Title: The Bureau of Justice Assistance Comprehensive Communities Program: A Preliminary Report Series: Research in Brief Author: George L. Kelling, Mona R. Hochberg, Sandra Lee Kaminska, Ann Marie Rocheleau, Dennis P. Rosenbaum, Jeffrey A. Roth, and Wesley G. Skogan Published: June 1998 Subject: Crime prevention, community policing 17 pages 41,000 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 Research in Brief National Institute of Justice Jeremy Travis, Director June 1998 ------------------------------- Issues and Findings Discussed in This Brief: Preliminary results of an NIJ-sponsored process evaluation of BJA's Comprehensive Communities Program (CCP) as implemented in 12 sites. Key Issues: Among the issues explored are: o The process by which sites implemented their comprehensive crime control and prevention strategies and the impact of preexisting ecological, social, economic, and political factors on implementation. o The evidence and effects of partnership building aimed at combating crime and violence. o The extent to which CCP accelerated sites' implementation of community policing. Key Findings: o Comprehensive strategies supported by a Federal grant to combat crime and violence can be implemented but must be adapted to address specific local circumstances and issues. o CCP's funding mechanism allowed for the fast startup of programs, so enthusiasm generated during the planning process remained high and established CCP as a program of action. o In many sites, the CCP process was a catalyst for establishing new anticrime community leadership while being inclusive of longstanding, active community leaders. o The partnerships that developed in some sites among citizens, criminal justice agencies, social service and other government agencies, and private-sector institutions were unexpectedly robust and persistent. o Powerful partnerships developed in a variety of ways from diverse origins--community organizations and organizers, mayors' and city managers' offices, and police departments. o BJA's mandated framework of community representation and coordinated, multidisciplinary approaches to crime were instrumental in ensuring that in most sites community policing and community mobilization did not function merely parallel to each other but as integral partners. o CCP funds were used at different levels and for various activities in the implementation of community policing, depending on the characteristics of the police department. o Police departments consistently pursued departmentwide community policing, not just individual programs. Target Audience: Criminal and juvenile justice agency administrators, law enforcement administrators, mayors and city managers, leaders of crime prevention organizations, policymakers, community organizers, and criminal justice researchers. ------------------------------- The Bureau of Justice Assistance Comprehensive Communities Program: A Preliminary Report by George L. Kelling, Mona R. Hochberg, Sandra Lee Kaminska, Ann Marie Rocheleau, Dennis P. Rosenbaum, Jeffrey A. Roth, and Wesley G. Skogan Since at least the 1960s, comprehensive community initiatives have been launched to foster economic development, serve youth, and improve the delivery of social services and medical care in central city neighborhoods. Such initiatives are comprehensive because they aim to improve the delivery of multiple services simultaneously and collaboratively. They emphasize community by giving some degree of program control and responsibility to residents of the target neighborhoods. These two features distinguish them from "top down" programs operated entirely by government agencies or those that focus on one social problem at a time. Until the 1990s, comprehensive community initiatives rarely targeted crime. Anticrime programs were generally operated by government agencies, focused on individuals, and carried out with little community involvement. There are many reasons for the growth of comprehensive community initiatives and their application to solving crime problems in the 1990s. Public and private agencies alike began recognizing several trends: that people in trouble tend to have multiple problems; that fragmented services waste resources; that prevention may be a cost-effective alternative to punishment; and that bricks and mortar, whether used for urban renewal or prison construction, are insufficient to solve social problems. Meanwhile, government officials began to view public-private partnerships as preferable to "big government" solutions because they leverage resources and encourage tailoring programs to local conditions.[1] Finally, in the early 1990s, U.S. cities witnessed record levels of violence fueled by the crack epidemic and generally deteriorating urban conditions. Out of such dire circumstances came a pressing need to attempt new initiatives. Thus, a half dozen national programs were created that introduced degrees of comprehensiveness and community involvement into crime reduction, such as Operation Weed and Seed, Pulling America's Communities Together (PACT), and SafeFutures. This Research in Brief summarizes a preliminary report on one of these programs--the Bureau of Justice Assistance's Comprehensive Communities Program (CCP). The Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA) initiated CCP in 1994. Its purpose was to integrate law enforcement with social programs--and public agencies with nongovernmental organizations and individuals--to control crime and improve the quality of life. It was thought that citywide networks and partnerships would be more likely to accomplish these objectives than individuals and agencies working independently. CCP placed special attention on dealing with gangs and youth violence. Community policing and community mobilization formed the core elements of the program, but other components were deemed important as well--including youth and gang programs, community prosecution and diversion, drug courts with diversion to treatment, conflict resolution, and community-based alternatives to incarceration. Two principles define CCP:[2] o Communities must take a leadership role in developing partnerships to combat crime and violence. o State and local jurisdictions must establish truly coordinated and multi-disciplinary approaches to address problems related to crime and violence and the conditions that foster them. Under contract to the National Institute of Justice, BOTEC Analysis Corporation conducted intensive evaluations at 6 of the 16 CCP sites (Baltimore, Maryland; Boston, Massachusetts; Columbia, South Carolina; Fort Worth, Texas; Salt Lake City, Utah; and Seattle, Washington). The sites were chosen because they were ready to begin implementation; their plans were especially interesting or ambitious; they were geographically diverse; or they allowed for the study of a variety of management processes. Next there followed less intensive evaluations at another three individual sites (Gary, Indiana; Hartford, Connecticut; Wichita, Kansas) and at three multijurisdictional sites--the Denver metropolitan area, the East Bay area of northern California, and the Atlanta metropolitan area. This Research in Brief presents preliminary findings of these evaluations. Knowledge about the effectiveness of comprehensive community initiatives is extremely limited,[3] in part because it is difficult to measure their impacts.[4] Their complexity makes it difficult to pinpoint cause and effect, and experiments are difficult to conduct because finding comparison sites is difficult and randomization is often not feasible. Consequently, this evaluation of CCP is a process evaluation intended to: o Develop insights into how community approaches to crime and drug abuse prevention and control evolved. o Track how each site implemented its comprehensive strategy. o Determine the influence of preexisting ecological, social, economic, and political factors on implementation. o Monitor the evolution of strategies and projects over time. Background for CCP implementation As noted, a rise in crime, particularly violent crime, was an impetus for the development of CCP. The six sites intensively studied experienced fluctuating crime rates during the 1980s, with record peaks in the early 1990s. Of particular concern were youth involvement in gangs, violent juvenile crime, and drug offenders. In addition, there were some site-specific concerns such as the availability of handguns in Boston, a rise in domestic violence in Fort Worth, Columbia, and Seattle, and shootings related to drug dealing in Baltimore. While the 1995 unemployment rate for these sites varied only slightly from the national rate of 5.6 percent, the percentage of persons living below the poverty level exceeded the national average of 12.8 percent in all the sites except Seattle. Almost one quarter of the population of both Columbia and Baltimore were living below the poverty line (see exhibit 1). CCP was developed in two phases: planning and development during phase I and implementation during phase II. Implementation funds began flowing to sites during the period from October 1994 to September 1996. Rapid implementation of CCP programs in many sites was made possible by several BJA operating procedures and specific local circumstances. For instance, 12 of the sites received up to $70,000 in planning grants from BJA in advance of implementation, and the 4 PACT sites (Metropolitan Atlanta, Metropolitan Denver, Nebraska, and Washington, D.C.) developed their plans through State and local resources. By setting explicit funding guidelines, BJA removed Federal funding allocations as a source of local contention and empowered local leaders to control competition among potential candidates. The local leaders generally selected persons and organizations with proven track records to lead and participate in CCP. Additionally, self-evaluation and accountability of participants and subcontractors were often built-in components. Some sites, such as Baltimore, Boston, Columbia, and Fort Worth, had preexisting strategies prior to CCP funding, accelerating their rapid startups. In these sites, city officials were pursuing clearly identifiable strategies; BJA's flexibility allowed them to be incorporated into the framework of CCP. BJA provided sites with budgetary and program guidelines as well as a range of technical assistance, but each site had ample leeway to pursue its local objectives within the framework of CCP's national goals. Community policing was an integral aspect of CCP and one of the major beneficiaries of BJA funding--approximately half of the $2 million given to each site for phase II implementation was to assist the move towards citywide community policing. Each site entered the CCP program with different assets, liabilities, existing agendas, and sources of leadership. Based on the Police Foundation survey (see "Methodology" box), all sites had made some progress toward the implementation of community policing prior to 1995. Regardless of programmatic progress, however, sites were expected to plan and implement their CCP initiatives within an infrastructure of partnership building and shared leadership among representatives of the community, public agencies, and social service providers. Highlights from the initiatives in the six sites that were evaluated intensively are presented in exhibit 2 and discussed in the following paragraphs. Columbia--A focus on the police's community mobilizers Columbia, the smallest of the six sites profiled here, was a city in which neighborhood and community organizations had gained considerable influence, skill, and maturity. The administrative agency for CCP was the city's planning department; however, the lead operative agency was the Columbia Police Department, which is involved in a major organizational shift to community policing. Columbia's police chief, who is much admired by community members and local leaders, had been systematically retooling the police department since the late 1980s. Included in those early efforts were subsidized housing for officers in transitional neighborhoods (a national model and award-winning program), neighborhood substations, and highly interactive neighborhood patrols that were the prototypes of what the police department has dubbed "community mobilizers." Three police department community mobilizers are at the heart of Columbia's program. These fully sworn neighborhood police officers operate out of three separate community-based offices and link police, other city government agencies, social service agencies, and community volunteers with residents who are either experiencing or creating serious neighborhood problems. They are involved in every aspect of neighborhood life and act as the conduits through which social services flow to troublesome and troubled families. Fort Worth--A focus on police decentralization Fort Worth was among the first cities in the Nation to understand that community policing is not a program but a shift in the basic strategy of policing. The Fort Worth Police Department's transition to community policing came relatively early in this national movement, beginning in 1985 with the arrival of a new police chief. The U.S. Department of Justice's Operation Weed and Seed funded the shift of one geographic area of Fort Worth to community policing. Special local funds contributed to the shift of a second area, and general revenue funded a third. CCP completed the shift of the Fort Worth Police Department to community policing by expanding the city's community policing and community mobilization plans into a fourth and final geographical area. The most noteworthy aspect of Fort Worth's community policing strategy has been decentralization. Lieutenants direct patrol operations from a number of neighborhood police stations with considerable administrative and budgetary autonomy. Detectives and other specialized units are primarily organized at the individual geographic level, and each unit is led by a captain with 24-hour responsibility for the area. Boston--A focus on decentralized neighborhood planning The reinvigoration of the Boston Police Department is one of the most impressive public-sector organizational turnarounds on record. Boston's CCP efforts were mounted by the police department in the context of decades of struggle with competing models of policing, spates of corruption and abuse, flawed leadership, and the persistence of governmental, community, and service sector fiefdoms that were either hostile or indifferent to each other. Confronted with soaring youth gang violence and constrained by extraordinarily troubled relationships with the African-American community, the police department channeled CCP funds into a complicated, decentralized neighborhood planning process. The Strategic Planning Process, which began with problem identification and was followed by problem solving, was carried out in Boston's 11 districts as well as in headquarters. It involved community leaders, residents, criminal justice agencies, churches, and social service providers. While this joint community policing and community mobilization effort had been on the board, the discretionary resources to conduct the planning were not available prior to the availability of CCP funds. Boston's CCP initiative also included a drug court, a community prosecution program, and two service provider networks that were created to change the way services were delivered to youth and offenders in certain areas of Boston. One network, the Alternatives to Incarceration Network, was a loose network of agencies that provided services to juvenile and young adult offenders. The other, the Youth Service Providers Network, evolved into a strong partnership between the Boston Police Department and the local Boys and Girls Clubs, whereby a club social worker was given an office in the district police substation to identify and refer troubled youths for needed services at the Boys and Girls Clubs or other appropriate agencies. Salt Lake City--A focus on Community Action Teams Community Action Teams (CATs) are the keystone of Salt Lake City's CCP program. Each CAT is a neighborhood-based, problem-solving team comprising a community-oriented police officer, a probation officer, a city prosecutor, a community mobilization specialist, a youth/family specialist, and a community relations coordinator. Community representatives are invited to participate in the CAT on an ad hoc basis to help with specific problems. These interagency units meet weekly to identify local problems, fashion solutions, coordinate resources, implement responses, and evaluate their own effectiveness. While CAT team members worked well together at the "street" level, each member was also answerable to a larger, separate bureaucratic organization (e.g., the police department, city prosecutor's office, school district). At times, these parent organizations were not as quick to respond to community needs as the CATs would have preferred, creating tension and frustration on both sides. Because the police were the most visible members of the CATs, the tension between the "can do" CAT officers and the police department's "command and control" bureaucracy was perhaps the most readily apparent. This situation was acknowledged and remedied through a combination of personnel and policy changes in the police department at the end of the first year. Besides reinventing government at a neighborhood level, Salt Lake City's CCP initiative, administered out of the mayor's office, included early intervention, treatment, community mobilization, and alternatives to traditional criminal justice approaches to proc-essing offenders. A number of educational programs were developed and implemented as referral services for high-risk youth and as alternatives to prosecution and incarceration for known juvenile and adult offenders. The Pre-Probation Program in the Juvenile Court catches youth early in their offending career and holds considerable promise for preventing recidivism and further contact with the criminal justice system. Baltimore--A focus on community police and community organizers Baltimore's CCP, administered through the mayor's office, originated in attempts by community organizers to interrupt the spiral of urban decay associated with Baltimore's housing stock of aging row houses. As the city's population declined (about 25 percent since the 1950s), the excess housing stock created a spawning ground for disorder, fear, crime, and associated urban problems in older neighborhoods. Two seasoned nonprofit associations, the Community Law Center (CLC) and the Citizens Housing and Planning Association (CHPA), developed a comprehensive strategy of community organization and legal action that became the centerpiece, first, of Core Communities (three initial target neighborhoods like the Boyd Booth neighborhood that had just been successfully revitalized) and, later, for Apprentice Communities (neighborhoods that would be subsequently targeted ). Discernible shifts in the approach to community policing were apparent during the period of observation in Baltimore. During the early visits, most of the community policing in the Core Communities was provided by off-duty officers working overtime, making officer continuity in neighborhoods impossible. Later, after requests were received from Core Communities and the CCP leadership, neighborhood officers were assigned to beats on a regular basis. The 13 community officers now have complete flexibility regarding their schedule and activities, allowing them to respond to problems as they arise. Moreover, Baltimore community officers have specific tools available to solve problems: skilled community organizers and responsive community groups, good legal support from housing lawyers, and neighborhood networks of service agencies. In some respects Baltimore officers act in similar ways to Columbia's community mobilizers, but they perceive their job to be much closer to traditional foot patrol--in its best sense. While they are willing to be perceived as problem solvers, they still view their main function as patrolling the streets. Finally, the overall impression gained by evaluators is that as the new chief gained control over the police department's two most pressing problems--community violence and organizational lack of integrity--he also began to shift toward a comprehensive community policing strategy. Seattle--A focus on training police During the beginnings of CCP, with a relatively new police chief, Seattle was entering the second generation of community policing, according to departmental representatives. The department was moving beyond a few existing community programs to a basic realignment of its strategy and culture. Traditionally known for its top-down management style, the Seattle Police Department was insulated from the public and isolated from other city agencies. As such, it was out of step with Seattle's vision of collaborative and neighborhood-based government. While most of Seattle's CCP funding was allocated to partner agencies and the initiation of a citizen advisory group, the nucleus of Seattle's CCP program was a Seattle Police Department training program that featured problem-solving strategies. The training was provided in a rolldown model: train the managers, then the trainers, the field training officers, the line staff, and finally the rookies. The conceptual core of the training was the SARA (Scanning, Analysis, Response, and Assessment) model of problem solving, augmented by collaborative group process techniques. There were many indications in Seattle that internal opposition to the department's commitment to community policing was an ongoing problem. This is not surprising, given the shift in administrative, organizational, and tactical philosophy that was under way in Seattle. These changes--from a centralized, authoritarian management style of "crimefighting" to a participatory, decentralized organization with a problem-solving orientation--will inevitably be slow and generate organizational conflict and resistance. The contributions of training to the transformation of the Seattle Police Department will be understood only with the passage of time. Creating partnerships CCP's two defining principles--that communities must take a leadership role in developing partnerships to combat crime and that government and private agencies must establish truly coordinated and multidisciplinary approaches to doing so--were put into operation in the building of coalitions. In the Coalition Survey (see "Methodology"), "coalition" was defined as an "alliance of groups and/or individuals that come together for a common purpose." During this evaluation, the research team found that many CCP participants preferred to refer to these cooperative relationships or coalitions as "partnerships." Thus these terms are used interchangeably in this study. The team's observations suggest that each city made considerable progress toward developing strong partnerships. Data from the Coalition Survey on 12 CCP sites support observational findings and provide additional information useful for understanding the dynamics of coalition building. Clearly, Baltimore, Boston, Columbia, and Salt Lake City have developed powerful partnerships. While functioning partnerships exist in Fort Worth and Seattle, they are less pronounced. In some respects this is not surprising, since the overall programs in Fort Worth and Seattle had more to do with internal police department matters than with building partnerships. The strong partnerships are all different, some are highly imaginative and creative, and all continue to evolve. Origins of partnerships. Partnerships originate in a variety of sources, expand to include other sectors, and evolve into powerful institutions. Boston's partnerships had origins in multiple sources: the Attorney General who initiated the Safe Neighborhood Initiatives (a program adopted and expanded by the district attorney); an alliance of ministers; a small working alliance between a probation officer and several police officers; a police precinct (Dorchester) that had been a model in an otherwise troubled police department; and several neighborhood organizations. The respective groups were pulled together by the police department's Strategic Planning Proc-ess in the hopes of expanding and consolidating these alliances. Salt Lake City's effort had its origins in the mayor's office, where the mayor recognized the need to work at the neighborhood level. The police department and community activists were involved in the planning process from the start. Baltimore's strong coalition developed from seasoned nonprofit associations that had slowly built strong relations with residents around their housing concerns and then used that leverage to bring other organizations--like the Baltimore Police Department--on board when they were ready. Columbia's coalition had its origins in the historical evolution of neighborhood associations from balkanized, self-protective organizations relying primarily on confrontational tactics to a self-assured council of neighborhood organizations that could collaborate successfully with an increasingly sensitive and integrated network of governmental agencies. Funding issues. CCP funds appeared to be directly related to partnership building in at least three of the six sites visited: Baltimore's community organizing and capacity building; Boston's Strategic Planning Process; and Salt Lake City's development of the CATs. In Columbia, CCP funds seemed less important to actual partnership development (the partnerships seemed to be in place) than they were for the program experimentation that created the community mobilizers. The Coalition Survey data confirm that survey participants in Baltimore, Boston, Salt Lake City, and Columbia were much more likely to be satisfied with their site's efforts at coalition building than were participants at other sites (see exhibit 3). However, satisfaction with the coalition and the feeling of involvement did not always translate into the belief that the coalition was particularly effective. Interrelationships. Community policing and community mobilization were closely interwoven activities in most of the sites. They were inseparable in Columbia and Boston and integrated over time in Baltimore and Salt Lake City. Active police collaboration was necessary to realize the full crime control potential of the CCP initiatives. Baltimore was the best example of this. There, in the Boyd Booth neighborhood, community capacity was high, and skilled community organizers helped mobilize neighborhood residents into a formidable community organization. Yet until police became fully involved and committed, the neighborhood organization was limited in the extent to which it could reduce crime. Together, police and community residents achieved substantial reductions in violent crime and, according to neighborhood testimony, were able to regain and maintain control of their streets. Conflicts. Innovative partnerships can cause conflict for more traditional organizations. Individual members of Salt Lake City's CATs are employees of organizations whose modes of operation differ markedly from the action-oriented, neighborhood-targeted CAT teams. Clearly, the organizational strategy of the Salt Lake City Police Department did not fit with the requirements of operating personnel assigned to CATs. Focused as they are on neighborhood problems, CATs require that participants come to the table and respond to local priorities. Centralized organizations with strong chains of command, in which information goes up and decisions flow down, are simply ill fitted to productive participation in such teams. In such circumstances, role conflict is inevitable. Officers who try to respond to changing neighborhood priorities frustrate their organizational colleagues and superiors; officers who maintain loyalty to their organizational priorities frustrate their CAT colleagues. At one point, the isolation of officers assigned to CATs became a source of conflict within the overall CCP effort and within the police department. As a resolution to this issue, organizational changes were introduced that improved communication through the chain of command. Degree of integration of components. Not all the CCP components were fully integrated into the overall strategy. For example, CCP sites were encouraged to include drug courts as part of their CCP initiatives. Most sites, however, simply passed the money through to preexisting drug courts or to ones that were already in the planning stages. Baltimore was the exception, because funds were used to arrange for community-based support services and supervision of community work for drug court clients. The Bureau of Justice Assistance allocated separate funding for the Boys and Girls Clubs of America to participate in CCP, with the idea that the national organization would in turn fund the Boys and Girls Clubs in the CCP sites. While this did not turn out as planned, some positive relationships were forged with local Boys and Girls Clubs in Salt Lake City, Fort Worth, and Boston. In Salt Lake City, youth workers from the Boys and Girls Club were part of the CATs and were seen as a crucial liaison between at-risk youth and available services. Given the youth focus of several of the CCP projects, it is a notable problem that the schools were usually not at the table. Salt Lake City, whose CCP effort was focused on youth and gangs, has recently brought the school system into the project's implementation. Conclusions Below is a list of findings that are attributable, in whole or in part, to the CCP funding. The crime rates in the six cities either decreased or stabilized during the CCP process. But due to the complex variables of the many factors that contribute to the level of crime, it is difficult to say how CCP or any other specific program played a part in this trend. Partnerships have been formed and are expanding; they are broader and deeper than one would have expected. Involved in them are Federal and local prosecutors, probation departments, county criminal justice agencies, courts (criminal, drug, housing, and civil), State corrections, sanitation departments, social service agencies, community associations, businesses, churches, hospitals, and business improvement districts. Diverse organizations are sticking together in crises, are focused on problems, and in many cases are more than just at the table--they are significant players. The direct impact of CCP on the implementation and expansion of community policing can be discerned most clearly in Boston, Columbia, and Fort Worth. Salt Lake City's CCP effort, clearly one of the most innovative, brought to the surface the structural and administrative issues that can result when a site attempts to build a new neighborhood problem-solving structure that cuts across traditional organizational boundaries. The impact of CCP on the Baltimore Police Department was more indirect than direct; the central focus of Baltimore's CCP was on organizing community associations to become sophisticated consumers of community policing and coproducers of community safety. Finally, Seattle's CCP was primarily an internal, long-term organizational transformation effort. Because of CCP's emphasis on comprehensive and multidis- ciplinary strategies, expansion of community policing occurred at the same time as major efforts to advance community mobilization. The combination of these two initiatives yielded results greater than either initiative could have achieved on its own. The police cannot partner with community organizations if these groups are weak or lack the resources to do their share of the work; community groups are limited in their anticrime efforts without the police as partners. For instance, Baltimore had well-established community groups but still needed the authority of the police to achieve formidable results. Without the thrust toward partnership building, incentive is lacking to other agencies to join police-initiated partnerships. If the Boston Police Department had not reached out to youth-oriented agencies and created the Youth Service Providers Network, the innovative model of placing a social worker in a police precinct to serve youths would never have been created. The CATs in Salt Lake City, which required the cooperation and shared staffing of disparate public and community agencies, could not have been created without CCP-designed efforts in partnership building. Governmental and service delivery systems have been changed. Police accountability has been so radically altered in Boston that many observers believe this change is irreversible. In Baltimore, Salt Lake City, and Columbia, neighborhood service delivery systems are reinventing themselves--not just in the area of public safety but in basic city services such as sanitation and housing--in ways that will not be easy to undo. The final question is, "Was CCP responsible for these things?" The research team concluded that most of these communities were moving in the right direction even prior to CCP. This point could be demonstrated in each site. However, CCP funding accelerated the process and broadened and deepened the range of collaborations. At the six sites that were studied intensively, CCP was the right program, at the right time, in the right cities. Notes 1. These issues are explored in detail by Connell, J.P., A.C. Kubisch, L.B. Schorr, and C.H. Weiss, eds., New Approaches to Evaluating Community Initiatives: Concepts, Methods, and Contexts, Washington, D.C.: The Aspen Institute, 1995. 2. Comprehensive Communities Program, Fact Sheet, U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Assistance, 1994. 3. Sherman, Lawrence W., Denise Gottfredson, Doris MacKenzie, John Eck, Peter Reuter, and Shawn Bushway, Preventing Crime: What Works, What Doesn't, What's Promising, Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, 1997. 4. Connell et al., 1995. ------------------------------- Methodology A Coalition Survey, developed by evaluation staff, was sent to individuals involved in planning and implementing CCP, residents involved in the community mobilization segment, and individuals and agencies receiving funding. It queried recipients about their involvement in CCP and their perceptions of the program planning and implementation process. A second survey was sent later to track changes and progress over time. From the responses to these surveys, a computerized network analysis was developed. (Network analysis makes it possible to examine the structural properties of social relations by examining the interactions between individual actors in a social network.) The network analysis that formed part of this evaluation sought to provide a clear picture of how professional referrals and contact among agencies might have changed as a result of CCP partnership building. The Community Policing Survey sent to each of the 12 sites' police chiefs was based in part on an earlier, national survey on community policing conducted by the Police Foundation during 1993. The data from that survey provided a baseline on the extent to which the sites had implemented community policing prior to CCP. As was done with the Coalition Survey, two waves of the survey were sent. All 12 sites were visited at least once. Evaluation methods used in the intensive evaluation sites included reviews of relevant documents, a minimum of three site visits by two researchers, and followup telephone calls. Examples of program observations during the site visits included attending partnership-building meetings, visiting programs, and riding along on police patrols. Research team members interviewed many CCP participants, including public officials, community representatives, police, and social service providers. While the focus of the onsite research was on CCP-funded activities, the breadth, scope, and inclusiveness of some of the programs inevitably brought the evaluators into contact with non-CCP-funded programs and initiatives--for example, with inner city churches in Columbia and with the downtown Business Improvement District in Fort Worth. A second stage of research will include an intensive study of six other CCP sites (Metropolitan Denver, Metropolitan Omaha, Phoenix, Hartford, Wilmington, and the East Bay area of northern California) and will focus on other issues, including the synergistic effects of CCP, changes in service delivery systems, community mobilization, and the continued support of CCP goals and programs once CCP funding ends. The research team will write epilogues for the first six case studies to document continuing synergistic effects and plans for sustaining the programs. ------------------------------- A Few Signs That CCP Is Working In Baltimore, trash has been removed, crack houses have been shut down, and properties have been put into receivership to be managed on behalf of neighborhoods. Associations are being formed to help renters buy homes in Baltimore neighborhoods that were formerly abandoned. In Columbia, police can now park both their personal and police cars in public housing developments without fear of vandalism, and pizza is again being delivered to residents. In East Boston, the head of a local business association is asking merchants to remove the metal shields over their doorways and windows. In Salt Lake City and Fort Worth, residents are asking for a say in local government and an opportunity to voice their opinions about local problems. ------------------------------- The study reported in this Research in Brief was conducted by BOTEC Analysis Corporation of Cambridge, Massachusetts, under grant no. 94-IJ- CX-0065, continued under 96-DD-BX-0098, awarded by the National Institute of Justice. This research was sponsored jointly by the Bureau of Justice Assistance and NIJ under the Edward J. Byrne Memorial State and Local Law Enforcement Assistance Program segment of the BJA/NIJ Evaluation Partnership Program. George L. Kelling is a professor in the School of Criminal Justice at Rutgers University and a research fellow in the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. Mona R. Hochberg is a senior research associate at BOTEC Analysis Corporation. Sandra Lee Kaminska is a graduate student in criminal justice at the University of Illinois at Chicago and the curriculum development coordinator of the Institute for Public Safety Partnerships, a regional community policing institute. Ann Marie Rocheleau is a senior research associate at BOTEC Analysis Corporation. Dennis P. Rosenbaum is professor and head of criminal justice at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Jeffrey A. Roth is director of crime control studies at the Urban Institute, Washington, D.C. Wesley G. Skogan is a professor of political science and faculty fellow at the Institute for Policy Research, Northwestern University. This Research in Brief (NCJ 171132) is available online through the Justice Information Center Web site (http://www.ncjrs.org) or the NIJ Web site (http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/nij). Copies of this document are available free from the National Criminal Justice Reference Service (NCJRS), 800-851-3420, Box 6000, Rockville, MD 20849-6000. Individual case studies of the intensively studied sites (Baltimore, Boston, Columbia, Fort Worth, Salt Lake City, and Seattle) are also available from NCJRS through interlibrary loan or for a small photocopying cost. ------------------------------- 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. ------------------------------- Findings and conclusions of the research reported here are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice. NCJ 171132 ------------------------------- Quick Access to NIJ Publication News For news about NIJ's most recent publications, including solicitations for grant applications, subscribe to JUSTINFO, the bimonthly newsletter sent to you via e-mail. 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