NEIGHBORHOOD WATCH PROGRAMS

Neighborhood Watch Programs

Neighborhood Watch Programs

Introduction

Neighborhood Watch Programs (also referred to as apartment watch programs, community watch programs or block watch programs) were first started formally in the United States that resulted in increased involvement of residents of neighborhood in the law enforcement's agencies' effort aimed at preventing crime. The history of formal Neighborhood Watch Programs can be traced back to 1973 when Seattle Community Crime Prevention Project was launched in order to effectively control the previously rising rate of crime in the respective area (Bennett, 1990).

Theoretical Background

The modern concept of neighborhood watch programs implies that residents keeping an eye on suspicious persons or activities and report these activities to the police, with an objective of reducing crime in their neighborhood. In many research studies, it has been reasonably argued that active and continuous surveillance by means of implementing neighborhood watch program might have a positive effect or the efforts of law enforcement to significantly reduce crime as a result of it perceived effect on offenders' decision making.

The resulting watching and reporting by the citizens, therefore, would certainly discourage offenders, especially when they are aware of the fact that their suspicious behavior would be immediately reported to the law enforcement personnel, thereby increasing the risk of being caught by the police. This way, neighborhood watch programs help in reducing crime by means of giving less opportunities to the offenders. This paper aims at evaluating the effectiveness of Neighborhood Watch Programs, while identifying the key issues the planners of such programs.

Program Benefits

Not every neighborhood is same in terms of crime and other delinquent activities. Some neighborhoods are more vulnerable to crime while others are less susceptible. But every neighborhood should consider implementing a community policing program such as Neighborhood Watch Program, since the program offers some significant advantages not only for those communities and neighborhoods with high rate of crime but also for those with low crime rate as well. Some of these advantages of Neighborhood Watch Program include prevention of residential crime, access to crime data, deterrence to criminals, greater awareness of crime among the residents of neighborhood, enhanced reporting and promotion of neighborhood (Garofalo & McLeod, 1988).

Neighborhood Watch Program Evaluation

The successful and effective evaluation of a Neighborhood Watch Program can be simply be done through assessing whether the programs has helped the law enforcements' effort to reduce crime as a result of designing and establishing the program or there have been observed no significant difference after the program has been put in place. Once the sufficient data is made available to create a baseline of crime rate in an area, a more thorough and detailed assessment of the effectiveness of the program can commence. However, the degree of evaluation of a Neighborhood Watch Program largely relies upon the assessment capabilities of the law enforcement and the group responsible for the watch program (McConville & Shepherd, 1992).

Key Issues

Target Population

There are several issues that need to be addressed for the Neighborhood Watch Programs to be ...