I wonder what the equivalent applied to corporate CEOs would be?

2/17/2004

CUTTING-EDGE crime reduction efforts fell off in Boston following the so-called Boston miracle of the 1990s, when police disabled youth gangs through relentless prosecution of chronic offenders. Now the next step in community policing is emerging: joint efforts by police and social workers to prevent crime in unstable families and unsafe neighborhoods. Boston Police Superintendent Paul Joyce revealed details of the department's comprehensive community safety initiative last month during a Dorchester meeting with criminal justice experts and neighborhood leaders sponsored by the Boston Foundation. Using the high-crime Grove Hall section of Dorchester as a pilot site, police analyzed data on nearly every arrest or field interrogation of an individual over a three-year period ending in September 2003. And for the first time, the Police Department enlisted the help of state social service agencies in what could become a broad anticrime initiative.

The police arrested or interrogated 457 individuals during the study period. As a group, the suspects had been responsible for a frightful 12,000 lifetime arraignments. That finding supports residents who decry sweeping portrayals of their communities as saturated with wrongdoers. In reality, just slightly more than 2 percent of Grove Hall's 19,000 residents caused a large part of the instability.

Next, officers formed into working groups with probation officers and officials from the Department of Youth Services to discuss each of the individuals who had been arrested or interrogated in Grove Hall. They estimated that 80 percent of the suspects would be better served by social service intervention than law enforcement. Change in thinking

It wasn't so long ago that the common police rejoinder to any mention of a suspect's background was, "Do I look like a social worker?" But now awareness is obviously high among officers that many of the suspects they encounter, including many young people, harbor potential for something better than a life of crime. Grove Hall residents in attendance at the Boston Foundation meeting reinforced this message, saying that a paucity of job training and housing opportunities, not criminal intent, undergirds the area's crime problems.

Police next asked the state's Executive Office of Health and Human Services to run the 457 names through its database of clients. The data revealed that 72 percent of the individuals were either receiving social services, ranging from child abuse intervention to welfare, at the time of arrest or had received such services between January 2000 and July 2003.

More analysis is needed. But the data already suggest that state social service agencies are not by themselves especially effective at keeping clients on the straight and narrow. Harry Spence, commissioner of the state Department of Social Services, says he is "intrigued" by aspects of the data that might result in ways to improve services and create alternatives to imprisonment.

One possibility might be for social workers to take a neighborhood approach by providing intensive group services to clusters of young people known to police. Another possibility is to intervene intensively in families where lawbreaking is passed down from generation to generation. Privacy issues

Police envision partnerships with social workers of the kind pioneered in the heyday of community policing in the late 1990s, when officers and ministers joined forces to offer young people alternatives to the street. But privacy concerns are much greater when police and social service workers are at the table together. Social workers are required by law to protect their communications with clients. Rare exceptions include suspected child abuse or specific threats. Even sharing of information among state human service agencies is highly restricted.

Spence, the DSS commissioner, emphasized that the state supplied police with aggregate data only and no information about individual clients. Wisely, Joyce and the police are not pressing for more detailed information. Joyce says police are prepared to enter into a one-way relationship in which they provide information to social workers but receive none in return.

In places with less strict privacy laws, police and social workers are forming effective crime-fighting teams. In 2001, the city of Regina in Saskatchewan was known as the car theft capital of Canada. Police and provincial social workers joined forces to steer young car thieves into social programs rather than jail. After two years, the car theft rate had dropped by one-third, according to Sergeant Bart Leach of the Regina Police Service.

"It's an open exchange back and forth on a daily basis," said Leach. That turnaround, however, was smoothed by numerous clauses written into the province's privacy laws allowing for disclosure and sharing of information among official agencies.

Spence calls the cooperative efforts "exploratory" at this stage. And one of the areas of exploration is clearly to determine whether the relationship can be built without trampling on individuals' privacy rights.

Boston police have found ways in the past to work both effectively and ethically with clergy and street workers to reduce violent crime. The latest effort is worthy of encouragement provided it proceeds on a similarly high plane.

Kathleen O'Toole, the city's new police commissioner, is a protege of Los Angeles Police Commissioner William Bratton, the godfather of community policing. Now O'Toole has the opportunity to blaze some trails of her own.

The lock-'em-up mentality once common in police departments is being replaced by a more thoughtful approach to crime and justice. New models are worth seeking. In Boston, they may well be found where police officers and social workers cross paths.
© Copyright 2004 Globe Newspaper Company.