The Politics of Community Crime Prevention

Operation Weed and Seed in Seattle

Lisa L. Miller

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781351752664
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Law
• Subtopic: Law Theory & Practice
• Index: Law

This title was first published in 2001. This book explores the complex and often striking differences between national and local perspectives, particularly those of racial minorities, on crime prevention and the role that community residents should play in prevention programmes.

1 Crime, Punishment and the Politics of Local Community

The advantages of the Weed and Seed program are: the offender is immediately removed from the streets, and the public immediately sees that these law enforcement efforts are effective; the offender is met with swift justice; and those convicted serve longer sentences mandated by federal law and are prevented from committing further criminal acts for years to come.

Weed and Seed Implementation Manual, Department of Justice.

It is my hope that as a result of him [Mayor Norm Rice] reaching out that the Weed and Seed proposal will be changed... so that the fears of what I think is the majority of people in the black community can be dealt with.

Larry Gossett, Director, Central Area Motivation Program.

In 1992 President George Bush announced a new inner-city crime prevention program entitled Operation Weed and Seed, sponsored by the Department of Justice. The program provided funding for federal, state and local law enforcement agencies to weed out criminal elements, specifically violent, gang and drug activity, in a targeted urban community, and seed money to support social services and community revitalization (Roehl 1996).¹ Community policing was the bridge between weeding and seeding: beat officers would perform conventional policing activities while simultaneously getting to know residents and their concerns, utilizing those newly formed relationships to address crime problems.

In cities around the country, including Seattle, Washington, mayors and city council members looked at Weed and Seed as an opportunity to obtain federal funding to address some of their cities' worst crime problems. The mayor of Seattle and the Seattle Police Department (SPD) were interested in addressing crime in a neighborhood known as the Central District, a predominately lower to middle income area with a significant portion of the city's African-American population that had been struggling for years with drug and crime problems. The SPD applied for a Weed and Seed grant for the Central District and was awarded $1.1 million dollars for the first year. Sixteen cities around the country received similar grants, a substantial sum for urban areas in crisis.

When news of Weed and Seed hit the streets of Seattle, however, along with San Diego, Los Angeles, Atlanta and other cities that were awarded grants, it quickly became apparent that the Justice Department had underestimated the concerns of urban minorities about implementing a tough law enforcement policy in their communities. Even with its seeding component, some communities quickly saw the program as a threat to young, black males and immigrants. The controversy that surrounded implementation of Weed and Seed focused on three main concerns of minority residents: that city officials and the police regarded their communities as filled with violent criminals; that they would treat all residents as suspicious; and that the seeding component of the program would never materialize.

In some respects, this response of local communities to federal policymaking is not surprising and may even be typical. Scholars of public policy have noted the problems inherent in attempting to graft federally conceived notions of social order onto communities that are far removed, both geographically and often psychologically, from the visions of national policymakers (Wildavsky and Pressman 1973; Derthick 1972; Feeley and Sarat 1980). In addition, the notion of allowing federal law enforcement officials to assist local beat cops in the arrest and prosecution of street gangs and drug dealers seemed destined to cause consternation and alarm in urban minority communities. Relations between black communities and law enforcement throughout American history, while perhaps improving somewhat over recent years, can be characterized by mutual suspicion at their best and downright hostility and violence at their worst (see Skolnick and Fyfe 1993; Kennedy 1997; Tonry 1995).

What is interesting and worthy of note in the Weed and Seed program, however, is that, unlike many federal programs, Weed and Seed deliberately provided for local, community involvement through the community-policing component of the strategy and through efforts to empower residents of the targeted areas to preserve their neighborhoods. Indeed, getting communities involved in law enforcement and crime prevention has become an increasingly popular way of framing the government's response to crime. Community policing and community prosecution are popular in both the mainstream press and among law enforcement administrators (see Fleissner 1997 and Lyons 1999). Block watches and citizen patrols have been increasingly popular since the 1970s (Skogan 1988). In addition, programs like Weed and Seed are touted as the latest way of "doing business" which breaks sharply with past practices in which communities, police and social services agencies all operated in separate and discreet realms with little communication and information-sharing (Fleissner 1997; see also Kelling and Coles 1996; for a related discussion see Garland 1996).

Perhaps most importantly, Weed and Seed coupled weeding efforts with seeding monies to help rebuild neighborhoods. Given the popularity of community policing and the calls for more state assistance for social programs from advocates of urban minorities, one might expect such a program to have enjoyed at least a short period of interest and contemplation before being so roundly criticized. Similarly, while some scholars have noted that community policing often serves as a tool for allowing police departments to enter communities more frequently and aggressively, nonetheless, the move towards community policing appears to be a welcome change to existing police practices among those living in crime-ridden communities (see Lyons 1999; Greene and Mastrofski 1988). The fact that Weed and Seed was greeted with immediate mistrust and condemnation by some of the very communities that it was intended to assist is, then, cause for investigation and explanation.

This book is concerned with how federal community crime prevention policy is implemented on the local level and the differences in definitions of crime prevention that emerge during this process. In particular, the research illustrates that residents of a high-crime minority neighborhood can view crime prevention in substantially different terms than policymakers at both the national and local municipal levels. When these views on crime prevention clash, a struggle over problem definitions and policy responses ensues and questions of local community resistance to national crime agendas emerge. This project builds on research illustrating that national policy makers have incentives to exploit the public's fear of crime and support punitive policies, while local leaders have to face more direct electoral pressures and propose more practical solutions (see Beckett 1997; Scheingold 1991).² The book illuminates specific local concerns, detailing how those concerns differ from policy ideas of state agents on the federal and local level, and what the prospects are for the transformation of local concerns onto national agendas. Further, this research develops a community-centered crime prevention model that is more consistent with the views of community residents in this study than crime prevention models that dominate public policy.

Research on the Weed and Seed experience in Seattle casts doubt on the dominant framework for community-based crime prevention that is prominent in national policymaking and discourse. That framework is largely police-centered and includes a narrow role for community residents, confining them to the role of police informants and promoting symbolic rallies designed to mobilize residents around existing police agendas. The central theme of this book is that, when invited to participate in the direction of crime prevention and control, residents and local community leaders in the Weed and Seed target areas in Seattle worked to shift state resources away from the emphasis on punitive law enforcement and mere crime avoidance strategies, and towards employment opportunities, and broad economic, educational and social development. In addition, they resisted policing strategies that subjected citizens to increased police authority and those that were unresponsive to community concerns about harassment and abuse. Finally, they advocated for greater control over crime prevention goals and activities.

Politics in National and Local Crime Agendas

Crime control policies frequently emphasize harsh punishment as elected officials both produce and respond to punitive public sentiments (Scheingold 1984; see also Beckett 1997; Marion 1994). That is, elected officials do not simply respond to the punitive will of the electorate; they help create that will by capitalizing on the fear of crime and on the anxieties about social order that lie beneath the surface of crime control debates.³

Crime control, in this formulation, is driven by a variety of concerns, not just fear of crime but also concerns about moral decline, family dysfunction and increasing diversity (Tyler and Boeckmann 1997; Scheingold 1984), This is particularly true at the national level where elected officials can deploy powerful symbolic images in an effort to gain support in the electorate without having to be held strictly accountable for resolving local crime problems. The rhetoric of the national government can reassure an anxious electorate by offering solutions to the problem even when those solutions have only marginal effects on the crime rate (Beckett and Sasson 2000; Marion 1994). In a 30-second television advertisement in a Senate campaign, for example, it is difficult to talk about economic development, affordable housing, better schools, and job opportunities. It is far easier to say that criminals are morally bankrupt and that candidate A will lock them up while candidate B will let them go.

Elected officials are reluctant to support policies that make them appear soft on criminals even if those policies may be more fiscally and empirically sound than policies that impose harsh penalties and utilize state resources for increased law enforcement and prisons. One need not look further than the use of Willie Horton in the 1988 presidential campaign, which was designed to make Michael Dukakkis appear dangerously soft on crime, to see how powerful such rhetoric can be.⁴ The furlough program that gave Horton a weekend pass had successfully provided opportunities for thousands of felons to return gradually to mainstream society. This was irrelevant in the face of one frightening man who had committed a violent crime as a result of the program.

Public policy scholars have noted that the manner in which social problems are conceptualized and the substantive issues that are discussed in conjunction with those problems help shape the form of public policy (Rochefort and Cobb 1994; see also Baumgartner and Jones 1993). The conception of individual fault and wrongdoing is at the heart of American ideas of criminality and leads to particular policy solutions. Thus, gang violence is likely to be discussed in connection with out-of-control, morally corrupt youth and, therefore, the policy solutions put forth by elected officials anxious to quell public concerns are likely to involve giving police more authority to act or trying juveniles in adult court.⁵ In contrast, if the issue of gang violence is discussed in connection with poverty, poor education and few job opportunities, than the policy solutions are likely to involve economic development and educational opportunities. On the national level, the "individual wrong-doer" conception is particularly appealing because it lends itself to symbolic politics and to solutions that do not require broad social welfare expenditures.⁶ Edelman states succinctly, "The appeal of an emphasis upon the pathologies of criminals and the utility of punishing them lies partly in what it negates: the tracing of crime to pathological social conditions" (Edelman 1988, 28). A clear illustration of this is the dramatic increase in incarceration rates in federal prisons as a result of the federal government's war on drugs. Though the agenda had little connection to actual rates of drug use, it deployed powerful symbolic language and aggressive law enforcement tactics (Beckett 1997; Tonry 1995).

There are a number of reasons to believe, however, that this individualistic conception of criminal culpability and the punitive responses that go with it are much more complicated than a quick overview of national crime policy-making would suggest. For example, the public's punitive attitudes appear to be more latent and contingent than one might think, given broad public support for long prison terms and the death penalty. Katherine Beckett and Theodore Sasson challenge the portrait of the public as simplistically punitive by illustrating that there is considerably stronger support for government spending on social and economic programs to reduce crime than for spending on police and corrections (Beckett and Sasson 1999, 137). In addition, Scheingold demonstrated that the use of simplistic law and order messages as a campaign strategy seems less likely to be successful on the local level than in national politics (Scheingold 1991). Finally, the presence of powerful coalitions of racial minorities in urban environments may further complicate local crime control politics as minorities are less likely to trust police and more likely to be ambivalent about the role of policing and corrections in their communities (Beckett and Sasson 1999, 140-141). Thus, while national crime control politics pushes policy agendas towards punishment and law enforcement, local urban politics may present an opportunity for tapping into more nuanced public sentiment that goes beyond simple law enforcement solutions.

Indeed, at the same time that the national agenda appears receptive to punitive policymaking, community policing, which some would characterize as a less punitive form of policing, has flourished on the local/municipal level. Alternatives to incarceration for non-violent and/or first-time offenders, such as drug courts, are also popular and appear to be proliferating on local agendas. Not only does the local level appear to provide more complex definitions of the problem, attention to the crime issue locally may be less susceptible to manipulation by elected officials and policymakers because they must answer more directly for policy failure. This means that projecting simple, law and order messages at the local level is much less likely to receive a positive response from the electorate than at the national level. Local political climates can transform crime control policies so that they "have a distinctly egalitarian thrust and are intended to curb the state...and [are] derived...to some extent, from an awareness of the structural sources of street crime" (Scheingold 1991, 187). Furthermore, the internal pressures of local bureaucratic organizations, such as the police and criminal courts, can have an independent effect on crime control practices that are only tangentially related, if at all, to the goals of policymakers (see Walker 1996; Blumberg 1978; Scheingold 1991).

Thus, when local community involvement in crime control is encouraged, the punitive emphasis might be muted and the individual-responsibility rhetoric might give way to more structural explanations and. subsequently, towards different solutions.⁷ Community members, particularly those in urban, black neighborhoods who have been the target of harsh, punitive police policies and/or policies which simply tolerate a level of crime in black neighborhoods, may mobilize around the opportunity to address what some see as crime's root causes – the social, economic and educational breakdown of inner-cities – and in opposition to further empowering law enforcement agencies. Thus, community crime prevention efforts are reformulated to fight crime and reinvigorate neighborhoods beyond a narrow focus on law enforcement and punishment.

Race, Resistance and Marginalization

Racial politics is central to this study both in terms of the impact that the perspectives of racial minorities have on crime control policies and for the effect that those policies have on minority communities.⁸ The controversy that surrounded Weed and Seed's original implementation was largely the result of concerns about racial harassment and the differential impact of that policy on minorities. Furthermore, the most vocal proponents of recasting the Weed and Seed strategy in Seattle were black residents of the Central District who saw themselves as representing broader interests in the community. Race is important to almost any discussion of crime control policy and is particularly important here in three specific areas: relations with the police and the criminal justice system, views about the origins of crime, and the impact of criminal justice policy on minorities.

Relations with Police

Scheingold concludes his analysis of local crime control politics by suggesting that blacks were more likely than other groups to criticize police, demand citizen review, be concerned with fairness and advocate for citizen participation in the ways in which their communities were policed (Scheingold 1991). Further, though the black population of the city was small relative to larger urban areas, it was large enough to require those running for local elected office to pay attention to them. Thus, crime control policies that target these populations and promote community involvement open up a struggle over how crime prevention services are delivered.

Similarly, research from a variety of perspectives indicates that racial minorities are more likely than whites to be suspicious of the police, to have less confidence in the criminal justice system and to express concern about the way governmental services are delivered (Welch et. al., 1996; Lyons, 1999; Beckett and Sasson 1999; see also Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Stat...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Dedication
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Figures and Tables
• Preface
• List of Abbreviations
• 1 Crime, Punishment and the Politics of Local Community
• 2 Federal Crime Control and Community Crime Prevention
• 3 Getting the Community Involved: Operation Weed and Seed
• 4 Weed and Seed in Practice in the Central District
• 5 Striving for Control in the Rainier Valley
• 6 Communities in Control: Perspectives on Crime Prevention
• 7 Community Development, Public Safety and the Future of Crime Prevention
• Bibliography
• Index