This is a big fucking deal.
Comparing the growth of other Kinds of nonprofits, the researchers believe
they were able to identify the causal effect of these community groups
Every 10 additional organizations in a city with 100,000 residents, they
estimate, led to a 9 percent drop in the murder rate and a 6 percent drop in
violent crime.
In a criminology field that has produced some eyebrow-raising ideas, this
one is actually not so surprising. That national finding echoes local studies
of some individual programs, like one run by the Pennsylvania
Horticultural Society that converts abandoned lots into green spaces and
that has been linked in Philadelphia to reduced gun violence.
The research also affirms some of the tenets of community policing: that
neighborhoods are vital to policing themselves, and that they can address
the complex roots of violence in ways that fall beyond traditional police
work.
“It’s absolutely consistent with what I would argue is probably the prevalent
theory of policing among the major cities today,” Richard Myers, the
executive director of the Major Cities Chiefs Association, said of the new
research.“Any time people’s basic needs are met, violence goes down – that’s not new,” said Noreen McClendon, who directs the nonprofit Concerned Citizenes of South Central Los Angeles.
in other news, water is wet
Okay, not to be snippy, but I really do hate these kinds of comment in response to something like this which is a very serious work of scholar activism that was not “water is wet” and I think it’s both disrespectful to the intense, complicated work that Dr. Sharkay is doing and also…It’s just not the case that this is “obvious” to the broader public or to people who have opinions about criminal justice considering that, compared to the studies on broken windows policing, the role of community organizations actually has been under-researched and, of course, because the DOJ is focused on creating more punitive policing strategies while cutting funding to Community Development Block Grants.
And also, I just think it’s important and valuable to make sure that we’re actually accomplishing what we’re trying to accomplish. It’s important to have somebody out there taking a step back and running the data and making sure we’re not all wrong about our assumptions.
Because we’ve been wrong before! The DARE program was working off of what “everyone knew” about holistic, non-punitive strategies preventing drug abuse and only after intensive evaluations was it revealed to be entirely ineffective…some studies showed that it make kids actually MORE LIKELY to abuse substances. The data on single gender education is genuinely complicated and it may actually make girls more vulnerable to sexist stereotyping. “Food desserts”, a concept that so many interventions and studies were based on may not actually exist. It’s really good to look into our assumption and make changes if we need to.
The Unsung Role That Ordinary Citizens Played in the Great Crime Decline
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