Are Local Law Enforcement Policies Effective

Local Policies of Interest

One of my community’s local criminal justice programs is the “Stronger Together” program which places a community resource officer in the local high school, middle school and elementary schools. The officers are there to make contact with the students and to show them that police officers are their friends. The goal of the program is to create a bridge between the community and law enforcement and to become “stronger together.” Some of the programs that these officers oversee include a Youth Crime Watch, a chess club, and assistance with athletics programs (City of Erlanger, 2020).

My current understanding of criminal justice programs and policies is that they tend to focus on community building and relationship building, which is a good thing in my opinion. However, in my opinion, more needs to be done in terms of outreach—and it should not just be a few police officers showing up at a school or event to convey a positive message. The outreach should really be more about integrating all aspects of the community: school, local businesses and business owners, counselors, teachers, professionals, church leaders, coaches, police officers, and others can all get involved to help kids learn trades, give them solid direction in life, keep them out of trouble spots, and motivate them to succeed. This is the kind of growth that can really make a community strong together. Groups of this type could organize to do community service projects, like helping people with whatever issues they might have at their homes if they are unable to take care of things themselves; cleaning up abandoned lots; or doing community watches too.

I think criminal justice programs and policies need evaluation because otherwise you do not know if they are doing any good. For instance, we can look at Erlanger’s “Stronger Together” program. What measures are being introduced to determine the effectiveness of the program? Does the city even care if the program is effective, or is it merely part of a PR campaign to make the local law enforcement department look like it is engaging the community? If it is the former rather than the latter, the city should be concerned about the impact of the program.

To assess the impact of the program, the city would have to evaluate its effectiveness. That means taking a baseline measurement before the introduction of the program, measuring during the program, and measuring after the program’s conclusion. What would the city measure, though? That is the part where it becomes difficult. The city has to know what it is trying to improve and it has to have clear ideas about the areas it is mainly trying to have an effect on with such a program. Is it trying to keep kids in school? Keep kids out of gangs? Keep kids from having negative views of police officers? How will it determine success? Will it survey students? Survey the community? Look at crime or dropout rates? These are all valid questions that should be asked, and they all pertain to the effectiveness of the program. But to determine that, one has to know what factors matter, how to measure them, and what the data means when it is interpreted in different ways.