35
Ways to Prevent Crime & Violence
There are many ways
people can take control and help prevent crime in their homes, in their neighborhoods,
and in their local schools. It's a matter of a little communication, a little
commitment, and a little time.
-In
Your Community
-In Schools
In
Your Community
1. Work with
public agencies and other organizations -- neighborhood-based or community-wide
-- on solving common problems. Don't be shy about letting them know what your
community needs.
2. Make sure that all the youth in the neighborhood have positive ways
to spend their spare time, through organized recreation, tutoring programs,
part-time work, and volunteer opportunities.
3. Set up a Neighborhood
Watch or a community patrol, working with police. Make sure your
streets and homes are well lighted.
4. Build a partnership with police, focused on solving problems instead
of reacting to crises. Make it possible for neighbors to report suspicious activity
or crimes without fear of retaliation.
5. Clean up the neighborhood! Involve everyone - teens, children, senior
citizens. Litter, abandoned cars, and run-down buildings tell criminals that
you don't care about where you live or each other. Call the city public works
department and ask for help in cleaning up.
6. Ask local officials to use new ways to get criminals out of your building
or neighborhood. These include enforcing anti-noise laws, housing codes,
health and fire codes, anti-nuisance laws, and drug-free clauses in rental leases.
7. Work with schools to establish drug-free, gun-free zones; work
with recreation officials to do the same for parks.
8. Develop and share a phone list of local organizations that can provide
counseling, job training, guidance, and other services that neighbors might
need.
9. If you see a crime or something you suspect might be a crime,
report it. Agree to testify if needed.
10. Learn about hotlines, crisis centers, and other help available to
victims of crime. Find out how you can help those who are touched by violence
to recover as quickly and completely as possible.
11. Recognize that it's already your problem if violence is about to
erupt in your neighborhood.
12. Consider an event that lets children turn in weapons, especially
those that might be mistaken for real firearms, in exchange for public thank-yous,
donated non-violent toys, books, or coupons from local merchants.
13. Start a discussion of neighborhood views on weapons in the home,
use of toy weapons by children in play, children and violent entertainment,
and how arguments should be settled.
14. Learn your state and local laws on firearms. Insist that these laws
be enforced vigorously but fairly. Support police, prosecutors, judges, and
other local officials who enforce laws designed to prevent gun violence.
15. Emphasize prevention as the preferred way to deal with violence.
Ask what schools, law enforcement agencies, public health agencies, libraries,
workplaces, religious institutions, child protective agencies, and others are
doing to prevent, not just react to, violence. What policies do they have to
prevent weapons-related violence? How can they help the community?
16. Volunteer to mentor young people who need positive support from adults.
Programs ranging from Big Brothers and Big Sisters to Adopt-a-School include
mentoring as a central ingredient.
17. Talk with children in the neighborhood about what worries or scares
them and about where and how they have felt threatened by violence. Interview
teachers, school staff, crossing guards, and bus aides.
18. Promote public service advertising that offers anti-violence programs
and services. Get several groups to cooperate in this effort. Include programs
to help kids headed for trouble.
19. Protect domestic violence victims (and their children) through policies
as well as laws that offer them prompt and meaningful response to calls for
help and appropriate legal recourse.
20. Organize to help clean and repair the parks and to report suspicious
and illegal activity to the police. Well-kept play equipment and organized activities
can attract people back to the parks in large enough numbers to discourage illegal
activities. Residents should insist that local government maintain parks, immediately
repairing vandalism or other damage.
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In
Schools
1. Adopt a
school. Help students, faculty, and staff to promote a sense of community
in the school and with the larger community through involvement in a wide range
of programs and activities.
2. Urge adoption of anti-violence courses that help children learn ways
to manage anger without using fists or weapons. Second Step, from The
Committee for Children, Resolving Conflict Creatively, from Educators
for Social Responsibility, and We Can Work It out!, created through Teens,
Crime, and the Community, are only three of many such courses.
3. Join with school and law enforcement in creating and sustaining safe
corridors for students traveling to and from school. Help with efforts to identify
and eliminate neighborhood trouble spots.
4. Help students through such opportunities as job skills development,
entrepreneurship opportunities, and internships.
5. Encourage employees to work with students in skills training, youth
group leadership, mentoring, coaching, and similar one-to-one and small group
activities. Make your facilities available for these activities when possible.
6. Provide anger management, stress relief, and conflict resolution training
for your employees. They can help build an anti-violence climate at home, at
school, and in the community. You might gain a more productive working environment,
too!
7. Speak up in support of funding and effective implementation of programs
and other resources that help schools develop an effective set of violence prevention
strategies.
8. Offer your professional skills in educating students on costs
and effects of violence in the community (including their school). Public health
personnel, trauma specialists, defense and prosecuting attorneys, and judges
are among those with important messages to deliver.
9. Help employees who are parents to meet with teachers by providing
flexible hours or time off; encourage employee involvement in sponsoring or
coaching students in school and after-school activities.
10. Develop an anti-violence competition, including speech, dance, painting,
drawing, singing, instrumental music, acting, play-writing, and other creative
arts. Get youth to help suggest prizes. Make it a community celebration.
11. Report crimes or suspicious activities to police immediately. Encourage
employees and families to do the same.
12. Establish business policies that explicitly reject violent behavior
by employees or others on the premises.
13. Report any crime immediately to school authorities or police.
14. Help to strengthen links between school services and the network
of community services that can help students and families facing problems.
15. Enlist children from elementary grades to senior high in solving
the violence problems in the school and community. Encourage them to teach violence
prevention to younger children, reach out to educate peers, work with adults
on community-wide problems, and identify and tackle community conditions that
they are concerned about.
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