Submitted to the National Institute of Justice. Prepared Under Contract Number OJP-99-C-010 (T005) for the National Institute of Justice.
The nonpartisan Urban Institute publishes studies, reports, and books on timely topics worthy of public consideration. The views expressed are those of the authors and should not be attributed to the Urban Institute, its trustees, or its funders.
Note: This report is available in its entirety in the Portable Document Format (PDF).
Executive Summary
Over the last few decades, research has focused on juvenile and criminal justice agencies working with communities to reduce and prevent crime. Demonstration programs across the nation have proliferated as new and innovative models aimed at community crime prevention have been developed. Many of these demonstration programs have been evaluated. As a result, the research literature on "best practices" of particular programs grows daily. However, few of
the evaluations have focused on understanding the capacity of communities to be strong partners
in crime reduction and prevention. Little is known about how community organizations mobilize to reduce and prevent crime and engage in community justice activities with criminal justice and other government agencies. With the nation's rapidly growing interest in initiatives that give
more voice to citizen concerns and promote community restoration alongside public safety goals, it becomes critical that we ask where and how community organizations fit within community justice initiatives.
The Urban Institute, in collaboration with Caliber Associates, has synthesized the current knowledge regarding the capacity of community organizations to engage as partners in strategies to prevent crime. The goal of this project is to review what is known about the role of community organizations in partnerships, and the myriad of contextual issues—social, economic, political and spatial—that challenge or foster their ability to effect positive change within partnership initiatives. This review will assist us in answering the following questions:
- What are the factors that facilitate and strengthen the ability of community organizations to participate in community justice partnerships?
- How do these factors at the organizational level relate to the ability of partnerships to achieve their stated mission and objectives?
The report synthesizes key dimensions and characteristics that embody partnership capacity. This review leads to the heart of the report—the development of a conceptual framework to improve our understanding of community justice partnership processes. The framework is presented in Figure A. The components of the framework include:
- Member characteristics that influence partnership characteristics;
- Partnership characteristics or dimensions that are related to outcomes;
- Goals, problem domains and objectives;
- Activities; and
- Outcomes at the community, individual and family and systems levels.
The framework can be used as a tool to guide outcomes—whether they are short term or long
term—to be realistically based on the resources at hand and scope of objectives. The framework enables articulation of both process and end outcomes, as well as articulation of process and end outcomes at multiple levels of change. Partnerships may not be utilizing all possible measures of effectiveness if they perceive that their efforts are best captured by end outcomes such as reductions in recidivism or number of crimes rather than by outcomes such as increasing capacity. Demonstrating changes that can occur at multiple levels also has been noted as a challenge in evaluation research (Chavis, Lee and Jones, 2001; Fawcett et al., 1997; Kubish et al., 1999).
We emphasize that partnerships are dynamic entities that move and evolve through stages where the relationships among variables are constantly changing. The framework can be applied at all stages of partnerships in that it can guide researchers and practitioners to examine framework dimensions at different periods of time throughout the life of the partnership.
Although this report was written about partnerships involving criminal justice agencies and utilizing principles of community justice, the material can be applied to any field where partnerships are utilized to achieve community outcomes. Beyond crime prevention and the criminal justice system, there is a growing literature on best practices and issues in evaluating comprehensive community initiatives (CCIs) (Connell, Aber and Walker, 1995; Connell and
Kubish, 1999; Kubish, Weiss, Schorr, & Connell, 1995). The intractability of complex community issues such as poverty, economic isolation, drug use and crime, has led to the emergence of comprehensive initiatives that involve service providers from multiple sectors as well as community representatives from all types of organizations. These initiatives have shown
some promise in tackling issues caused by a number of factors. This body of literature offers many lessons about implementing, managing and evaluating community initiatives that relate
directly to building effective community justice partnerships.
The report synthesizes knowledge derived from our literature review and consultation with
other researchers and practitioners about factors that may affect a community's ability to
organize, mobilize, and build capacity to serve as an active partner with criminal justice
agencies. Time and time again, evaluations of crime prevention and intervention programs have
concluded with the same lessons learned: community organizations need to be able to leverage
outside resources, or collaboration among organizations is key to program success, or lead
agencies must recognize and articulate the community's needs and be able to act cohesively for
the good of the community. This report seeks to go beyond "lessons learned" and begin to break down the components of capacity for effective partnerships in community justice initiatives.
We recognize that the track record for community justice partnerships has not been without
its failures. Partnerships, regardless of size, are complex entities that involve an array of
variables, interpersonal and system dynamics, which must meld into an arrangement that
successfully reduces crime and increases quality of life. This report does not attempt to define
successful partnerships, but instead, it begins with the goal of breaking down these variables into useful dimensions.
First, we provide the definitions of key ideas and concepts within our partnership framework
to clarify the boundaries of each as defined for this report:
- Community justice is a participatory process in which stakeholders join in collective problem solving with the goals of improving community safety, promoting community capacity for collective action, and healing the harms imposed by crime. Community organizations must be an active partner; simply having a place at the table does not constitute community justice.
- Our definition of community hinges on geographic boundaries that can vary across partnerships. Within community justice partnerships, physical boundaries: (1) delineate the target area; and (2) set the limits for measuring outcomes.
- Stakeholders are those who experience or are impacted by criminogenic situations. They can be offenders, victims, or supporters of victims or offenders. They are also residents, students and teachers, property owners, service providers, local government officials, criminal justice practitioners, civic leaders, business owners, and others who use community resources and are affected by the quality of life in the community. Because community justice initiatives aim to articulate the voice of the community and improve quality of life for everyone that uses or provides resources to the community, the range of stakeholders is broad.
- A partnership is a linkage between community organizations and government agencies formed for the purpose of reducing a defined social problem or improving the conditions of the community. By partnership we mean a commitment between at least one criminal justice agency and one community organization to invest resources to bring about mutually beneficial community outcomes with regard to public safety and community health.
- The capacity of organizations and partnerships to pursue community justice is an example of community capacity directed at the joint goals of enhancing social control and improving quality of the community life (Karp and Clear, 2000). It is defined by the ability to bring stakeholders together to exchange ideas, jointly plan, and collaborate in actions intended to increase safety and strengthen the community directly or indirectly.
- We define community organizations to include any organization or agency that, at a minimum, meets regularly and has a name.
After discussing definitions we provide a useful typology of organizations to distinguish
frontline agencies from funders and the traditional powerholders. Level one organizations are
frontline community organizations. Examples include block clubs, youth peer groups, parent-teacher associations, Community Development Corporations (CDCs), churches, and local
schools—at a minimum, level one organizations must constitute a local organization, meeting regularly and having a name. Businesses where residents shop and work and merchant
associations are also level one organizations. Level one agencies can be divided into those that
are institution-based, such as church or school organizations and businesses, those that are issue-based, and those that are membership-based, such as neighborhood watches and block
associations.
The local police department, local government, housing authority, and businesses such as central banks, contractors and consultants that provide direct services to level one entities are
level two organizations, or the local support organizations. These are the traditional local power holders, with concern for a larger jurisdiction (i.e. beyond the neighborhood). Level three
organizations are the state, regional, and national counterparts to level two organizations. Level three organizations, such as regional and national foundations, policymakers and bureaucrats, and national news media, are more likely to fund partnerships, dedicate resources to local organizations, raise national awareness, or directly affect systems change, through the creation of laws and regulations.
Using these definitions and the organization typology as a starting point, we discuss the role
of community organizations and the importance of their involvement in increasing informal social control in the community. Formal local organizations support the informal relationships among community stakeholders and assist in developing networks and joint efforts. Community organizations serve as the means through which individual residents build networks with other
residents, and other organizations, both internal and external to the local community. Organizations are involved in a dynamic process involving a number of components at the
different levels of control. We view organizations set within a dynamic, multi-layer community field of horizontal and vertical networks and communication patterns. Specification of "how" partners communicate and collaborate—dimensions of horizontal and vertical integration— becomes another key component of the framework.
Next, we examined the community organization; we drew from the nonprofit literature, organizational theory, community psychology, and community development, and from the results of our focus group discussion to understand characteristics of community organizations which are important to the development of capacity to partner for community justice initiatives. We identified three key organizational characteristics that influence the capacity of the organization to be influential participants. These characteristics are leadership, resources, and
orientation.
- Leaders have a key role in articulating the community voice through identification and development of core values and unifying purpose. There is a community justice process associated with generating the community voice; it is a process that includes generating consensus, using good data, and deliberating, or entering into "community dialog." This is where leaders are crucial; they use these skills to gather and articulate the community voice, or the voice of their constituents, and guide the community through these processes.
- To act as a capable partner, an organization must have some asset to bring to the partnership. This can be a tangible resource, such as money, supplies, or time, or an intangible resource, such as generating participation or having a strong understanding of community problems. The report defines examples of three types of resources—human, financial, and technological—with the understanding that an organization does not need every type of resource to be a competent partner.
- A critical area of organizational capability is the determination of readiness for and commitment to engage in joint community justice efforts. We use the word orientation to capture this element. Orientation of the organization towards traditional power holders—level two and level three agencies— is a defining feature of community organizations in community justice initiatives. Factors such as the community climate, views of legitimacy of and trust in government authority, and existing relations and experiences with other groups, can affect the
capacity of an organization to partner as it moves through the stages of readiness to confront a local problem and enter into a partnership.
We also highlighted a number of other characteristics of community organizations that work
dynamically with these concepts, such as formality of structure, mission, outreach, networks, products and services.
Next, we present a discussion of dimensions of partnerships that enable useful description of
partnership capacity—lead agency type, structural complexity, readiness, horizontal and vertical integration, and resources. Partnerships are more likely to succeed:
- in communities which understand the issue that is being targeted, and are committed to tackle the issue; where partnership intentions are clear and agreed on;
- where partnership structures support multiple organizational contacts with clear lines of communication across organizations, as well as equal decision making among community organizations and government agencies;
- where partnerships undergo careful planning based on community needs and resources; and
- when partnerships are actively publicizing their successes and remaining open to increased community support through continued local action and diverse membership.
- In essence, success appears likely to be achieved when both horizontal integration (among community organizations) and vertical integration (between community organizations and traditional power holders) are strong.
Many of the points stated above have been known and repeated often over the years. Our intent is to synthesize current knowledge and reduce it into a common formula—a framework—that will enable systematic examination of partnership processes. The framework is a tool that will facilitate using what some researchers have referred to as a "theory of change approach" to specify relationships between inputs, activities and different types and levels of outcomes (Weiss, 1972; 1995). It is important to emphasize that the framework is more than a logic model or activity model. A framework allows for full specification of the dynamic and complex processes that typify partnerships. The components at the far left of the framework—partnership members and partnership characteristics—have a number of dimensions within them that can be assessed using a number of techniques. Chapters Four, Five and Six discuss the dimensions and briefly highlight some assessment and measurement techniques. Chapter Seven provides a brief summary of the main types of partnerships as defined by the primary justice partner or other non-community partner and continues, where possible, with more detailed examples.
Our search for measures of the various dimensions of the framework revealed both a lack of
straightforward definitions that would allow description of the dimensions, and a lack of
common measurement techniques. We conclude (Chapter Eight) that future research should begin with an elaboration of key constructs with continued empirical research to assess different dimensions of the constructs and how they influence partnership outcomes. This will facilitate both the linking of activities to outcomes and precise measurement of outcomes. We suggest research in a number of topical areas:
- Levels of community participation or "community embeddedness" within community justice partnerships. Sometimes referred to as articulation of community voice, community participation embodies community justice activities, but to date, there has been little or no research linking levels or types of community involvement with outcomes.
- Related to community participation is the role of residents. This report focused on the organization, not the residents themselves, as means to articulate the community voice and gain full participation in community justice activities. Although research emphasizes that engagement of citizens builds social and political capital, there is little systematic research examining how resident involvement is related to program benefits and outcomes. What happens when
residents participate in community justice programs? How do programs move beyond simply delegating activities to residents to achieve true empowerment? How, when and why do residents participate?
- The role of trust within community justice partnerships. Building trust has been
targeted as a method to increase the success of community justice partnerships, but trust is a complex construct—holding different meanings for different audiences. Furthermore, how does one build trust in an untrusting community that may have the most need for community justice activities?
- The role of an intermediary. Research suggests that partnerships with an entity acting as a go-between among partner agencies may be more likely to succeed because trust is higher and conflicts are managed by the intermediary. Partnerships with successful intermediaries may be achieving a unique type of systems change. The community development literature has begun to highlight the significance of the intermediary, but the research is lacking with regard to the role of intermediaries within community justice partnerships.
- Similarly, empirical research examining networks of vertical and horizontal support is limited in criminal justice. Theoretical and empirical research on informal social control mechanisms and differential social organization emphasizes the role of "stable interlocking organizations" (Sampson, 1999: 276) and organizational ties to extralocal resources (Bursik and Grasmick, 1993; Sampson, 1999), but criminal justice research is mostly limited to studies measuring community participation in organizations. A few researchers have applied network analysis techniques to examine the strength and depth of criminal justice collaborations (Ferguson, 2002; Hendricks, Ingraham and Rosenbaum, 2001; Kelling, et al., 1997; Moore and Roth, 2001) but this research is in its infancy.
- The dimensions of leadership. Transformational leadership has been proffered as a style of management for effective leadership within organizations. The criminal justice field could benefit with studies that review and summarize the large number of leadership studies that exist across substantive fields, including quantitative studies that factor analyze characteristics of leadership to examine how different leadership styles may be related to partnership outcomes.
- Collaboration. Collaboration is the key to successful horizontal and vertical networks and numerous surveys and instruments exist to capture collaboration. But how does one choose which survey or instruments to use? Are some more suitable for certain types of community justice initiatives? Are there instruments that measure collaboration at different stages of partnership evolution? A large body of literature exists on this topic, yet there are no standard practices for understanding or measuring collaboration within community justice programs and initiatives.
- Community restoration and criminogenic problem solving. Not only are community justice initiatives different from traditional crime prevention because the community becomes an active participant, but also the focus expands to include building community capacity. Research based solidly in theories of restoration and community building can further our knowledge with regard to how activities are linked to outcomes. In turn, relevant outcome measures can be developed.
- Community-level measures. Very closely linked to understanding restoration and criminogenic problem solving is the need for further development of measures that tap community outcomes such as community confidence, community satisfaction, or increased participation. Many community justice initiatives utilize community satisfaction surveys after community justice activities take place, but little research has been conducted to assess the utility of these tools and their appropriateness for measuring immediate and intermediate community outcomes across police, court and corrections programs.
Note: This report is available in its entirety in the Portable Document Format (PDF).
Acknowledgments
This report was written by Caterina Gouvis Roman and Gretchen Moore of The Urban Institute, and Susan Jenkins and Kevonne Small of Caliber Associates. Adele Harrell facilitated the focus group, provided significant assistance with the outline, and offered insightful comments on report substance and editing; we thank her for her advice and tireless support. We also thank Dan Felker, Caliber Associates, and Cornelia Sorensen, National Institute of Justice, for their assistance throughout this project.
The authors acknowledge the contributions of the focus group participants, Sarah Bryer, Catherine M. Coles, James Copple, David R. Karp, Phyllis McDonald, Susan Motika, Shelli Rossman, Carol Shapiro, Arnold K. Sherman, and Avis Vidal. We thank them for their thoughtful participation in the focus group and their time spent providing comments and suggestions on a previous draft of this report. We also would like to thank Dennis Rosenbaum who provided comments on the draft report, and the anonymous peer reviews, who provided comments on the final report. We thank Dionne Davis for helping with the meeting coordination to bring everyone together for the focus group.
We especially thank Elizabeth Griffith at the National Institute of Justice for supporting this work.
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