CRIME BEAT

Interesting viewpoint from the Progressive Review...........PEACE............Scott


BRITISH COP TURNS A TOWN AROUND

OLGA CRAIG, TELEGRAPH - The lager louts who made many of Spilsby's
3,000 residents wary of venturing out after dark are more likely to be
found playing carpet bowls against the pensioners they once abused,
scrubbing graffiti off walls, cleaning up road signs, collecting litter
and cutting down trees to create parkland. The town is transformed too.

Anti-social behavior and crime rates have been halved, the streets are
clean and the inhabitants have an air of jaunty self-confidence. The
shops now bustle with the daily banter of a close-knit community that
takes a pride in the market town.

The man who has made the difference is Spilsby's police sergeant, Gary
Brown, who, with a lot of help and a very vivid vision of how
old-fashioned virtue can change a community, has given back the town's
self-respect. . .

His innovative scheme to transform Spilsby began when he formed the
Knight School, a course for six to eight-year-olds that instills a
chivalrous code of courtesy, respect and pride in the youngsters. So
far, more than 130 children have "passed out" from Knight School and Sgt
Brown has set up a whole host of local projects that have enticed
teenagers off the street and into community work.

He has had a skate park built and the new year will see the opening of
the town's own Centre for Excellence, which will house a cinema and a
whole range of activities for residents, from crime prevention classes
to debating forums on local issues and tea dances for pensioners.

"Everything has been based around the whole idea of returning to the
concept of a medieval society - one in which people rely less on their
local authorities and more on themselves and their neighbors to turn
around their town," Sgt Brown explains as he settles back in his
knight's throne in the new centre. "Instilling a sense of personal
pride, of mannerly and compassionate behavior and of respect for oneself
and for others in a child in its formative years is, I believe, the way
to becoming happier and more responsible as they enter young adulthood.
If it saves one child from a life of crime then it has been worth it.".
. .

As Sgt Brown acknowledges, it will be a decade before he sees the fruits
of his work with the under-10s. So far he has seen an enormous decrease
in teenage petty crime in the town. Funding for all Mr Brown's projects,
30 in all, has come from a variety of sources including local firms, the
town council, police, the Countryside Agency and the Rotary Club. Back
on the streets where Sgt Brown, Pied Piper like, is greeted by almost
everyone with a cheery nod, he explains what prompted him to become so
involved in revitalising Spilsby.

While working as a bobby in a nearby town he was horrified to find a
local church had been vandalised by four nine-year-olds. They had thrown
conkers through the stained glass windows and torn up the wooden crosses
on the graves of the war dead. Instead of simply telling off the
youngsters in the presence of their parents, with the family's
permission he invited the boys to a meeting. A member of the War Graves
Commission explained the sacrifices the war dead had made and Mr Brown
told the boys the importance of revering ones church. "Those boys were
thoroughly ashamed and have never done anything like it again," he said.
"But it made me think how we were no longer instilling such values in
our children."

Long interested in medieval history, he decided he could use the era to
capture the attention of young people and harness their energies in
giving something back to their communities.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/11/13/nknight13.xml&sSheet=/news/2005/11/13/ixhome.html


SAM SMITH, GREAT AMERICAN POLITICAL REPAIR MANUAL - What law enforcement
tool does every shopping mall and big office building have -- but not
most neighborhoods? Their own police force. It is hard to imagine how we
can restore order to our communities without giving them some role in
creating and maintaining this order. Think, for example, about what
typically happens when a kid first gets into trouble -- minor
shoplifting, vandalism, a fight. The police are called to the scene. And
what do the police do? They remove the young person from the very
community against which the crime has been committed.

The implicit message is that your sin is against the city or the country
or the state, not against your neighbors or your community. Thus, from
the very start we teach the wrong lesson. Imagine instead that the
community had its own constables -- with police training and powers --
but who lived in the community, were known in the community and helped
the community maintain its own order. In minor non-violent offenses, the
first person on the scene would be the constable, who could quickly
bring the offender before a community judicial board instead of waiting
months for the matter to wend its way through the normal judicial
labyrinth. If found guilty, the offender would have to provide
restitution or perform community service.

This is not day-dreaming. The Spring 1994 issue of Policy Review
described the system of elected constables in Houston, TX. One of these
constables was Victor Trevino, who managed -- with the help of over 200
volunteer deputies (fully trained and with arrest powers) -- to cut the
crime rate 10%, arrest nearly 2,000 wanted parole violators, slash the
school truancy rate in half and bring back Little League after a 25-year
absence. Trevino, the first latino immigrant elected in Harris County,
worked in an inner city community of 150,000 people. All his volunteers
were fully trained and had the arrest powers of regular officers.

Neither is the notion of community-based restorative justice untested.
Writing in The Progressive Review, David Spero described how western New
York's Genesee County found itself with overflowing jail cells. It
turned to community service sentences and to recruiting non-profits,
schools, churches and road crews to assign hard work in lieu of jail
time. As Spero noted, for the criminals working with such institutions
it "was often their first positive contact with anyone in authority."

Then the county developed a system of victim support, including
restitution from offenders. A felon diversion program allowed screened
offenders a chance to put their lives together while their case was put
on hold. Only 5% of those in the program turned out to be repeat
offenders. Spero described one case: An 18-year-old sniper on LSD
seriously wounded two passers-by. He went through diversion for 18
months, including victim-offender conciliation. This conciliation helps
victims heal and forces offenders to confront the pain they have caused.
The young sniper finally received a short jail sentence plus community
service and now works, pays taxes, and raises a family in Genesee
County.

Communities can get involved in other ways, as in the a victim-offender
mediation program of LA's Centinela Valley. Director Steve Goldsmith
told Spero how is works: First we get the victim to agree to mediation,
then the young offenders and their parents. We hold the sessions at a
place convenient to the victim, with two volunteer mediators who have
gone through 40 hours of free training. The mediators let the victim and
offender work out the solution. The important thing is the kids have to
hear the consequences of their actions on others. Such programs take a
lot of effort. There are about 200 volunteer sponsors and victim
advocates in the Genesee program and more than a 100 community agencies
working with offenders. Yet there is no substitute for organic social
order. We can't just call the cops and think everything will be taken
care of.

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