The author(s) shown below used Federal funds provided by the U.S. Department of Justice and prepared the following final report: Document Title: Boston's Comprehensive Communities Program: A Case Study, 2004 Author(s): George Kelling ; Ann Marie Rocheleau Document No.: 204680 Date Received: March 2004 Award Number: 1998-IJ-CX-0053 This report has not been published by the U.S. Department of Justice. To provide better customer service, NCJRS has made this Federally- funded grant final report available electronically in addition to traditional paper copies. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice. BOSTON’S COMPREHENSIVE COMMUNITIES PROGRAM: A CASE STUDY Prepared for the National Institute of Justice March 25, 2004 BOTEC Analysis CORPORATION 767 Concord Avenue, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138 Boston’s Comprehensive Communities Program: A Case Study By: George Kelling, Ph.D. Ann Marie Rocheleau, M.A. With assistance from: Nicholas Walsh Boston’s Comprehensive Communities Program: A Case Study Table of Contents OVERVIEW.................................................................................................................................................. 1 BACKGROUND CONTEXT ...................................................................................................................... 2 CITY PROFILE.............................................................................................................................................. 2 THE CRIME PROBLEM IN BOSTON............................................................................................................... 3 Boston Unified Crime Report Data....................................................................................................... 3 LOCAL GOVERNMENT CONTEXT................................................................................................................. 5 POLICE CONTEXT: A HISTORY OF THE BOSTON POLICE DEPARTMENT ...................................................... 6 The Early Years..................................................................................................................................... 6 The Boston Police Strike ....................................................................................................................... 7 Surveying the BPD ................................................................................................................................ 8 Modern Traditions .............................................................................................................................. 10 COMMUNITY CONTEXT............................................................................................................................. 14 CCP PLANNING AND ORGANIZATION.............................................................................................. 16 THE PLANNING PROCESS .......................................................................................................................... 19 The Strategic Planning Process .......................................................................................................... 19 Planning Boston’s Other CCP Components ....................................................................................... 23 CCP ADMINISTRATION STRUCTURE ......................................................................................................... 25 CCP BUDGET COMPONENTS..................................................................................................................... 26 Strategic Planning Process................................................................................................................. 26 YSPN Network..................................................................................................................................... 27 ATIN Network...................................................................................................................................... 27 START-UP FUNDING.................................................................................................................................. 28 CCP STRATEGY ........................................................................................................................................ 29 CCP PROGRAM........................................................................................................................................ 30 IMPLEMENTATION OF COMMUNITY POLICING ........................................................................................... 30 ORGANIZATION FOR COMMUNITY INPUT................................................................................................... 32 ORGANIZATION FOR SERVICE DELIVERY................................................................................................... 33 Grove Hall Safe Neighborhood Initiative ........................................................................................... 33 Youth Service Providers’ Network ...................................................................................................... 33 Alternatives to Incarceration Network ................................................................................................ 37 SUSTAINABILITY .................................................................................................................................... 45 INGREDIENTS FOR SUSTAINMENT.............................................................................................................. 45 THE BOSTON SUSTAINMENT PLAN............................................................................................................ 48 INTERIM SUMMARY.............................................................................................................................. 50 AN EPILOGUE TO BOSTON’S CCP CASE STUDY............................................................................ 52 NEW DEVELOPMENTS AND ISSUES IN CCP ............................................................................................... 52 Expansion of CCP in Boston............................................................................................................... 52 Facing Problems/Issues Both Old and New........................................................................................ 53 SYNERGISTIC EFFECTS OF CCP................................................................................................................. 55 SUSTAINMENT OF CCP IN BOSTON ........................................................................................................... 57 Sustainment of Processes Begun Under CCP ..................................................................................... 57 Sustainment of Programs and Initiatives ............................................................................................ 58 FINAL CONCLUSIONS ABOUT THE SUCCESS OF CCP IN BOSTON ............................................................... 59 Boston’s Comprehensive Communities Program: A Case Study APPENDIX A: DESCRIPTIONS OF NETWORK SERVICE PROVIDERS ...................................... 61 YOUTH SERVICE PROVIDERS NETWORK PARTICIPANTS ............................................................................ 61 ALTERNATIVES TO INCARCERATION NETWORK PARTICIPANTS ................................................................. 63 Boston’s Comprehensive Communities Program: A Case Study Overview On February 19, 1997, President William Clinton announced his 1997 Juvenile Crime Bill in Boston. Boston was selected because his national strategy drew on several successful Boston initiatives. In making the announcement, President Clinton said: It is really a national framework to give other communities the chance to get the resources to do what you’re trying to do in Boston. That is all it is. Tough when you should be tough; smart when you should be smart; compassionate when you should be compassionate. For Boston, its achievements and recognition came after decades of struggle with competing models of policing, spates of corruption and abuse, flawed leadership, and extraordinarily rancorous management-union relations. The Comprehensive Communities Program (CCP) played a pivotal part in Boston’s achievements, most notably by funding an unusually intensive planning process. This planning process brought together the Boston Police Department (BPD), community leaders, citizens, criminal justice agencies, and social service providers in each of Boston’s police districts over an extended period of time during which neighborhood problems were identified and tactics were developed to solve them. This planning process also laid the groundwork for an ongoing accountability process in each of the districts. To achieve these goals, long-standing suspicions, indeed even antagonisms among participants, had to be overcome and/or managed. While this did not happen overnight, and while the BPD’s and other organizations’ capacities were strained by their new experiences and responsibilities, for the most part, problems were overcome. They were overcome in large part by the self- consciousness of the BPD: that is, by its willingness to learn from its experiences and its attempt to find new ways of solving problems, be they neighborhood or program administration problems. This case study of Boston’s CCP program was written as a result of site