Instead of prisons: a handbook for abolitionists
New responses to street crimes
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- Bu səhifədəki naviqasiya:
- Crime the Minority Community Conference
- NOTES
- Against
- Rape: Victims of
- Against Our Will: Men, Women and Rape
- Rape: The First Sourcebook for Women
- How Many More Vic
- The Crime of Rape in Denver: A Preliminary Report on the Findings of 965 Cases of Reported Rape in a Two Year Period
| New responses to street crimes
Each community, given the proper resources and services could begin to effectively deal with problems of crime on the street. However, community members realize no program can be totally successful until the root problems of unemployment, powerlessness, racism and economic exploitation are remedied. These systemic failings are the root cause of poor peoples' economic crimes: Able bodied Black and Hispanic men stand in ever greater numbers on the street corners during these days of deepening recession. The unemployment rate for minority teenagers seeking work is now soaring toward an appalling 40 percent. The country at least flirted with these problems thru the Great Society programs of the mid 60's. When those programs were precipitately abandoned as utopian and fruitless, hundreds of thousands of citizens of this city--and millions elsewhere were doomed to an environment of futility, alienation and profound hostility. This severed the civilizing connection of hope for a decent life without which conventional appeals to law and order might just as well be issued in Urdu. Roger Wilkins, "Crime and the Streets," New York Times, February 18, 1975 If you walk a few blocks from my house in New York you will see that the seven percent unemployment we now have translates out to kids standing around the street corner with nothing to do. It translates out to 41 percent unemployment among Black teenagers ... the source of a tremendous amount of street crime .... Most of it is committed against themselves, against other Blacks. That is because they have the highest degree of unemployment, school drop outs and the least is done for those kids. They do not get unemployment compensation because they have never had a job. What is more, they are never going to have a job .... It is just as predictable as that a candle will burn out that many of those kids will be lost to drug addiction, lost forever to the welfare system, and even more will be lost forever to crime. Tom Wicker, Remarks to Lehigh Valley Bail Fund, March 18, 1976, reprinted in Pretrial Justice Quarterly, Spring 1976, pp. 42 43 Crime & the Minority Community Conference Despite awareness that poor peoples' economic crimes are rooted in the social structure, communities fear they will "water the seeds" of police repression if they do not engage forcefully in the struggle to make their communities safe. As in other urban settings, street crime has become a major concern of urban Black community residents in recent years. A survey by Louis Harris in 1973 revealed that 77 percent of the residents of Harlem who were polled felt that "crime in the streets" was a "very serious problem."[94] Concern about the escalating street crime rate in minority communities, led the Criminal Justice Priority Team of the United Church of Christ in conjunction with several national religious, civic and civil rights organizations to sponsor a national conference on "Crime and the Minority Community" in Washington, D.C., October 1974. The conference, attended by over 300 participants, brought together community activists from around the country to share insights and projects which could be useful in confronting crime and discovering causes in their communities. During the three conference days, participants identified common community needs to respond to the problem of community crime. They included:
Emphasizing that anticrime programs are designed to develop nonlethal and nonvigilante style programs to combat crime, they focused on methods to minimize the opportunity for crime to occur. Individual program goals for a community anticrime model included:
The conference noted that almost every imaginable crime prevention program is in operation somewhere in New York, but very few exist in the minority community. Innovative programs that could be duplicated were described:
The effectiveness of the project decreased when city funding was obtained. Patrol leaders were harassed by the police until the project went out of existence. The program later re emerged in an impotent form under the auspices of the Mayor. If kept from becoming "a political football," this project could be duplicated. Because of widespread police brutality, corruption, abuse of power and other acts committed by members of the police department against minorities, many of the United Church of Christ's conference participants raised serious questions about the nature of cooperation with law enforcement agencies. Police departments tend to work with citizen groups only when the department is in control of the program, as opposed to working on an equal level. However, conferees agreed each community group should forge the alliances they see as beneficial and productive to their local efforts. Participants took critical note of huge expenditures by LEAA to purchase guns, tanks, helicopters, submarines, boats, computers and other weapons from the U.S. military arsenal field tested in Vietnam. Despite statistics that show increased use of hardware and patrols are not the answer to street crimes, LEAA continues a militarized response while paying mere lip service to minority citizen involvement and needs. The conference proposed an investigation be undertaken to examine the use of funds and effectiveness of LEAA programs to reduce crime in minority communities. Finally, the conference cited specific program models which reflect some of the immediate needs of minority communities in anti crime efforts. They included:
The military model for crime prevention should he abolished. It is clear that neither punishment by prison nor training police for a community combat role can solve the problem of street crime, in the long range, nothing less than social restructuring will accomplish the goal of greatly reducing poor peoples' economic crimes, but in the interim, communities must be made safe and the victims protected and cared for. This requires that funding be diverted to those services and resources communities identify as vital to their efforts to create a safer society and to bring relief to the victims. Community people can empower themselves to turn away from their fortress existence and transform their streets into real neighborhoods where all are safe and welcome. In Philadelphia, a small number of concerned citizens have organized to make their streets safer from crime, building a sense of neighborhood at the same time. Its program. CLASP, provides an opportunity for communities to take more power over their own lives, and has significantly reduced crime. CLASP Four years ago, a group of concerned neighbors in a section of West Philadelphia came together to confront the fact that they were living in the highest crime rate area of the highest crime rate district in their city. It is a mixed, Black and white, working class and middle income neighborhood. Muggings and burglaries were so prevalent that many people found themselves victimized more than once. A crisis came when three women were raped in a two block area within two weeks. A friend of one of the rape victims called a block meeting. Expecting a small group from her own block to come to her home, she was surprised when people from five additional blocks responded, a total of 80 people. After an evening of open discussion, it was decided that the most effective action would be community action. From this meeting grew the Block Association of West Philadelphia: neighborhood crime prevention based on self management concepts. Everyone wanted safer streets, streets that could be walked by day and by night, free from fear. All grew to realize that the only way to safety was thru linking neighbors together as friends instead of strangers. Eventually, the Block Association of West Philadelphia aligned itself with CLASP, Citizens' Local Alliance for a Safer Philadelphia, an educational coalition working in community crime prevention. CLASP adopted the community action organizing model of the Block Association.[95] Preventing burglary. Simple techniques to make apartments and houses safer from burglary were implemented. These included such obvious precautions as keeping windows locked, installing door locks that can't be jimmied, keeping porch lights blazing. Makeshift burglar alarms were created simply and inexpensively by hanging strands of jinglebells on doors. More important was the sharpened awareness of the need for neighbors to have ties with one another. At block association meetings, neighborliness grew. Telephone numbers were exchanged. People became conscious of who was customarily on the street. Would be burglars generally spend time "casing" a block. They study the habit of residents in order to know which houses and apartments are vacant and at what times. When people passing on the street know each other and when they speak a friendly "hello" to strangers, most burglars quickly disappear. Another community crime prevention technique put into practice by CLASP is Operation l.D. An electric engraving machine is available to residents so that they can put their Social Security numbers on valuable personal property. Notices to this effect are posted on the doors of houses so protected. More than 50 electric engravers are now in use in Philadelphia. Neighborhood walk. Block associations also addressed themselves to the problem of street crimes. Muggers and other street criminals nearly always choose as victims those who walk alone at night. People decided to walk in groups of two or more after dark. Here again, raising neighborhood illumination by leaving on porch lights was stressed. Out of the basic concept of block organizing grew the idea of the neighborhood walk, an unarmed foot patrol. Two or more persons walk thru the neighborhood. The walkers wear no i.d. or armbands. The time and route of each walk are unpublicized. To the potential wrongdoer who has heard of this program, any two or more people walking together might be one of these patrols. If walkers encounter a street crime in progress, they are prepared to take action. In addition to flashlights, walkers carry a freon horn--a loud signalling device. When people hear a horn go off, they come out of their houses signalling with their own freon horns. CLASP recommends that as many residents as possible of organized blocks own freon horns, it buys them at wholesale from the manufacturer and makes them available to the community at cost. The organization of neighborhood walks varies because each block association is autonomous. The amount of time volunteered by an individual walker might vary from two hours per month to four hours each week, in addition to the monthly meeting of the block association. Of the 30,000 blocks in the city of Philadelphia, CLASP has thus far organized about 600. These block associations are scattered thruout the city in more than 20 neighborhoods, including some of the most blighted areas of the city. CLASP prefers not to discuss how many of the block associations have neighborhood walks. This is partly because the figure varies from month to month, as walks are started or dropped, according to conditions in specific neighborhoods. It is also because the very idea of neighborhood walks is thought to discourage street crime, whether or not the walks are actually taking place. A most important side effect of the neighborhood, walk is that participants have gradually lost their fear of the streets. The streets have begun to fill up with people again--a bad situation for the mugger or rapist who must be alone on the street with his/her prospective victim. Evaluation. According to a survey conducted by CLASP in spring 1976, 20 organized blocks had on the average only 25 percent as much crime as the police districts in which the blocks are located. A more intensive victimization survey of nine organized blocks in North Philadelphia shows that with one exception crime has been reduced on each block. The amounts of this reduction range from 11 percent to 79 percent, averaging 33 percent overall. A grant from the LEAA funds the training of neighborhood organizers from other high crime cities in the state Pittsburgh, York, Harrisburg and Chester. Requests for information and resources have been received from many cities outside the state. Block organizations have found ways of effectively reducing crime in their neighborhoods. It is worth noting that they have been able to do this nonviolently. CLASP strongly advises people to avoid the vigilanteism of privately owned guns, noting that having guns around often results in the injury or death of innocent persons; using a gun in response to a burglar or a street criminal escalates the likelihood of serious violence without assuring that innocent persons will not be hurt. Block organizing, based on self managing, nonviolent principles, clearly demonstrates an alternative to the war model employed elsewhere the proliferation of lethal weapons and military tactics. However, when suspected lawbreakers are apprehended, they are turned over to the police and the criminal (in)justice systems' punitive institutions and procedures. Until real communities can be created communities where poverty is eliminated and the commission of economic crimes is no longer an attractive option the CLASP model is worth emulating. In many ways block organizations are a step toward the creation of true community. They empower neighborhoods and individuals to increase the safety of their homes and their streets. NOTES 1. Margaret Mead, Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies (New York, Mentor, New American Library, 1935) pp. 23,80 81. The Arapesh tribe in New Guinea is a rape free society. 2. See Andrea Medea and Kathleen Thompson, Against Rape (New York Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1974) pp. 21 23. Also Diana E. H. Russell, ed., The Politics of Rape: The Victim's Perspective (New York, Stein and Day, 1975) pp. 71 116. 3. See Ann Wolbert Burgess and Linda Lytle Holmstrom, Rape: Victims of Crisis (Bowie, Maryland, Robert J. Brady Company, Prentice Hall, 1974) pp. 21 33. 4. See Julia R. Schwendinger and Herman Schwendinger, "Rape Myths: In Legal, Theoretical and Everyday Practice," Crime and Social Justice, Spring/Summer 1974. See also, Cathie Woolner and Robin Rich, "Rape: Old Myths Endure," Valley Advocate, Northampton, Massachusetts, May 15, 1974: "According to a Missouri attorney who handled U. Missouri rape cases, 'Many juries will acquit a man for raping his date in a parked car even when he admitted it was rape maintaining that the girl shouldn't have put herself in the situation in the first place.'. . .In a New York City case where a woman had dinner with a man in his apartment and was later raped by him, the D.A. stated a woman can't go three steps and not expect to go the fourth.'" 5. See Susan Brownmiller, Against Our Will: Men, Women and Rape (New York Simon and Schuster, 1975) pp. 312 13. "The popularity of the belief that a woman seduces... a man into rape, or precipitates a rape by incautious behavior, is part of the smoke screen that men throw up to obscure their actions. The insecurity of women runs so deep that many, possibly most, rape victims agonize afterward in an effort to uncover what it was in their behavior, their manner, their dress that triggered this awful act against them." 6. See Medea and Thompson, p. 23. Also Russell, pp. 44 51. 7. See Lilia Melani and Linda Fodaski, "The Psychology of the Rapist and His Victim," in Noreen Connell and Cassandra Wilson, ed., Rape: The First Sourcebook for Women (New York, New American Library, 1974) pp. 82 93. 8. See Murray L. Cohen, et al., "The Psychology of Rapists," Seminars in Psychiatry, August 1971. Also Gladys Denny Schultz, How Many More Victims? Society and the Sex Criminal (New York, J.B. Lippincott, 1965) pp. 138, 317. 9. Thomas A. Giacinti and Claus Tjaden, The Crime of Rape in Denver: A Preliminary Report on the Findings of 965 Cases of Reported Rape in a Two Year Period (Denver, Colorado, Denver Anti Crime Council, 1313 Tremont Place, 1974) p. 3. 10. See Joseph J. Peters, M.D., "Social Psychiatric Study of Victims Repotting Rape," American Psychiatric Association 128th Annual Meeting, Anaheim, California, May 7, 1975. This study conducted at the Philadelphia Center for Rape Concern in 1973 showed that of the sample group of 369 reported rape cases, 78 percent of the child victims and 62 percent of the adolescent victims knew their attackers. Only 29 percent of reported adult victims knew the man or men who raped them. Also Donald J. Mulvihill et al., Yüklə 1,92 Mb. Dostları ilə paylaş:
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