NCJ Number
190246
Journal
Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology Volume: 88 Issue: 4 Dated: Summer 1998 Pages: 1453-1474
Date Published
1998
Length
22 pages
Annotation
This article examined the investment in community anti-crime activities and volunteerism, involving neighborhood residents solving problems through community organizations thereby potentially sustaining the present decline in violent crime creating safer communities.
Abstract
This article discussed community volunteerism or community anti-crime activities going on across the country where neighborhood residents work together through community organizations and have made a serious contribution to the decline in violent crime nationally. These community anti-crime strategies were seen as the most effective, democratic, and humane avenue and most likely to make communities safer and friendlier. Ordinary people were seen as having both a direct and indirect impact on the national crime and violence statistics that were currently being celebrated or debated. Participants in volunteerism were racially and ethnically diverse. Regardless of the growing number of volunteers in low-income and at-risk neighborhoods, crime rates would not decline unless the community anti-crime activities they were involved in were effective. In addition, the key to generating collective effectiveness from community-based organizations was volunteer leaders and community organizers willing to stimulate action on behalf of the public good. The article discussed the evaluation of the Chicago Alternative Policing Strategy (CAPS), Chicago's version of community policing. The evaluation showed that the presence of organizations was positively related to collective effectiveness. The philosophy underlying CAPS was the encouragement of community activism. It was recommended that if the desire was an alternative to "getting tough" then neighborhood residents should advocate for an investment in community-based organizations that had the mission of involving people to solve community problems. With adequate investment, the present decline in violent crime might be maintained.