REDUCING URBAN CRIME (Part 2)

Here is Part 2 of Kelling and Corbett's paper, "This Works: Preventing and Reducing Crime."

TARGETING ILLEGAL WEAPONS AND DRUGS

Illegal weapons are a major factor in exacerbating crime rates. High rates of criminal gun possession tend to increase the overall violence associated with crimes, and are incredibly destructive of public order. It is impossible for a community to believe that crime will not be tolerated if they see people flouting the law by carrying illegal guns on a daily basis, let alone if the night is occasionally punctuated by gunfire. The fewer guns on the streets in malicious hands, the fewer shootings there will be, and the safer and more orderly a city will be.

It is important, therefore, for police to specifically target illegal guns. One strategy simply requires police to check the identification of those stopped for less serious offenses. Persons wanted for other crimes can be searched, and they will often turn out to be carrying illegal guns, which can then be confiscated. This dovetails neatly with "Broken Windows" policing, which naturally increases the number of people stopped for minor offenses. Another effective strategy is to trace how those arrested with illegal guns obtained their weapon. In New York, which pioneered the most aggressive targeting of illegal guns in the 90's, police interrogations of those arrested with illegal guns have netted the arrest of hundreds of gun dealers and record levels of illegal gun confiscations.

In most cities, there is a clear link between crime and illicit drugs. Crime and drug use follow one another, and where drug markets exist other crime will be practically inevitable. Even more so than in the case of illegal guns, a thriving drug trade engenders contempt for the law, as it is so obviously unenforced. Devoting resources to effective anti-drug initiatives will therefore result not only in reductions in the drug trade, but also make a major impact in reducing other related crimes and restoring order. The central strategy that informs successful initiatives is to blanket areas where the drug trade flourishes and give drug dealers no place to hide. Employing tactics such as "buy and bust" operations, a major uniformed patrol presence, and putting neighborhood drug gangs out of business can transform drug-ridden communities into safe, orderly spaces. Carried out broadly enough, they can have the same effect on entire cities....

REDUCING THE IMPACT OF CRIME

In developing a vision for crime prevention, it is important to recognize that not all crime problems can be solved. Reducing the amount of crime, or even of a particular type of crime, to zero simply isn't a reasonable goal for urban law enforcement authorities. Efforts to reach unachievable targets can sap morale, reduce public confidence, and most importantly lead to a misallocation of police resources. Instead, police must learn to deal with problems without a solution by managing them in a way that reduces their impact on the citizenry to its lowest possible point. For example, prior to the mid-90's, large areas of New York City were infested with drug dealing. Employing a variety of tactics, the NYPD was able to dramatically reduce the problem, but they were, and still are, unable to eliminate drug use and dealing from their city. Realizing this, the police focused their efforts, with immense success, on driving drug dealers off the streets and indoors where, while continuing their illegal activities, they ceased to instill a climate of disorder and lawlessness on the city. Thus, by managing the problem rather than trying fruitlessly to solve it, the NYPD maintained order even where they could not totally eliminate crime.

Applying an order maintenance strategy can only succeed so far without a law enforcement structure that properly supports it. Creating that structure requires extensive central data collection and analysis, and constant feedback and review of the effectiveness of police programs. It also requires the creation of strategic partnerships between the police, other branches of law enforcement such as parole and probation departments and district attorney's offices, non-law enforcement public service agencies, and community groups. Such partnerships are essential both to marshal all the necessary resources government and the public can bring to bear to prevent crime, but also to gain the consent and involvement of each community's members, without which maintaining order within the communities will be nearly impossible. Perhaps most importantly of all, a culture of accountability must be instituted within the structure. At every level, from the whole city to a single street, the law enforcement personnel entrusted with preventing crime must take responsibility for failure, and be recognized for their success.

POLICE DEPARTMENTS MUST BE ACCOUNTABLE

No matter what vision of crime prevention is chosen and what strategies are selected to implement it, no law enforcement organization is likely to succeed in reducing crime unless it is held responsible for doing so. Far too often in the decades preceding the 90's reforms, criminologists and political leaders argued that social, economic, and demographic "root causes" were responsible for crime, and that nothing mere police officers could do would change the crime level afflicting a city. This attitude, which unfortunately still infects a significant portion of the national debate on crime, undermines any attempts at better crime prevention.

Insisting that police don't matter eliminates all the pressure and most of the incentives for them to succeed, saps the morale of officers, and leads inexorably towards a response-oriented brand of policing, the flaws of which were outlined above. A key principle of crime prevention, therefore, must be an absolute insistence on the accountability of police departments for the crime rate. While the police do not have limitless capabilities, and will often require partnerships with other groups to succeed in preventing crime, theirs is the central role. Using the proper strategies, including such partnerships, the police can reduce crime, and failure to do so must not be written off as an inevitable result of amorphous social trends....

INVOLVE THE WHOLE COMMUNITY

One last crucial component to effective crime prevention is community support. Without the consent, and hopefully active involvement, of the people among whom the police operate, it is extremely difficult to reduce crime. The entire project of maintaining order, after all, is only possible in an area where the majority of citizens actually want order. If the majority opposes the police, denying the consent of the community to their efforts, the community as a whole can itself act to maintain disorder by active opposition to the police. While the extreme version of this phenomenon, such as the Los Angeles riots following the Rodney King case [which involved King's beating by police], is quite rare, even fairly small degrees of community opposition can cripple law enforcement efforts and provide aid and comfort to illegal activity. It is, therefore, absolutely essential to work with leaders in the community being served, and to pay careful attention to the concerns of normal community members.

If gaining community consent is essential, involving community members actively in the effort to maintain order is nearly as significant. Police resources are necessarily finite, and retaking the streets of a neighborhood from disorder and illegality, not to mention keeping them once efforts are directed to other troubled areas, requires the help of the people who live and work there every day. Community residents know what the local problems are and community institutions are the ones that can combat acceptance of criminal activity. Close cooperation with the people crime prevention is designed to benefit must be a part of any law enforcement strategy.

The formula for massive crime reduction developed in major cities across America over the past ten years has been tested, and found effective. Order maintenance-based policing implemented through a law enforcement structure designed to support it has resulted in the most dramatic crime prevention successes in the history of the nation. Continued reductions in crime are certainly possible, even as the national downward trend seems to be coming to a halt. Cities such as New York and Baltimore have seen precipitous crime declines ... even as crime elsewhere has stabilized or risen. It is not a coincidence that both cities employ an aggressive order-maintenance policing strategy. If other cities wish to continue to see safer streets and more secure citizens, they would do well to follow the same path.