Crime prevention through environmental design and repeated burglaries at the Naylor Gardens apartment complex

Ground floor apartment at Naylor Gardens.  Washington Post photo by Clarence Williams.

CPTED is a longstanding practice that addresses architectural and environmental design factors that may, if unchecked, contribute to crime.  The Washington Post has a piece, "Burglaries leave apartment residents uneasy in Southeast Washington," about repeated burglaries at the Naylor Gardens apartment complex in Southeast DC ("Southeast Complex Survives as Cooperative)," Post, 2004).

From the article:

At Naylor Gardens, small bands of burglars have struck 18 times across the sprawling, 43-acre complex this year, according to the property’s management office.

The burglars target ground-floor apartments with unlocked windows or air conditioning units. They have even pulled out window frames to slip in and steal computers, televisions and other electronics.

Property manager Alesia Johnson said the burglaries, coupled with a rash of daylight muggings at nearby bus stops last year, led dozens of residents to leave Naylor Gardens.

“We have lost 50 tenants. We normally stay 100 percent occupied,” Johnson said in a recent interview. “It seems a lot of people feel unsafe.”

I don't know how the police department is set up, but there being 18 burglaries of ground floor apartments ought to be triggering a systematic response by the Metropolitan Police Department, and in fact they claim that it is (see "District police embrace crime prevention through design," a 2012 article in the Post) and the apartment complex, which spends more than $500,000 on security annually.

-- Architecture as Crime Control
-- Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design
-- National Center for Community Policing
-- National Crime Prevention Council

The photo in the article shows that the ground floor apartments don't have security bars.  Clearly they need them. 

DC should probably require security management plans for apartment buildings and complexes of a certain size, and reviews and responses should be required in situations like these. 

Naylor Gardens has 796 apartments over 43 acres, so they'd definitely have to meet such a requirement were it to exist.  Maybe because they are a cooperative they are a bit out of their depth on this issue.

In the meantime, the MPD needs to step up.

Safer Communities Journal special issue on crime and urban design

Among the journals published by Emerald Group Publishing, an academic publisher based in the UK, is Safer Communities, which focuses on all aspects of "community safety."

The current issue “Designing out Crime - Voices from the Fields” touches on the issues that I raised in the recent blog entry, "Crime prevention through environmental design and repeated burglaries at the Naylor Gardens apartment complex," about frequent burglaries of first floor apartments at Naylor Gardens Apartments in Southeast DC and how there should be a focused CPTED (crime prevention through environmental design) approach there.

From their press release:

Guest edited by Leanne Monchuk, from the University of Huddersfield’s Applied Criminology Centre (ACC), and Garner Clancey, Deputy Director of the Sydney Institute of Criminology, the issue features five articles ranging over many aspects of Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED) from England, Australia and New Zealand. All of the authors are people working in the field, using techniques, such as CPTED, which try to ensure that new buildings and developments are designed in ways that minimize the likelihood and possibility of crime.

Contributors to the issue include Nick Goldby, Senior Security Consultant for construction giant Arup, and Ian Heward, Crime Prevention Design Advisor for the Metropolitan Police, who describe how designing out crime was part of the process for the development of the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in London.

Other contributors include Sue Ramsey, Crime Prevention Team Leader for Christchurch City Council in New Zealand, who writes about the extensive use of CPTED in the post-earthquake rebuilding of the city, and Jonathan Knapp, Director of SJB Urban, who provides context to the challenges of integrating CPTED into design and architectural practice.

Emerald Publishing is providing free public access to the journal issue until December 7th. Use the following details to log in:

username: safercommunities
password: emerald2013

Proof of Broken Windows theory in Philadelphia and New York City

Broken Windows theory ("Broken Windows: The Police and Neighborhood Safety," Atlantic Magazine, 1982) posits that communities where there are vacant buildings, litter, abandoned cars etc. communicate that it's okay to commit crime.  Unfortunately, there are few examples of its implementation, as police departments did mostly "zero tolerance policing" calling it community policing.  

New York City did data-based policing, but still not community investment, and it was very successful in reducing the crime rate.  But as crime dropped police needed stuff to do, and Giuliani was more of a hard ass, so they moved to Zero Tolerance Policing--stop and frisk.

And so there is a huge contingent of progressives and academics who argue that Broken Windows is b.s.

Broken windows successfully implemented on the NYC Subway in the early 1990s. One of the only places Broken Windows was implemented truly was the NYC Subway system under David Gunn, and transit police chief William Bratton.  

It's discussed in Bratton's second autobiography, The Profession: A Memoir of Community, Race, and the Arc of Policing in America ("Bill Bratton Explains His Ideas of Good Policing," New York Times).

During his interview for chief, Gunn took him around the system.  Gunn said we can fix the trains, eliminate graffiti on them (which is why miscreants now use acid to etch cars and windows), and run them on time, but if people have to experience chaos in the stations, they won't ride.

Broken windows theory in action.  An op-ed in the Philadelphia Inquirer, "Home repairs decrease gun violence in Philadelphia," references research done at University of Pennsylvania and Columbia University that found investing in fixing up abandoned properties led to significant neighborhood improvements including a marked reduction in gun violence.

From the article:

One study of Philadelphia’s Basic Systems Repair Program found that when even one home on a block received repairs, there was a 21.9% decrease in homicide rates. And the more home repairs a block received, the more homicide rates fell. The data reflect what we already know: When people’s basic need for a safe, stable home is met, it decreases violence in our neighborhoods. 

But that message isn’t getting through to our local government. As we talked to close to 200 Grays Ferry residents, the stories poured in. Many residents have applied for home repair programs — for plumbing, roofing, weatherization, insulation, and other renovations — but haven’t heard back, have been denied, or have had to wait many years. Philly residents need home repairs, and we know home repairs are a key part of reducing violence, so why isn’t our city making them more accessible? It is literally lifesaving work to keep longtime Black residents in their homes ... 

Our Council member, Kenyatta Johnson, is now also Council president, and he has enormous power to protect affordable housing in his district and beyond. We need him to work with community advocates to pass citywide policies that prioritize low-income housing and opt the 2nd District into the mixed-income neighborhood overlay, which would require housing developers to ensure 20% of their units are affordable. 

 -- "Fighting blight by fixing up homes could bring down Philly gun violence, new study shows," WHYY/NPR
-- "Abandoned house repairs reduced nearby gun violenceAbandoned house repairs reduced nearby gun violence," Penn Today (2023)
-- "Urban Blight Remediation as a Cost-Beneficial Solution to Firearm Violence: A Citywide Cluster Randomized Trial," Journal of the American Medical Association (2022)
-- "Urban Blight Remediation as a Cost-Beneficial Solution to Firearm Violence," American Journal of Public Health (2016)

==== 

Past blog entries include:

-- "George Kelling, co-creator of the "Broken WIndows" thesis, dies" (2019)
-- "The state of "broken windows" versus "problem oriented policing" strategies in 2016: Part 1, theory and practice," 2016 (references the speech by Ronald Clarke upon receiving the Stockholm Prize in Criminology)
-- "The state of "broken windows" versus "problem oriented policing" strategies in 2016: Part 2, what to do"
-- "Night-time safety: rethinking lighting in the context of a walking community," 2014
-- Crime prevention through environmental design and repeated burglaries at the Naylor Gardens apartment complex," 2013

Social urbanism is a related concept to Broken Windows, first introduced in Medillín, Columbia, which during the program experienced a 90% drop in the number of murders.

-- "Experiments in Social Urbanism"
-- "'Social urbanism' experiment breathes new life into Colombia's Medellin Toronto Globe & Mail
-- "Medellín's 'social urbanism' a model for city transformation," Mail & Guardian
-- "Medellín slum gets giant outdoor escalator," Telegraph
-- "Medellín, Colombia offers an unlikely model for urban renaissance," Toronto Star

I've written about ways to implement it in the US.

-- "Social urbanism and equity planning as a way to address crime, violence, and persistent poverty: (not in) DC" (2021)
-- "Creating 'community safety partnership neighborhood management programs as a management and mitigation strategy for public nuisances: Part 3 (like homeless shelters)" (2020)

Social urbanism and equity planning as a way to address crime, violence, and persistent poverty: (not in) DC

In 2013 I was on grand jury duty.  Each jury had a specialization--ours was drugs and guns mostly, but we still dealt with murders, assaults, and other violent crimes.  

The lesson after three months was that DC spends billions of dollars each year--police, emergency services, health and social services, criminal justice, education, etc., in the communities where crime is persistent--just to keep the neighborhoods and people within them at equilibrium/the same--not to improve.

So I started thinking even more about this.  I had been thinking about it plenty, but more in terms of addressing crime:

-- "Crime prevention through environmental design and repeated burglaries at the Naylor Gardens apartment complex," 2013
"The state of "broken windows" versus "problem oriented policing" strategies in 2016: Part 1, theory and practice," 2016
"The state of "broken windows" versus "problem oriented policing" strategies in 2016: Part 2, what to do," 2016

But that wasn't enough.  I had to consider equity planning ("An outline for integrated equity planning: concepts and programs," 2017, "Equity planning: an update," 2020), social urbanism ("Social urbanism and Baltimore," 2019). public investment in place ("Yes, public and nonprofit investments in the city spur further reinvestment and change: is this a bad thing or a complicated thing?," 2019, "Rethinking community planning around maintaining neighborhood civic assets and anchors," 2011) and more focused policing-community partnership initiatives ("Los Angeles police department "Community Safety Partnership"," 2014, expanded as "Creating 'community safety partnership neighborhood management programs as a management and mitigation strategy for public nuisances: Part 3 (like homeless shelters)," 2020).

And I realized that David Barth's concept of an "integrated public realm framework", which I thought about a lot in terms of both transportation and the conceptualization of civic assets as a network, was equally applicable to equity and community revitalization planning.

While I haven't ever combined these writings into a unified position paper, I did talk about it extensively with a campaign worker for Muriel Bowser in 2013 at September's 17th Street Festival when she was running for mayor.  (I talked with the policy analyst, Suzanne talked with Ms. Bowser.)

The recent two part set of articles on what an economic revitalization plan for St. Louis ought to look like goes a long way towards outlining such a concept in practical ways for a city overall or a city with areas of persistent poverty:

-- "St. Louis: what would I recommend for a comprehensive revitalization program? | Part 1: Overview and Theoretical Foundations," 2021
-- "St. Louis: what would I recommend for a comprehensive revitalization program? | Part 2: Implementation Approach and Levers," 2021

And wrt "East of the River" there are also these past pieces: 

-- "Wanted: A comprehensive plan for the "Anacostia River corridor"" 2012
-- "DC has a big "Garden Festival" opportunity in the Anacostia River," 2014
-- "Ordinary versus Extraordinary Planning around the rebuilding of the United Medical Center in Southeast Washington DC | Part One: Rearticulating the system of health and wellness care East of the River," 2018
-- "Schools #2: Successful school programs in low income communities and the failure of DC to respond similarly," 2019

(Another idea, not original to me, is to underground DC 295/I-295 ("DC and "city repair" of the urban grid," 2020).  

Photo from Interstate-Guide.

I also suggested when I was briefly affiliated with the now defunct Anacostia River Trust, to create a Trail/River Towns initiative, modeled after the Trail Towns and River Towns programs in Pennsylvania, for the River and the Anacostia River Trail, from DC to Greenbelt Maryland.)

There is a National Park Service map/brochure for the Anacostia River Trail (water and shared use).

My idea, being a place-based initiative, called for creating a "Deputy Mayor for East of the River" although parts of Ward 5, Ward 1, and to some extent Ward 4 have areas of persistent poverty and should've been included in such an initiative also.

(Some cities like Dallas, Charlotte, North Carolina, and Richmond, Virginia, and Toronto, Ontario have various initiatives that address poverty in focused ways, but definitely more broadly than an almost exclusive focus on jobs.)

I never heard from them again, but imagine my surprise to read about her adoption of this concept, uncredited, in a May 2014 article about the campaign in the New York Times.

When she was elected, she created a Deputy Mayor position, not place-focused as I proposed, but on achieving gainful employment, a "Deputy Mayor for Greater Economic Opportunity," with a focus on creating a "pathway to the middle class."

In contrast to what I proposed, the position wasn't focused on wide-scale community revitalization, more on employment and the Department of Employment Services.  

While this press release touts great success from the position, the reality is that the places of persistent poverty remain economic laggards and crime and the murder rate has increased in these communities.  (When the original appointee was replaced, Mayor Bowser appointed the director of the Department of Child and Family Services to co-hold the Deputy Mayor position, demonstrating the lack of a broader approach.)

Which is the point made today ("Press releases aren’t going to prevent gun violence in D.C.") by Washington Post columnist Colbert King.  He writes that Mayor Bowser keeps introducing initiatives and press releases, but crime keeps rising.  

And despite complaints by Bowser Administration officials that the criminal justice system (in DC, because the city is still overall under control of the federal government, adult crimes are prosecuted by a unit of the federal Department of Justice) is failing to prosecute the perpetrators of violent crimes, the fact is that's not the case, according to data presented in the article.

Reading the comments, I realized that had Mayor Bowser done something more along the lines of what I suggested, the creation of a wide-ranging community revitalization initiative on the scale of social urbanism initiatives like those in Medellin--which have reduced murders by about 90%--likely, even in the face of the pandemic, crime and murders would have dropped, neighborhoods and life circumstances and achievements would have improved.

-- "Experiments in Social Urbanism"
-- "'Social urbanism' experiment breathes new life into Colombia's Medellin Toronto Globe & Mail
-- "Medellín's 'social urbanism' a model for city transformation," Mail & Guardian
-- "Medellín slum gets giant outdoor escalator," Telegraph
-- "Medellín, Colombia offers an unlikely model for urban renaissance," Toronto Star

The problem is that most elected officials aren't particularly visionary--and we have to grant them recognition of the reality that multi-generational poverty is a problem that takes more than a couple of four-year terms as mayor can reverse--and they want to make ideas "their own" -- for example "Deputy Mayor of Greater Economic Opportunity" as opposed to "Deputy Mayor for East of the River" -- usually dumbing down the potential of the initiative in the process.

Or as I wrote in the conclusion of "Social urbanism and Baltimore":

Righting disorder is a process that never ends.  Medellin isn't perfect. The city still is wracked by violence ("Medellin's efforts against crime prove fleeting," Washington Post), but I think the point is that there is never a "state of rest." And in any case, going from 6,391 murders to less than 500 (at one point) is a significant accomplishment.

But it must be recognized that this is an ongoing process, because the forces of disorder are always present, and only by continued investments in public safety, education, and civic assets can the chaos be countered.

Night-time safety: rethinking lighting in the context of a walking community

Last night, instead of going to a forum in Arlington on the future of WMATA, I felt obligated to go to a neighborhood meeting organized in response to a night-time robbery of two teachers from the nearby charter school, and an unconnected burglary of that school, plus an uptick in some other crime categories.

Having lived in the H Street NE neighborhood at the height of the crack-related crime and murder epidemic in the late 1980s and early 1990s, I am pretty inured to low levels of crime, although I am still very much interested in the etiology of crime, the field that is called "crime prevention through environmental design," and the general realization that most police departments, including DC's, despite the rise in the use of statistical analysis to fight crime, and definitely police officers, don't seem too capable of taking a planning approach to crime reduction (e.g., see "Planning applied to crime reduction," "Crime prevention through environmental design and repeated burglaries at the Naylor Gardens apartment complex," and "Suburban building forms in the center city--Does this contribute to crime?"). 

Night-time lighting as an element of placemaking and the walking city.  But just like how I argue that the walking-biking-transit city needs a transformational approach to snow clearance ("Upping the expectations on snow removal," "A "maintenance of way" agenda for the walking and transit city," and "Level of service and maintenance requirements in planning #2: winter maintenance of bike paths"), we need to think more clearly about night-time lighting for neighborhoods, commercial districts, schools, and transit stations and stops.

This image from the Elizabeth Dickerson, State of Maine Representative, shows a globe light streetlight with the light set to illuminate sidewalks and a streetlight at a different height, set to illuminate the roadway.

Crime everywhere--not just in urban areas-- is abetted by poor lighting... and empty places.  I am not going to get into the details of how street robberies are normally enacted, but the robbery that happened a couple blocks away happened on a street by the school where teachers park their cars, where the lighting is minimal, and where one side of the block is a relatively empty park--so it's an order vacuum besides the problems of limited lighting.

The area of activity that matters is larger than the entrance to the building.  Parents, of course focused on where they go in and out of the school, at the school's entrance, are only focused on that part of the school's "catchment" area, and not the other parts of the catchment area, beyond the school.  This came up at last night's meeting.  Frankly, the block of Peabody Street NW abutting the school is the safest place to be, because it has a great deal of activity throughout the hours that the school is open.

Safe routes to school programs inadequately consider night-time issues.  And "safe routes to school" planning materials don't address night-time lighting much because of a presumption that the school day ends around 3pm to 4pm when it is daylight. But many urban schools offer a wide range of afterschool programs, and more attention needs to be paid to ensuring there is enough light around the school when it's dark.  

For example, I consider this State of Washington guidebook, School Walk and Bike Routes: A Guide for Planning and Improving Walk and Bike to School Options for Students, to be definitive, yet it fails to address night-time illumination to the level of detail the topic deserves.

We need systematic approaches to improving night time lighting in walkable places.  The problem is that we haven't extended the ideas of "safe routes to (and from) school" or "safe routes to and from transit," by daypart, to address evening-related issues, which affect students but also parents and personnel like teachers.

(Some communities have more systematic programs addressing "safe routes to transit" (e.g., NYC DOT - Safe Routes to Transit, Safe Routes to Transit Program, San Francisco Bay region, Safe Routes to Transit BRT planning guide, pedestrian section, ITDP).


This Wikipedia image of a block in Adelaide, Australia shows how the issue of "streetlights" being focused on illuminating the roadway is not unique to the U.S.

Resources exist but are limited.  There are resources out there, such as Improving Street Lighting to Reduce Crime in Residential Areas from the Department of Justice. (The FHWA publication Pedestrian Facilities Users Guide: Providing Safety and Mobility is somewhat inadequate when it comes to the night time lighting issue, although it does provide limited guidance.)

Unfortunately, according to the DOJ guide:

There is no published step-by-step guide on how to improve street lighting to reduce crime and, in any case, every problem-oriented project is unique.

I don't agree about uniqueness being a big issue.

Left: Washington Globe lights on 8th Street SE. are focused on lighting the sidewalk, not the roadway, although the density of the lighting plus illumination from the buildings provides adequate lighting for the roadway as well.

Traffic safety countermeasure protocols need to be enhanced to better cover night time illumination.   Just like how we have "counter-measure" protocols for dealing with pedestrian (Pedestrian Safety Guide and Countermeasure Selection System) and bicycle (BIKESAFE: Bicycle Countermeasure Selection System) accidents, it's pretty clear how to respond to many of the conditions that tend to support street robberies (other than people not paying attention).  And the PEDSAFE website does have a section on Lighting and Illumination:

Roadway lighting has often focused on the needs of the motorist and not necessarily the safety of the pedestrian. ... Adequate roadway lighting enhances the safety of all roadway users, while pedestrian-scale lighting improves nighttime security and enhances commercial districts.

The solution: focusing on sidewalk lighting systematically, separately and distinct from roadway lighting.  The primary problem is that "street lights" are mostly focused on lighting streets and the lights are placed much higher than they need to be to be useful for pedestrians (except at crosswalks).  As a result, it's better to discuss streetlights in terms of their function as roadway lighting, and to call for additional lighting focused on serving pedestrians--"sidewalk" lighting--where the lighting fixture is placed closer to the sidewalk.

Left: this image from a document from Chapel Hill, North Carolina shows a traditional streetlight with the addition of a separate arm to provide more focused pedestrian lighting.

Where to prioritize sidewalk lighting.  It's pretty simple, start with schools and transit stations and stops, and other areas with pedestrian activity adjacent to and/or through order vacuums like parks.

For example, Delegate Eleanor Norton pressed the National Park Service to install sidewalk lighting in Sherman Circle, after a bicyclist was robbed and murdered there a few years ago ("Norton Presses NPS to Light the Darkness in Sherman Circle," press release, "D.C. hosts ribbon-cutting for new Sherman Circle lights," WJLA-TV).

But the murder could have been prevented in all likelihood, had this area been lighted not after the fact, but as the result of a systematic and proactive evaluation of neighborhood needs for safe night time walking environments.

Crime time re-revisited: a set of programs focused on reducing crime

Because crime waxes and wanes, discussions about crime and public safety issues are a perennial topic, especially since media and government responses are episodic and tend to not address more systemic and structural elements of the problem.

I wrote a series of pieces on "Crime Time" in 2006, when cities like Philadelphia were experiencing a serious uptick in time. And I wrote about this last December, in Crime time revisited."

We're in that kind of place today, where many cities, including DC, are experiencing an significant uptick in serious crimes, including murder, assaults, and armed robberies.  

There is no question that unrest in response to the various police shootings of African-Americans and the subsequent response in various communities has likely increased anger and a greater willingness to act out violently.  Baltimore has experienced a massive crime increase in the aftermath of the death of Freddie Gray, which some call the "Ferguson Effect" ("In Baltimore Arrests are Down and Crime is Way Up," Marginal Revolution blog).

Former police officer and professor Peter Moskos argues that in the aftermath of Freddie Gray, more police officers are required to respond to each call, sapping their resources, preventing proactive policing, and reducing the number of arrests made per officer ("Crime in Baltimore Rises as Support for Police Declines," New York Times).

About two weeks ago, there was a crime summit which brought a bunch of police chiefs to the city to discuss experiences and best practices ("U.S. Police Chiefs Meet to Address Rising Homicide Rates," Time Magazine).

And the city did a recent "All Hands On Deck" event with police on every corner in the Woodland Terrace public housing project with 201 units in Southeast DC ("Deadly violence has become all too common in one D.C. neighborhood" and "Killing an example of chilling violence in DC's Woodland Terrace," Washington Post).

Mayor Bowser has expressed her empathy with citizening the crime wave.  And there was a program ("Reacting To The Spike In Violence In Southeast D.C.") on Monday on the Kojo Nnamdi Show featuring a number of Southeast DC community activists and organizations.

What to do -- long term

1.  The first thing I thought about in response to the AHOD event in Woodland Terrace was that DC needs to launch its own version of Los Angeles' Community Safety Partnership, which embeds police officers and implements community programs in various public housing developments in the Watts community.

Apparently, Albany, New York has a similar program, called Neighborhood Engagement Units ("Back on the beat," Metroland).

-- past blog entry, "Los Angeles police department "Community Safety Partnership""
-- Pathway to Change: African Americans and Community Policing in Albany, Center for Law and Justice

The All Hands On Deck response isn't 24/7/365 like the Community Safety Partnership approach.

People could argue that DC's organization of "Police Service Areas" does the same thing as the Albany program, but police officers aren't embedded in high crime areas in the same way that these other programs seem to work.  It's more of a reporting relationship for interested citizens, rather than a way to engage police officers in an ongoing, day-to-day manner.

There is no question that most cities need to rethink how they address community safety in high crime areas.  The warrior method isn't working.

2.  The city and the police department need more focused crime interdiction programs for places with persistent problems.  See "Crime prevention through environmental design and repeated burglaries at the Naylor Gardens apartment complex."

3.  A big problem is the failure to provide adequate programming for the mentally ill.  Many of the people caught up in the criminal justice system have mental health problems.  I was surprised to see that Los Angeles is creating a special jail unit to deal specifically with inmates with mental health issues ("LA County to relocate some inmates, build jail to treat the mentally ill," Los Angeles Times.

This guy in New York City (image at right), who repeatedly urinates in public ("20 years of cleaning up NYC pissed away," New York Post), is an example of someone with serious mental health issues.

Arresting and incarcerating him doesn't address his underlying problems and won't cure him.

Police officers are put in a terrible position of being the default responders for mental health problems.

4.  I have written about this before, but with regard to summer school programming, I think that DC needs to consider:

- Year Round Schooling, so that there aren't such long breaks in the summer
- and/or Enhanced, Enrichmment-Focused Summer School programs -- they have to be great, not just more traditional lecture-based instruction.

5.  And create cooperative high school education programs that could include externships and income for high school aged youth.  This is complementary to the next recommendation.

6.  Besides a bottom to top review and revamp ("Can a troubled summer jobs program give D.C. the results it wants?," "D.C.'s summer job program starts — and the heat is on Bowser" and "D.C.'s Summer Youth Employment Program," Washington Post), the city's Summer Youth Employment Program, especially because many of the participants are post-high school age, could be extended to an all-year program, comparable to the Federal Government's Vista and comparable programs and other job development and workforce readiness programs.

7.  And recreation centers, parks, and libraries in areas of greatest need should have more extensive program and be open for longer hours in the summer, say til 11pm.  Los Angeles ("Crime falls 40% in neighborhoods with Summer Night Lights program," Los Angeles Times, Greensboro, NC, and Muskegon, Michigan, among other places, have such programs.

From the Muskegon Chronicle article "Summer Evening Recreation Program at Muskegon High School gets young people off the streets":

“It was a lot of fun last year and we expect more this year,” Adkins said of a program that drew on average 400 youth on any given night. “We encourage parents to come with their younger children. This is for anyone in the Muskegon area, not just the city or Muskegon school district.”

There are also "midnight basketball leagues."

-- Parks After Dark: Preventing Violence While Promoting Healthy, Active Living report, LA County Department of Parks and Recreation
--The Real Deal:The Evolution of Seattle, Washington’s At-Risk Youth Program
-- "Rethinking Sports-Based Community Crime Prevention: A Preliminary Analysis of the Relationship Between Midnight Basketball and Urban Crime Rates," Journal of Sport and Social Issues

8.  Plus, why do outdoor pools start closing in mid-August, shouldn't they stay open through September?

9.  There should be improvements with halfway house programs and more general monitoring of ex-offenders, along the lines of programs like those once successful in Boston.  See "Straight Outta Boston" from Mother Jones Magazine.

What to do -- short term

I don't know.  There are issues with synthetic drugs, gun violence, not enough police officers on the beat generally, and not enough officers working at night, when crimes most typically occur.

Providing long term approaches will reduce crime in a more structural and structured manner compared to the results of short term responses, other than the current cohort of active criminals (for example, "Two men sought in rash of D.C. armed robberies"  and "In DC's homicide spike, a new trend: Some involve past violent offenders,"Post--although I don't see how this particular pattern in homicides is "new") being apprehended and imprisoned.

Usually that is what is going on when crime spikes upward.  A "new" group of active crime perpetrators commits a bunch of (pattern) crimes, the police recognize the pattern, and eventually the criminals are apprehended, and in response, the crime rate drops.

It's a recurring, and at least to me, common cycle.

DC Public Safety Summit, Wednesday May 10th, 9am

I'm the first to say I don't know how to reduce violent crime other than ensuring police time is spent in the areas with the most crime, and that crimes involving gun possession be prosecuted diligently.

Recently, DC Police Chief Robert Contee said that the average person arrested for homicide in the city has been arrested 11 times before.  Similarly, homicide victims have a high rate of involvement with the criminal justice system.  It's pretty clear that a small number of people are responsible for a lot of crime.

Charlie has called our attention to the DC Crime Facts e-letter, and the site provides a lot of analysis about crime in the city.

DCCF has also alerted us to a "public safety summit" tomorrow, convened by Mayor Bowser, and bringing a lot of public officials to the table, with citizens invited.

Wednesday, May 10 at 9:00 a.m. 
District Emergency Operations Center 1015 Half Street SE, 10th Floor

Officials Attending:

Mayor Muriel Bowser 
Brooke Pinto, Ward 2 Councilmember, Chair, Committee on the Judiciary and Public Safety 
Lindsey Appiah, Acting Deputy Mayor for Public Safety and Justice 
Robert J. Contee, III, Chief of Police, Metropolitan Police Department  
Matthew Graves, United States Attorney for the District of Columbia 
Brian Schwalb, Attorney General for the District of Columbia 
Anita Josey-Herring, Chief Judge, DC Superior Court 
Linda Harllee Harper, Executive Director, DC Offices of Neighborhood Safety and Engagement and Gun Violence Prevention 
Kristy Love, Executive Director, Criminal Justice Coordinating Council  

It will be broadcast live on the city's cable television channel.

DCCF has a post, "Questions for Mayor Bowser's Public Safety Summit," providing lots of questions to be asked of the public officials.  It's pretty focused and trenchant and worth a read.  

He points out that arrests are down in the most dangerous parts of the city, and that areas of high crime have 300% to 400% more crime and incidents than "safe areas," but safe areas are overstaffed relative to crime.

What about a real Citizen Summit on Crime?  I doubt that much will come of the summit, as it was announced the day before, and there is no posted agenda.  But it also reminds me of something that Mayor Anthony Williams did two or three years running.  They were called Citizen Summits and were designed, theoretically, to get citizen insights into city policy and budget.

They got more publicity, including in the planning press, than they deserved.  I was critical that they were mostly window dressing, but I did attend one, and if they were organized to engage people in substantive ways, they could be very effective.

I would have an agenda, provide "education time" so people can be exposed to best practice insights,  featuring well known academics and other professionals, and go from there.

Academic insight.  Patrick Sharkey has written Uneasy Peace: The Great Crime Decline, the Renewal of City Life, and the Next War on Violence,  about the pre-covid crime drop and attributed a fair amount of it to citizen participation in community efforts to reduce crime.  

Alex Vitale takes a different tack, focused on overpolicing and criminalization of social issues in End of Policing.  It's provocative and worth reading, although maybe not relevant to the murder and gun problems.

-- "The opportunity to rearticulate public safety delivery keeps being presented: Rochester New York" (2021)

There is the broken windows approach.  

-- "Broken windows/collective efficacy: Baltimore; Newark; Grand Junction, Colorado; Pittsburgh; Albany" (2019)

A lot of academics criticize it, but I think they are missing the point.  BW never really got implemented, instead it was transmogrified into "zero tolerance policing" not community policing and improvement.

-- "George Kelling, co-creator of the "Broken WIndows" thesis, dies" (2019)
-- "The state of "broken windows" versus "problem oriented policing" strategies in 2016: Part 1, theory and practice," 2016
-- "The state of "broken windows" versus "problem oriented policing" strategies in 2016: Part 2, what to do"
-- "Night-time safety: rethinking lighting in the context of a walking community," 2014
-- Crime prevention through environmental design and repeated burglaries at the Naylor Gardens apartment complex," 2013

Herman Goldstein (deceased), wrote a lot about "problem-oriented policing."

And there is a lot of work on "violence interruption."  I go back and forth about it, but there is some potential there.

But basically there needs to be a place-based approach to the most dangerous areas in the city, something I wrote about in terms of equity planning and social urbanism.  

-- "Social urbanism and equity planning as a way to address crime, violence, and persistent poverty: (not in) DC" (2021)
-- "Creating 'community safety partnership neighborhood management programs as a management and mitigation strategy for public nuisances: Part 3 (like homeless shelters)" (2020)

I think that Mayor Bowser has bobbled the issue for years. And I don't see things changing.

Note that William Bratton's latest book is very good ("Bill Bratton Explains His Ideas of Good Policing," New York Times).

Resource: Center for Problem Oriented Policing at Arizona State University

Note that it can't be emphasized enough that a goodly amount of urban success over the past 15 years is attributable in part to a general reduction in crime, making people feel more comfortable about choosing to live in cities.

I am a strong proponent of the original concepts of "broken windows policing," which in the original research weren't just about arresting people and what transmogrified into "zero tolerance policing," but included investments in the broader environment, from dealing with vacant houses or abandoned cars and litter to public space maintenance.

The Broken Windows idea dates to a 1982 article in Atlantic Monthly Magazine.

Researchers focused on the total environment that supports crime came up with the term "problem-oriented policing" as a way to move beyond some of the political and social opposition to the term "broken windows policing" because of its association with "stop and frisk" and other zero tolerance measures.

-- "The state of "broken windows" versus "problem oriented policing" strategies in 2016: Part 1, theory and practice," 2016
-- "The state of "broken windows" versus "problem oriented policing" strategies in 2016: Part 2, what to do," 2016
-- "Los Angeles police department "Community Safety Partnership"," 2014
-- "Night-time safety: rethinking lighting in the context of a walking community," 2014
-- "Crime prevention through environmental design and repeated burglaries at the Naylor Gardens apartment complex," 2013
======

I used to say that while there is a considerable amount of worthwhile academic literature on urban planning, it's surpassed by the amount of academic writing on transportation.

While I write from time to time on crime and public safety issues, and have even guest lectured at a college class on crime analysis, the depth and quality of the academic literature in criminology humbles me.  This started with the printed lecture by famed criminology professor Ronald V. Clarke, "Criminology and the Fundamental Attribution Error," sent our way by charlie.

Yesterday, I was researching bike theft and was reintroduced to the resources of the Center for Problem Oriented Policing at Arizona State.  I believe that they received a fair amount of funding from the US Department of Justice to create a series of guides on addressing crime in systematic ways.

For bike theft, these guides include

-- Bicycle Theft (Guide #52), 2008
-- Understanding Risky Facilities (Tool Guide #7),  2007

But the website is full of incredible resources on so many more topics.

=======
WRT to bike theft a couple of other very good journal articles that I came across are:

-- "Breaking into bicycle theft: Insights from Montreal, Canada." (Although this paper is by transportation researchers.) -
-- "Environmental Risk Factors influencing Bicycle Theft: A Spatial Analysis in London, UK." Most of the citations are linked and fully accessible. Reading all the cites would be a crash course in crime analysis and reduction!

George Kelling, co-creator of the "Broken WIndows" thesis, dies

I'd been taking a break from the computer for the last couple weeks and during that time, Professor George Kelling, co-creator of the "Broken Windows" approach to order/disorder/crime, died.

-- "George L. Kelling, a Father of 'Broken Windows' Policing, Is Dead at 83," New York Times
-- "George Kelling: A Visionary of Public Order," City Journal

I was reminded of Kelling by a new article in The Atlantic, "Did Cellphones Bring Down Crime Rates in the '90s?," hypothesizing that one of the reasons for the crime drop in the 1990s was due to the impact of cell phones on drug sales by making them less turf (geographically) specific, reminds me.

Kelling wrote with James Q. Wilson, based on an experiment in Newark, New Jersey, where they figured out that disinvested property (houses, cars, etc.) contributed to more disinvestment and in turn, crime. By "fixing broken windows" crime escalation was dampened.

-- "Broken Windows," The Atlantic, 1982
-- "Making Neighborhoods Safe," The Atlantic, 1989

The cell phone thesis is interesting, because I am not completely sold on the hypothesis that much of the crime drop was due to increased citizen involvement, such as that laid out by Patrick Sharkey in Uneasy Peace, which has its roots in "collective efficacy" theory. Yes, that helped. But it wasn't enough.

Guns and bullets often trump protest.

Unfortunately, in practice "Broken Windows" became what is called "Zero Tolerance Policing," which makes sense at some level because police officers are trained to use force, not be "Civic Action Officers" (cf. military pacification programs).

And even the earliest interpretations of the writings focused on the policing aspect rather than  dealing with disinvestment/nuisances.


Anti-policing initiatives haven't taken hold as much in DC compared to other cities, although there is a current schism between the police department and the Executive branch in DC versus the legislative branch, on these kinds of issues ("D.C. police chief says critical council hearing 'emboldened' drug dealers," Washington Post).

As a result, many academics and others have sought to discredit the approach ever since.

More recently, I've come to believe that the best approach is a combination of Broken Windows and collective efficacy + way more training for police officers + a greater focus on directed problem solving as a structural approach + approaches that aren't just about more policing.

But my experiments with litter picking and other stuff back when I lived in the H Street neighborhood c. 2000 convinced me that Broken Windows was on the right track.

That places where properties were vacant and unkempt, crime flourished. When you picked up litter, less trash was deposited. When alleys were kept up, less trash was dumped illegally. That one way streets made it easier to deal drugs. Etc.

At the same time, focused enforcement needed to be applied to dampen crime. And more innovative programs too, like the Community Safety Partnership in Los Angeles.

-- "Broken windows/collective efficacy: Baltimore; Newark; Grand Junction, Colorado; Pittsburgh; Albany," 2019
-- "Resource: Center for Problem-Oriented Policing at Arizona State University," 2019
-- "Revisiting intimate partner abuse/murder," 2017
-- "The state of "broken windows" versus "problem oriented policing" strategies in 2016: Part 1, theory and practice," 2016
-- "The state of "broken windows" versus "problem oriented policing" strategies in 2016: Part 2, what to do," 2016
-- "Los Angeles police department "Community Safety Partnership"," 2014
-- "Night-time safety: rethinking lighting in the context of a walking community," 2014
-- "Policing: escalation vs. de-escalation," 2014
-- "Crime prevention through environmental design and repeated burglaries at the Naylor Gardens apartment complex," 2013

Broken windows/collective efficacy: Baltimore; Newark; Grand Junction, Colorado; Pittsburgh; Albany

EE called our attention to the cover story on Baltimore, published two Sundays ago in the New York Times Magazine, "The Tragedy of Baltimore."

Baltimore.  The article was very disturbing.  The description of the post-Freddie Gray riots and the rapid rise in crime and murders in Baltimore reminded me of what it was like living in Washington, DC and specifically the H Street NE neighborhood back in the late 1980s and early 1990s when the city was faced with the scourge of crack and a rapid increase in murders--over 400 per year for many years.

Where I lived was a few blocks from Union Station and a bit more than one mile to the US Capitol and to Downtown, but by happenstance, it was also just a few blocks away from one of the city's primary open air drug markets, and in an 18-month period, there were 30 murders.

It was a terrible period for me personally.  My then wife was assaulted, we had a car stolen, our house was burglarized multiple times, and after the breakup of our marriage, I got mugged a number of times (hurt a bit but I always managed to get away and never lost anything, not my wallet not my bike).

It was living under siege.

Interesting, the article ascribes the riots, and even the death of Freddie Gray, to a number of poor decisions and choices by the police department, the State's Attorney's Office (who in advance of the arrest of Freddie Gray, asked the department to increase patrols in the Sandtown-Winchester neighborhood), under trained police officers and the failure of the State of Maryland to provide the police department with back up officers in the period of unrest after Gray's death and before the onset of riots a few days later.

Broken windows versus collective efficacy theory.  My primary response to the article concerned how in the past I had scorned collective efficacy theory (ironically, one of the leaders in this school is Robert Sampson, who is speaking next week at American University) in favor of "broken windows theory" and how I had been wrong and missed the point.

I believe in the concept of broken windows theory, which is that by addressing disorder -- vacant houses, crime spots, litter, abandoned cars, etc. -- communities end up being better able to manage and reduce crime.

-- "The state of "broken windows" versus "problem oriented policing" strategies in 2016: Part 1, theory and practice," 2016
-- "The state of "broken windows" versus "problem oriented policing" strategies in 2016: Part 2, what to do"
-- "Night-time safety: rethinking lighting in the context of a walking community," 2014
-- Crime prevention through environmental design and repeated burglaries at the Naylor Gardens apartment complex," 2013

The thing about the original theory is that it was also about investing in the community, but for the most part, police departments abandoned that element of the approach, and focused on what came to be called "zero tolerance policing," and the arrest of people at the merest provocation -- not having a fastened seatbelt, a broken tail light -- including rampant "stop and frisk."

The basic idea behind collective efficacy is that communities that are more organized and active, despite income and other demographics, are supposed to be better at warding off crime and disorder, without necessarily more policing, and even in low income areas.

To me, the data on this is mixed.

Which is why I was, I hate to say, derisive ("Urban Health, Nasty Cities, Broken Windows, and Community Efficacy," 2008).

But I missed the point.

Not either/or but and/and.  One of the factors acknowledged by Professor Patrick Sharkey's book discussing the decline of crime in major cities is collective efficacy ("NYU professor's book traces the decline of crime in U.S. cities since the '70s," New York Daily News).

What I failed to acknowledge is that focusing on the defense of Broken Windows wasn't the point -- and I had first hand experience from my H Street neighborhood.

Instead, I should have been considering the fact that how bad things could be, that the neighborhoods and community organizations were functioning at all was a miracle.

This is especially true for low income neighborhoods, which for a variety of reasons, have fewer resources, fewer functioning community organizations, and less of a sense of collective trust.  Also a lot more direct experience with all kinds of trauma.

The real point is that neighborhoods under siege need even more investments in community organizations, neighborhood improvement, and the like.

Likely collective efficacy surveys would find more positive results commensurate with increased investment in social infrastructure.

Newark.  Yesterday's NYT has an article ("'Newark's Original Sin' and the Criminal Justice Education of Cory Booker") on Presidential hopeful Cory Booker, now a Senator from New Jersey and formerly the Mayor of Newark.  Much of the article discusses his record on addressing crime.

While the city was successful at reducing crime and the murder rate, it was more focused on a zero tolerance policing strategy, although it was called "broken windows," and eventually the city submitted to a consent decree with the US Department of Justice over overzealous execution of policing to the point where people's civil rights were frequently violated.

Broken Windows and Collective Efficacy Theories need to marry.  Again, I believe that Broken Windows theory has been transmogrified from its origins.  Had it been paired more overtly with collective efficacy theory as a way to implement the community investment side of the equation, it would have worked better and generated less opprobrium.

Granted, police departments aren't always the best agency out there to implement community investment programs.  But there are exceptions:

-- "Los Angeles police department "Community Safety Partnership"," 2014

Grand Junction, Colorado.  The Grand Junction Sentinel has a great article ("We got our neighborhood back: Targeted areas see a drop in crime") about a targeted crime reduction effort in Mesa County.

The program focuses on places of frequent incidence of crime, and in addition to arrests provides and coordinates the provision of other resources in a Broken Windows fashion to make the changes permanent.

Pittsburgh and Albany.  Other articles on the East Liberty neighborhood in Pittsburgh ("How community-led renovation is helping a rundown Pittsburgh neighbourhood fight crime," Guardian), and the difficulty of making new investments in weak market neighborhoods ("In Albany, struggling neighborhoods face uphill battle to improve: Local couple faced many hurdles trying to build in low property value area," Albany Times-Union) provide other insights into the advantages of such approaches, but also demonstrate the difficulty of making new private sector investments in such communities, because the cost of new construction exceeds the value of existing properties.

The fine line between urban/center city chaos and order

There are a couple of pieces, one not quite a screed ("The UWS is falling apart, and lefties seem too woke to care," New York Post) and the Bloomberg Opinion column, "New York and San Francisco Can’t Assume They’ll Bounce Back," about the decline in urban order in the face of rioting, violence and looting around Black Lives Matter demonstrations.

Crime is rising in a number of US cities right now, in particular shootings and murders, but not so much other crimes, and there are a variety of theories for why this is so ("The murder spike in big US cities, explained," Vox).

WRT BLM-related violence, it seems to be perpetrated by a preponderance of whites ("How reckless White allies could lead to the reelection of Trump," Washington Post), but also recognize that some of it is fomented by supremacists seeking to spark disorder and discredit BLM, such as in Minneapolis ("Minneapolis police say 'Umbrella Man' was a white supremacist," Minneapolis Star-Tribune) and Oakland ("Suspect in officers' killings tied to Boogaloo group," Los Angeles Times).

Looting I think was more opportunistic and tended to be a more racially "diverse" phenomenon.  Clearly some groups organized specific forays against businesses, seeing the opportunity.

While I understand the need to seriously reconfigure how we deliver public safety services:

-- "Is it too late to change the messaging on "Defund the Police"? How about "Reconstruct Policing"?," 2020
-- "Towards a public safety model that is broader than policing," 2020

the idea of "defund the police" scares the hell out of me, because I have first hand experience of living with widespread disorder, from 1987 into the early 2000s, living in Washington, DC, when the 1990s were especially terrible because of the crack epidemic, bad policing, and other problems.

I can't provide a full recounting of all the bad experiences with crime that I dealt with during that time, but they include:

• at least three muggings (I happened to get away each time, although my glasses were broken once and I was punched another time)
• attempted muggings
• a crazy assault when I was locking my bike which caused blood and injury (I got the guy arrested and he served time, but the reality is that he was mentally ill)
• stolen (rental) car
• multiple stolen bikes or stolen bike parts
• thefts from my yard
• thefts of my stuff when at restaurants
• multiple burglaries of my house
• rape of my then wife during the commission of a burglary (which led to our divorce, although we might have gotten divorced eventually anyway)
• etc.

Besides my personal experiences with criminal acts, the neighborhood where I lived was full of disorder, from trash to vacant houses to a major crack distribution area. 

There were at least a dozen murders a year in the neighborhood, some within a block of my house at particularly bad corners or at businesses.  The H Street commercial district was pretty gnarly too, with a lot of crime, vacant properties, street robberies, robberies of businesses, tons of litter etc.

(As a result, community policing matters were some of the issues I aimed to address when I first got involved in neitghborhood issues around 2000.  A few years later, I was featured in a Washington Post article on Labor Day in 2003, about city advocates fighting the overconcentration of liquor stores, the sales of singles, etc.  It's oddly not available online, but is in articles databases.)

So arguing that police have no legitimate role in maintaining order makes no sense to me.

Furthermore, doing some experiments of my own picking up litter, and seeing the impact of nuisance properties led to my fervent belief in the theoretical basis of broken windows theory--that better maintained places are safer than those that aren't.

Obviously, the "Capitol Hill Occupied Protest/Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone" ("The CHAZ Has Become America’s Fascination," Seattle Met) in Seattle was no bed of roses ("Capitol Hill residents and businesses sue city of Seattle for failing to disband CHOP," Seattle Times) even if alt right media blew it out of proportion.

Even in the best of circumstances, some people join in and seek to take advantage of the situation for their own purposes.

Getty Images.  

And the reality is that not everyone is pure of heart.  Some people are evil.  Others have mental health or substance abuse demons that make it difficult for them to function in society, etc.

So we need forces to help us maintain order.  And volunteers don't normally measure up when it comes to dealing with serious disorder.

That traditional police forces need to be much better controlled, trained, and resourced is another issue.

And I am the first to argue that public safety service delivery should be conceptualized much differently from at present:

-- "Crime prevention through environmental design and repeated burglaries at the Naylor Gardens apartment complex," 2013
-- "Los Angeles police department "Community Safety Partnership"," 2014
-- "Night-time safety: rethinking lighting in the context of a walking community," 2014
-- "Crime time re-revisited: a set of programs focused on reducing crime," 2015
-- "The state of "broken windows" versus "problem oriented policing" strategies in 2016: Part 1, theory and practice," 2016
-- "The state of "broken windows" versus "problem oriented policing" strategies in 2016: Part 2, what to do," 2016
-- "Police response to mental health matters," 2016
-- "Who identifies problems and addresses them at the metropolitan scale? No one, at least when it comes to mental health-related police shootings," 2016
-- "Revisiting intimate partner violence/murder," 2017
-- "Seattle Times article on the need for changes to 911 services and emergency response," 2018
-- "Broken windows/collective efficacy: Baltimore; Newark; Grand Junction, Colorado; Pittsburgh; Albany," 2019
-- "Social urbanism and Baltimore," 2019

I wrote this in the second Broken Windows piece from 2016:

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 (past blog entries: "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, simultaneous with and not subservient to "order maintenance."