“Talk to everybody. Get the vision of the stakeholders, community boards, the business community, cops, every single block association and everybody in and out of the system.”
– Michele Sviridoff, deputy director for research at the Center for Court Innovation
Whether it originates out of the local police department, prosecutor’s office, probation department or court system, a community justice project must be tailored to the neighborhood it serves. And since the focus of all community justice projects is solving local crime and public safety problems, one of the foremost tasks for planners is to identify the key problems that the neighborhood in question faces.
Planners can go about that in a number of ways, starting with direct outreach to local stakeholders. Planners should talk with both community leaders and a cross-section of average citizens. In addition to individual conversations, focus groups, surveys and attending community meetings are excellent ways to take a community’s pulse. It’s best to ask a broad range of questions, covering general attitudes about the neighborhood and issues related to crime, safety and youths. Planners should also ask people to identify a community’s assets. Planners can round out their picture of the community by walking through the neighborhood.
Planners need quantitative data to sharpen their understanding of the issues identified by the community. Planners find it useful to know the number of people in the catchment area; profiles of residents, as well as offenders, including their socio-economic status, ages, level of schooling and employment; types and locations of crimes; types of housing; the annual number of violations, misdemeanor and felony arrests and case outcomes.
Once the problems have been clearly defined, planners start generating solutions. By this stage, many good ideas have probably already surfaced; others can be harvested by talking to local members of the criminal justice system, and by turning to other jurisdictions that are handling similar problems in creative ways.
For more, read Steps to Defining the Problem, which breaks down the process.