Title: What Can the Federal Government Do To Decrease Crime and Revitalize Communities?. Series: Research Forum Author: NIJ/EOWS Published: October 1998 Subject: crime prevention, community policing 176 pages 321,000 bytes ------------------------------ Figures, charts, forms, and tables are not included in this ASCII plain-text file. To view this document in its entirety, download the Adobe Acrobat graphic file available from this Web site or order a print copy from NCJRS at 800-851-3420. ------------------------------ U.S. Department of Justice Office of Justice Programs National Institute of Justice Executive Office for Weed and Seed What Can the Federal Government Do To Decrease Crime and Revitalize Communities? January 5-7, 1998 Panel Papers Research Forum ------------------------------ A Message From the Assistant Attorney General "What can the Federal Government do to decrease crime and revitalize communities?" This is a question policymakers, practitioners, and researchers have debated for more than 30 years. Over the past few years, the Justice Department's Office of Justice Programs (OJP) has brought together former administrators of OJP and its predecessor agencies and a broad range of other criminal justice experts to examine Federal criminal justice assistance over the past three decades and what lessons this experience holds as we move to shape criminal justice policy for the future. In January 1998, OJP posed this question to a group of practitioners and researchers at a symposium sponsored by two OJP components--the Executive Office for Weed and Seed (EOWS) and the National Institute of Justice (NIJ). This session brought together those who are thinking and writing about crime from a practice or research perspective. It was a result of ongoing collaboration between NIJ, our research agency, and Weed and Seed, one of the Department's premiere community-based initiatives. It marked the first time these two OJP components have come together to focus on the issue of crime and its impact on communities, and I commend EOWS Director Stephen Rickman and NIJ Director Jeremy Travis for their vision and energy in designing this symposium. I also want to thank the symposium participants for taking the time to ponder and discuss this critical question--and for their recommendations on how we should be setting priorities, what role the Federal Government should play, how OJP can best provide leadership and demonstrate new programs, what approaches are proving successful, what factors we need to learn more about, and what questions our research should be trying to answer. It is so important for those of us at the Federal level to listen to those of you in the field--to see programs in action, to talk to people on the frontlines, and to get a better understanding of what's working, what's not, and what's needed. The Attorney General strongly believes that this kind of engagement is critical if we are going to keep our Federal programs responsive to the communities they serve, and I have yet to meet anyone "beyond the Beltway" who disagrees. These are critical and complex issues we must continue to assess if criminal justice is to be prepared to meet the challenges of the future. I hope you will find that the products of our EOWS/NIJ symposium can help make a contribution to this ongoing debate. Laurie Robinson Assistant Attorney General ------------------------------ What Can the Federal Government Do To Decrease Crime and Revitalize Communities? January 5-7, 1998 Panel Papers A joint publication of the National Institute of Justice and the Executive Office for Weed and Seed October 1998 NCJ 172210 ------------------------------ Jeremy Travis NIJ Director Stephen Rickman EOWS Director ------------------------------- Opinions expressed are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the U.S. Department of Justice. ------------------------------ The National Institute of Justice is a component of the Office of Justice Programs, which also includes the Bureau of Justice Assistance, the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, and the Office for Victims of Crime. ------------------------------ Introduction We are pleased to present this volume of panel papers from the January 1998 Department of Justice symposium, "What Can the Federal Government Do To Decrease Crime and Revitalize Communities," which was jointly sponsored by the National Institute of Justice (NIJ) and the Executive Office for Weed and Seed (EOWS). While NIJ and EOWS often collaborate, this partnership was a unique opportunity for us to highlight important research, discuss problems facing the Nation's communities, and share some of the imaginative solutions to address them that are being implemented by cities and towns across the country. Conference participants discussed various ways to effectively address the needs of changing communities and initiated dialogues that we hope will continue. We were delighted to host the speakers whose papers are included here. We were equally pleased with the active involvement of program participants who listened, questioned, and made observations about the speakers' presentations. Teaming with EOWS to achieve the goal of reducing crime and revitalizing communities is a natural extension of NIJ's research, evaluation, and development mission and activities. It also reflects one of NIJ's strategic challenges that focuses on understanding the nexus between crime and its social context. The Weed and Seed strategy is essentially a coordination effort, making a wide range of public- and private-sector resources more accessible to communities. With the assistance of the U.S. Attorneys, the strategy brings together Federal, State, and local crimefighting agencies, social services providers, representatives of the public and private sectors, prosecutors, businessowners, and neighborhood residents--linking them in a shared goal of "weeding" out violent crime and gang activity while "seeding" the target area with social services and economic revitalization. The strategy combines law enforcement; community policing; prevention, intervention, and treatment; and neighborhood restoration. EOWS also provides a range of training and technical assistance activities to help communities plan, develop, and implement their programs. Combining EOWS' community focus with NIJ's research and development expertise made this symposium exceptionally productive. This volume is intended to share the beneficial outcomes resulting from the symposium. It is our belief that discussions begun between participants at this conference will lead to action at the community level. It is our hope that these actions will provide new, creative, and effective approaches to address the issues of crime prevention and community revitalization that concern all of us. Jeremy Travis NIJ Director Stephen Rickman EOWS Director ------------------------------ Contents Introduction Jeremy Travis and Stephen Rickman Panel One: The Context The Context Bailus Walker, Jr. Economic Shifts That Will Impact Crime Control and Community Revitalization Cicero Wilson The Context of Recent Changes in Crime Rates Alfred Blumstein Luncheon Speaker Community Watch Amitai Etzioni Panel Two: The Roles of Federal, State, and Local Governments and Communities in Revitalizing Neighborhoods and in Addressing Local Public Safety Problems Revitalizing Communities and Reducing Crime Robert L. Woodson, Sr. Cooling the Hot Spots of Homicide: A Plan for Action Lawrence W. Sherman Communities and Crime: Reflections on Strategies for Crime Control Jack R. Greene Panel Three: Promising Programs and Approaches Crime Prevention as Crime Deterrence David Kennedy Revitalizing Communities: Public Health Strategies for Violence Prevention Deborah Prothrow-Stith Lawyers Meet Community. Neighbors Go to School. Tough Meets Love: Promising Approaches to Neighborhood Safety, Community Revitalization, and Crime Control Roger L. Conner Panel Four: What Do We Do Next? Research Questions and Implications for Evaluation Design Dynamic Strategic Assessment and Feedback: An Integrated Approach to Promoting Community Revitalization Terence Dunworth Community Crime Analysis John P. O'Connell What Do We Do Next? Research Questions and Implications for Evaluation Design Jan Roehl Appendix A: Author Biographies ------------------------------ Panel One: The Context Bailus Walker, Jr. This brief discussion will review, in broad outline, selected health parameters of the context within which efforts to reduce crime and revitalize communities must be pursued. My principal underlying thesis is that health conditions, the health status of populations, and the services available to address them are among the key determinants of community stability, economic viability, and the incidence of crime. Indeed, when the history of the 1990s is written, health status and access to health care for large segments of the population in the Nation's urban centers will appear repeatedly in many chronicles. Along with pictures of the homeless, the charts and tables of the rates of acute and chronic diseases and premature death among the poor and disadvantaged will illustrate many texts about crime, community instability, and family disruption. These data will also illustrate that the lack of access to comprehensive physical and mental health care, including health promotion and disease prevention, has a broad range of social and economic ramifications that lacerate the civic fabric and drive people from shared institutions-- subways, buses, parks, schools, and neighborhoods. Even to casual observers, a discussion of the prevention and control of crime and the revitalization of communities raises many issues that do not have a single or unambiguous solution because both crime and community development are affected by economic, health, social, behavioral, political, and scientific factors. Many of these factors are changing at an unprecedented pace, both in the United States and abroad. "Abroad" must be emphasized here because economic, health, and social systems have become increasingly interconnected and globalized. As competition and trade have increased, people in virtually every country have benefited, and a remarkable degree of mutual interdependence has emerged. These changes have also brought risks that frequently cannot be adequately addressed within traditional national, State, or neighborhood borders and have created quality-of-life problems that have spread among nations at an accelerating pace. Indeed, the movement of more than 2 million people each day across national borders and the growth of international commerce are inevitably associated with the transfer of health risks, including such obvious examples as infectious diseases, contaminated foodstuffs, and terrorism, which have multiple dimensions and a broad spectrum of impacts--some subtle, some overt. Transnational connections in health imply that health threats, including violence, can no longer be contained by national frontiers; most diseases do not require passports to travel. Due to the ease of rapid travel, emerging diseases in one country represent a threat to the health and economies of all countries. In the United States, local community leaders are now seeing clear evidence that the suburbs, which sprang up as an "escape" from the stress of urban decay, are themselves feeling the impact of "city ills." This was clearly delineated in a recent Wall Street Journal article headed, "More Suburbs Find City Ills Don't Respect City Limits."[1] ------------------------------ Demographics At the same time, the demographic picture is changing. Demography is the study of the size, composition, and distribution of human populations. Although quantitative methods are employed, demography is also centrally concerned with the quality of human populations, such as their health status. It should be noted that demographic trends are already causing an increase in the demand for health services and altering the character of the demand. The U.S. Bureau of the Census estimates that the United States population increased by 2.4 million people in 1997 to 268,921,733 as of January 1, 1998. The projection is based on the number of births (3.9 million), the number of deaths (2.3 million), and the number of people returning or immigrating to the United States (867,600) during the previous year.[2] As the population grows, it will increasingly become more diverse along many socioeconomic dimensions. The increasing diversity will create challenges and opportunities for both the public and private sectors. In addition to population size, the age structure will be important in planning for community redevelopment and crime prevention. Changes in the Age and Racial Makeup of the U.S. Population Today, much attention is being focused on the "aging" of the U.S. population. Citizens 65 and older doubled in number between the 1950s and the 1980s. The fastest growing age group is between 55 and 65--now at 21.5 million but expected to increase to 30 million by 2000 as baby boomers approach retirement age.[3] This trend raises concerns about the economic and social aspects of care for the elderly and the ratio of elderly dependents to productive adults, whose caring responsibilities will shift increasingly from children to the elderly. Another trend on the demographic landscape is the growth of the population share of nonwhite citizens. The minority population numbered nearly 70 million in 1996, about one in four Americans. By the middle of the 21st century, however, the size of the minority population should just about equal that of the non-Hispanic white population. In 1996, African-Americans made up the largest segment of the minority population--32 million people, about 12 percent of all Americans. Hispanics followed closely with 27 million (10 percent).[4] Moreover, because of differential birth rates, a disproportionate fraction of the country's children, adolescents, and young adults will be nonwhite. Think of the economic and social implications of an aged population mostly white, combined with a youth population mostly minority. New Health Stresses on Women in the Workplace Another demographic trend is the large-scale movement of women from the home into the workplace, particularly into jobs that subject them to health risks of the kind previously prevalent among men. In addition to traditional industrial hazards and workplace pollution, both men and women now suffer the putative side effects of a range of new technologies. But our considerations must include the less overt but long-term impact of job stress on women's health along with the psychological and economic burden of single parenthood. Women who work outside the home still do most of the housework as well. Added to the pressures of long hours of work inside and outside the home are the time conflicts that emerge when one is both a homemaker--and usually family caretaker--and a wage earner. Sick children, school holidays, and ill elderly relatives all contribute to stress and frustration in the context of inadequate health and social services and employers support for working women. Additional problems include inflexible work schedules, the trend among employers to "do more with fewer employees," and the lack of high-quality, accessible, and affordable child and elder care. Each of these demographic trends has serious ramifications for social policy, economic planning, and health care reform. For example, the aging of Americans clearly implies a need for increased attention to a broad spectrum of geriatric health and social services. The age group between 55 and 65 is losing health benefits at a faster rate than any other group except children. Many in this age group cannot qualify for health insurance because of the preexisting health condition criterion imposed by a number of insurance plans. Another segment of this population no longer has health coverage because when they were in early retirement their former employers canceled their benefits to reduce costs. Unfortunately, women have a greater chance than men of being uninsured. "Social Diseases" and the Growth of Economic Inequality The growth in the nonwhite share of the population is distressingly bound up with the persistence of, and even increases in, certain familiar pathologies of disenfranchisement--substance abuse, teenage pregnancy, family disintegration-- as well as more recent challenges to the health services system, such as that of devising, supporting, and delivering culturally appropriate services to new immigrants (both legal and illegal) and refugees. Within this matrix, there is another subset of problems that might be characterized as new "social diseases." By social disease, we mean a mixed bag of pathologies--some physical, some psychological, some both. They range from homelessness among veterans and others to child abuse (every 11 seconds a child is reported abused or neglected), with its long-term neuropsychological impacts from substance dependency to obesity. Some of these are pathologies of poverty due to changes in the distribution and location of jobs and in the level of education and training required to obtain employment.[[5] Let me hasten to insert here that there have always been homeless people in the United States. As economic circumstances have fluctuated, so have the size and composition of the homeless population. The homelessness problem has increasingly captured public attention. Take, for example, Washington, D.C. Evidence of the problem is not hard to find in the Nation's capital. Twenty-five families spent the Christmas holidays in an emergency shelter. Many others were housed elsewhere. The population at the shelter has been growing since it opened last November. Similar trends have been identified in other cities, according to a telephone survey of community leaders conducted in late 1997 by the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies. Of particular relevance to the present discussion is the fact that many homeless individuals, particularly single young men, have histories of encounters with the criminal justice system and a glaring lack of experience with the health care system. Most disheartening are the cases of adolescents and post-adolescents who grow out of foster care or child mental health and mental retardation facilities because they are no longer eligible for residentially based services for their age group, yet they have nowhere to live. They then resort to illegal means to get food and shelter. Unfortunately, the otherwise robust economy of today has helped create the illusion that everyone is prospering, but that is not the case. Indeed, there is a rapidly widening gap between rich and poor. Although it is tempting to add the influence of the historic legacy of racial segregation and discrimination, that would only be assigning blame--which is not a productive exercise--and would blur the challenges and opportunities to recognize and address the underlying forces that have provoked economic stress for many Americans. In this direction, William Julius Wilson, a long-time student of economic and social problems of urban America, writes: Many of today's problems in the inner-city neighborhoods--crime, family dissolution, welfare- -are fundamentally a consequence of the disappearance of work. Work is not simply a way of making a living and supporting your family. It also constitutes a framework for daily behavior because it imposes discipline.[6] The Troubling Issue of Mental Health Then there is the deeply troubling issue of mental health, a problem so serious that it must be considered separately. It cuts across boundaries of race, class, and neighborhood. If it differs from group to group or community to community, it is in complexity, not in fundamentals. The relevance of mental health to our discussion today was underscored three decades ago in a 1967 paper of the American Bar Association (ABA). It is worth quoting at length: If one observes both persons who crowd our criminal courts and the population of our mental hospitals, one is struck not by differences between the two but by similarities. Our pre-occupation with trying to separate the "mentally ill" from the "criminals" may have led us to overlook a more central reality; both mental illness and criminality are tributaries of some deeper mysterious channels. Certainly, there are differences between "criminals" and the "mentally ill," but it seems possible that the problems of mental illness and crime lend themselves to identical methods of handling.[7] The ABA report goes on to state that there is a limited supply of mental health resources and inefficient use of those that exist. This resource issue has been brought into much sharper focus by a recent study that shows that under the pressure of competition and managed care, two-thirds of the Nation's private hospitals that are equipped to take in mentally ill patients dump them on hard-pressed, financially weak public hospitals. The study also reports that hospitals discharge mental patients prematurely, either when their health insurance runs out or when the cost of their coverage exceeds the reimbursement rate that their insurance companies pay hospitals. Among adolescent psychiatric patients, it is more difficult for those without health insurance than those with insurance to obtain needed behavioral health services. How many of those who cannot get care become "students" in the juvenile justice system is not clear. Added to this is the shortage of mental health care professionals. For example, in 1997, the Department of Health and Human Services--which recognizes areas with a paucity of mental health care services--designated 536 mental health care professional shortage areas in the United States. This trend could get worse if the organizational landscape of health care delivery continues to be rearranged (i.e., by mergers, consolidations, and alignments of health care organizations and institutions).[8] Health Care to Meet the Nation's Changing Needs The demographic trend pertaining to women raises basic questions about what health services are most critical for female heads-of-household and their children as well as about how, when, in what setting, and at what cost such services should be provided. Each of the other demographic trends previously cited expands or lends weight to a group with new or greater needs or with needs that have so far been inadequately addressed in the health and social services system. These needs have not been met for a number of reasons. One of the most prominent reasons is that many members of the group lack a regular source of health care with an emphasis on preventive health services. They lack these services because they do not have health insurance or other means to pay for care. In a recent study by the National Center for Health Statistics, it was found that African-American persons were four times more likely than whites to report "no insurance/can't afford" as their main reason for poor health. I will close by underscoring the fact that near the top of any agenda for revitalizing communities and reducing crime must be a health care system that successfully addresses the issue of equity between the young and aged and among social and ethnic groups. The health care system must have the capacity, commitment, and community orientation to be an active part of efforts to address health care needs of adolescents, including behavioral disorders and related dysfunctions. It must also address past inattention to women's health issues that have created serious gaps in knowledge about the cause, treatment, and prevention of disease in women. Unfortunately, the health care system that exists today in the United States is not fully prepared to meet these and other challenges of the 21st century, as we are constantly reminded by the media, advocates for the poor and medically underserved, policymakers, and participants in forums and workshops. As managed care has emerged as a principal system for health care and evidence indicates that the profit margins of health maintenance organizations are falling and services may be reduced, it is becoming increasingly clear that more health care reform is needed. These organizations are also confronted with angry consumers demanding better services and hospitals and physicians determined to resist further cutbacks in fees.[9] Clearly, health care must be substantially reformed to meet the changing needs of all stakeholders in a system so essential to community revitalization and to a reduction in the incidence of crime and related social problems. ------------------------------ Notes 1. "More Suburbs Find City Ills Don't Respect City Limits," Wall Street Journal, January 2, 1998, B1. 2. U.S. Bureau of the Census, "U.S. Population Nears 269 Million as 1998 Begins," Press Release, Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Commerce, U.S. Bureau of the Census, December 24, 1997. 3. Day, J.C., "Population Projections of the United States: 1995-2050," Current Population Survey, Washington, DC: U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1995. 4. U.S. Bureau of the Census, March 1994 Supplement, Current Population Survey, Washington, DC: U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1995. 5. See The Commonwealth Fund, "Survey Finds Missed Opportunities to Improve Girls' Health," The Commonwealth Fund Quarterly 3 (3)(Fall 1997); Mushinski, M., "Teenagers' View of Violence and Social Tensions in U.S. Public Schools," Statistical Bulletin, Metropolitan Life Insurance Company (July-September 1996); Children's Defense Fund, "Key Facts About Children," CDF Report, Washington, DC: Children's Defense Fund, 1995; and Cropper, C.M., "10 Heroin Deaths in Texas Reflect Rising Use by Young," New York Times, November 18, 1997, 28. 6. Wilson, W.J., "Work," New York Times Magazine, August 18, 1996, 28. 7. Matthew, A.R., "Mental Health and the Criminal Law: Is Community Health an Answer?" American Journal of Public Health 57 (September 1997): 1571. 8. See U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Mental Health, United States, Rockville, MD: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 1996; National Advisory Mental Health Council, Health Care Reform for Americans With Severe Mental Illness: Report of the National Advisory Mental Health Council, Rockville, MD: National Advisory Mental Health Council, 1993; and Kilborn, P.T., "Mentally Ill Called Victims of Cost-Cutting," New York Times, December 10, 1997, A20. 9. See General Accounting Office, Medicaid Managed Care: Challenge of Holding Plans Accountable Requires Greater State Effort, Washington, DC: General Accounting Office, May 1997; United Hospital Fund, Primary Care Capacity and Medicaid Managed Care, New York: United Hospital Fund, 1998; and Knickman, J.R., R.G. Hughes, H. Taylor, K. Binns, and M.P. Lyons, "Tracking Consumers' Reactions to the Changing Health Care System: Early Indicators," Health Affairs 15 (Summer 1996): 22-32. ------------------------------ Economic Shifts That Will Impact Crime Control and Community Revitalization Cicero Wilson As we approach the year 2000, the United States is nearing the end of a prolonged period of prison construction. The growth of violent crime and sentencing reforms in the 1980s and 1990s have led to record numbers of incarcerated adults and juveniles. Although crime rates declined in 1995 and 1996, it is not clear what the long-term crime and incarceration trends will be during the next 20 years. If crime rates do not continue to decline, local officials may divert government resources away from schools, community development, parks, and other public amenities for prison construction. Two important priorities for our Nation are to reduce the rate of crime and to minimize the impact of crime on children, families, and communities. Despite improvements in the criminal justice system, such as community policing, drug courts, and increases in prison beds for violent offenders, the incidence of crime remains high in the United States. The focus of our attention in the criminal justice system is on improvements in how we deal with crime after it is committed. The criminal justice system must begin to monitor more carefully economic and community trends that influence the rate and depth of poverty. The efforts of policymakers and practitioners to achieve crime reduction goals in the next 20 years will require greater attention to the reduction of poverty. Rates of crime may be influenced more by rates of persistent poverty than by criminal justice interventions. Poverty, not race, sex, or age, still has the highest correlation with crime and violence. Poverty helps create and maintain the behaviors and attitudes that contribute to crime, violence, and the onset of criminal careers by youths. Few criminal justice reforms and innovations directly address poverty or the systems charged with addressing poverty--housing, education, welfare, and employment and training. In the future, the criminal justice system must be more proactive in influencing antipoverty, community revitalization, family, and educational programs and policies. To have a stronger voice in the design of these programs and policies, economic trends need to be monitored and analyzed from a crime control and community revitalization perspective. Three of the general trends that will influence the American economic landscape in the 21st century will have a special impact on crime rates and the success of efforts to revitalize distressed communities. These three trends are: --Increases in populations with higher-than-average risk of participating in crime, including long-term unemployed adults and youths, unemployed ex-offenders, school dropouts, and children reared in fatherless homes. --Increases in the number of high-poverty communities because of failing schools, unemployment, underemployment, and community abandonment strategies. --The continued reliance on ineffective programs and policies to promote family self-sufficiency and revitalize distressed communities, including "deconcentration of poverty" approaches and the emphasis on income maintenance rather than on asset-building strategies. Population Trends Trend One: For Dropouts and Unskilled Workers, Finding Family Wage Jobs With Benefits Will Become More Difficult It will be difficult for unskilled and uneducated labor to find family wage work in the 21st century. The globalization of the economy and technology are producing greater productivity, greater competition, larger profits, and fewer family wage jobs. Although foreign competition and lower overseas wages in some countries have cost the United States jobs, most of our job losses were because of competition from high-wage, high-technology countries such as Germany and Japan. Technology will have a greater impact than foreign competition on job loss and disruption of career paths. Technology will not only eliminate some jobs in industries such as banking and manufacturing, it will also change the educational skills needed for the new jobs. Another major source of labor market problems is the corporate culture that promotes maximizing profits by downsizing, or converting full-time jobs with benefits into part-time jobs with no benefits. Jeremy Rifkin, in his book The End of Work,[1] predicts technology and corporate culture will determine unemployment levels in the 21st century. If unemployment grows to levels of 20-25 percent nationally as Rifkin and other authors predict, then the pressure on all of our social systems will be enormous. While such dire predictions are far from guaranteed, these trends must be carefully monitored by agencies and advocates concerned about reducing crime and revitalizing economically and socially distressed communities. Trend Two: The Number of Youths Failing School Will Continue to Escalate Without Changes in School Policies, Tutorial Support Systems, and Parental Involvement Youth crime prevention is often deemed synonymous with school failure prevention. Unfortunately, school failure is a growing trend in poor urban and rural areas. Two sources of school failure are extremely important to criminal justice and community development advocates: unaddressed learning difficulties and school suspension and expulsion policies. Unaddressed learning difficulties. Students who fall behind two grades in school are more likely to drop out or become involved with drugs, alcohol, or the courts. Despite the emphasis on education standards, our schools are still struggling to help students master basic reading, math, and communications skills. Many students who are experiencing learning difficulties have nowhere to go for help. Working parents, especially single working parents, have limited time to check homework or tutor their children. Teachers are overburdened. Most churches do not offer latchkey or tutorial programs. The absence of adequate rural transportation is a major impediment to getting students to programs, if programs exist. Without tutorial assistance for students in schools and juvenile institutions to supplement classroom instruction, many students will continue to fail and either drop out or graduate functionally illiterate. These youths lack the skills needed to succeed in the 21st-century working world and are at high risk of becoming involved in criminal activities to support themselves. School expulsion and suspension policies. In response to student disruptive behavior, violence, weapons, and illegal substances, most schools have adopted zero-tolerance rules to quickly expel offending students. Schools penalize minor misbehavior with suspensions. However, unlike suspensions of two decades ago, some schools have added procedures to automatically fail students in courses in which they have five unexcused absences. A student who is suspended for 5 days fails all of his/her classes for the entire semester. Old policies would require students to attend afterschool detention and do more work and suspended students to make up all assigned work. Today, schools expel students without adequate provision for alternative schools. Schools also suspend students so frequently that they fail enough classes to fall more than 1 year behind their graduating classes. These students usually drop out of school. These policies remove the most troublesome students, but they also push out students who could be helped. These policies are at odds with everything we know about school absence, dropouts, school failure, and delinquency. These school policies are filling communities with teenagers who are unsupervised most of the day. These out-of-school youths are at high risk for substance abuse, teen pregnancy, and criminal activity. Whatever the sources of school failure, more than 1,100 youths drop out of school every day in the United States. Many students will graduate without the basic skills needed to succeed in the rapidly changing working world. Unabated, this school failure trend intensifies the problems of unemployment and poverty, which are primary contributors to crime rates. Trend Three: The High Incarceration Rates of the 1990s Will Result in a Flood of Unemployed Releasees From Prisons and Jails in the Next Two Decades The efforts of economic and community development programs, work force development projects, and welfare reformers erode when adult and juvenile parolees return to the community unemployed. They attempt to make money through street crime, drug sales, and extortion from women on welfare. The current lack of sufficient reintegration programs, high recidivism rates, and the number of persons to be released from jails and prisons during the next 25 years should alarm everyone. Furthermore, large numbers of these releasees are returning to the communities we are trying to revitalize. The criminal activities of unrepentant parolees make the neighborhoods inhospitable to efforts to revitalize the family, community, and local economy. Crimes such as carjacking, school violence, and random shootings have fueled the move of many families and businesses to communities perceived as safe. Business tax incentives, business retention strategies, and community development efforts such as Empowerment Zones are severely diminished as development tools when businesses and residents perceive a community or city as crime ridden. Controlling community crime and violence is an important prerequisite to community revitalization. Trend Four: There is an Increase in the Number of Fatherless Children, Who Are More Prone to Delinquency and Other Social Pathologies As the incidence of father absence grows, community disintegration and crime, especially youth crime, will continue to grow. Between 1960 and 1990, the percentage of children living apart from their biological fathers increased from 17 to 36 percent. By the year 2000, half of the Nation's children may not have their fathers at home. While the heroic efforts of single women to raise their children alone are laudable, the economic and social requirements for raising healthy and productive children are hard to achieve by poor single parents alone. Reengaging fathers in the economic and social life of their children is an important but overlooked aspect of addressing poverty, community revitalization, and crime. Many of our problems in crime control and community revitalization are strongly related to father absence. For example: --Sixty-three percent of youth suicides are from fatherless homes. --Ninety percent of all homeless and runaway youths are from fatherless homes. --Eighty-five percent of children who exhibit behavioral disorders are from fatherless homes. --Seventy-one percent of high school dropouts are from fatherless homes. --Seventy percent of youths in State institutions are from fatherless homes. --Seventy-five percent of adolescent patients in substance abuse centers are from fatherless homes. --Eighty-five percent of rapists motivated by displaced anger are from fatherless homes. Without fathers as social and economic role models, many boys try to establish their manhood through sexually predatory behavior, aggressiveness, or violence. These behaviors interfere with schooling, the development of work experience, and self-discipline. Many poor children who live apart from their fathers are prone to becoming court involved. Once these children become court involved, their records of arrest and conviction often block access to employment and training opportunities. Criminal histories often lock these young persons into the underground or illegal economies. Behaviors related to father absence that directly contribute to the growth of welfare and the difficulties in creating jobs in communities include: --Sexually predatory behavior that results in out-of-wedlock births. (Most teen mothers are impregnated by older men, not teen boys.) --Domestic violence that occurs as a result of arguments over enforcement of child support payments. --Welfare pimping, which is the practice of men collecting part of the welfare check from girlfriends or the mothers of their out-of-wedlock children. Some pimps collect from five or six mothers on welfare per month. Innovative father engagement programs have had an impact on child rearing, family economic stability, and gang involvement. Unless community revitalization and crime reduction programs begin to address the need for father engagement programs and services, the cycle of poverty and crime could continue virtually unabated. Community Revitalization Trends Trend Five: There is an Increase in the Number of High-Poverty Areas Socially and economically distressed communities tend to promote behaviors and attitudes conducive to crime and dependency. High levels of crime also help to maintain and increase high-poverty communities. The 1990 census indicated that the number of high-poverty census tracts had increased since the 1980 census. The proportion of poor persons living in extreme poverty census tracts in the 100 largest U.S. cities tripled between 1970 and 1990, from 12.6 percent to 36.2 percent.[2] Apparently, approaches to law enforcement and income maintenance in extremely poor communities had limited impact on poverty and crime during the last two decades. Although current welfare reform and broken windows approaches to law enforcement appear to have some impact, the underlying poverty and propensity for crime have been suppressed, not reduced. If recessionary economic conditions reappear with high levels of unemployment, the rates of poverty and crime could rise significantly. Federal programs and policies that have an impact on employment and education in poor communities are very important components of an effective crime reduction and community revitalization strategy. Federal criminal justice and antipoverty policies need to consider more effective resource targeting to reduce the number of high-poverty communities. However, these policies and programs to combat the concentration of poverty should not rely on "deconcentration" or "dilution" approaches. These dilution approaches deconcentrate poverty by moving poor families into mixed-income communities. Generally, these programs do not help families improve their family income, gain economic literacy, or reduce or eliminate such problems as drug addiction before moving the family. Dilution programs should not be "problem export" programs. Simply moving to a better neighborhood will not automatically change destructive attitudes and behaviors. Trend Six: Community Abandonment Frustrated criminal justice, housing, and economic development officials often view communities with very high rates of crime, housing abandonment, substance abuse, and gangs as beyond help. Investing police and economic development resources in these communities is deemed a waste of limited resources. This approach is called a "community abandonment" strategy. The problems with this approach are numerous. First, these communities often spread their misery to neighboring communities. Second, crime and barriers to economic development extend far beyond the particular abandoned community. The presence of such a community adversely affects the reputation of entire segments of towns and cities. Third, these abandoned communities also serve as safe havens for criminals who prey on other communities. Fourth, most of what we have learned about successful community revitalization has been learned from the efforts of local residents and their partners in distressed communities. The transformation of the Kenilworth Parkside Public Housing Development in Washington, D.C., is one of many successful transformations. The frustration and failure associated with revitalization efforts in very distressed areas is the result of weak strategies that do not engage the support of local residents. These strategies also fail to focus on asset building and lack strong criminal justice responses to crime. An example of a good strategy is the Weed and Seed program. The Weed and Seed program has a major positive impact on economic development and revitalization when a coalition of community and law enforcement agencies work together to eliminate local crack houses. This strong law enforcement response, with media coverage of local residents cheering, boosts community development efforts. This program says to the public that something can be done about crime and that residents of poor neighborhoods want crime eliminated. Without such efforts, community abandonment is viewed as a logical response. Trend Seven: Without Policies to Correct Asset Deficiencies, an Increasing Percentage of Families Will Not Achieve Self-Sufficiency and Efforts to Revitalize Poor Communities Will Continue to Have Limited Success Until recently, our approaches to poverty and community development have been focused on deficits, problems, and income security programs. Programs that do not focus on teaching and asset building consistently fail to reduce poverty and revitalize distressed communities on a large scale. Asset building has been the primary vehicle for lifting individuals and families out of poverty. Assets such as savings, homeownership, property ownership, business ownership, and postsecondary education and training are the resources most Americans use to become self-sufficient and decrease the likelihood of poverty for themselves and their children. Asset-building programs increase family income rather than supplement inadequate income and also create local jobs and local stakeholders in communities. Poor families that rise out of poverty through education and employment often leave poor communities because of crime, poor schools for their children, and lack of business ownership and home-ownership opportunities. When these successful families leave, they take their disposable income, civic involvement, and examples of positive achievements with them, leaving the familiar concentration of poor families and problems behind. Asset-building programs also create a positive economic future for youths. Many youths join gangs or engage in street crime because they feel they have no other economic options. Programs that provide youth enterprise skills or education trust funds influence their view of themselves and their risk-taking behavior. Crime prevention and treatment programs as well as community revitalization strategies need to include asset building to be effective. Poor and working poor families and individuals can effectively build assets when provided with specialized programs to help them. By increasing the availability of these programs and promoting asset building for the poor, families and communities can be strengthened. Policymakers and practitioners should explore the expanded use of the following programs and policies in reducing poverty and crime: Economic literacy programs. Economic literacy programs provide basic budgeting and banking and savings skills for low- and moderate-income individuals and families. Microenterprise and youth enterprise programs. Microenterprise and youth enterprise programs provide entrepreneurial training for low-income individuals. After assessing their talents and interests, each trainee is taught how to develop a real business plan by program staff. The program then makes small amounts of capital available to the trainees to launch their businesses. Homeownership programs for low-income families. Homeownership programs provide counseling on the homeownership process and assistance with budgeting, savings, and the downpayment. These services create community stakeholders. Individual Development Accounts. Individual Development Accounts (IDAs) are restricted savings accounts that can be used for buying a home, starting or expanding a business, or postsecondary education and training. Individuals or families are required to save for their dream, and their savings are matched by the private, nonprofit, and public sectors. For example, a family saves $20 a month, and those savings leverage $80 in matching contributions. IDAs are included in the new welfare law. The law also allows recipients of income maintenance benefits to have these accounts without affecting their eligibility to receive benefits. Legislation is pending in Congress to provide $100 million for IDA demonstrations. Conclusions and Recommendations Our real crime reduction and community revitalization challenges involve finding ways to reduce poverty, the number of high-poverty communities, family disintegration, and the number of young people entering criminal careers. Community development and crime reduction agencies must not sit by while employment, welfare, child support, and school agencies institute rules and guidelines that increase the difficulty of controlling crime and reversing community decline. For example: --Local employment agencies have always put ex-offenders and youths at the bottom of priority lists for employment and training services. The willingness of noncustodial fathers to support their children is not considered when selecting participants for training programs. The importance of employment for noncustodial fathers, especially ex-offenders, will not become a priority without Federal guidance. --New child support and paternity establishment rules have great potential to increase violence against women and children. State and local agencies need guidance in considering how to reduce these risks. --Schools not only institute expulsion and suspension policies that push too many children out, they also are initially inept at addressing the emergence of gangs in schools. Information on best practices to prevent and control gangs and violence in schools is available at the Federal level, but few school administrators use it. Federal incentives to get schools to use this information are needed. The U.S. Department of Justice has developed accessible databases on best practices in violence prevention, gang control, victim assistance procedures, and other important areas. In addition, the Department of Justice has funded demonstrations and evaluations of important innovations such as drug courts, community policing, Weed and Seed, and prison industries. These programs are having an important impact at the community level. Greater attention should be given to these databases and to innovations by other Federal, State, and local agencies. Federal agencies with mandates to reduce crime and rebuild communities need to focus more attention on asset building, reshaping school suspension policies, and designing programs and policies to engage fathers as positive economic and social agents in families. Without these changes in our approaches, poverty, employment, school failure, and family trends will block efforts to reduce crime and revitalize communities. ------------------------------ Notes 1. Rifkin, Jeremy, The End of Work: The Decline of the Global Labor Force and the Dawn of the Post-Market Era, New York: Putnam Publishing Group, 1995. 2. Kasarda, John D., "Urban Industrial Transition and the Underclass," Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 501 (1990): 26-47. Also see Wilson, William Julius, When Work Disappears, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1996. ------------------------------ The Context of Recent Changes in Crime Rates Alfred Blumstein The late 1980s saw a dramatic growth in U.S. homicide rates, particularly in homicides committed by young people. Between 1985 and 1992, the homicide arrest rate for youths and children age 18 and under more than doubled. This gave rise to considerable rhetoric about the "bloodbath" that was coming and the new generation of "superpredators" who had to be dealt with in harsh new ways. Fortunately, that growth peaked in the early 1990s and has declined appreciably since then. Aggregate homicide rates are now lower than they have been for more than 25 years, but the rate of homicides by young people is still well above the stable rates that prevailed from 1970 through 1985. In this paper, I would like to address some of the contextual issues behind the growth in violence of the late 1980s, examine the decline since 1991, and explore some of the speculations about the factors that contributed to that decline. I will then follow with some suggestions for potential Federal roles in helping to decrease crime and revitalize communities. Growth in Violence in the Late 1980s In a recent paper,[1] I examined the time trends in three measures--youth homicides, handgun homicides by youths, and arrests of nonwhite juveniles for drug offenses. Each of these rose dramatically beginning in about 1985 and had more than doubled by 1992. Similar changes were not displayed in adult homicides, nongun homicides, and arrests of white juveniles for drug offenses. My hypothesized link among these three trends is that crack arrived in the mid-1980s, initially in the larger cities, and spread from there to the smaller cities. Because crack required many more sellers to meet the increased demand (composed of many more buyers and with more transactions per buyer), there was major recruitment of young minorities to serve in that role. They were carrying valuable property--drugs or the proceeds from the sale of those drugs--and so they had to take steps to protect themselves from robbery. Because they were dealing in an illegal market, they could not call the police if someone tried to steal their valuables. Their self-protection involved carrying handguns. Because young men are tightly networked and highly imitative, their colleagues--even those not involved in selling drugs--armed themselves also, at least in part as a matter of self-protection against those who were armed. That led to an arms race in many inner-city neighborhoods. It is widely recognized that violence has always been part of teenage males' dispute-resolution repertoire, but that has typically involved fights, the consequences of which were usually no more serious than a bloody nose. The lethality of the ubiquitous guns contributed in a major way to the doubling of the homicide rate by (and of) those 18 and under. The emphasis on the presence of guns as a critical instrument in this process is reflected in the fact that gun suicide rates by young people, especially young African-Americans, escalated at the same time as homicide rates.[2] There were no comparable trends in nongun homicides or suicides. At the same time, the homicide rate for older ages diminished. For those 30 and older, the reduction was about 20-25 percent. The growth in the prison population during that time (a doubling in the incarceration rate between 1985 and 1996) has undoubtedly contributed to that reduction, although no one has isolated that incapacitation effect from other factors (e.g., a general decline in intimate partner homicides) that may have contributed to the decline in the homicide rate by older offenders. Shifts During the 1990s The number of homicides by young people leveled off in the early 1990s and did not begin a significant decline until 1994. With the growth in the homicide rate among young people stopped, the continuing decline in the homicide rate by older offenders resulted in a peak national homicide rate in 1991 and a subsequent decline. That decline was dominated by the changes in the largest cities--New York in particular--which displayed very sharp declines, beginning in 1994. One explanation that has been offered for the decline in crime rates is "demographic change." This probably harks back to the last time we saw a significant decline in crime rates, in the early 1980s, when demographic change--the aging of the baby-boom generation out of the high-crime ages of the late teens and early 20s--was indeed a major contributor to the crime rate decline.[3] Today, however, demographic change is working in the other direction--to increase crime rates. As can be seen in exhibit 1, which shows the number of people at each age in the United States in 1998, the smallest age cohort in the Nation under age 40 is now about 23. These are the people who were born in 1975 following the baby boom, which peaked in about 1960. Thus, we are seeing a growing number of individuals entering the high-crime ages of the late teens and early 20s, and that will continue for at least the next 10 years. But we should also note that those changes are not dramatic, with the cohort sizes expected to grow by about 15 percent in 15 years, or roughly 1 percent per year. Even when one partitions this analysis by race (see exhibit 2, which shows the white and black male populations separately by age), we see that the young black male population (which is multiplied by a factor of seven to show the comparative growth, since the U.S. white population is about seven times the black population) follows a pattern very similar to the white male population, but with a somewhat faster rate of growth. Nevertheless, the growth rate of the black male population is only about 30 percent in 15 years, or about 2 percent per year. These demographic shifts represent but one factor contributing to changes in crime rates. If crime rates within each demographic group stay constant, then an increase in the size of the demographic groups with the highest rates contributes to an increase in the aggregate crime rate. But other factors are contributing to changes in demographic-specific crime rates well in excess of even 2 percent per year. During the late 1980s, for example, homicide rates by young people were growing by 10-20 percent per year. Declines in recent years, especially in the largest cities, have also been of that magnitude. An important avenue to pursue is finding an explanation for the recent decline in homicides by young people. Possible explanations include: --Changes in the nature of drug markets (crack markets in particular), induced by changes in the nature of the demand, that has led to less violence associated with those markets. --Vigorous police and community efforts in at least some cities to get guns out of the hands of young people. --Police and community efforts to resolve gang conflicts and encourage disarmament. --Improvement in the economy that not only has provided jobs to young people but also has been a source of improved hope for succeeding in the legitimate economy. --Increased incarceration of potentially violent offenders. --Improvement in the largest cities that may be masking a situation that could be very different in many smaller cities. These explanations certainly are not mutually exclusive, and different explanations could apply to different cities. We still need more effort to sort out these and possibly other contributors to the decline. Even though the decline in the homicide rate by young people is encouraging news, it is important to note that the homicide rate by juveniles is still at least 60-80 percent above the rate that had prevailed for the 15 years from 1970 to 1985. Thus, we still have a long way to go in bringing that rate down. Incarceration has been the Nation's dominant strategy against crime over the past 25 years. That has led to an incarceration rate (prisoners per capita) that is more than four times the rate that prevailed with remarkable stability for the previous 50 years. Incarceration with reasonable sentences is likely to have an important incapacitation effect on older offenders (ages 25 and older), whose lengthy criminal careers may reasonably predict future offending. Such predictions are far more difficult with younger offenders, so it is important to address opportunities for investment in crime-prevention efforts targeting individuals in high-risk situations at an early age. Even though the payoff from such investments will take several years to be realized, it is likely to exceed the fiscal cost--let alone the social cost to the society and the economy--of widespread use of long-term incarceration of young people. But no one can make that assessment definitively because the evidence on the comparative payoffs is still poorly known and the payoffs will vary with different kinds of interventions with different target groups. A major national challenge lies in finding what approaches can be most effective with each of the different kinds of young offenders. We still do not have definitive solutions, but it is extremely important to invest in the research that will enable us to develop and identify them. Windows on the Future As we look to the future, there is little we can say with certainty. One strong predictor is the demographic composition of the Nation. It has already been indicated that demographic trends will contribute to making matters worse, but only at the rate of about 1-2 percent per year. The other matter of concern is the greater number of people who will be unemployed or without reliable sources of income if the economy turns down--a likely eventuality--but few people can say with any confidence just when that will occur. When that happens, we might see more people resorting to criminal activity to offset their displacement from the legitimate economy. One group in particular for whom that is an important issue is the people who will be displaced from welfare support when their time of eligibility expires. So far, we have seen an important reduction in the welfare rolls by those best able to move into the legitimate economy, while those without such opportunities have stayed on welfare. Within the next few years, more of that latter group will find themselves without welfare support, and-- especially if there is concurrently a significant growth in unemployment--there is a serious risk that they will pursue illegitimate means for their sustenance. Another important cloud on the horizon is the concern about the arrival of new drug epidemics in our major cities. We have seen an ebbing of serious drug abuse in recent years as young people have eschewed the crack cocaine that so often did serious damage to the lives of their parents and siblings. As that awareness fades in coming cohorts of young people, or if new drugs without the comparable stigma arrive, we might well see a reignition of some of the serious crime epidemics that characterized the late 1980s. The data to be collected in 75 cities by NIJ's Arrestee Drug Abuse Monitoring (ADAM) program, involving urinalysis of booked arrestees, should provide some early warning of the arrival of those problems. The Federal Role As one builds on this background to identify an appropriate Federal role for dealing with these problems, one is first faced with the complexity of the division of labor between the Federal Government and State and local governments. It is widely accepted that the primary operational responsibility for local crime control is inherently State and local. But there are important aspects of the crime problem for which the primary responsibility is Federal. One relates to interdiction of criminal activity in which interstate transactions are particularly important. The most evident of these is the area in which there is already widespread Federal involvement--interstate trafficking in drugs. But it is also important to focus on another crime-related product, which is much more directly associated with violence and one in which the Federal role is still poorly developed. That relates to the illegal trafficking in firearms, particularly the semiautomatic handguns that have been implicated as a major factor in the rise of juvenile violence over the past decade. Crime-gun tracing by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) through its National Gun Tracing Center has seen some important growth over the past several years, but the capability and the effort applied are still far less than is needed to become effective in interdicting that illicit traffic. Better collaboration between local police and ATF could result in more effective interdiction of that traffic. The other general role of the Federal Government relates to "public goods" that States or localities need but whose creation is expensive and is broadly beneficial, so the Federal Government appropriately becomes the agent to serve the combined interests of States and localities. These public goods include creation and maintenance of shared operational databases such as the National Crime Information Center (NCIC); fostering and evaluating a wide range of innovations and disseminating the results of evaluations of those innovations so that the successful ones can be replicated elsewhere; and organizing and sponsoring research and statistical projects and disseminating the information and new insights they generate. This last--the research and statistics function--is the critical one, and it is not likely to occur without major Federal involvement. These activities are the province of the U.S. Department of Justice's Office of Justice Programs--NIJ, the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the Bureau of Justice Assistance, the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, and the Office for Victims of Crime. Most people see these functions as merely a transfer of Federal money to alleviate local costs. The agencies' participation in providing the knowledge to enhance the overall effectiveness of the agencies of the criminal justice system is a far more critical Federal role because the functions could not be performed without that participation. In view of their importance, it is astonishing how little money the Federal Government invests in those functions. ------------------------------ Notes 1. Blumstein, Alfred, "Youth Violence, Guns, and the Illicit-Drug Industry," Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology 86 (1) (Fall 1995): 10-36. 2. See Blumstein, Alfred, and Daniel Cork, "Linking Gun Availability to Youth Gun Violence," Law and Contemporary Problems 59 (1) (Winter 1996): 5-24. 3. See Blumstein, Alfred, Jacqueline Cohen, and Harold Miller, "Demographically Disaggregated Projections of Prison Populations," Journal of Criminal Justice 8 (1) (January-February 1980): 1- 25. ------------------------------ Community Watch Amitai Etzioni* The way one thinks about and deals with crime depends on one's assumptions about human nature. If one assumes that people are good by nature, as many liberals do, then one blames conditions in society on ill conduct. Giving people jobs-- well-paying jobs and not dead-end ones--is the most obvious treatment for anti-social behaviour. Education, rehabilitation, and psychotherapy are close seconds. But if one shares the assumption of social conservatives (from the religious right to Michael Howard) that people have strong aggressive and sexual impulses, then one seeks ever stronger measures of law and order. In the U.S., Steve Forbes campaigned in favour of one strike and you're out. Yet there is a mountain of social-science evidence to support a third, communitarian position; infants are born without values (there are no altruistic genes) but, given the proper moral infrastructure, they can acquire values. The building blocks of such an infrastructure are well known. Historically they have included families, schools, and communities (which encompass places of worship and voluntary associations). From this viewpoint, the sharp rise in crime in western societies is due to the weakening of all these moral elements. The family has clearly declined, and no new social agency has taken its place. Whatever one thinks about child-care centres, their focus is on custodial care, perhaps learning, but hardly on moral education. Schools in Britain still do a fair job of character-building, but as pluralism rises they are under increasing pressure to be value-neutral. The sad fact is that even when families and schools are functioning to perfection as values-transmitters, as the moral agents of society they do not suffice. This takes us back to the pesky question of human nature. It is impossible to expunge all anti-social urges: we all occasionally experience aggressive feelings, inappropriate sexual desires and selfish inclinations. The best families and schools can do--and this is crucial for our understanding of crime and how to deal with it--is to develop a conscience that serves as a counterweight. Human nature is condemned to an eternal struggle between theses urges (which make us offend mores and often laws) and our conscience. Most important, how law-abiding (and good) we are as adults is very much determined by the extent to which the conscience we acquired as children receives external reinforcement. This is particularly effective when it comes from those in whom we have an emotional investment: members of our communities. The stronger the communal bonds and the more they support pro-social behaviour, the more we are able to curb our urges, and the lower the level of crime. This is why we are all so surprised at crime in a small, tight-knit community, such as Dunblane. The crimes I am talking about include not merely street violence, but also child and spousal abuse, white-collar crimes (embezzlement), corporate crime and political corruption. Crime occurs in all social classes, not only in inner cities. While communities can curb even the most serious violent crimes, they are particularly effective in minimising most other crimes, releasing resources to fight the hard core. Tony Blair's anti-crime programme, as drafted before his election, was successful in deflecting Tory accusations that Labour was soft on crime. Its focus on moving police from behind desks to the streets, "zero tolerance" for petty crimes, and fast-track punishment for persistent youth offenders, leaves plenty of room to make it more communitarian. The government programme could now take into account that crime is best prevented from the beginning rather than deterred by punishment after the fact. And that if one simply arrests most kinds of criminals (for instance, drug dealers), other people soon take their place. Both issues are best addressed when members of communities censure anti-social behaviour. To mobilise communities to censure crime strongly, they must be treated as true partners with the police. Community policing does not quite cut it. While it is helpful to move more police on to the beat, it is also necessary to change the demographic composition of local police forces so they will not differ too much from the communities they are supposed to co-operate with. Community leaders must be involved in setting police priorities. Should the police concentrate on drug-dealers or on school safety? Should they focus on outsiders or entrap kerb-crawlers? Some communities cannot be reached because they are hostile in general and to the police in particular. Yet in some instances, for example in Los Angeles, even gangs have been won over to help curb violence. Many disadvantaged communities already realise that they bear the brunt of crime. If they could be convinced that the police would deal fairly with them, they would be more likely to collaborate. Recently we learned that the curbing of quality-of-life offences--minor crimes such as playing cassette players loudly in public places, graffiti, and aggressive begging--is surprisingly effective in reducing more serious offences. Such drives re-establish community mores and mobilise the community to back crime-fighting. Stigma is a useful device for addressing criminal behaviour; unfortunately it ruffles the feathers of liberals. They speak of returning to putting people in stocks. But while most everyone would agree that it would be a better world if one could prevent crime only by positive incentives, realistically, negative sanctions are unavoidable. Stigma is the least costly and the most--yes, the most--humane. A young accountant is caught for the second time having embezzled money from a pension fund. Send him to jail, and he is most likely to graduate with even less respect for the law, be subject to punitive conditions, and carry the stigma of a criminal conviction, all at a high public cost. Make him carry a sign in his neighborhood (as a judge recently did in the U.S.) and he will be deterred from repeating his offence--at minimal public cost. Another way for communities to prevent crime is for them to wall themselves in--troubling, because communities sometimes employ these gates to keep out those of a different class or race. One notes that affluent communities and public institutions already have stringent entry controls. I cannot get into Parliament, the BBC, the High Court, and well-off people's residences, without identifying myself and explaining my business. Working-class neighbourhoods should be allowed the same protection, given that they are the likely victims of violent crime and that the state has not succeeded in keeping crime at bay. Gates and other methods of shielding target areas have proven surprisingly effective. Gates have another constructive effect. They can help build community. When a neighbourhood in Dayton, Ohio, was flooded with drug-related crimes, gates--only to cars, not to pedestrians-- blocked the traffic from the highway and divided the neighbourhood into six cul-de-sacs. Each of the six areas developed its own identity and social web. Children were heard to comment on the way to school that they must behave themselves because throwing stones or yelling aloud was not welcome in these parts. The undesirable effects of gated communities can be avoided by ensuring that neighbourhoods treat all who seek entry in the same manner. One still would prefer open communities, but gates seem necessary until crime, including terrorism, is better controlled. Some pundits insist that the real issue is the exaggerated fear of crime, rather than crime itself. Fear is more pervasive in communities where crime rates are relatively lower. (A recent survey--which relies on self-reporting--found that in England more people reported themselves to have been a victim of crime last year than in the US, although crime rates in the US are several times higher.) This fear has barely declined even as crime has been reduced. Many liberals draw from this the somewhat presumptuous conclusion that the members of such communities are irrational (the term "hysterical" is sometimes used) and need reassurance, rather than more protection. But communities are sensible to worry about crime, even if after rising drastically (by more than five times between 1960 and 1990 in England and Wales) crime rates have now levelled off or been curtailed. Crime has such devastating and lasting effects that limited changes in statistics do not much matter. Parents who yearn for a day when their children will be able to play outside unsupervised derive little comfort from a fall in crime of 11 percent. People won't walk at night in the "wrong" parts of a town simply because the murder rate is not as high as it used to be. Among the more innovative ideas is an approach highlighted during the first Talk to Tony town meeting: restorative justice. It calls for offenders to meet their victims in the presence of other community members. The offenders are expected to apologise as well as perform community service that will help compensate the victim--for instance, restoring their vandalised property. The community determines the nature and scope of the compensatory service. Untested so far is an idea from the Communitarian Network, which advocates sharing with communities savings that result from falling crime. The plan, "it takes a village to prevent a crime", offers communities a deal: it gives the community an estimate of the public cost caused by crimes committed on its turf. If the community agrees to fight crime, and if as a result crime falls in the following year, the community is awarded half the savings. These can be used for shared purposes, from building a playground to a swimming pool, but not for projects for the benefit of individuals. This further enhances the communal bonds, which in turn enables the community to combat crime. These measures are not meant to supplant the conservatives' law-and-order measures or the liberals' job-creation. Communities are partners which can shoulder an important part of maintaining public safety, but they can hardly combat it single-handedly. One should note that for many crime-fighting purposes, police are over-skilled and expensive. It is best to draw as much as possible on alternative sources, and sentence first offenders to community work rather than jail. When it comes to policing, a certainty of punishment is more effective than extensive punishment, and communities would be better off if the numbers of cops and courts were increased, rather than the number of jail cells. Jails should accommodate more people, for shorter sentences, to better effect. Providing the right jobs can significantly reduce crime; unfortunately such jobs are difficult for governments to produce, especially for the areas in which violent crime is most common. Yet law-and-order and socio-economic cures have long been the focus of the debate over the best ways to deal with crime. These have overshadowed the importance of community as a reinforcer of pro-social mores. Whatever portion of crime community-based methods can prevent, they eliminate it in ways that are low in cost and humane. ------------------------------ Panel Two: The Roles of Federal, State, and Local Governments and Communities in Revitalizing Neighborhoods and in Addressing Local Public Safety Problems Revitalizing Communities and Reducing Crime Robert L. Woodson, Sr. To reduce crime and revitalize communities, it is necessary to develop a strategy that can effectively intervene in the cycle of violence before it claims the next generation. A primary focus of our efforts, therefore, should be to reach and guide our Nation's youths who now, by the age of 18, confront more crucial moral decisions than their parents' generation faced in an entire lifetime. A model of effective youth intervention does exist. There are hundreds of men and women throughout the country who have the proven capacity to provide the guidance and example that have the power to redirect at-risk youths to productive and positive activities. The importance and unique power of these dedicated community leaders can be appreciated best in light of the scope of the problems experienced by today's youths and the dismal track record of many conventional, professionally designed programs for at-risk youths.[1] A Generation in Jeopardy Throughout the Nation, crimes committed by juveniles, who often express a haunting sense of indifference, have created a public perception that a portion of the upcoming generation is already lost--beyond help. Reports and statistical analyses also reveal that the epidemic of spiritual malaise and violence is not an isolated "inner-city" problem and that it is affecting families of every income level. Throughout the Nation, youths from suburban neighborhoods and rural communities, like inner-city youths, are wasting, losing, and taking their lives. Five thousand children die each year as a result of assaults, illness, or suicide.[2] It is projected that 1 in 7 youths who are now between the ages of 10 and 18 will run away from home. Each year, 1.5 million young people are living on the streets.[3] Many of these children turn to the drug trade or prostitution as a source of money. Trends in behavioral choices among adolescents indicate that the crisis will grow worse if effective intervention and support are not provided. In a recent survey of eighth graders, one-third of the respondents said they use illicit drugs and 15 percent said they had drunk more than five alcoholic beverages in a row in the preceding 2 weeks.[4] In 1996, the greatest increase in birth to adolescents was to girls younger than 15 years old. The firearms homicide rate among 10- through 14-year-olds more than doubled between 1985 and 1992, and suicide rates for these youths increased by 120 percent from 1980 to 1992.[5] Clearly, our Nation's conventional responses to the problems of youth violence have not been effective in spite of the millions of dollars that have been invested in them. Researchers project that juvenile arrests for violent crime will more than double by 2010. A recent nationwide survey reported that gang membership in the United States has grown to more than 650,000 youths who are involved in 25,000 gangs. In response, a massive crackdown was launched by the FBI, which created 133 task forces that resulted in 92,000 arrests and 35,000 convictions nationwide throughout a 4-year period.[6] Yet in many cases, these arrests did no more than move a "bubble" of crime to a new location. In the words of one corrections officer in a State where half of a 38,000-person prison population has been identified as gang members, "The problem does not go away. When the community gets rid of its gang problem, that problem is then transferred to the correctional institution. In fact, it becomes more intensified."[7] To date, most resources and efforts to rescue our Nation's children have been targeted to inner-city populations. Young people in low-income neighborhoods have felt the most severe impact of the moral free-fall that is afflicting the next generation because their communities lack the economic stability that has provided a temporary buffer for middle- and upper-income youths. Yet, although millions of dollars have been invested in programs for inner-city at-risk youths, many of these projects have had little impact on the crisis. Consider, for example, the case of a teenager in Washington, D.C., who murdered a taxi driver. The youth was sent to a psychiatric treatment center in a resort town in upstate New York where he received $100,000-a-year therapy. After several months of therapy, he simply walked away from the facility, returned to the District, and committed a second murder at a convenience store just blocks away from the first homicide. Psychiatrists who had treated the youth argued they had made progress because he reportedly expressed regret regarding the second murder. Pitfalls of Conventional Approaches The failures of a number of professional programs that have been launched for at-risk youths will show us that there is a need for a fundamental change in our approach to the problem, not that the situation is hopeless. There are at least four reasons why many conventional approaches have not been effective. --Many conventional programs have been designed on the mistaken premise that the source of the problems faced by young people is external and that the root causes of the current youth crisis are economic and financial. It is assumed that if young people are simply offered employment and adequate educational opportunities, the crisis will eventually be resolved. The spread of the youth problems across all income brackets provides evidence that the problem is not the result of economic and social disadvantage alone. Even when the economy of our Nation hit bottom in the Great Depression, families and communities remained strong, and young people did not suffer the alienation and anxiety they suffer today. The problems affecting our Nation's youth are fundamentally spiritual and moral in nature. Community leaders who have addressed the crisis as a spiritual problem have been remarkably effective in changing the lives of the young people they serve. The most powerful agents of transformation are grassroots leaders whose outreach rests on principles of personal responsibility and reciprocity. Most of their efforts are faith-based and are guided by a steadfast conviction in the God-given potential of every human being. These neighborhood-based initiatives stand in sharp contrast to the conventional social service industry that, in essence, rewards deviance. The clients of conventional social services are identified only in terms of their deficiencies. If you are unwed and pregnant, there is a program for you. If you are addicted to drugs or alcohol, there is a program. Effective community outreach, on the other hand, is aligned with the principles implied in the parable of the prodigal son. In order to be rewarded, young people are first expected to fundamentally change their attitude, values, and behavior. In the parable, a young man demands his share of his father's household, only to waste it away through a life of debauchery and immediate gratification. The father's heart may have been broken as he witnessed his son reaching his lowest point in life, lonely and impoverished. Yet, he could not embrace his son unless he first "came to himself" and underwent an internal transformation through repentance and resolve. Otherwise, the father's embrace could have been perceived as sanctioning his son's debauchery. In the same way, grassroots leaders first lead the youths they work with to a point of conversion, where they personally accept responsibility for their wrongdoings and determine to change. Conventional programs for youths apply therapy and environmental modifications to produce a change in behavior, but the change is often temporary. When many "rehabilitated" youths reenter their old environments, they adapt to them and revert to their previous behavior. In contrast, faith-based neighborhood programs have the power to produce a lasting, substantial, internal transformation. This conversion then results in a long-lasting, consistent change in behavior. When "transformed" youths go back to their old environments, many are not only able to resist their influence but often bring about a major transformation in their communities. --Academic degrees and professional credentials have been considered necessary prerequisites of "experts" who should be entrusted to solve societal problems. In the arena of social policy, firsthand experience and personal commitment are not considered to be an essential part of a credible resume. Many authors who have reaped profits from books on the crisis of today's young people did not even talk with their subjects before pontificating on their problems. Professional sociologists, psychologists, and academicians who have negligible personal experience of, and have had no impact on the problems they talk about, have dominated lecture circuits and television shows. Meanwhile, the true experts--those who have proven track records of success in solving the problems--have been ignored. In arenas including gang activity, unwed teen parenting, and substance abuse, many of the most effective agents of change are individuals who have personally experienced and overcome the problems they encourage others to overcome. Their daily lives provide a practical example of the values and standards they promote, and their unwavering, long-term commitment to the young people they serve has won the confidence, trust, and respect of youths, even those who had been considered incorrigible by the social service system. In spite of their effectiveness, in many cases regulations have prohibited such grassroots volunteers from providing services in their neighborhoods because they lack academic degrees or professional certification. --"Rescuing" a young person from his or her environment may not be the solution. The rescue mode of conventional programs ignores the value-generating, mediating structures that exist within the youths' own communities (families, neighborhood associations, etc.) and may, in fact, undermine and usurp them. It is assumed that the solution lies in the beneficence of those who are outside the community. This is true even of the much-lauded mentor programs, which frequently bypass parents and neighbors. What message does a young person receive through programs that are built on the assumption that role models must be imported into their homes and communities? The lives of young people can-not be salvaged through outside intervention that ignores the necessity of supporting and strengthening their communities. The key to establishing consistent and sustainable support lies in using the indigenous, "natural antibodies" of a community, which have the power to ward off societal disease. --Focusing on only one area of a complex of interrelated problems may not work. In contrast, personal neighborhood-based outreach addresses the whole individual and the interrelated factors that affect a person's life. For example, one of the most effective substance abuse programs I have encountered, the San Antonio-based Victory Fellowship, does not focus exclusively on eradicating drug and alcohol addiction but also incorporates programs to reunite and strengthen families, meet the needs of the children of addicts, and provide educational and employment opportunities. Through Victory Fellowship's impressive Christian version of the Boy Scouts, the Royal Rangers, young men who have successfully overcome their addictions function as role models for boys age 5 and older, guiding them in projects of community service and civic responsibility. Recently, a collaboration of grassroots initiatives in Washington called Hands Across DC has created a model comprehensive strategy. Five groups have joined forces to 'go deep' into troubled neighborhoods, supporting the survivors of homicide victims, equipping incarcerated men to fulfill their responsibilities to their families and communities, and providing productive activities and educational opportunities for young people. Indigenous, grassroots, youth intervention programs throughout the Nation have shown us that solutions to this crisis exist. Neighborhood-based strategies have been remarkably effective in eliminating rather than simply displacing youth violence. Accounts of their efforts show us, however, that there is no shortcut to engendering the change in young people's vision and values. Such internal transformations are the harvest of long-term consistent effort, around-the-clock availability, and the personal example of adults who have committed themselves to a calling to salvage young lives. Effective, Community-Based Youth Intervention Two men, Leon Watkins in south central Los Angeles and Carl Hardrick in Hartford, Connecticut, live hundreds of miles apart but are linked by a common commitment to salvage the lives of young people from the lures of gangs and street violence. Both of these men have been active for more than 20 years and have worked tirelessly with minimal financial resources. Both have recognized that the most effective way to influence gang members is through existing youth leadership structures, working with the leaders to establish peace and to redirect activities of the group toward a positive end. This is not an easy or safe venture. In the volatile world of gang violence, street-savvy youths demand authenticity and proven commitment before they will enter a relationship of mutual trust. Through consistent investment, perseverance, and in spite of great personal risk, both men have been able to have a significant impact on the incidence of gang violence in their communities. Leon Watkins: Los Angeles, California In 1979, Leon Watkins launched his effort to stop the waste of young lives in senseless violence in south central Los Angeles. He created the San Pedro Business Association to develop alternative activities and employment opportunities for youths. In a door-to-door campaign to business owners in the community, Leon enlisted support for the jobs-creation project. In return for their participation, Leon worked to protect store owners who were often the targets of theft and extortion. He posted reward notices throughout the community, asking that any tips regarding crimes in the neighborhood be reported to what he dubbed the "Family Helpline." In time, this helpline would become an anchor of information exchange and crisis counseling for the community, but in the beginning, the hotline was simply one man, Leon, and a telephone booth. Fearless, Watkins began his antiviolence efforts by seeking out the leader of one of the city's most notorious gangs, a youth whose street name was Quake. Leon recalls: I just put the word out on the streets that I was looking for Quake, and then one day as I was walking through an alley, a car pulled alongside and one guy stepped out and was flanked by four of his friends. He said he heard I was looking for him and asked what I wanted to talk about. I just answered, "about what you are doing with your life." We talked that day, and then many other times when I found him on the street. A relationship began to build, and he could see that what I was saying made sense. Gang life was a one-way street to prison or a coffin. He was ready to change, and he was willing to help me reach the kids that were under his control. The majority of Quake's gang members did respond and followed his lead in participating in the first graffiti removal project in the neighborhood. There were some who didn't want to stop "gang banging," but most, like Quake, were ready to change. The graffiti was a constant reminder of the lives that had been claimed in turf wars. It was a powerful statement for the gang members to paint over the graffiti. Since the day of that historic cleanup project, Leon has continued to reach and change the lives of young people. In the following statement, he describes an attitude that is necessary to win the response of gang members: Before you come into a young person's life, telling him to change, you must understand the vital role that gang membership plays in his life. You have to recognize the value that the gang has in the eyes of these young people, and you have to give their reality its due respect. Many gang members would literally rather die than renounce this life, because it is the only place in their entire lives where they have found respect. It is the only culture that has embraced them. They have been rejected by the larger society. Here in their gangs, young people who have been abused in their own homes have found a place to go where they will not only be accepted but respected and where it is possible for them to receive a rank of accomplishment [different levels of leadership and standing within the gang]. You cannot just walk in and tell them to drop what they have found. If you understand this, and respect it, you will have some foundation to begin to talk with these kids, and you can establish a level of communication where they can hear what you have to say. Some people just come in and criticize the gangs and tell the kids how bad it is to be in a gang. What are they offering as an alternative? What are they telling those kids that they can do if they leave their gangs? The kids already know what society considers to be right or wrong. What we fail to understand is the far-reaching impact of despair. How can you measure the pain a person feels when he is hurt and shut out from society? When there is no trustable alternative, when they have seen other lifestyles filled with hypocrisy, all young people are susceptible to the call of the gang. Recruitment begins in elementary schools, and it knows no racial or economic boundaries. Even a young boy singing in a choir can be drawn to affiliate with this culture. All the kids know about it. It is always there, pulling them, and the first time they get into a serious crisis, they will enter that culture. I try to get to the most practical level. I work with an individual until he can verbalize his own personal goal. I try to uncover what his own dream for his life is. I very seldom talk about negative things when I talk with them about what they are doing. I work on the premise that, deep inside, they have a vision for what they could be, and I work to pull out what they have inside and to make them aware of the intelligence and talent they possess. In most cases, I can sense that these young people are in pain, deep pain. That pain turns to anger, and it erupts in situations where they lash out and begin killing each other. And a cycle of violence begins. You have to cut through all of this and get down to the individual. You have to get him to the point where he can look at himself and the overall picture. He has to believe that he has a future and that he is worth something. Carl Hardrick: Hartford, Connecticut Like Leon Watkins, Carl Hardrick began his youth intervention efforts in the 1970s. Residents of the Belleview Square community of Hartford were being held in a virtual state of siege by warring gangs. The elderly locked themselves inside their homes and were afraid to come out. Only three residents dared to come out to a public meeting in the neighborhood about the rampant violence. Carl describes the strategy he adopted to reach the gangs. Similar to Leon Watkins' strategy, it involved working through the gang structure and its leader. One of the most notorious gangs in Hartford in 1975 was the "Magnificent Twenties." Its leader represented a huge population of nearly 1,100 youths who came from all over the city. Senior citizens and other residents of the Belleview Square community couldn't function. They locked themselves in the house when they came home, and they were afraid to come out. We had a meeting in Belleview Square and only about two or three people showed up. They told me that they were very concerned about the gang and the violence that was going down in the community. At that point, I went out to seek the leadership of the gang. The name that kept coming up was Steven Holter. Steven was a young man who was labeled as 'learning disabled,' yet he controlled 1,100 young men and was pretty much responsible for their actions. I began to work with Steve and talk about what he was doing. There was another gang at that time that wasn't as strong as Steve's but was pretty big, with a membership of about 500. The two gangs were having feuds and going at each other. What I attempted to do with Steve was to talk about the things that he was doing that were negative and to begin to work with him to turn around to do positive things. As I worked with the leadership, Steve, in turn, worked with the youths who were directly under him. The strategy I developed to work with the gangs and my discovery of the things that work started back then. At that time, we were invited to attend a gang workshop at the Urban League to talk about our successes and to see what other people were doing. That is where I first met Bob Woodson, who was coordinating that first gang workshop. Sister Falaka Fattah was there from the House of Umoja, a gang intervention effort that reached thousands of youths in Philadelphia. We also met "Fat Rob," a former gang member who had played an important role in addressing the problem of gang violence in Philadelphia, and we began to exchange information. We were able to dialogue with people who were working with young people throughout the Nation, and at that time Philadelphia had the biggest gang problem. As the youths interacted, they began to talk about what could be done to stop the violence. After that time, we established a good relationship with the people in Philadelphia, and Fat Rob would come to Hartford whenever there was difficulty. Fat Rob was committed to making peace. He was responsible for bringing all those brothers to the table. So that was the beginning of my work. We took a negative situation, in a very explosive environment, and we turned it into a positive. Steven and his followers went from gang banging to hosting dances in the community, providing escorts for senior citizens, and sponsoring a youth day and a community day. They served in every aspect where there was a way for them to fit in. We found out that when you give kids positive things to do, you get positive results. It's difficult to dismantle a gang. But you can change the attitude and behavior of a gang, and once you do that, they will change themselves. As the years went on, these kids grew up. Some of them went to school. Some went to college. Some of them remained out there and went to jail. But the majority of them got jobs and married and are doing fine today. In that process, we learned that Steve Holter and Fat Rob had much in common and that they were natural leaders. But we couldn't give them the tools or the expertise that they needed to diffuse a lot of what they saw was happening on the streets. In a sense, they predicted what would be happening now. Back in the '70s and '80s they said, "If you think that we are tough, watch what our little brothers will be like. They will be much harder, much crueler, and much deadlier." When we sought the reason that young people were involved in gangs, we learned that the gangs filled a gap that was left in the absence of solid family and community structures. The gang fulfilled the role of an extended family. The need for this kind of relationship was natural, though the gangs themselves turned to negative activities. The gang became an essential part of the lives of many young people and we could not just step in and tell them to leave those relationships behind. Instead, our task was to work through the leadership structures and network of influence to lead the youths to positive behavior. Our first challenge was to convince them to bring their differences to the table--where they could talk them out--rather than the streets where they fought them out. There are times when I am criticized for meeting with gang members by people who would rather address the problem through officials and community representatives. But I know of a meeting called by those officials that was organized with 3-months notice yet had only 8 participants. Compare that with 1,300 who came to a meeting with 1-day notice. Compare the responses to those two meetings and you will see who is controlling that community. To turn the situation around, you had to deal with the leadership. In some cases, kids were being forced into gang activity. When Steve Holter and I visited schools and talked about making the right decisions, kids would come up and ask, "What do you do when someone comes up to you and puts a gun to the side of your head and asks, 'Who are you down with?' You would say 'I'm going with you.'" You have to show the kids that what they are doing is damaging to the community. You have to be there for them and sacrifice for them until they believe in you. And once you approach them, you have to be in there for the long haul and offer solutions. In Hartford, we were able to convince a number of gang leaders, who had street names such as "Bird" and "Bookman," that there is another way. They were ready to change. They didn't want to continue down a pathway to destruction. Yet, there was no one to tell them how they could make that change. When they did, the turnaround was remarkable. They went from being enforcers to being peacemakers. They knew that it was better to solve their problems at the table than on the streets. I believe that there were more people who wanted peace than war, but no one was talking to these young people. When you get them to the table and clear up the confusion and find out what the real issues are, you will get a sense that they all want the same things. Then you can work together to address those issues. First, you have to establish yourself and show your sincerity and commitment over time if the young people are to respond. There is no shortcut to that. It takes time and investment. It doesn't happen overnight, but once there is visible progress, the whole community will begin to change. Once the young people declare, "This is what we want to do," you can hold them to that. In a sense, they will force themselves into doing the right thing. Often, when grassroots leaders approach government agencies, they are questioned--not about their outcomes and strategies but about their credentials. When a city launches a program to do gang mediation, the people who are successful with the kids on the streets seldom apply for the job. If these programs are to be effective, they should value effective experience as much as certificates and diplomas, and they should enlist the people who can reach the youths who are making decisions. The value of an intervention strategy is determined by its fruits, its results. One of the first gang leaders I worked with, Steve Holter, is now the owner of a bonded construction company and has currently been contracted for a $4-million project. From a position of success, he is now able to reach back and hire former gang members and at-risk youths. He understands where they are coming from. He sets down the rules, and then he trusts them and assigns them the work. He knows that someone once took the time and made the investment to give him a break. I just wish that I had more Steves, and that he had more work. It is important, once the young people are willing to turn themselves around, that you have opportunities for them and that you can keep them busy. In Hartford, the Upper Albany Neighborhood Collaborative launched a project for youth enterprises. Young people had entrepreneurial skills and innovative ideas, but they were selling the wrong products. This project came as a result of an assessment we conducted on the neighborhood's needs and capacities. It was one example of how, with proper support, young people can turn their negatives into positives. The kids responded immediately. They wrote business plans and even talked of franchising some services. Former gang members came up with detailed plans for small enterprises such as Jeanie's laundromat, Bird's bakery, and Bookman's barbershop. But now that [entrepreneurial] project is on hold. The most pressing need was for capital investment. Conventional lending institutions did not want to take the risk involved in new businesses such as these. Even if the project has come to a halt, the kids are still looking forward to these enterprises: they still have their dreams. The strategies that were successful in Hartford can work in other cities as well. I wish we could take a corps of these young people and "go deep" into other cities, staying there for a year and setting the foundation for things to turn around. Kids from other cities will respond to what the former gang members from Hartford have to say because they can relate to them, and they recognize leadership. The ones who have come through successfully have "been there." They did it. They know the situation that other kids are in, and they also know the consequences of not falling in line. A transformation could spread in the same way that destructive behavior spread. When the Crips and Bloods spread out from Los Angeles, they were organized around violent gang enforcement. The same network and organization can apply in a positive direction. It's important to reach the kids before they go to prison or get involved in the kinds of activities that will take them to prison. Once you have identified the youths who are ready to change and you start working with them, they will respond. They really don't want to live a life on the line. There is a "ripple" effect from the kids who turn their lives around. Once Steve Holter made that change, he was able to reach thousands of other young people I couldn't reach. As each young person is helped, they will pass on the baton. That is why you can anticipate expanding results. There is power when someone says, "That is where I was. I used to do that, but I'm not doing it anymore, and let me tell you why." Acknowledging Grassroots Victories In spite of the remarkable success of neighborhood-based initiatives for at-risk youths, grassroots outreach has received little public recognition. Typically, even the most effective programs have received one of the following responses: they are ignored, they are dismissed as chance occurrences of charismatic leadership, or they are awarded token accolades rather than substantial support. It is said that, when compared to the scale of the problem, their successes are limited. Rather than dismissing the success of these grassroots efforts, we should be investing all of our energy and resources to learn how we can expand, multiply, and "export" their effective strategies. We should treat their victories as we would treat a medical breakthrough. If, for example, in laboratory experiments, just three out of hundreds of mice that were exposed to the AIDS virus were discovered to be immune from the disease, all resources would be invested in an effort to understand what factors contributed to their survival. Their case would inspire hope and would be on the front pages of newspapers throughout the world. The success of grassroots leaders such as Leon Watkins and Carl Hardrick has precedents in community-based outreach that has been going on for more than two decades. One of these precedents is the effective youth intervention strategy that was employed in the city of Philadelphia during the summer of 1973. At that time, the city was paralyzed with fear as small gangs of marauding black youths arbitrarily targeted citizens on the streets and in shopping malls. In what police termed as "wolf pack" attacks, the victims were knocked to the ground and stripped of rings, watches, gold chains, wallets, and purses. A virtual reign of terror spread as reports of the attacks were published and other youths joined in the melee. Because these robberies were not connected to organized gangs and occurred sporadically, police and law enforcement officials found it impossible to predict or contain the rash of attacks. Neither increased police patrols nor emergency funding to traditional social service institutions had any impact on the problem. As the city was held hostage in this crime wave, movie theaters closed early, stores and shopping centers shut down, and many civic events were canceled. Public officials were at a point of hopelessness when two grassroots leaders stepped forward with a unique strategy. Within 1 day of the implementation of their plan, the attacks ceased and never again resumed. Valuable guidelines for addressing the current epidemic of youth crime and gang violence can be gained by studying who it was who solved Philadelphia's crisis and the resources they enlisted in their solution. The agents of this successful strategy, David and Falaka Fattah, were well-known veteran community activists who had discovered that one of their own six sons was an active gang member. At that time, Philadelphia was known as the youth gang capital of the Nation. Newspapers published statistics of victims of gang violence weekly next to the death tolls of the Vietnam war. In responding to their son's gang activity, the Fattahs reached out to embrace his circle of friends rather than trying to isolate him from them, inviting 13 of the youths to come to live with them in their small row house in West Philadelphia. This informal arrangement blossomed into a gang rescue program called the House of Umoja. Word of the safe haven soon spread on the streets, and the number of young gang members seeking asylum steadily increased. Within a few years, the influence of the Fattahs' outreach spread throughout the entire city, and they were able to coordinate a citywide peace pact that dramatically reduced the annual number of gang-related homicides. The Fattahs brought this established reputation and foundation of trust and respect with them when they came to the table to address the crisis of the wolf-pack attacks. Their first step was to call in the "experts" with invaluable street experience, former gang members--the "Old Heads" or "OGs"--they had worked with. This group suggested a collaborative effort with their counterparts who were incarcerated at the local prison, the "House of Correction." When the Fattahs sent out a call for help in stopping the violence, more than 130 inmates signed up to join a crime-prevention task force. The prisoners identified young people who were influential on their "corners" in their neighborhoods who were invited to a conference at the prison the following Saturday. The response was overwhelming. On the day of the conference, buses ferried more than 300 youths to the prison. After hearing presentations from the inmates on personal responsibility and moral obligation, the group broke up into smaller workshops and discussion groups focused on ending the violence. The following day peace prevailed. Although the Fattahs and their group received official recognition from the mayor, the acknowledgment of their unique ability to reach the city's young people was more ceremonial than substantive. When funds were later allocated for crime prevention or youth services, they were designated for conventional social service programs and for increased police patrols. The Fattahs were applauded but then ignored. Our national strategy, likewise, has failed to provide substantial support for alternative grassroots responses to youth crime and gang activity, in spite of its undeniable effectiveness. While plaques may be bestowed on numerous successful neighborhood-based antigang efforts, there has been no effort to develop structures that can harness the capacities of grassroots initiatives to sustain and expand their impact. Instead, as in the case of the Fattahs, massive funding has been channeled to conventional social programs, therapeutic treatment, police interdiction, and incarceration. We cannot afford to continue to ignore our most powerful agents of healing and transformation. The Nation's attention should be focused on the impact that these models of excellence have had on the youths in their communities. All our energies and resources should be invested in understanding how successes that have been achieved in low-income neighborhoods could be adapted and applied throughout society. Until now, we have been unwilling to study the strategies of grassroots leaders who have claimed a beachhead in the battle against youth crime and gang activity. Men and women who have reached and changed the lives of hundreds of young people have accomplished dramatic results, against the greatest odds, with meager resources. If we were to invest in them just a small portion of what we have squandered on ineffective, top-down programs, we could salvage the future of the next generation. Exporting and Adapting a Successful Youth Intervention Model Recently, a remarkably effective grassroots youth intervention effort in one of Washington, D.C.'s, most crime-ridden areas has alerted policymakers and law enforcement officials to the power of neighborhood healing agents. The Benning Terrace public housing development appeared a hopeless case to David Gilmore, the official in charge of Washington, D.C.'s, public housing, when he conducted his first tour of the properties that were entrusted to his management. His driver refused to turn into Benning Terrace and opted to merely slow down as they passed the site, which was notorious for its violence: 59 homicides had been reported in a 5-month period. Gilmore recounts, "I saw the devastated conditions that have been a day-to-day reality for families for many, many months, perhaps even years. The area was filthy, ill-maintained, and ill-equipped. It was silent and deserted, with one exception. The stoop of one unit was guarded by a group of fierce-looking young men. With their caps pulled down, huddled in big Starter jackets, even in the sweltering summer heat, their message was clear: 'We dare you to approach us.'" At that time, Gilmore believed that he had only one option for dealing with this property. He would tear the buildings down and disperse their residents to other locations. In spite of the hopelessness of the scenario in the summer of 1997, those buildings were not razed, and, though they remain, today the site bears little resemblance to the scene Gilmore encountered scarcely more than a year ago. The graffiti that once defaced those buildings is gone. Well-planned flower beds and lawns have replaced litter-strewn lots. Neighbors chat on their front stoops and little children are everywhere--playing on a once-desolate football field, riding bicycles, and practicing basketball shots. The members of youth factions whose turf wars had once virtually held the residents hostage still reside in the development, but they, too, are scarcely recognizable. In Gilmore's words, "Today, there is not only life and laughter in the community, but there is light and hope beginning to shine in the eyes of those young men. Their dreams and aspirations had always been there, but now they have been awakened. They have been given the opportunity to step back from the conflict and to see who they really are. Recently, two of those once-calloused young men risked their lives and suffered injuries to pull babies from a burning unit in their development. They possess more heart than you can imagine, and they have a desire to live." The agents of this transformation are members of a grassroots organization, the Alliance of Concerned Men, which evolved from a common commitment that five men made to help the next generation of young men deal with the lures of gangs, drugs, and crime that had once nearly claimed their own lives. The Alliance first became affiliated with the National Center for Neighborhood Enterprise (NCNE) as members of a project entitled Hands Across DC. The eight participants in this project are Washington-based grassroots initiatives ranging from safehouses and youth intervention programs to support groups for families of homicide victims. Hands Across DC provided two types of linkage. Internally, participants shared ideas, strategies, and encouragement with one another. Externally, connections were made with private institutions and individuals who could provide resources for their efforts. The Alliance was aware that NCNE's nationwide network of community-based programs included a number of counterparts that had implemented effective strategies to quell gang warfare. When youth violence at Benning Terrace climaxed with the abduction and murder of a 12-year-old boy, the members of the Alliance made a commitment to go into that community and devote themselves to stopping the violence. They requested NCNE's assistance in coordinating communication with other youth intervention programs as a first step in developing their strategy. NCNE arranged for a conference call between members of the Alliance and two other grassroots youth intervention "experts"--Carl Hardrick, who has worked with youths in Hartford, Connecticut, for more than 20 years, and Omar Jahwar, a 23-year-old in Dallas, Texas, who established an antiviolence youth development program that has instilled a sense of vision and value in hundreds of young people, both within correctional institutions and in the community. The advice given by these grassroots leaders coincided with the experience and natural instincts of the Alliance: to reach the youths and win their trust, they should identify and work through the established leaders of each of the youth factions. The men went into the neighborhood and went to the homes of residents who were familiar with them and their work. The residents told the Alliance which youths were influential, and they arranged for them to meet and talk with these leaders. After a period of consistent outreach by the Alliance, the youths admitted that they wanted the killing to stop but didn't know how to begin: unilateral disarmament seemed the equivalent of suicide. The Alliance convinced representatives from each faction to meet to discuss the possibility of a peace pact. The offices of NCNE were neutral territory where the talks could be held. A series of closed-door meetings were held in which the youths worked out terms of a truce. The Alliance performed the role of facilitator as the young men described their vision for what the neighborhood could be and listed the resources that they thought would be needed to bring revitalization to their community: Among these were a recreation center and the means for themselves and their families to travel beyond the neighborhood boundaries. On January 29, 1997, a peace pact was forged, and NCNE went into swift action to alert the press, hoping that media coverage of this victory would elicit private-sector support for the renewal of the community. The story of Benning Terrace appeared in news media from the New York Times, Washington Post, and Washington Times to ABC News. While the story engendered inspiration and hope, it evoked little concrete support--with the exception of the response of public housing official David Gilmore, who was moved to offer crucial opportunities for job training and employment to the young men who were at a vulnerable point in their transformation. The youths eagerly embraced jobs such as landscaping, graffiti removal, and repair work for $6.50 an hour, dispelling the notion that they would never give up a lucrative life of crime or drug trade for low-paying but steady jobs. One of the greatest skeptics of the truce, a gang leader named Derrick who had been dubbed by police as one of the seven most dangerous individuals in the District, became one of its most faithful converts. He would rise early to inspect and water the flower beds his crew had planted before reporting for work. Another young man who was inspired by the potential of a job training opportunity exhibited remarkable determination to complete his course. When his car broke down, he rode a bicycle to his classes. When even the bike broke down, he picked it up and literally carried it to the job training site. Through the committed efforts of the Alliance, the lives of 35 young men and their families have been changed forever. A newspaper column recently recounted how one newly employed young man literally broke into tears as he signed health insurance papers for his little daughters, realizing that, for the first time, he could provide them with security and reliable support. The courageous intervention of the Alliance of Concerned Men, supported by the National Center for Neighborhood Enterprise, has yielded the following results: --Thirty-five young men have rejected a lifestyle that destroyed their neighborhood and have become productive, contributing members of their community. --A cycle of despair and violence has been stopped and reversed as young fathers take responsibility for their children and older youths function as positive role models for youngsters in the neighborhood. --A community once considered off-limits for business ventures or services is now "open for business." --To date, the housing authority projects cost savings of nearly $2 million from this intervention, at a site that was previously slated for demolition due to crime that was deemed uncontrollable. This immediate assistance from the housing authority provided a "missing link" that previous grassroots youth crime interventions have lacked due to bureaucratic indifference to such efforts in many cities. --A model of youth intervention has been established that can be exported and adapted in other cities and regions throughout the Nation. The truce between rival youth factions that was brokered by the Alliance with NCNE support has become a catalyst for initiation of other youth peacemaking efforts by the Alliance in 10 crime-ridden Washington, D.C., public housing sites to date. Policy Recommendations The grassroots intervention at Benning Terrace has received consistent support from Eric Holder, who offered his offices as a former U.S. Attorney and as the current Deputy Attorney General to support law enforcement partnerships with the youth initiative. A new effort with the Washington, D.C., Metropolitan Police Department--Operation Fresh Start--could serve as a model for bringing formerly delinquent youths through a process of legal validation as a reward for renouncing destructive behaviors. Through this program, youths receive counsel and guidance to deal with past offenses and outstanding child support payments. On May 8, 1997, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Henry Hyde and Ranking Minority Member John Conyers convened a full committee hearing to examine the policy implications of this grassroots youth intervention success. In addition to the Alliance of Concerned Men, Carl Hardrick of the Hartford Youth Peace Initiative, Leon Watkins of the Los Angeles Family Helpline, and their counterparts from other cities were invited to testify. The Judiciary Committee leadership has committed itself to a partnership with NCNE to fully examine the national policy implications of this grassroots youth crime intervention. With the support of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), NCNE has commenced planning for the Hartford Youth Peace Initiative and hired a third-party evaluator to document program results. A "best practices" manual and tool kit will be developed for use in other high-crime housing sites around the country. Among the policy recommendations NCNE is making are the following: --A seven-city National Demonstration of Grassroots Youth Crime Intervention Success should be established, with the goal of creating "Violence Free Zones" similar to the Benning Terrace intervention in Washington, D.C. NCNE is already planning the intervention in four of the cities (Hartford, Dallas, Los Angeles, and the District of Columbia). With appropriate investment, NCNE is prepared to establish a 3-year, multisite demonstration through a public-private partnership in support of local grassroots anticrime initiatives that could be fully documented in terms of cost savings as well as its impact in reducing the death rate among at-risk youths. --The District of Columbia Housing Authority's affirmative support for the grassroots youth crime intervention success at Benning Terrace should be examined by policymakers as a model for public housing agencies nationwide. NCNE is in the process of capturing this process through a best practices manual supported by HUD. --Operation Fresh Start should be supported by the U.S. Department of Justice for replication in other communities, as a vehicle to "mainstream" youths who are making the constructive transition from violent to productive citizens and "ambassadors of peace" to other communities. --The Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention's antidrug technical assistance voucher program operated by NCNE can serve as a model of support to build capacity for grassroots youth crime initiatives. The procedures and lessons learned from this national initiative could be incorporated as an eligible activity within State juvenile justice block grants. --The prohibition of effective faith-based drug treatment programs for juvenile delinquents should be removed through reform of archaic and counterproductive licensing and credentialing requirements. In addition, "Charitable Choice" provisions, which bar discrimination against faith-based drug treatment programs, should be expanded to include all forms of Federal antidrug assistance. The biggest hurdle that remains to be overcome is a prejudice against information and experience offered by the untutored, the uncredentialed, the unanointed. For the sake of this Nation, we must overcome the elitism that is at the core of this bias. We must have the wisdom to listen and learn from the men and women who, with quiet tenacity, have established track records of success and effectiveness in addressing our Nation's most critical problems. We must have the humility to recognize them as our guides and to provide the support they will need to continue and expand their efforts. ------------------------------ Notes 1. Nat