle crime in earlier blogs.

Here is the latest.

Far too rarely we celebrate crime prevention success stories. I remember reading an article a decade ago in a Canadian criminology journal claiming good news prevention stories make it into papers less than 1% of the time. Given the info-tainment that passes as news, that's no surprise.

For a decade Winnipeg Canada has been the auto theft capital of North America. The headlines said it all: Too many stolen cars; Police chases of stolen cars; Too many victims.

No more.

An award finalist at this year's International Problem Oriented Policing conference was the Winnipeg Auto Theft Suppression Strategy. It's not really SafeGrowth. It's more targeted policing and design out crime. Yet those are great tools in the SafeGrowth toolbox and this project shows the excellent work they have done to tackle crime that can be adopted by a full SafeGrowth community. And it looks like that's exactly where they are headed. Read their latest report on crime prevention planning.

When you've done that, check out their auto theft program.

Even the CBC is getting in on the action and telling some good news on crime.

Revenge vs back to basics

I’m remembering an old friend this week, C. Ray Jeffery, a famous criminologist, former President of the American Society of Criminology and professor at Florida State University. C. Ray passed away last year and I was just wondering what he’d make of the current debate about crime.

It’s interesting to reflect on what folks think causes crime and how to stop it. Some want rehab for violent offenders. Others want to string them up. Victims, understandably, often want retribution. Years ago professor Jeffery - a founder of the CPTED movement - would tell me never to forget it is far more fair, effective, and efficient to prevent those crimes in the first place.

He didn’t tell me that because it was obvious. He told me that because it is so often ignored. It still is today. Part of the reason for this blindness, I think, is the cloud of confusion obstructing clear-headed thinking when it comes to the emotional topic of crime.

Take the idea that living in places of Poverty and Social Deprivation (PSD) creates conditions for crime: desperation from lack of meaningful vocation; scarce personal resources; disconnection from meaningful relationships or sense of community.

If you believe PSD, then our course is clear. We must target crime neighborhoods, tackle the deprivation and opportunities that trigger crime hotspots, and get to work preventing crime-causing conditions.

Not that crime won’t happen in wealthy areas. More that the exception should not prove the rule.

Even though we can do some useful things (like CPTED) to reduce crime in the short term, not tackling the PSD root causes seems unethical (even though they are much harder to do).

Yet alternate theories persist, for example gang activity increases violence or a large young population in the "crime prone years" increases drug use. These ideas are like a half-finished story screaming out for a conclusion. Accepting them uncritically means ignoring that PSD probably stimulates the former and enhances distribution of the latter.

Professor Jeffery said it best in his paper at the 1999 International CPTED Association conference:

Most of the principles of crime prevention are based on the punitive-revenge-deterrence approach found in the criminal law. Punishment does not work, even a rat can learn to avoid a shock and to gain food.

As planners for crime prevention we must reinforce desirable behavior rather than punishing undesirable behavior. We must create environments that are healthy for the development of the infant, that stimulate brain growth, that provide a healthy diet and not toxic poisoning or stress, and that provide opportunities for education, family support, and adequate medical care in places of high infant mortality and child abuse.

Those are the words of the person who originally coined the term “crime prevention through environmental design”.

Perhaps it’s now time to re-examine how CPTED and Design Out Crime are taught and conducted today.

Perhaps it's time to get back to basics?

Waking up in the 21st Century: The San Romanoway Story

One version of crime prevention is to hunt around for the latest program and try it out. Like a teen shopping for clothes, popular fashion dictates choice. Cost comes second. Many of the prevention programs we see today result from the most recent academic or policy fashion. They are impervious to cost and, to stretch the metaphor, they are silent on effectiveness.

Too many crime prevention programs are adopted as though one size fits all. They are effective or ineffective depending on where, on what, and how they are applied. Few have actually been tested for effectiveness with any scientific rigor.

It is like medicine that waits for symptoms and then looks for specific treatments. The more sophisticated doctor is more holistic, working in partnership with the patient to build overall health and wellness, rather than waiting for symptoms to arise.

SafeGrowth is such an approach in crime prevention. It is a 21st Century holistic form of collaborative community development. SafeGrowth works directly with residents, transferring skills and knowledge to the place they are most needed, within troubled neighbourhoods. It also applies to existing safe neighbourhoods looking to innoculate their community from disorder and delinquency.

Example: A large cluster of high rise apartment buildings - the San Romanoway project - becomes the subject of a multi-year program to address crime and disorder. Housing 4,000 residents, many of whom are new immigrants and single parents, the project has a history of problems with crime. They are surrounded by gangs, drugs and poverty of the notorious Jane/Finch suburbs in north Toronto. For decades conditions for the 60,000 residents in Jane/Finch worsen and grow into one of Canada's highest crime communities.

From 2000 to 2001 a research team led by Ross McLeod from Intelligarde and myself from AlterNation conducted research and crafted a SafeGrowth neighbourhood redevelopment plan. From 2001 to 2009 the Greenwin Property Management group led by Kevin Green, along with local residents formed the San Romanoway Revitalization Association, led by director Stephnie Payne. They immediately began implementing tailored strategies they selected for themselves. Community gardens, parenting classes, area cleanups, better lighting, improved management practices, social and recreational programs for kids, and others began the process. Fundraising was done locally and government, private corporations, and philanthropic groups all contributed.

Most recently San Romanoway has added new tennis courts and tennis camps from Tennis Canada, and a new cineplex movie theatre donated by the Cineplex Corporation within the apartment project - the first of its kind in Canada. They also have opened a new recording studio in which local kids create their own rap songs for public sale.

Crime at San Romanoway has plummeted, more residents are engaged in community life, and fear has decreased. While conditions in the wider Jane-Finch area are unchanged, San Romanoway shows us how the SafeGrowth model for neighbourhood building represents the future of 21st Century crime prevention.

The full SafeGrowth story will be reported this fall in a special issue of the Built Environment journal: Security versus Safety: A New Look.

the Built Environment journal website

Still crazy, after all these years - reversing blight

The Oregon District, Dayton, Ohio - photo Nyttrend, Creative Commons

With all this talk of police reform, it's easy to get sidetracked. Last week during business travel I came across another urban gem - an example of how to do neighbourhoods right. I was working on the SafeGrowth program in Dayton, Ohio. Dayton is an older city in the rust belt. Manufacturing jobs, like a GM plant, have been shutting down and thousands have been laid off. Innovative police chief Richard Biehl is working with his agency and community to expand problem-solving and crime prevention in some troubled neighborhoods. 

 It was during this workshop the participants brought me to a fascinating area called the Oregon District. All the Daytonions I spoke to raved about this trendy neighborhood. And for good reason. The Oregon District is an historic area just outside the main downtown area. It has interesting shops, restaurants and pubs. It is accented by tasteful street designs such as decorative lighting and pavement treatments. 

The residential areas behind the commercial street are among the most desirable in the city. During our safety audit walks we found plenty of TLC from front yard flower pots to artistic renos. The residents to whom I spoke loved living in this area. There is an active neighborhood association. Local folks are working to make it a safe place.

Downtown Dayton - photo Nyttrend, Creative Commons

But the Oregon District wasn't always this way. For those working in troubled areas, it's important to remember all success stories have a beginning. Things don't just happen! Thirty five years ago the street was blighted. Then a local doctor got the idea to invest and turn it around. He was followed by others. 

Essentially they tackled the blight and began purchasing properties in the cities oldest neighborhood. Gradually, the street began to develop. A gazebo in a retrofitted park here. Streetscaping on the commercial block there. Eventually, I was told, the positive energy spread to surrounding residential areas. 

DAYTON TODAY

Today residents and shopowners participate in alley sweeps, local festivals, social events, garden tours, and baseball camps. The local neighborhood association tackles issues such as liquor permit saturation - what we call tipping point capacity in SafeGrowth. A theatre company is moving there. 

It has taken three decades, but Dayton's Oregon District is now among the most successful in the city. In so many ways this story echoes the story of Westville in New Haven (see my blog from last month on Westville). A half century later, Jane Jacobs' crazy ideas of vibrant neighborhood life still trickle down the years. see the Oregon District

Eyes on the prize in policing and reform

It is impossible to talk safety and prevention and not talk about cops. I am conflicted whenever I see stories of ineffective, obsolete, or just bad policing, as I did this week.

My conflict arises from my own belief in the decent goodness for people who choose an often impossible and unforgiving profession. I am committed to police reform. But it seems our policing system is a legacy of a pre-digital age. Recent crime trends, it seems, are not.

Ultimately policing is a vital, but very small, part of the public safety story. It's a story that cannot be told without participating residents.

Consider my February blog with the LAPD video about this very point.

watch video

Today the news in Vancouver is flooded with yet another story about a tragic Taser death during a violent arrest. We are told by the Taser crowd the technology works and saves lives, though apparently not in this case. We are also told Tasers are too often abused during arrests. Who to believe? Tasers are a newer technology with promise. But the medical research on them looks less like facts from sources and more like factoids from sourcelings. What to believe?

Yet again we hear calls for police reform reverberating through the media.

read Vancouver newspaper story

No one is immune and Vancouver is by no means alone. The public wants something done, mostly they want safer neighborhoods and less fear of violence. Which brings me to my duh moment - our goal: We obsess on the means to an end (policing, tasers) and forget all those means are but a tiny part of how we actually get to our public safety end.

Of course the police use of force is important. By the nature of the job it cannot go away. During violent arrests it may be needed. Of course we should make sure police training is done properly and the technology does what it says. Of course we need police reform, especially reform in training/education and the political gumption to stick with it.

Yet the goal should be to keep our eyes on the prize - neighbors working together in functional places to make vital and safe streets.

The questions we should be asking:
How to get neighbors to work together in a positive way?
How to create functional neighborhoods with social activities?
How to build places where people feel safe and participate fully in community life?
How to more effectively do community development?

As I read the latest crisis it is easy to obsess on the vicissitudes of policing when things go bad. I agree we must never forget, or fail to prevent, deaths in and from police arrests. All lives are precious. But policing was created specifically for crime prevention and public safety. Do police tactics, resources, and training focus directly and daily on crime prevention and safety? No! When they don't, they need to.

That is the prize that matters most.

Welcome to SafeGrowth

Safety and crime - our shared challenge


Welcome to the SafeGrowth blog at safe-growth.blogspot.com

If you are interested in, or working on, neighborhood safety, community development, or crime prevention, this blog is for you. Posts will highlight current trends in how to turn troubled communities back from the brink of crime.

I will post anyone who wants to comment. I have only 4 exceptions: posts with abusive, off-topic, or offensive language; any racist, sexist or homophopics slurs; thread spamming; or ad hominem attacks. Those are verboten. All all others are welcome.