State of Tennessee public safety plan as a way forward to link #BlackLivesMatters agenda with crime dampening

One of the problems that many people ascribe to the #BlackLivesMatter agenda is a kind of "nullification" as it relates to crime ("Black Lives Matter should also take on 'black-on-black crime," Washington Post).  To an outsider, it appears as if there is a kind of preconceived notion within the movement that anything "the government" does concerning crime and public safety is anti-Black and moreover, unjustified.

While I can see why many people would have strong reason to believe that, it is in fact a stretch or overstatement.  There is no question that the current paradigm isn't working ("Police misconduct and grand juries: a separate prosecution and grand jury system is necessary" "How police departments become corrupt," and "Police officers aren't always the best placemakers").

But at the same time there is no question that there is crime and it disproportionately impacts low income communities and people of color.

I believe that communities need a strong agenda for dealing with crime while recognizing that the public safety agenda is often built on a racist foundation, and much more resources need to be put towards community improvement.

I wonder if the State of Tennessee public safety plan, A Safer Tennessee: Public Safety Action Plan, 2016-2018, is an adequate foundation for such planning.

Yes the document has all kinds of measures for getting tough on criminals, but it does offer an agenda of assistance to individuals and low income communities as well.  (Also see "Haslam unveils anti-crime plan in Memphis," Memphis Commercial-Appeal.)

Is it perfect or broad ranging enough?  Probably not.  Will more money be spent on police and prisons and the criminal justice system rather than on "community improvement"?  In all likelihood yes.

But at the same time the document recognizes the need to focus on crime, individuals and communities in a more nuanced and positive way, and to invest in reducing recidivism beyond longer prison terms.

Note that in a comment on a blog entry on a "strategic plan" for the Seattle Police Department, charlie pointed out that the plan I lauded didn't say a lot about reducing crime.

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This article "A most violent year: What the left and right got wrong about crime in 2015," by Thomas Abt for the Marshall Project cites the July 2015 special issue of the Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency on "broken windows."  The major finding in the article "Can Policing Disorder Reduce Crime? A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis" is that:

The strongest program effect sizes were generated by community and problem-solving interventions designed to change social and physical disorder conditions at particular places. Conversely, aggressive order maintenance strategies that target individual disorderly behaviors do not generate significant crime reductions.

That's in keeping with what I wrote about in "Los Angeles police department "Community Safety Partnership."

When people criticize "broken windows" approaches, they are criticizing something different from what I think of as "broken windows." They are criticizing "aggressive order maintenance strategies," not community-embedded approaches to reducing crime.

-- "Fixing Broken Windows," George L. Kelling and James Q. Wilson, The Atlantic Magazine, March 1982