LACP.org
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SUSTAINING STABLE COMMUNITIES
THROUGH PARTNERING
:

A Blueprint for the Development, Implementation and Permanent
Operation of Community Parnerships for Crime Prevention
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Arthur A. Jones, J.D., Dr.jur.
Robin Wiseman, J.D., Dr.h.c.

International Human Rights Law and Policy
c/o Los Angeles Community Policing
email to: Arthur@lacp.org

EDITOR'S NOTE: --- Arthur A. Jones and Robin Wiseman are international human rights lawyers with legal educations in the United States and Europe. They are consultants and authors on international policing, social policy and human rights, and regular contributors to the forum here at LA Community Policing.

Although the following was originally prepared at the behest of Los Angeles County Sheriff Leroy D. Baca for the City of Compton, CA, it may well serve as a viable blueprint for community policing practices in many other urban (and non urban) environments in the LA area, across the nation and around the world. We hope those who read this will pause to say, "Yes, that makes sense .. and perhaps it will work for me."

For more of their work, please see the
Think Tank.
For additional information feel free to contact Dr. Arthur Jones: e-mail: Arthur@lacp.org


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SUSTAINING
STABLE COMMUNITIES
THROUGH PARTNERING

A BLUEPRINT FOR THE DEVELOPMENT,
IMPLEMENTATION AND PERMANENT
OPERATION OF COMMUNITY
PARTNERSHIPS FOR CRIME PREVENTION
IN THE CITY OF COMPTON, CALIFORNIA

- Click here to download an MS Word version -

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by Arthur A. Jones and Robin Wiseman
email to: Arthur@lacp.org


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Prepared for Los Angeles County Sheriff Leroy D. Baca
Los Angeles, California, USA
_© Copyright _ 2006 Arthur A. Jones and Robin Wiseman.

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September 9, 2006


CONTENTS

Section
Page (in MS Word version)

Introduction

  3
About the Authors   5
I. Statement of Purpose   5
II. Definitions of Terms   6
III. General Duties   7
IV. Initiating the Partnership   8
V. Partnership Design   9
VI. Matching Goals to Structure   11
VII. Training Members   14
VIII. Operation and Maintenance   15
IX. Termination of Partnerships   17
X. Assessments and Evaluations   18


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INTRODUCTION

“Consciously or unconsciously, every one of us
renders some service or other. If we cultivate the habit
of doing this service deliberately, our desire for service
will steadily grow stronger, and will make not only our
own happiness, but that of the world at large.”

-
--Mahatma Gandhi

Police agencies in many countries around the world have learned, in the two decades or more since the advent of Community Policing, that dependence on traditional law enforcement measures and methods alone will never enable societies to reduce the enormity or the impact of today's complex crime problems. Indeed, there is one place where good science, best practices and common sense converge: Effective crime prevention requires the constant and sustained application of early psychosocial intervention. And in turn, effective intervention presupposes the involvement of local partnerships between police and every available community organization or grouping of residents.

Over the past nine years, we have studied and participated in police-community partnerships in many countries, primarily but not exclusively in Europe. Based on our combined experience of partnering with police forces in Britain, Germany, France, Switzerland, Italy, Sweden and Belgium, plus our recent two-year consultancy for the government of Bulgaria, we have compiled the following outline, or blueprint, for changing crime-inducing cultures into low-crime cultures with lasting effect.

A permanent network of police-community partnerships allows law enforcement leadership to concentrate its efforts on specific problems. In the case of the City of Compton, these would initially include gang violence; homicides; robberies; drug dealing; and the myriad lesser offenses associated with those groupings.

Also, a varied arsenal of partnerships is indicated where long-term public neglect, corruption and loss of civic content have combined over time to produce a crime-inducing culture. Changing those cultures into a less cynical crime-intolerant culture is now the subject matter of an entire new generation of police-community partnerships in many countries, and we will review those principles in this outline.

We have participated and observed continuously, over the past nine years, as conditions comparable to those now prevailing in the City of Compton were reversed in:

Palermo , Italy (Cosa Nostra turf wars, homicides);
Sweden (Motorcycle gang violence, drug networks);
Zurich , Switzerland ( Needle Parks ; community implosion);
Sophia , Bulgaria (Eastern European Mafia homicides; government corruption);
Germany (racist violence, neo-nazi gangs).

In each of those cases, local police-community partnerships were carefully tailored to the specific problems and tasks . Their respective resources were identified, evaluated, reduced to clearly written documents, descriptions and agreements, activated and managed on a disciplined, continuing basis.

All of those partnerships and many others became possible only when sustained leadership by police agencies inculcated sound management methods . These included new and interdisciplinary scientific advances that enabled them to isolate, calibrate and predict cause-effect relationships in communities of varied composition. It also enabled them to maintain clear lines of competence and accountability.

The common factor in all successful partnering projects we have experienced to date is that of Critical Mass: It is necessary to invest in a Critical Mass of interlocking resources in order to produce a Critical Mass of trust, confidence, perceptions of security, and plausible arguments for active civic participation.

This proposal outline is, we suggest, timely in light of the ASAP (Advanced Surveillance and Protection Plan) now being implemented by the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, in cooperation with the Belkin Corporation, in the City of Compton, California.

As an established pioneer in the interlocking fields of Community Policing, crime prevention technology, leadership training and pragmatic community building, the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department serves as a role model for police forces around the world. There can therefore be no doubt that this proposal and blueprint is directed to the single most successful policing agency to provide the necessary leadership and resources.

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About the Authors

Arthur A. Jones and Robin Wiseman are multilingual international law consultants, instructors and authors with over 40 years' experience in 26 countries. They have assisted in the development of dynamic community partnerships in crime prevention in many countries, and have published research papers and articles in English, German, French, Italian, Portuguese and Bulgarian. They recently completed a two-year Community Policing and Police Management Structure consultancy together with OSI in Sophia , Bulgaria , and are now making preparations for a similar project in Romania .

Arthur has served for the past 3 ½ years on the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department PIF/DOJ Advisory Committee on Emergency Communications and Information Technology. Arthur and Robin will soon be featured in several articles by the German Fulbright Commission. Arthur has appeared on television news and commentary programs of CBC, BBC World News, and NBC. Several of their more recent essays can be seen, in English and German, at www.jurawelt.com/aufsaetze.

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I. Statement of Purpose 

The experience gathered in a growing number of countries, which during the last decade or more have developed and implemented small- or large-scale crime prevention programs and projects, has shown that an effective preventive approach to reducing crime and associated harm should involve the establishment of partnerships among the relevant key actors at all levels of government and society. The goal is to reduce, in the short, medium and long terms, the causes and opportunities for crime, to reduce the risks for potential victims and, as a consequence, to improve quality of life through increased community safety.

Reaching that goal requires recognition by all participants that responsibility for crime prevention should be widely shared in society, and that partnership approaches are a practical means to sharing this responsibility and pooling diverse resources.

The parties should ensure that the legal context is appropriate and enables but does not constrain partnerships, and should review proposed new legislation and regulations for impact on partnerships in crime prevention.

Partners should cooperate in establishing a wider understanding among politicians, administrators, professions, NGOs, private businesses and commercial associations, the public, the media and all others of the diversity of causes and effects of crime; of the range of crime prevention activities based on the sharing of responsibilities and interests among different communities and agencies; and of the partnership approach as a means of bringing those responsibilities together to implement and support these action.

Partners should ensure that their respective partnership arrangements are appropriately supported by consultation, citizen participation and democratic and professional accountability as checks and balances against abuse; and that the exchange of information between members of different partnerships is consistent with the protection of human rights, rights of privacy, and data protection.

Partners should identify the areas of public policy and practice which have proven to be appropriate and successful for partnership work in crime prevention and the agencies and institutions responsible for them including, but not limited to, law enforcement and the criminal justice system; social welfare; employment; health; education; culture and town planning; and the private sector, whether as umbrella organizations, financial contributors, or individual stakeholder businesses.

Partners should take action to set up and stimulate partnerships at different levels (local, regional, state, national and international), and ensure that they are well-designed, actively and openly managed and operated, constitutionally and legally sound, kept up to date, equipped with evaluation processes, and otherwise maintained with efficiency and a lasting sense of mission.

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II. Definitions of Terms

For the purposes of this document, and unless otherwise specified herein, the following definitions are used:

Partnership shall mean a way of enhancing performance in the delivery of a common goal, by the taking of joint responsibility and the pooling of resources by different agents, whether these are public or private, collective or individual. The partners seek to act together without loss of their separate professional identities, without unacceptable or illegal blurring of powers and interests, and without loss of accountability.

Partners are those agents, whether individual or collective, that may jointly intervene, directly or indirectly, in the causes of criminal acts and related problems, or who may facilitate those interventions.

Crime Prevention shall mean an intervention in the causes of criminal acts and related problems, to reduce the risk of their occurrence, their evolution and the seriousness of their potential consequences.

Community Safety shall mean a situation in which people, individually and collectively, are sufficiently free from a range of real and perceived risks centering on crime and related misbehavior, are sufficiently able to cope with those risks which they nevertheless experience, or where they cannot cope unaided, are sufficiently well-protected from the consequences of those risks that they can still lead a normal culture, social and economic life, apply their skills and enjoy well-being and the receipt of adequate services.

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III. General Duties of a Partnership 

First, it is the duty of all partnership participants to support the allocation of sufficient resources so as to create and to maintain the partnership, as well as to enhance their effectiveness and beneficial impact. They will also develop appropriate financial frameworks and regulations to allow for the pooling of resources of all kinds, with suitable checks and balances.

Partnerships must always strive to forecast the effects of new technology and social and economic change on the development of crime and, at the same time, recognize the potential positive or negative impact they may have on crime prevention and the partnership.

They should take every opportunity to integrate new technologies into their crime prevention programs , and should promote scientific research and evaluation of the partnership approach in crime prevention in terms of its operation, results and effectiveness.

They should recognize that practical arrangements, more than philosophy or rhetoric, will achieve and sustain real crime prevention gains.

The partnership should encourage the development of a systematic and rigorous knowledge base on partnerships; share, disseminate, and apply that knowledge in the community or territory for which they are responsible; and support an evidence-based, innovative, evolutionary and improvement-oriented approach which is capable of adapting to changing crime problems, social conditions and legislation.

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IV. Initiating the Partnership

At the outset, the relevant police agency should assume an assertive and innovative leadership role in promoting the creation and maintenance of partnerships as a means of pooling and of “harnessing” all available resources, whether active or dormant, real or potential, in the community's efforts to create and maintain safe and stable conditions in the environment.

Close tactical coordination of police, political, and institutional initiatives is a requirement that is not confined to the start of the partnership: It must be done on an ongoing basis in order to provide the adaptability to develop solutions to emerging problems and even in many cases to anticipated problems.

Operational and organizational changes will be a way of life in partnerships: These are required in the working environment to establish permanence and to maintain good performance, especially where the partnership is intended to be of long duration.

All partnerships must clearly understand that such arrangements involve innovation, creative tension and some risk-taking. Any municipal legislative framework should be enabling rather than too tightly prescriptive, to allow for flexibility and speedy adaptation to changing conditions, and to encourage constant improvement.

Partnerships should always seek to develop wider networks of institutions and individuals interested in crime prevention and common goals within that shared interest: Useful new partnership arrangements might grow out of them.

The success of every crime prevention partnership depends upon close and frequent contacts with local government in all its forms. Close connections with decision-making bodies and the creation of legal and structural clarity (e.g., crime prevention councils, contracts for cooperation and joint action, creation of joint working groups and specific problem teams) are among the proven best practices.

Police top management should create a team of persons responsible for initiating and prosecuting the Crime Prevention Partnership Program, to be responsible for supervising and sustaining the partnerships they develop . They should interlock their efforts with those of local authorities to ensure good support schemes including funding of activities, establishing expert bodies or information resources for good practices, training facilities and programs, and evaluation of projects and partnerships at regular intervals.

The initiating police agency should appoint a paid coordinator to aggressively build the reservoir of resources, to approach authorities and legislative bodies, any and all potential partners, both collective and individual, and to report frequently and diligently to police management on progress and problems. The coordinator should possess outstanding interdisciplinary and interagency training, credentials, and experience. The coordinator should also be knowledgeable about present and future national and international developments in crime prevention techniques which might affect the partnership approaches adopted.

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V. Partnership Design

Partnerships can come together in many different ways, and can begin in medias res, that is, at different stages of the cycle of identifying and tackling crime problems. For this reason, when initiating a partnership it is necessary to clearly identify the nature of the crime and disorder problem(s) to be tackled and to determine whether suitable methods of prevention exist or can be developed, and then to consider whether:

  • An existing single agency or partnership –with adjustments if necessary—can take responsibility for tackling the specific problem(s);
  • A new agency is needed; or
  • A new partnership is needed.

Proliferations of overlapping partnerships are usually wasteful and, because they cause competitive hostility between or among existing and potential partners, are often damaging. Where overlaps of competence, specialization, or territory are found to exist, action should be taken to resolve these in constructive ways.

At the same time, attention should be paid to achieving the “buy-in” of compatible, not competing, resources . This principle holds for schools, religious organizations, civic groups, social institutions and the welfare safety net, rehab centers, businesses, and criminal justice facilities.

Universities are to be actively encouraged to participate, especially the following faculties or departments:

  • Medicine;
  • Psychology;
  • Sociology;
  • Law;
  • Politics and Government;
  • Architecture (Crime-reducing public environments);
  • Public Administration;
  • Business (Identifying economic dysfunctions; innovative development programs);
  • Electronics, Information Technology, Engineering, Research and Development;
  • Colleges of Primary and Secondary Education.

Best practices suggest that the criteria for choosing potential partners should relate to the stated goals of the partnership and should include:

  • Their competence and wider resources including the capacity for leadership over a sustained period of time;
  • Their access to information;
  • The coverage they provide “on the ground”, i.e., whether they cover the right type and size of territory;
  • Their acceptability/legitimacy/”street creds” for carrying out the role, including a professional sense of detachment;
  • Their readiness to collaborate on the basis of an appropriate balance of economic or organizational power and expertise between and among the team of partners;
  • An appropriate balance between independence and involvement, in the political, professional or commercial world;
  • Their possession of sufficient corporate, professional or personal motivation to assume responsibility for getting their portion of the job accomplished;
  • Their potential for flexibility to explore new ways of working on specific problems, both at the beginning and throughout the life of the partnership. 

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VI. Matching Goals to Structure 

This is perhaps the most crucial and difficult task in building up a network of police-community partnerships. It requires thorough, precise articulation of the goals to be attained, and equal precision in the design of an organizational basis of the partnership(s). It is here that the flaws in the partnership are built into the structure and present themselves at a later date, and it is here that many anti-gang partnerships fail internationally.

First, one size does not fit all . Second, all partnerships require trust between the partners. Thus, initial partnerships are most successful where that mutual trust already exists, or can be feasibly developed as one of the basic goals. Similarly, the establishment of long-term partnerships as a general policy has proven to be more efficient than merely collecting together a series or “batch” of short-term ones. In many cases, the best synthesis has been to form long-term, lasting partnerships (flagships) with a host of smaller, more flexible “satellite” partnerships to combat short-term crime problems.

In this manner, the human capital invested in the greater partnerships is not risked on a single procedure, for example cleaning out a crack house or a meth lab.

Another recurring question for the partnership will be whether to identify all problem areas within the group's competence at the beginning, or to tackle them as they arise. The solution often takes the form of a hybrid approach.

Several crime prevention partnership designs have begun by outlining the community's crime problems together with the available resources to combat them. We have often presented this process in the form of a T-Account borrowed from accounting:

ASSETS   LIABILITIES


Proactive Businesses

 
High % of youth in gangs
Honest City Government   Widespread cynicism
Police Community-oriented   Entrenched drug dealing
Youth Facilities   High Unemployment
Social Outreach Teams   2nd -3 rd generation felons
Vohab available   Ineffective schools
Other   Other

In fact, the T-Account approach can be used to quantify either general or specific problem areas . Even though this is a routine mental process for police executives, it may not be for the partner(s). In any event, it can be useful in partnership planning sessions in lending guidance and providing a profile of each neighborhood in a breakdown format.

Following are several suggestions for consideration in forming the organizational basis of the partnership. They are not presented in logical sequence or order of importance, but as mere examples:

  • Conduct an initial analysis of the crime problems as rigorously as possible;
  • Then, based on that analysis, consider both immediate (tactical) and long-term (strategic) action;
  • Agree upon common goals for reducing each specific crime problem, and define what would constitute a success (establishing criteria);
  • Set up a framework for monitoring of partnership's performance and evaluating the results;
  • Identify which forms of preventive intervention will fall within the purview of the individual partnership, which forms will not;
  • Leave room for adding suitable preventive approaches at a later date and based on more information to be gained;
  • Consider the issue of fund-raising very carefully: We have witnessed the demise of otherwise valuable partnerships that were forced to spend too much time seeking financial support;
  • Split out the organizational funding needs from the operational financing needs: How much for premises, personnel, overhead expenses? How much for actually implementing prevention/intervention on the streets?
  • Consider funding of independent evaluations;
  • Choose an intended lifespan for the partnership realistically: Will this be short, medium, or long-term? Could the duration change or be folded into a greater, more strategic partnership?
  • The partnership might decide to pursue some initial goals that are achievable quickly or easily in order to demonstrate action and success, both to inspire and to motivate the partners and to generate more external support;

A framework of working procedure should be adopted, to cover the exchange of information and intelligence within and outside the partnership, as well as the process of decision-making and handling possible conflicts between partners . We have noticed that in the early phases of a partnership, too much concentration on “Rules and Bylaws” can be destructive. However, some general consensus on dispute mediation or resolution internally could be discussed and achieved in advance.

Examples of such general consensus statements would include a clear definition of each partner's area of competence and responsibilities, to avoid role confusion or conflict. Also, any initial training needs should be assessed early on. Ethical standards should be drawn up, adopted, and promoted at all times: They might be useful at a later date in countering gang cohesion.

Working terminology and definitions of terms should be agreed upon and adopted. This is a boring but necessary process. Reciprocal expectations among the partners should be discussed to prevent future misunderstandings.

Wherever possible, a fair and equitable distribution of partners' input responsibilities should be drawn up: Who supplies the premises? Staff and volunteers? How much personnel working time will each allocate? What are their credentials? Who supplies funding and for which purposes?

How many partners will join the group? Each partnership should limit its size to fit the goals. A simple rule of thumb: If the group cannot deliberate in quiet, normal conversational tones without any member using public speaking, oration, or voice projection techniques, or reading from prepared statements, the partnership has too many members!

Ground rules for dealing with the media should be introduced by the police leadership at the earliest possible time, and a media launch considered and either adopted or rejected for operational reasons.

Finally, the one rule written in stone: Get the partner's commitment in writing!

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VII. Training Members

Crime Prevention partnerships cannot succeed without proper training. Participants must be able to demonstrate the necessary base of knowledge and skills as well as critically engage in ethical issues, community skill development, respect-based leadership training, technology usage and new applications, cost-benefits analysis, performance evaluation and media relations.

In sum, partners must understand law enforcement management including social responsibility, organizational priorities and resources, and professional decision-making.

When preparing the partnership's training and/or continuing education component, it is worthwhile to take a Comparative Best Practices approach, including a review of the experiences of European and other police-community partnerships. It is important to determine how different training methods have influenced partnerships and their crime prevention results in other communities at home and abroad.

A practice-oriented training program should be introduced early in the partnership's life by the police leadership. In the case of departments such as LASD, which features particularly strong training and education resources, the partners can attend periodically scheduled workshops through the cooperation of the Sheriff's Community Auxiliary Training program, or through STARS.

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VIII. Operation and Maintenance 

We have found that, to an extent, the partnership's organizational tensions can be reduced by an increase in operations. Successful partnerships always try to have several new problem-solving projects on the runway, waiting to be introduced and rolled out.

At the same time, floundering or unsuccessful partnerships must be either corrected or deleted. We have witnessed partnerships that should have been eliminated, but were maintained because they were a favorite idea of a politician or a police executive, yet were never seriously monitored for their effectiveness .

Axiom: 3M (Maintaining Means Monitoring).

Efforts must be made to maintain, and thus monitor, all the beneficial conditions established under the partnership from the beginning. Good management practices should be adopted concerning review, monitoring and adjustment of goals, methods and action plans. Periodic evaluations are also essential for sustained effects.

Axiom: Revolving doors leak.

Revolving personnel causes leaks of knowledge and intelligence. Steps should be taken to ensure minimal turnover of individuals in partnership roles, to maximize efficiency, preserve a common pool of knowledge, and maintain trust within the community.

Axiom: Continuous training is like nourishing the garden.

Training of partnership staff should be maintained to ensure continuity of competence and to facilitate growth. Also, training programs can be aimed at broadening the scope of the partnership to make it more flexible and to introduce it to new and greater projects.

Axiom: Information flow is a two-way street.

The proper exchange of information and intelligence between partnership members is to be nurtured and encouraged. Unnecessary secrecy regarding facts, plans, agendas or intentions undermines trust. Also, information and intelligence briefings should be held at the highest levels reasonably possible in the police agency, public services, political bodies, and businesses involved in the partnership. Normal exceptions are to be made where professional confidence must be observed.

Axiom: Communications with the public will be your best ally ---or your worst enemy. Communications between partners and their respective organizations should be actively managed to maintain support of colleagues, and to prevent misunderstandings. Also, all communications should be phrased with due regard to introducing new perspectives and concepts. New ideas should be transmitted with clarity and precision to supervisors, other organizations, professional groups, and to the wider public generally.

The partners will need to work with the media and the general public to ensure the continued acceptance of the partnership and its specific activities. In particular, it is useful to report progress on implementation, the delivery of results, and the outcome of external evaluations. Each partnership should consider using both traditional and new communications media to communicate internally, with the members and their colleagues, with similar organizations and partnerships elsewhere, and with the general public.

A partnership cannot expect to maintain continued support from the community if it does not keep all parties informed.

Axiom: If we do not set the priorities, they will set themselves.

The partnership should agree upon the principles it will follow in setting its priorities. This in turn presupposes a clear understanding of the administrative and civic mechanisms involved in those priorities. Each partnership represents the interests of all the community in removing the causes of crime. Its priorities cannot be allowed to degenerate into a gathering of special interests or of single-issue activists.

Periodic reviews should be conducted, and regular scrutiny undertaken, of the “added value” element in partnership arrangements: What resources were brought to the table, and to what effect? Can you express in percentiles where you stand at any given time with regard to the starting point and the goal in mind for a particular project? If not, why not? Are you ready for changing conditions? Which ones in particular?

In all other respects, best policing practices do not differ substantially from best business or governance practices in the operation and maintenance of a partnership.

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IX. Termination of Partnerships

There are several valid reasons for terminating partnerships. They include:

  • The goal for which they were created have been achieved;
  • The crime situation and the kinds and causes of the crimes have changed beyond the scope of the existing partnerships to organize or deliver solutions;
  • The partnership's cost-effectiveness or efficiency is very low and cannot be significantly improved.

Axiom: Create a vacuum, and crime will come in to fill it.

Therefore, before a partnership is terminated, an exit strategy needs to be adopted to avoid leaving a crime prevention vacuum in its place.

There should be an assumption or transfer of remaining legal and moral responsibilities and commitments. The police leadership should see to it that all obligations to clients, staff, and to the public are fulfilled as seamlessly as possible.

The remaining legacy of resources, including know-how, data and physical inventories, should be transferred to other partnerships or otherwise assigned with wisdom and care: Especially the human resources –invested work time, training of volunteers, important information and experience—should be salvaged from any termination move. Ultimately, these assets are all property of the community.

The media handling of a partnership termination is worth extra care and consideration on the part of police management.

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X. Assessment and Evaluation  

There is a rapidly growing, international body of scientific research emerging from the expanding use of crime prevention partnerships. It should be incorporated into partnership resources and assets, and used as a base or reference point for conducting periodic assessments and evaluations of partnership performance.

Police management, especially, should forge links with national and international crime prevention networks in order to exchange data on problems and solutions; train and brief staff; and promote further research.

Police management should also develop and introduce techniques for partners to collaborate on crime impact assessments and crime risk assessment; on forecasting of new or developing crime problems together with suggested opportunities for their prevention, and to make all partners generally aware of relevant socioeconomic and emerging crime patterns of a wider nature.

Partnerships should adopt or develop a suitable framework and methodology for evaluating their own performance . In so doing, care should be taken to distinguish between the performance or success rate of the partnership, and those attributable to other organizations that the partnership itself only supports or initiates. It is important to preserve the cause-effect relationships, which means that a few “assists” in a successful short-term project may not always be given their due credit. It should also be recognized that nothing breeds rancor and hostility like being excluded from the accolades!

Perhaps the most difficult, resource-consuming aspect of assessment and evaluation will come in the form of development and application of cost/benefit assessments of separate projects and partnerships, and in adopting “best practices” approaches to enable comparative assessments to be made between different types of activity.

Also, the cost of obtaining the services of specialized consultants to introduce and carry out comparative scientific assessments can be stupefying: One more good reason to nurture close relations with various university volunteers from faculty and graduate students in business, econometrics, criminal justice, law, psychology, etc. The partnership may be providing nourishment for a graduate program at the same time that the university is supporting the partnership's success with a valuable assessment of its effectiveness. Further, the partnership and the university should work together in identifying and securing grant money for that purpose.

An appropriate balance should be struck between internal self-evaluation and administrative monitoring, on the one hand, and external independent evaluations, on the other hand. Their methods and purposes will differ considerably.

Before introducing or commissioning an evaluation, the partnership should clearly identify and articulate its purpose: This will help ensure that the evaluation itself will be conducted with accuracy and efficiency.

Axiom: The cost and effort put into an evaluation should be determined by the risk and consequences of acting on the wrong conclusions.

Even when an evaluation is limited to the partnership's actions in a given neighborhood, the lessons learned may impact larger populations in a way that can be demonstrated and acted upon.

Axiom: An evaluation that falls and crashes in the forest will make no noise if nobody is listening.

The various kinds of knowledge that derive from evaluations should be systematically gathered, assessed for their scientific quality, synthesized and fed into education, training, on-the-ground guidance for partnerships, and briefings for senior management of police participants and others.

Also, the knowledge that flows from evaluations should be made widely available on a non-profit basis or free of charge. Your actions, properly evaluated, can save lives in other communities .

Respectfully submitted,

Arthur A. Jones, J.D., Dr.jur. Robin Wiseman, J.D., Dr.h.c.

Los Angeles, California / Genoa, Italy - September 9, 2006

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--- Arthur A. Jones and Robin Wiseman are international human rights lawyers with legal educations in the United States and Europe. They are consultants and authors on international policing, social policy and human rights, and regular contributors to the forum here at LA Community Policing.


For more of their work, please see the
Think Tank.

For additional information or a complete list of references, contact:

Dr. Arthur Jones

e-mail: Arthur@lacp.org