Two part research paper

Part 1 –

For this assignment, you will be composing the introduction and review of literature sections of your research paper that is due in Unit VII. In Unit II, you selected your research paper topic, conducted research, and identified three articles that will be used (I have attached the research paper topic with the three articles for you). 

Now, you will present your introduction, which will include your thesis statement, and your review of literature, which should include at least five scholarly resources that relate to your topic. The resources can include the three from Unit II (see attached) and an additional two for this assignment. 

Please see the following Writing Center resources for help with constructing your introduction and literature review: 

Introductions and Conclusions

Abstracts

Literature Review

Transcripts for these resources can be found within the “Notes” tab to the right of each presentation. 

Be sure to include the following elements in this assignment: 

• APA title page, 
• APA abstract, 
• introduction (including your thesis statement), 
• review of literature, and 
• references page. 

Remember that your introduction should capture and focus the attention of your reader, present your topic, give background information on your topic, and present your thesis statement. 

Be sure that your literature review includes information related to the following: 

• deliberate indifference and its impact on the relationship between police and the group that your paper is focused on and 
• the psychological ramifications that police action taken against your group can have within a community. 

This assignment should consist of at least two pages, not including the title page and references page. All sources used should be cited and referenced properly using APA Style.

Part 2 – 

Instructions

In Unit V, your assignment was to begin writing the first part of the final research paper. This required students to submit the first several pages of their project: 

APA title page, 
APA abstract, 
introduction (including your thesis statement), 
• review of the literature, and 

references page. 

The final portion of the paper will include the following: 

• discussion of the literature; 
• analysis and findings of your research; 
• conclusions drawn from your research, including how the media can operate to help improve the relationship between the police and the community, especially in regards to citizen perceptions of police regarding use of force and/or excessive use of force; and 
• APA references, including all references used in the development of your paper. 

As you are combining the first part of your paper with the final portion, be sure to incorporate any feedback that you may have received from your professor in Unit V. Your research paper should consist of at least five pages.

All papers must be in APA Style that includes the items listed above and use of peer-reviewed journal articles, government documents, books, or monographs. Never use anything from newspapers, news outlets, blogs, websites, or anything Wiki as they are not academically acceptable, contain significant bias, or they are can be altered (Wikipedia). 

Running head: BUILDING BETTER RELATIONSHIP THROUGH YOUTH 1

BUILDING BETTER RELATIONSHIP THROUGH YOUTH 4

Building Better Relationship Through Youth Mentoring and Engagement

Student name

BCJ 4101

Columbia Southern University

Building Better Relationship Through Youth Mentoring and Engagement

Overview

The purpose of my research paper is to cover how the police relates to the youth within a community. This is established through mentorship and engagement programs that helps law enforcement build better relationships on a personal level. Youth mentoring is a perfect opportunity for police officers to build that rapport by commitment and establishing a foundation of trust with the young people.

Annotated Bibliography

Peterson, S. B., Burnett,Arthur L.,,Sr, & Halstuch, J. A. (2020). America’s new criminal justice system diversion program, the community acceptance program. Criminal Justice, 34(4), 23-25. Retrieved from https://search-proquest-com.libraryresources.columbiasouthern.edu/docview/2389218485?accountid=33337

In this journal article, the publishers, American Bar Association discusses the diversion programs that are increasing throughout the United States. These programs for juvenile are addressing multiple issues and problems to reduce expenses in the court and law enforcement activities.

The publishers are aware of the community acceptance program providing an alternative to arrest, conviction and incarceration. The publisher reflects on different programs that were established through the years and how it has evolve into a high completion rates. The publisher’s explanation of the program is descriptive and explains how it will enhanced police community relations free of crime and threats to the public. As well as bringing the law enforcement and communities closer together to improve the quality of life. This will be applied to my research paper by explaining the conflict that a youth can occur if incarcerated.

Clarke, A. (2017). The holistic effect of police officers mentoring “high risk” youth. International Journal of Evidence Based Coaching & Mentoring, 15, 123–134.

In this article, Clarke describes her time though out the 28 years she has been a police officer. Seeing the different challenges, obstacles, and aspect of a youth from being a high driven criminal because of their inherent criminal family. To a youth who still encounters social and criminal family history, but has control over their choices and is still successful. The author discusses the approach the police officer uses to reach out to those youth who are viewed as lost. Due to the society, they are involved in from either academically to behaviorally conform.

Clarke is an experience police officer that is well experience in the operational field and have knowledge in regards to mentoring youth. The author is exposed to the target group and has researched the youth who were mentored by police officers. This article will explain the process and effect of the police mentorship program with youth. It will further explain the impact the mentorship has on both the youth and the police officer themselves.

Forman Jr., J. (2004). Community Policing and Youth as Assets. Journal of Criminal Law & Criminology, 95(1), 1–48. https://doi-org.libraryresources.columbiasouthern.edu/10.2307/3491381

Within this article, it suggests the flaws within the community policing. How the new policing model has left out a huge group that is critical and that is the youth and young adults. The author describes in the 1970s and 1980s on how the police community relations was of importance and was growing, but hard to maintain. He explains in the article on how community policing needed to change its approach and structure to start thinking that the community is an ally instead of an enemy.

A professor of law, Forman is aware of the community policing having the potential to impact the perspective of how police officers are seen. The author is optimistic with his explanation and his experience and research on community policing and creating an image for the youth as they are an asset for the community. I will use this article to explain the different approaches to police-community relations and how it impacts the youth and the officers.

America’s New Criminal Justice System
Diversion Program, the Community Acceptance
Program
Peterson, Scott B 1 ; Burnett, Arthur L, Sr 2 ; Halstuch, Jonathan A 3 1 hief executive officer at Global

Youth Justice Inc.sustainable, and volunteer-driven models to 2 has the distinction of serving as

America’s first African American United States magistrate judge, as the lead judge of the Superior Court

of the District of Columbia in dealing with children and youth juvenile and welfare issues, and now as

vice-president of Global Youth Justice Inc. 3 cofounder and chief technology officer at the

CyberConverged data security corporation RackTop Systems Inc., a volunteer in one of the US’s earliest

youth courts, and board chairperson for Global Youth Justice Inc. . Criminal Justice ; Chicago

 Vol. 34, Iss. 4,  (Winter 2020): 23-25.

ProQuest document link

ABSTRACT (ENGLISH)

Despite no federal support, and little state support over the past 25 years, these local youth/teen/student/ peer

court and peer jury diversion programs have rapidly been expanding across the US, and have emerged as the most

replicated juvenile justice diversion program in the US since the first juvenile court in Cook County, Illinois, in 1899.

The CAP will address multiple issues and problems to include reducing court dockets, expenses of court

proceedings, expenses for law enforcement activities, and the alarmingly high arrest and incarceration rates in the

communities, as well as improving the credibility of our courts and justice system through active citizen

participation. An admission of guilt is required for acceptance into the CAP. […]the CAP operates as a sentencing

hearing, as opposed to a trial, which would have been utilized to determine guilt or innocence. The CAP will

improve and enhance the community by: (1) reducing the backlog and case docket of adult criminal cases; (2)

providing an alternative to arrest, conviction, and incarceration; (3) offering a civic approach to a fair process for

imposing an additional sanction other than more formal criminal justice involvement; (4) reducing the economic

disparity associated with the disproportionate confinement of indigents and minorities; (5) reducing the effects of

a negative stigma individuals often acquire after being labeled a convicted criminal and/or experiencing

confinement; (6) sending a message that every crime will result in a consequence; and (7) increasing satisfaction

of local law enforcement given that their arrests are not plea bargained out with little or no sanction imposed.

[…]the CAP will address some of our society’s upcoming demographic challenges.

FULL TEXT
Despite decades of unanimous support, advocacy, funding, and justification for more criminal justice system

diversion programs in the United States, there have been few new authentic diversion programs established, and

none of them have proven to be scalable on a state or national level. Unlike specialized courts such as drug court,

authentic diversion programs are not a court, and they can be established locally in lieu of arrest, bail, jail, or

conviction, and used to avoid a criminal record.

Recognizing the need for criminal justice system reform, and the absence of a sustainable, affordable, and

scalable criminal justice system diversion program, efforts began five years ago to remedy this situation. In 2014,

conceptualization, development, and design began on a new front-end local criminal justice system diversion

program to be called the “Community Acceptance Program” (CAP). The CAP will be for adults age 18 and older who

have committed minor crimes, offenses, and violations. Local communities will determine if an adult offender is

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eligible to proceed in the CAP for a second or even third time, based on the criteria they establish for this criminal

justice system diversion program.

Modeled on Existing Youth-Led Diversion Programs

Recognizing the considerable benefits a viable diversion program could have on a local, state, and national level,

for purposes of immediate and longterm criminal justice system reform, organizers behind the development of this

CAP looked to the US’s existing youth-led and volunteer-driven youth justice diversion program called youth/

teen/student/peer court and peer jury, established over 25 years ago and now in more than 1,800 local

communities in 48 states, the District of Columbia, and at least 10 tribes. This innovative youthled youth justice

diversion program is not only a textbook example of a local grassroots movement in America, but it also has

spread to 10 other countries, and is referred to as an excellent example of “access to justice” and “peoplecentered

justice.” Just like in America, adults from the legal community outside America are driving the local expansion of

these youth-led diversion programs, which is commonly referred to as the Global Youth Justice Movement.

Despite no federal support, and little state support over the past 25 years, these local youth/teen/student/ peer
court and peer jury diversion programs have rapidly been expanding across the US, and have emerged as the most
replicated juvenile justice diversion program in the US since the first juvenile court in Cook County, Illinois, in 1899.

Just like youth/teen/student/peer court and peer jury diversion programs, the CAP will utilize the same volunteer-

driven programmatic design, which is affordable, scalable, and sustainable. There is considerable interest in

implementing the CAP in many of the communities already operating a youth/teen/student/peer court and peer

jury, which will likely fuel the rapid local expansion of the CAP in America.

Structure and Benefits of the Community Acceptance Program

Local communities will determine if the CAP will be a voluntary or an involuntary criminal justice system diversion

program. The CAP will not be a specialized court or docket, but rather a local community diversion program

operated by public and/or private organizations in collaboration. Local community officials and leaders will decide

which agency or organization will administer the CAP. It may be a nonprofit, police department, bar association,

district attorney office, court, probation office, or another agency or organization.

The CAP will handle low- to mid-level crimes and misdemeanors, and possibly even some nonviolent and other

types of felonies. Narcotic distribution and serious violations of federal and state laws will not be eligible for the

CAP. Local communities operating within state and federal laws will determine what types of crimes, offenses, and

violations will be adjudicated in a local CAP.

The CAP will address multiple issues and problems to include reducing court dockets, expenses of court
proceedings, expenses for law enforcement activities, and the alarmingly high arrest and incarceration rates in the
communities, as well as improving the credibility of our courts and justice system through active citizen

participation. The CAP will involve volunteer adults who successfully complete a multiweek training program,

including former offenders and retired and senior citizens wishing to stay active in community affairs-and such

participation will enhance overall the sense of community involvement in promoting the welfare and public safety

of the entire community. The CAP will salvage individuals’ lives by reducing future criminal activity, and encourage

these individuals to become contributing citizens to the community, even after completing their assigned peer

sanction.

The CAP will be a new voluntary program alternative to arrest, conviction, and incarceration for adult offenders

ages 18 and up. In several states like New York, a 16- or 17-year-old may be eligible for the CAP if there is no other

diversion program available. Adult offenders, as determined by local communities within applicable laws, who have

been either formally arrested or formally apprehended with an arrest pending are eligible to be referred to the CAP

for alternative sentencing and disposition by volunteer adults serving in roles ranging from judges, attorneys,

clerks, and bailiffs to jury members.

An admission of guilt is required for acceptance into the CAP. Therefore, the CAP operates as a sentencing

hearing, as opposed to a trial, which would have been utilized to determine guilt or innocence. The CAP is a

program and not a legally authorized court by state statute or constitution or the US Constitution. Adult

community leaders determine allowable sentences the volunteer adults can impose based on one or more crimes,

offenses, and violations. Most often, it will be a range of mandated community service hours, such as 1-50 hours,

in addition to other requirements such as classes, drug testing, restitution, and other reasonable imposed

sanctions by a jury of their peers.

The CAP sentencing hearing will likely take place in local courtrooms across the US when they are not in use

during the evening. A convenient location already paid for with taxpayer funding that is safe and friendly to public

transportation would be most desirable and is available in most communities. Just like youth/teen/student/peer

court and peer jury diversion programs, it is likely only necessary for the CAP to have one or two full-time and/ or

part-time staff.

Failure to complete the CAP will result in stricter consequences when the case is referred back to the criminal

justice agency or court of origin. Like youth/teen/student/ peer court and peer jury diversion programs, this swift

and more severe approach within the rule of law will result in offenders having exceptionally high completion rates

of their peer-imposed sanctions. This will reduce the court backlog every time an offender successfully completes

the CAP. Law enforcement referral of cases directly to the CAP where an official arrest did not take place pending

successful program completion further reduces paperwork and added financial costs to the court and community-

not to mention the considerable benefits to the adult offenders who made a foolish mistake they hopefully will

learn from having done. A goal of the CAP is to not create a burdensome diversion program, but rather to blend in

and assist with the processing of cases for improved efficiency and effectiveness where improvement is needed.

The CAP will do both, while strengthening a commitment and personal responsibility to the community and its

citizens.

The CAP will improve and enhance the community by: (1) reducing the backlog and case docket of adult criminal

cases; (2) providing an alternative to arrest, conviction, and incarceration; (3) offering a civic approach to a fair

process for imposing an additional sanction other than more formal criminal justice involvement; (4) reducing the

economic disparity associated with the disproportionate confinement of indigents and minorities; (5) reducing the

effects of a negative stigma individuals often acquire after being labeled a convicted criminal and/or experiencing

confinement; (6) sending a message that every crime will result in a consequence; and (7) increasing satisfaction

of local law enforcement given that their arrests are not plea bargained out with little or no sanction imposed.

Moreover, the CAP will address some of our society’s upcoming demographic challenges. People are living longer,

and with that we need to be prepared for more senior citizens entering America’s criminal justice system. A senior

citizen may be suffering from dementia and forgetfulness, and pay for some items but forget to pay for one or two

other items put in a shopping bag or elsewhere on his or her person. Such behavior may result in apprehension

and/ or arrest. The forgetfulness may be genuine, and thus there is no intent to steal or commit larceny. Such an

individual should not be subject to an unlawful theft accusation but should get treatment for the mental deficiency

or take the precaution of going shopping with another individual, which would protect the senior citizen from

picking up objects and forgetting that he or she has them. Further, to the extent that medical assistance is

necessary or medication to deal with the mental deficiency is required, that should be provided rather than

subjecting the individual to a criminal conviction. These types of crimes will almost certainly increase in America

in the coming years, and these types of crimes are an excellent type of referral to the CAP.

Caveat

The situations described in this article are not intended to be exhaustive but merely illustrative of the need for a

new approach to designing a criminal justice system diversion program that is scalable, sustainable, affordable,

practical, volunteer-driven, and left up to the local community to modify to meet its needs and resources. The CAP

would provide multiple benefits, including reduced court dockets, and improve the credibility of our courts and

criminal justice system through active citizen participation. It would prevent the overcriminalization of a large

portion of our society in the United States.

In addition to drug addiction or dependency requiring intensive treatment, there is another cautionary concern we

must have in running such a diversion program-that is, the questioning of the participant in the program should not

involve other matters to an extent as to violate that person’s right against self-incrimination under the Fifth

Amendment. If there are other unsolved crimes which come to light, that person’s right to counsel must be

respected as to any matter other than what brought that individual to the attention of the CAP. It is normally

presumed that the individual is a first-time offender, and if the offender starts talking about other unsolved crimes

and such information starts to be disclosed, the administrator of the CAP program should cease questioning the

individual and advise that individual to seek counsel and disclose no further details or incriminate himself or

herself in the unsolved crime. Ideally, that person should be referred to a public defender office or legal aid office

that handles potential criminal matters or can refer that individual to a resource to talk with counsel in an attorney-

client relationship in confidence.

With reservations as to these two conditions, the CAP should be a most effective means of improving the quality

of our criminal justice system in this nation, result in more effective usage of law enforcement personnel, improve

police community relations with its population, and improve the quality of community life free from crime and

threats to public safety, at less cost to the supporting taxpayers of that community. It should bring law

enforcement personnel and community citizens closer together in mutual respect and improve the quality of life in

that entire community.

What’s Next for the US’s Community Acceptance Program in 2020?

1. In early 2020, organizers of the CAP will convene a meeting in Washington, D.C., comprised of leaders from

criminal justice agencies and organizations, criminal justice policy and research professionals, and foundations for

purposes of designing a US strategy on this new criminal justice system diversion program.

2. In mid to late 2020, organizers of the CAP will announce a call for applications for at least 10 CAP demonstration

sites from the US’s 50 states, five territories, the District of Columbia, and Native American/Alaskan native tribes

and councils.

3. At the end of 2020, the demonstration CAP sites will be announced, along with the dates and times for the first

CAP two-day implementation training for teams of five adults from each of the demonstration sites.

CAP Contact Information

The CAP website, www.CommunityAcceptanceProgram. org, will launch in mid-2020. A Twitter account

@AdultJusticeCAP has been launched and has passed 11,500 followers. Any questions, comments, interests in

becoming involved, and requests for additional information on CAP may be emailed to

CAP@CommunityAcceptanceProgram. org. You may also contact Scott Peterson, who is leading the US’s strategy

for the CAP, at (202) 468-3790.

DETAILS

Subject: Violations; Law enforcement; Citizens; Diversion programs; Community; Grass roots

movement; Convictions; Sanctions; Older people; Criminal records; Imprisonment;

Adults; Alternative sentencing

Location: United States–US

Publication title: Criminal Justice; Chicago

Volume: 34

Issue: 4

Pages: 23-25

Database copyright  2020 ProQuest LLC. All rights reserved.
Terms and Conditions Contact ProQuest

Publication year: 2020

Publication date: Winter 2020

Publisher: American Bar Association

Place of publication: Chicago

Country of publication: United States, Chicago

Publication subject: Law, Criminology And Law Enforcement

ISSN: 08877785

Source type: Trade Journals

Language of publication: English

Document type: Journal Article

ProQuest document ID: 2389218485

Document URL: https://search.proquest.com/docview/2389218485?accountid=33337

Copyright: Copyright American Bar Association Winter 2020

Last updated: 2020-04-21

Database: Criminal Justice Database

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• America’s New Criminal Justice System Diversion Program, the Community Acceptance Program

International Journal of Evidence Based Coaching and Mentoring
Special Issue No. 11, June 2017

Page 123

The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at: http://ijebcm.brookes.ac.uk

The holistic effect of police officers mentoring ‘high
risk’ youth

Annita Clarke, Luton, UK
Contact: neets879@btinternet.com

Abstract

This article reports on an Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis study that provides a
description of the experiences of a sample of college students who were mentored by police officers.
It includes an account of personal motivation for the topic and the features of the investigation,
specifically with regard to academically underachieving youth. Throughout the study, there was a
heavy concentration on any ‘high risk’ circumstances present and their possible influence. The article
provides a brief description of findings to illustrate the holistic effect of the mentoring journey and
concludes with the limitations of the study and the implications for practice and further research.

Key words: interpretive phenomenological analysis, police officers, high risk, youth mentoring.

Introduction

I have been a police officer for over 28 years, with the majority of this time spent dealing face to
face with either perpetrators or victims of crime. I have always been motivated by the need to
understand why people make the choices they do, but also what I could do to enlighten them about the
range of options they may not have considered. I could debate the nature verses nurture issue of the
environmental factors of the child, ‘creating’ the anti-social and criminal enterprise driven youth and I
have seen evidence of this, as learned behaviour from an unfortunate or inherently criminal family is
undeniable (McCord, 1991), however, I have also seen the autonomous youth who have made positive
choices and succeeded on all levels in spite of their socialisation and familial antecedents. I would
humbly say that I would include myself in this statistic. The HM Government paper ‘Every Child
Matters’ (DoH, 2003) leading to the Safeguarding Act of 2013 delves deeper in respect of the
vulnerability inherent within their environments and the increased risks associated to these situations,
proposing that children or youth are susceptible to radicalisation or mental health symptoms and that
they could be groomed into sexual exploitation, prostitution, drug taking and other criminal activity.
So the question for this research was ‘how can we reach out to out to those youth who could be
viewed as ‘lost’ to society, because they are failing either academically or behaviourally to conform’?

Within any role we play, there few substitutes for one to one relationships where positive regard
(Rogers, 1986) is a factor. My operational experience has taught me that the exposure to role models
and personal attention from an influential adult is minimal for youth as a target group, and that the
impact of introducing personal attention can be monumental. This view is evidenced within the
comprehensive work by Muncie (2014, p.100) where he references Durkhiem’s ‘Normality of Crime’
theory. This is also supported by Kornblum (1985) in his ‘Growing up Poor’ study, where he identified
the influential nature of mentors. Congruent findings were produced by Werner and Smith (1982)
where high risk children were studied. Rutter (1987 p.237) argued that at-risk children with one good
relationship were less likely than others to develop conduct disorders. The impact of this absence of
an influential adult role-model cannot be measured as there are too many other factors which could

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Special Issue No. 11, June 2017

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The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at: http://ijebcm.brookes.ac.uk

influence the outcome (Muncie, 2014). However, the introduction of a positive intervention, such as
mentoring for these young people could provide subjective data which may indicate an effect for them
as individuals (Smith et al., 2009).

The introduction of police officers as mentors was a considered choice as it is unknown how their
inclusion would affect the development a trusting relationship. Drury (2003) provides research
indicating an individual-blaming agenda and power-play for the lack of ability to communicate from
both the adult and youth perspective. Within this study, Drury argues that stereotypes of the adult
mentor from the adolescent mentee perspective and visa-versa, are depicted as often detrimental for
the development of relationships. The youth were expected to be hostile, sullen and unforthcoming
with adults failing to listen to them, and needing only to get their own message across. However,
police officers interviewed by Drury and Dennison (2000) as part of an original study, stated, they
aimed to be honest, open and not talk down to adolescents, interpreted by Drury and Dennison as an
effort to gloss over the power difference by treating adolescents as equals. This is supported by
Michael and Mehrota (2015), who also discuss the need for symbiosis in the relationship and the need
for an absence of a power ratio creating an authentic youth/adult relationship. Conversely, DuBois
(2002) suggests that professional people who are already in helping or supportive roles may have a
greater insight in relation to their own attitudes, ability to reflect and better able to listen and tolerate
difficult feelings.

The specific police force within the study has faced immense pressure to work further with the
communities it serves in recent years (5-year Strategic Policing Plan). The diverse political and
religious nature of the communities served provides their own challenges (Community Tension
Survey- confidential document). These are played out in local and national media, where the police
are depicted as robustly managing warring factions of protesting groups (Bedfordshire on Sunday,
24th November 2014). As a separate community issue, but no less concerning has been the continuing
gun crime within the town where over the last 4 years there have been numerous shootings resulting
in a number of fatalities, mainly involving teenage gang members (BBC news report, 15/05/13). I felt
that possible positive interventions could be explored in an attempt to prevent the seemingly natural
progression of youth from the disenfranchised, failing student to potentially committing violent and
criminal activity (Lakind & Atkins, 2015, Carb & Matjasko, 2012).

I decided to concentrate on identified disenfranchised 6th form college students in my research and
both in the spirit of Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) but also with reference to an
empirical gap I identified in the literature (Smith et al., 2009). My aim was to provide the youths who
were mentored by police officers with a voice throughout and to chronologically signpost any effects
or impacts they had recognised from their personal reflections of their mentoring journey. It was
evident from the initial interviews I held with each of the five students that there were factors or
circumstances within their environment or physical or psychological being that constituted ‘high-
risk’. Lloyd (2013) talks about the detrimental effects of poor health and well-being, suffering
bullying and poor educational aspiration and achievement as a direct consequence of this familial
situation. It would be correct to say that all of these factors were represented to a greater or lesser
degree within these initial discussions.

The social world of adolescents has changed, as have the recognised added responsibilities and
types of negative influencers they may be vulnerable to (Pittman, 2012; Beier et al, 2000). Although
generalisation is vital in research to identify trends and patterns of behaviour, an individual’s attitude
and internal meaning-making can alter dramatically depending on their own experiences and
socialization as has been seen within Beiers (2000) study. Explaining the limitations of youth
mentoring when supporting high risk individuals, Rhodes (2002; p. 255) suggested that ‘mentoring

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The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at: http://ijebcm.brookes.ac.uk

programs have proven that they can powerfully influence positive development among youth’. It is
this positive change that maintains a commitment to youth mentoring of high-risk groups is
fundamental, considering the lack of personal positive influencers in their lives as described by
Lakind and Atkins, (2015). These authors also provided an outline of the types of youth who would be
considered to be ‘high-risk’, including those who are affected by poverty, unstable housing,
unemployment and family composition. As already emphasised mentoring cannot be the remedy to
the youth situation as a whole, but there has been research produced highlighting that that the personal
growth and ability to make decisions as a result of the one to one sessions in an adult/youth mentoring
relationship can reduce the likelihood of problems associated with transitions into adulthood
(Simmons et al, 1973). These relationships can be separate or additional to recognised relationships
with parents and teachers (Hope et al, 2013: Schwartz et al, 2012).

This article will continue with my motivation for beginning and continuing the research. A year
on and the mentoring programme is now in its second successful year at the same college. An
examination of the gaps in the empirical literature provides further motivation to examine the
possibilities behind this process. I will also compare three methodologies, identifying the reasons why
IPA was chosen. I will describe the sample subjects, who they were and why they were chosen for
this study. Once the foundations of the study have been identified, I will work through the study itself,
my reflections, the identification of the subordinate themes and discuss any links between the
students’ experiences of the mentoring and their journeys through college. All of this information
will then be drawn into the conclusions and finally any limitations and my own reflections.

My motivation for the subject

It would be difficult to provide a personal context to this research without first outlining my
empathy to the students included within it. The students chosen for this programme are all
academically struggling for various reasons, a position I can remember occupying throughout my
school and college years. I was deaf and attended a school for the hearing impaired until I was 8 years
old. Once allowed to attend state school, I was quiet, lacking in confidence, bullied and unable to
contribute in class. Until the age of 12 years, I was also kept off school, as a young carer, looking
after my father who had multiple sclerosis. Although with surgery, my hearing improved, and my
father sadly died when I was 12 years allowing me access to more school hours, but I did not extend
my educational attainment and scraped through my ‘O’ and ‘A’ levels.

Determined to do something useful in my life, I joined the police but have never forgotten what it
was like to be that struggling student at the back of the class. Having been a successful police officer
for 28 years, promoted to the rank of Inspector, I know that change can happen. It is determined by
self-will, values and experiences but can be affected by those around us, who can influence our
thoughts and behaviour.

Existing gaps in the literature

It appears that there is a need for more empirical research which concentrates on the experience of
the mentee, providing a more holistic account of their environment, health and well-being, familial
circumstances and academic attainment (Schwartz et al, 2012, Fazel et al, 2104) and the overall effect
of the mentoring process. The positive effects of mentoring have been suggested to require the mentee
to have the capacity for meaning-making and be receptive to mentoring (Cox, 2003, DuBois et al,
2011; Tolan et al, 2013). These effects are also reliant on their external social influencers and the
subsequent internal attitude and value formation being compliant with the intervention for it to be
accepted by the adolescent (Baxter-Magolda & Porterfield, 1985). It could be argued that what

International Journal of Evidence Based Coaching and Mentoring
Special Issue No. 11, June 2017

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contributes to youth vulnerability irrespective of their external circumstances is their internal lack of
self-esteem (Schwartz et al 2012, Hope et al, 2013, Giunta et al, 2013). This lack of personal regard
and confidence in one’s self and own abilities has causal links to delinquency, poor academic
attainment and risky behaviour (Lakind & Atkins, 2015, Carb & Matjasko, 2012) and although their
links have been established as present, the order in which they appear is impossible to predict.

Over the last two decades there has been more empirical literature exploring the goals and
outcomes of youth mentoring (Meier, 2008, Fletcher & Mullen, 2012, Slack et al, 2013, DuBois &
Karcher, 2014, Aderibigbe et al, 2014, Lakind & Atkins, 2015). The progression of youth mentoring
appears to be in response to various educational, societal and economic changes and the development
of social awareness regarding the impact of these changes on young people (Rustique-Forrester,
Riley, 2001; Balogh, Mayes & Potenza, 2013). Despite this, a lack of empirical concentration on the
holistic meaning-making of the youth during and post implementation of a mentoring intervention
reveals a gap in ascertaining the personal experience of young people participating in mentoring
programmes – a gap which this study seeks to address.

Acknowledging that a mentor requires enhanced communication skills and some appreciation of
the application of empathy, I have suggested that police officers may provide an underused and under-
researched resource for this type of mentoring, This detail indicates that not only do the officers have
the ability to converse and develop essential emotional intelligence required for a successful
mentoring relationship, they have the experience and ability to tolerate the difficult feelings that may
be discussed by the high-risk youths. They also belong to a culture where development by this method
is common-place. Police officers are continually assessed and expected to develop within their roles.

Methodology

The interpretive idiographic viewpoint in a research setting includes the researcher’s values, prior
knowledge and interpretations of meaning and personal understanding (Smith et al., 2009). Thus,
acknowledgement of the researcher’s interpretation is essential for establishing the required validity
of the research. It is also important to recognize that the aim within the phenomenological method of
inquiry is to obtain insight into participants’ experiences, by enabling participants to reflect within
that experience during the research (Husserl & Solomon, 1927). As this study was dependent on the
interpretation of the meaning-making from the students contributing, it was vital that the approach
would support the open discourse required for personal and subjective disclosure of individual
thoughts, feelings and values. It is for this reason that a phenomenological, interpretive approach
seemed to be the best fit (Smith, 2007; Lopez & Willis, 2004) in terms of the research paradigm
adopted.

Supporting the hermeneutic, phenomenological approach, the interview questions were semi-
structured (Smith et al., 2009). This enabled individual meaning-making from the subject and
subsequent reflection and interpretive reflexive practice in terms of the process within the interpretive
phenomenological analysis principles. The principle aim in hermeneutic approaches within qualitative
research is to explore and analyse the ‘life-world’ of people using non-directive interview techniques
to collect information (Smith et al., 2009). This viewpoint is pertinent within the youth environment,
the idiographic influences such as peer pressure, academic expectations, cultural and religious norms
and stereotypes of those involved as relevant frames of reference must be considered (Muncie, 2014).
This premise supports the motivation research linked to the self-determination theory conducted by
Standage, Duda and Ntoumanis (2005).

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Due to the underpinning interpretive philosophy, knowledge obtained can be difficult to validate
in forms of natural science and from a purely scientific viewpoint (Yardley, 2000). Reflecting on the
purpose of the research, it is essential that the current research explores the meaning placed on the
experience of mentoring by the young people themselves. For this reason interpretive
phenomenological analysis seemed most appropriate (Smith et al., 2009). There are other methods of
data collection and analysis within the qualitative field and others were considered prior to choosing
IPA. The most obvious competitor to IPA was the case study methodology (Yin 2013), as it also
involves the ‘in-depth’ exploration of the individual’s experience, generating data via similar methods
as IPA. However, this methodology was discounted for this current research as the concentration of
the findings would be on the processes within the organisation case or project and the transferability
of the model to similar organisations. Another possible option for the research was an action research
methodology. This again, is process driven and would struggle to provide the depth of analysis
required when the subjective meaning placed on the mentoring received by the college students is
pivotal to the findings.

Sample selection
The college concerned has an overall attendance of 2,700 students, 120 of which are within the
cohort of those struggling academically. The selected sample was a purposive and homogeneous cross
section of those within a particular cohort of students within a specified academic year at this
particular sixth form college. Therefore, all of the participants were selected as they provided a
perspective relevant to the phenomenon being studied. Within the mentoring programme where young
people are supported by police officers, 25 students were mentored albeit only five students were
chosen for the research process, as IPA requires small numbers of subjects to allow for in depth
analysis to be performed (Smith et al., 2009, p. 51). Participant details are included in Table 1. This
core group of 25 students who were provided with the mentoring opportunity, allowed for substitutes
to be identified should any of those being interviewed leave the programme for any reason.

Table 1. Participants

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To achieve the in-depth understanding of their mentoring journeys, I interviewed the five students
more than once. This research allowed for me to use the individual disclosures within the first
interviews to direct me towards possible thematic concepts for the second and third interviews. (Smith
et al., 2009).

Access to the students was subject to the safeguarding principles related to the Prevent strategies
of 2013. As the decision was made by the college that the police officers contributing their time to this
programme would not be DBS (Disclosure and Barring Service) checked, there was a need to
facilitate the mentoring process by enabling this to take place in the sight of a supervisor or tutor. On
some occasions, this would include having the mentoring within the classroom itself, where the class
mates of the mentee were. The researcher interviews were conducted in a separate room as I am DBS
checked and could be left alone with the students whilst being entrusted to uphold the relevant
safeguarding principles (DoH, 2003).

Utilising the six principles of qualitative research analysis (Smith et al., 2009), I identified step by
step how the IPA methodological criteria had been achieved through familiarisation, coding,
searching for themes, reviewing the themes and looking for connections, emerging themes, moving to
the next case, and writing up, identify patterns across the cases. In line with IPA, I analysed each
individual’s experience before undertaking the thematic comparison. This consideration provided a
phenomenological journey of the mentoring process and a subsequent detailed analysis to be
conducted, providing a useful conclusion and theoretical links to previous relevant studies. A similar
process was used to exemplify adherence to Yardley’s model of validity (2000).

Researcher’s reflexivity and data analysis
I chose not to take notes during the three interviews with each student as I wanted to listen
intently to the responses provided without distractions. It was also vital that there was no disturbance
to the participants’ flow. I have kept a continual personal account of the dynamically unfolding
process. The subjective engagement with the process was challenging when the obvious requirement
for objective reasoning was evident. To enable this to be achieved in line with Smith et al. (2009), and
maintaining IPA principles by providing additional data analysis reflexivity, I made extensive notes
following each interview, acknowledging the influence that my own assumptions, values and
experience may have to my interpretations (Gilgun, 2010). By doing this it has also enabled me to
understand Gilgun’s (2010, p.173) phrase, ‘we are often unaware of what we think, believe and the
implications until we write about them and discuss them with others.’ These notes provided a social
mirror in terms of my own bias, prejudice and barriers to objectivity. Having received the completed
transcripts, I read them line by line whilst listening to the intonation of the voices to attempt to
interpret the tiniest nuance for each of the students. This was incredibly valuable and enabled me to
provide a more complete picture of both the person but also the journey they were on. It also enabled
me to comprehensively identify the confidence, self-assuredness and clarity of direction and choice
gained through the mentoring process.

Identification of subordinate themes
It was evident within the initial reading of the transcripts that there were emergent themes for
each subject. These created a journey of development, recognition and potential opportunities
facilitated by the introduction of the mentoring process. By maintaining the identified themes within
an individual mind map, relating to one person’s journey, I was able to plot in a pictorial format, the
holistic effect of mentoring for each of the students. The data from the interviews remained
consistently denoted across the mind maps in the same colours e.g. 1st interview was in red pen, 2nd in

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blue and 3rd in green. This enabled any patterns of behaviour or experience to be identified across the
5 candidates, creating themes (see Figure 1).

Figure 1. Example Mind Map

These themes were then paralleled across the experiences and meaning making of all five
students, culminating in the identification of the three concept themes providing the foundation of the
overall research analysis. I will provide an outline of each of these concept themes and proceed later
to offer a more contextualised account of each theme.

Findings – Concept, Emergent and Subordinate Themes

Three key themes emerged across the participants; The authentic self, Education and aspiration
and Police officer mentors as represented in the figure below (see Figure 2).

Theme One – The Authentic Self
It was clear throughout the interviews, that the students had an appreciation and an understanding
of their authentic selves which appears to work alongside the façades created for a myriad of
situations including: to hide disappointment or nervousness or created to attempt to fulfill the
expectation of others. When asked about the impression he made on others, Shah in his first interview,
described himself as, ‘a joker, or a clown.’ He acknowledged that he needed to be more mature and
‘calm down a bit and joke around,’ but his friends, ‘…. are used to a funny guy.’ For Kevin, his
dyslexia has often impacted on his confidence, when describing himself he says, ‘I would say sporty,
funny, sociable. I wouldn’t put academic because I know I’m not.’ Carols lack of confidence has
been the result of years of bullying in High school, ‘in a classroom, I just feel like I’m being judged.’

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There was some division in these different personas of the individual interviewed but the overlap
was hazy, causing confusion and sometimes frustration as they attempted to separate themselves from
their perceived unsuccessful self, and emerge as the mature and potentially successful self. Their lack
of confidence was an unvarying barrier to accepting this potential outcome. There was a suggestion
from the students that the police officers may provide the panacea for this lack of confidence. Usman,
in his first interview, had high hopes for the mentoring and the impact of the process, ‘I think the
police officer might help me to develop as a person and develop my confidence.’

Theme Two – Education and

Aspiration

Pivotal to this theme was the reflections on their situations which provided an opportunity for the
individual students to assess their current position and reflect on the circumstances or behaviour
which resulted in their present station. There was a consistent theme highlighted amongst the majority
of those interviewed of regret, internalising the blame for their lack of success in their GCSE results.
This negative emotion, compounded by their continuing GCSE pressure in college and the
psychological impact of self-fulfilling prophecies in terms of expected outcomes of current studies
and potential aspirational levels have impacted on all interviewed. Kevin in his first interview,
eloquently described his self-disappointment, ‘I was pretty angry at myself because I – not angry at
myself but I know mum had high expectations, high hopes for me…’

This was countered with the improvements made within his performance as Kevin reported in his
last interview, held post mentoring that, ‘…before mentoring, I used to get Ds, now I’m getting Cs
and pushing to get Bs. She even gave me a merit in art.’ For Usman, his lack of self-confidence was a
barrier to success, ‘I think I was nervous from the inside and I think that stopped me from being
confident.’ With Usman, he was so softly spoken initially that I had to ask him to sit closer to the
microphone so that his voice would be recorded. By the third interview, I had learned to move the
microphone to a normal distance. His posture had changed and although he didn’t yet command the
room, you could now tell he was in it.

Figure 2. The three themes

MEANING MAKING
Stages of
coding

Concept
Themes

Category
-Clusters
Themes

Emergent
Themes

Theme 1

The authentic self

The real me

The divided self

Transformation

Confidence and self-worth

High risk antecedents

Theme 2

Education and

Aspiration

Why am I in this position?

Experience shaping

outcomes

Misguided priorities

Learning Difficulties

Theme 3

Police officer mentors

Expectations of the
relationship, the reflective
journey and the personal

effects of the process

Positive attitude

Limitations of the process

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Theme Three – Police Officer Mentors
Within the initial interviews, it was clear that the majority of the expectations of the mentoring
relationship revolved around the previous experiences the students had with members of the police
service as a whole. Sara explained that she thought that the process might be, ‘a little awkward.’ This
seemed to relate to the fact that the officer would be a stranger to her rather than the stranger would be
an officer. Shah expressed that it, ‘would be a great chance and opportunity to actually talk to a
man….’ Kevin, introduced his friends within the first interview as ‘aint the greatest of people,’
explaining that they, ‘do bad stuff…in gangs…just like to fight really.’ He was concerned about how
speaking to a police officer would look, reflecting about this in the third interview he considered his
feelings prior to the mentoring at the beginning, ‘I thought because my friends don’t like police
officers, so I don’t know how it will look.’ He went on to explain the confidence that has developed in
him since the mentoring, ‘I used to care what people think, like I was hiding behind, but now, I just
say, this is me; if you like me, then you like me. If you don’t, we don’t get along.’ For Shah, he
explained that, ‘I’ve not been messing about in lessons, he (mentor) made me realise having talks with
him that it’s not about being just a clown and messing about, you need good grades and do something
with your life.’

Discussion

Remaining true to the value-driven perspective of delivery, the aim was to enable confidence and
personal growth rather than intellectual development as this was seen to occur as an apparent natural
consequence of the mentoring. It has been essential that the social and personal context of the
individual student has been respected in order to ensure the learning taking place is specific to their
personal needs and social resources. This is the strength of the chosen mentors, as police officers,
their experience and empathy has greatly assisted in rapport building and the development of trust
throughout.

The effect on the meaning-making of these students was quite profound. The semi-structured
interviews enabled a narrative journey to be captured, detailing their opinions, feelings, self-image
and self-belief throughout. It was clear that the students had embraced the mentoring sessions. They
had engaged with the mentors and had developed more self-awareness and self-efficacy as a result,
both having and accepting a challenging way forward that they were confident to achieve. This
research has generated more in-depth understanding in how and why mentoring by police officers
may contribute to and support the holistic meaning-making of the adolescent student. It has suggested
the related skills and experience which have proved contributory to the building of trusting
relationships. Specifically, it has been the empathetic, non-judgmental approach of the police officers
that has appears to have provided the environment for sensitive challenge of existing defeatist
attitudes and promoting transformational learning.

Conclusions

Each of the students suffered from confidence issues, which manifested in avoidance of difficult
situations, poor self-belief and the development of self-fulfilling prophecies or conversely acting the
fool, drawing controlled attention rather than uncontrolled ridicule. The introduction of mentors for
youths who demonstrated high risk behaviours resulted in the majority of those participating reducing
the negative behavior but there were some for whom the mentoring could not be the panacea due to
their existing socio-economic and societal influences. However, the subsequent meaning making of
the youth provided more relevant reflection material and enabled the possible effects related to the
introduction of the police officers into the lives of these young people to be subjectively measured by
the students through phenomenological interpretation.

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Limitations
The current research took place in a highly diverse town, in a 6th form college setting. Working
with high risk groups can be fraught with danger as their lifestyles and inability to plan, organise and
commit can make research incredibly difficult. These specific fields were chosen to provide relevant
data for the research aim but they do serve to restrict the generalisation possibilities of the results.
The longitudinal impact of the mentoring and the development of the students’ transition from mentee
to self-mentor would provide an advancement of the current research.

My own reflections
The first interview with students enabled me to ascertain their perspective on their holistic
environment and circumstances. It was remarkable that although they were picked at random from the
original 25 (Boost programme candidates) each of them fell into the definition of ‘high risk’ students
in one or more elements, be they specific learning difficulties, dyslexia, dyspraxia or ADHD,
depression and suicide attempt due to bullying at high school or performing the role of carer for those
at home (Lloyd, 2013). Following the mentoring process, all the students interviewed expressed the
benefit of having the confidentiality clause, which helped provide the trust required for establishing an
environment conducive to disclosure, enabling them to be explicit during their mentoring sessions. I
reflected on the need for confidentiality and whether this might have been more of an issue since the
mentors, being police officers, were required to disclose and report on everything discussed with
them. Having created an open discussion, it was made clear to the students that anything could be
discussed. This lack of censorship on subject or degree of disclosure was obviously assisted by the
confidentiality clause explained at the commencement of the mentoring process, but I have also
reflected about the pros and cons of the use of police officers within the mentoring process and there
appeared to be an unconscious disassociation that took place for all the students who went beyond the
first interview, allowing for the discussion to take place.

Even though the students knew they were talking to police officers who were potentially difficult
to shock, it appeared that they had unconsciously forgotten their status during mentoring, allowing
full and frank conversations to take place and enabling the students to be completely honest about
their feelings and experiences. This contradiction in assimilation seems to have negated any potential
barriers caused by difference in age and position. The associated power and control and the possible
hindrance to rapport which may have been caused by this has been mitigated by the way that the
officers chosen have approach the sessions (Drury, 2003). By demonstrating an empathetic persona
towards these students, the mentors may have experienced a contradiction with what they might
otherwise have assumed was going to be the experience, thus enabling the trust to be established and
the relationship and open discussion to be maintained (Rutter, 1987; Hope et al, 2013; Schwartz,
2012).

References

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Annita Clarke is a police officer who has ascended to the rank of Inspector during her 28 year career.
Influenced by the difficult circumstances of her own childhood, which was compounded by the lack
of any overt support received along the way. She strives to enable others to achieve their own
potential by providing coaching or mentoring for them at various points of their personal and working
lives.

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009

1

-4169/04/9501-0001
THE JOURNAL OF CRIMINAL LAW & CRIMINOLOGY Vol. 95, No. I

Copyright © 2004 by Northwestern Utliversity, School of Law Primed in U.S.A.

CRIMINAL LAW

COMMUNITY POLICING AND YOUTH AS
ASSETS

JAMES FORMAN, JR.

INTRODUCTION

Over a decade afiter it was first introduced, community policing
remains the most important innovation in American policing today. Called
“the most significant era in police organizational change since the
introduction ofthe telephone, automobile, and two way radio,”‘ community
policing has been supported by the past three Presidents, Congress, every
major police organization, and much ofthe public? A broad cross-section

Associate Professor of Law, Georgetown University Law Center. I presented an earlier
version of this paper to the law faculties at Columbia University, Fordham University,
Georgetown University, New York University, University of Michigan, and Yale University,
and am grateful for the comments I received. 1 would like to thank Akhil Amar, Michael
Barr, David Cole, Arthur Evenchik, Jeff Fagan, Owen Fiss, Sam Gross, Don Herzog, Dan
Kahan, Jerry Kang, Randy Kennedy, Steve Mastrofski, Jim Ryan, Mike Seidman, Reva
Siegel, Gerry Spann, Bill Stuntz, Susan Sturm, and Adrien Wing for helpful comments, and
Edeanna Johnson-Chebbi for help with the manuscript. Margaret Rodgers, Tamaria Kai
Perry, Nicole Devero, Kristen Johnson, and Om Kakani provided first-rate research
assistance.

‘ Edward R. Maguire & William Wells, Community Policing as Communication Reform,
in LAW ENFORCEMENT, COMMUNICATION AND COMMUNITY 33,33 (Howard Giles ed., 2002).

^ Edward R. Maguire & Charles M. Katz, Community Policing, Loose Coupling, and
Sensemaking in American Police Agencies, 19 JuST. Q. 503, 504 (2002); see also Wesley G.
Skogan, Preface to COMMUNITY POLICING: CAN IT WORK?, at xii (Wesley Skogan ed., 2004)
(community policing “is so widely known and popular with the public and city councils that
it is hard to fmd a police chief that does not claim that his or her department is on board
because they have adopted this or that community-friendly program”);WESLEY G. SKOGAN
ET AL., O N THE BEAT: POLICE AND COMMUNITY PROBLEM SOLVING 21 (1999) (reporting that
by 1997, fifty-four percent of police departments had adopted some type of community

1

2 JAMES FORMAN, JR. [Vol.95

of the legal academy also endorses community policing. Those who seek
new ways for inner-city communities to mobilize against disorder and
crime support it,̂ as do others whose principal concem is reducing police
abuse of minorities.’*

In this Article, I will argue both that there is much to be said for
community policing and that it has not reached its potential. The flaw, I
suggest, is that a critical group—youth and young adults—has largely been
left out of the new policing model. Community policing rejects the
discredited “warrior” approach to policing, in which inner-city communities
were viewed as implacably hostile to the policing enterprise. Yet I will
show how this warrior model persists for the young, who are still viewed as
targets of policing rather than as assets to it.

The bad news is that leaving young people out of this new model of
policing has tremendous implications. Public safety tums, to a great extent,
on what the young do and what is done to them. This is the group most
likely to engage in criminal conduct, to be victims of crime, and to be
targeted by police. By treating the young exclusively as threats to public
order, the state creates and reinforces attitudes of hostility and opposition.
This has negative consequences for public safety, because oppositional
attitudes can increase law-breaking and make it less likely that citizens will
provide information to law enforcement. Further, as the central
representative of the state in inner-city communities, what the police do
(and what they teach by what they do) has implications beyond policing.
The alienation generated by the warrior model creates costs that are bome
not just by youth themselves, but by their neighbors and the rest of society.

The good news is that the warrior model of policing the inner-city
young is built on premises that are faulty, and therefore can be corrected.
Despite the powerful image of urban youth as threats, most delinquent and

policing and another twenty-eight percent were in the process of doing so).
‘ See Dan M. Kahan, Reciprocity, Collective Action, and Community Policing, 90 CAL.

L. REV. 1513, 1527-30 (2002); Tracey L. Meares, Praying for Community Policing, 90 CAL.
L. REV. 1593(2002).

” See DAVID COLE, N O EQUAL JUSTICE 192-94 (1999); CHARLES OGLETREE ET AL..

BEYOND THE RODNEY KrNG STORY: AN INVESTIGATION OF POLICE CONDUCT IN MINORITY

COMMUNITIES 127-30 (1995); Anthony C. Thompson, Stopping the Usual Suspects: Race
and the Fourth Amendment, 74 N.Y.U. L. REV. 956, 1010 (1999) (advocating “a race-
conscious community policing model”); see also PETER ELIKANN, SUPERPREDATORS: THE
DEMONIZATION OF OUR CHILDREN BY THE LAW 193-97 (1999) (arguing that community
policing is a preferable altemative to incarceration-oriented approaches for adolescent
offenders); THE L.A. COUNTY SHERIFF’S DEP’T, A REPORT BY SPECIAL COUNSEL JAMES G .

KOLTS 285 (July 1992) (“[W]e view the immediate. Department-wide implementation of
community policing as our single most important recommendation for reduction of excessive
force claims.”).

2004] COMMUNITY POLICING 3

criminal conduct is concentrated among a small percentage of young
people. The rest—the majority—are law-abiders. Moreover, they are the
principal victims of the law-breaking minority. They therefore have a
profound stake in keeping their neighborhoods (and themselves) safe.
Coupled with their interest in reducing police abuse and harassment, this
gives the young powerful incentive to participate in the community policing
enterprise.

Moreover, just as the warrior model alienates young people from the
police and society, community policing offers to do the opposite. A
growing body of empirical research establishes that people’s satisfaction
with the legal system, including the police, is determined not by whether
they are satisfied with the outcome of the decision, but instead by whether
they believe the process was fair. These fmdings have powerful
implications for community policing. Not all community policing is equal,
as I will explore. But some versions offer citizens the opportunity to
participate in regular group deliberations with neighbors and local officers
to set community policing priorities. To date, young people have not
generally been involved in this type of policing. But a model that included
the young would place them alongside other community members and
officers in trust-engendering deliberations regarding matters of community
safety. This process would, in tum, increase law enforcement’s legitimacy
in their eyes, by increasing their respect for the process of police decision-
making.

This Article proceeds in four parts. In Section I, I will outline how
community policing developed out of dissatisfaction with the antagonism
caused by the warrior model. Because community policing is a term that
has been used to describe quite disparate concepts, in this Section I will
define what I mean by it. I will also emphasize what I view as the
enormous potential of community policing to increase local regulation of
law enforcement. I will do this by contrasting community policing to what
I call the “judicial control” model, in which judges attempt to regulate
police conduct through enforcement of the Fourth Amendment.

In Section II, I will describe how community policing has failed to
change the way the inner-city young are policed. Young people are less
likely than older citizens to be involved in the community meetings and
other venues where the community policing agenda is set. Further, they are
more likely to be stopped, disrespected, and illegally searched by the police
on the streets. I will then tum to the rhetoric regarding the young, and
argue that here too they appear solely as threats and objects of intervention.
I will suggest that part of the reason for this portrayal is that community
policing gained currency just as youth crime, especially youth homicide.

4 JAMES FORMAN, JR. [Vol.95

increased dramatically. Because our national imagination was fixed on the
image of the adolescent and post-adolescent “super-predator,” it was
difficult to see that same group as potential assets to the community
policing agenda.

In Section III, I will justify my claim that we should view youth as
assets, and I will explore the costs of our failure to do so. First, I will
describe the investment the young have in influencing police behavior and
fighting crime. Second, I will outline society’s stake in using all
mechanisms at its disposal—including law enforcement—to reinforce
bonds of trust and faith in law’s legitimacy among the inner-city young.
Drawing on sociological research, I will suggest that many youth and young
adults in urban areas are “walking a tightrope,” between what Elijah
Anderson has called “street” and “decent” values.^ Perhaps the greatest evil
of warrior policing is that, because it is perceived as illegitimate and unfair,
it encourages its targets to adopt street values. On the other hand, I will
argue, the state has the power to increase law’s legitimacy by adopting
policing practices that are perceived as procedurally fair.

In Section IV, I describe in greater detail what a model of community
policing that engages young people would look like. Through an
examination of novel and promising policing experiments in Chicago and
Boston, I will outline the model’s core principles. I will also describe some
potential pitfalls, and discuss how they might be avoided.

I. THE POTENTIAL OF COMMUNITY POLICING

A. BACKGROUND TO COMMUNITY POLICING

Community policing grew out of a variety of sources,^ but of central
importance was the growing consensus in the 1970s and 1980s that police-
community relationships in many cities had become untenable.^ Many
departments and individual officers had long subscribed to the “warrior
model” of the detached, aloof crime-fighter who daily battles the hostile

^ ELIJAH ANDERSON, CODE OF THE STREET: DECENCY, VIOLENCE AND THE MORAL LIFE OF

THE INNER CITY 35-65 (1999).
* A comprehensive history of community policing has not yet been written. What 1 offer

here is a highly truncated summary. Existing historical summaries include Debra
Livingston, Police Discretion and Quality of Life in Public Places: Courts, Communities,
and the New Policing, 97 COLUM. L . REV. 551, 565-78 (1997), and Maguire & Wells, supra
note 1, at 33-39.

‘ See, e.g.. Jack R. Greene, Community Policing and Organization Change, in
COMMUNITY POLicrNG: CAN IT WORK?, supra note 2, at 30, 35 (describing minority
communities’ alienation from police in the 1960s).

2004] COMMUNITY POLICING 5

enemy—the public.^ Indeed, it was something of a matter of faith in many
city forces that citizens were inalterably opposed to the police, and therefore
would never cooperate regardless of what the police did. William
Westley’s 1970 study, for example, found that seventy-three percent of
officers believed that the public was “against the police” or “hates the
police.” Thirteen percent believed that “some are for us, some against us,”
while only twelve percent believed that the public “likes the police.”‘
Similarly, a Kemer Commission study found that most big city policeman
believed that the public saw them as “brutal, annoying, and
inconsiderate.”‘”

Community policing gained further support when police officials
confronted new criminological findings demonstrating the inadequacy of
many traditional police tactics.” This research, conducted principally in the
1970s, questioned the value of increasing the number of patrol officers,
showed the limited utility of random and saturation patrol, and cast doubt
on the efficacy of rapid response to 911 calls. Moreover, it suggested that
police officers spent relatively little time fighting violent crime, and instead
spent the bulk of their shifts passively patrolling and providing other
services. Finally, the research showed that most crimes are not solved by
investigation, but rather because an offender is arrested immediately on the
scene or the police are given specific identifying information such as a
name, address, or license plate number. In total, the research undermined
many of policing’s core assumptions, thereby creating an opening for
reformers to offer new approaches.’^

GEORGE L . KBLLING & CATHERINE M . COLES, FIXING BROKEN WINDOWS: RESTORING

ORDER AND REDUCING CRIME IN OUR COMMUNITIES 82-85 (1996).

‘ WILLIAM WESTLEY, VIOLENCE AND THE POLICE: A SOCIOLOGICAL STUDY OF LAW,

CUSTOM AND MORALITY 93 (1970); see also WESLEY G. SKOGAN & SUSAN M . HARTNETT,

COMMUNITY POLICING, CHICAGO STYLE 79 (1997) (less than twenty percent of Chicago
officers believed that police-citizen relations were very good, about half believed that people
do not respect the police, over seventy percent thought that citizens do not understand the
problems of the police, and over eighty percent said that most people do not know how
difficult the job of police is); JAMES Q . WILSON, THINKING ABOUT CRIME 117 (Rev. ed.

1983) (“The view of many big city police officers seems to confirm the ‘war’ theory of
police-community relations. Data gathered at least as far back as 1960 suggest that most
big-city officers see the citizenry as at best uncooperative and at worst hostile.”).

‘” W. Eugene Groves, Police in the Ghetto, in SUPPLEMENTAL STUDIES FOR THE
NATIONAL ADVISORY COMMISSION ON CIVIL DISORDERS 103,106(1968).

” For a review of the research discussed in this paragraph, see JEROME SKOLNICK &
DAVID BAYLEY, THE NEW BLUE LINE: POLICE INNOVATION IN SIX AMERICAN CITIES 3-5

(1986).
‘̂ Some of the early reform efforts—upon which community policing today is built—

include team policing, community crime prevention, problem-oriented policing, and fear
reduction strategies. Wesley G. Skogan & Jeffrey A. Roth, Introduction to COMMUNITY

6 JAMES FORMAN, JR. [Vol.95

With crime and fear of crime rising, community relations at a low, and
research questioning the efficacy of the current approaches, some within
policing circles began to conclude that the warrior strategy was failing.’^
But replacing the warrior strategy required a paradigm shift that was not
entirely easy. It meant questioning the entrenched belief that the public—
especially minority residents of inner cities—was implacably hostile to the
policing enterprise. This required police to recognize that although inner-
city residents were more critical than were other Americans, substantial
majorities nonetheless held generally favorable views of police.”* Even
more profoundly, it meant understanding that even those who were critical
did not want less policing—they generally wanted more, and better,
protection.’^ As the Kemer Commission found, “[t]he strength of ghetto
feelings about hostile police conduct may even be exceeded by the
conviction that ghetto neighborhoods are not given adequate police
protection.”‘*

The recognition of this reservoir of community support for policing
was connected to a broader understanding that even high-crime
communities are made up principally of law-abiders. Community policing
was built on the import of these findings, and its challenge was to replace
the warrior model with one premised on the notion that the police and
community could become co-producers of public safety, rather than hostile
antagonists.”

B. DEFINING COMMUNITY POLICING

But exactly what is community policing? This definitional issue arises

POLICING: CAN IT WORK?, supra note 2, at xviii-xxiii.
‘^ KELLING & COLES, supra note 8, at 85.

‘•’ SAMUEL WALKER ET AL.. THE COLOR OF JUSTICE: RACE, ETHNICITY AND CRIME IN

AMERICA 91 (2000).
” For a thoughtful discussion of how black citizens balance the desire for additional

police presence with concems about unfettered police discretion, see generally Richard R.W.
Brooks, Fear and Fairness in the City: Criminal Enforcement and Perceptions of Fairness
in Minority Communities, 73 S. CAL. L . REV. 1219 (2000).

‘* NAT’L ADVISORY COMM’N ON CIVIL DISORDERS, REPORT OF THE NATIONAL ADVISORY

COMMISSION ON CIVIL DISORDERS 307 (1968); see a/50 George L. KeWmg, Acquiring A Taste
for Order: The Community and Police, 33 CRIME & DELINQ. 90, 94 (1987) (“Despite the
contrary belief of some citizens and police that minority residents do not respect police, the
great majority d o . . . . They believe that police have not been a tangible presence, engaged
with citizens to develop neighborhood peace and security.”).

” Cf SUSAN MILLER, GENDER AND COMMUNITY POLICING 194 (1999) (“Community

policing programs often adopt the language of the business world, which entails seeing
residents as ‘customers’ who are ‘invested’ in the joint production of community stability.”).

2004] COMMUNITY POLICING 7

because the term has come to refer to a wide variety of police tactics.’^ For
Tracey Meares and Dan Kahan, two of community policing’s leading
advocates, it can mean neighborhood prayer vigils, gang loitering
ordinances, and “order maintenance” strategies, in which police
aggressively prosecute offenses such as panhandling, vagrancy, or
prostitution.” In the press, community policing can mean officers playing
basketball with kids in housing projects and smiling at babies.^”

These tactics, however, are just that—tactics. At its core, community
policing is not a set of tactics, but instead is an organizational strategy for
running a department. In its most promising form, this strategy has two
essential elements. First, it requires that citizens, at the neighborhood level,
meet regularly with police to jointly defme neighborhood crime problems
and set police priorities.^’ This consultation serves four functions: (1) it
allows neighborhood residents to express their concems and needs; (2) it
gives police a forum to educate citizens about neighborhood crime issues;
(3) it allows citizens to state complaints about the police themselves; and

‘* David Bayley was one of the first to point out that community policing “means
different things to different people—public relations campaigns, shopfront and mini-police
stations, rescaled patrol beats, liaison with ethnic groups, permission for the rank-and-file to
speak to the press, Neighborhood Watch, foot patrols, patrol-detective teams, and door-to-
door visits by police officers.” David H. Bayley, Community Policing: A Report from the
Devil’s Advocate, in COMMUNITY POLICING: RHETORIC OR REALITY 225, 225 (Jack Greene &
Stephen D. Mastrofski eds., 1988). More recent evaluations of community policing indicate
that Bayley’s analysis remains true today. See Jeffrey A. Roth et al.. Trends in the Adoption
of Community Policing, in COMMUNITY POLICING: CAN IT WORK?, supra note 2, at 4
(“Reasonable people could (and still do) argue over” the proper objectives and strategies of
“real community policing.”); Skogan & Roth, supra note 12, at xvii (Although “police chiefs
report that they are moving toward” community policing, “[w]hat they say they are doing
when they do community policing varies a great d e a l . . . . ” ) ; see also Michael E. Buerger,
The Challenge of Reinventing Police and Community, in POLICE INNOVATION AND CONTROL
OF THE POLICE: PROBLEMS OF LAW, ORDER AND COMMUNITY 103, 104-5, 108-11 (David
Weisburd & Craig Uchida eds., 1993).

” Kahan, supra note 3, at 1527-30 (order maintenance strategies); Meares, supra note 3,
at 1612-19 (prayer vigils); Tracey L. Meares & Dan M. Kahan, Law and (Norms of) Order
in the Inner City, 32 LAW & SOC’Y REV. 805, 819-21 (1998) (gang loitering ordinances).

^° Michael Massing, The Blue Revolution, THE N.Y. REVIEW OF BOOKS, NOV. 19, 1998, at
32, 33 (describing 1996 Time Magazine cover story).

^’ LORIE FRIDELL ET AL., POLICE EXECUTIVE RESEARCH FORUM, RACIALLY BIASED
POLICING: A PRINCIPLED RESPONSE 100 (2001) (“Police department efforts to provide
significant means for community input into police operational and policy decisions are the
backbone of community engagement.”); Maryann Wycoff, The Benefits of Community
Policing: Evidence and Conjecture, in COMMUNITY POLICING: RHETORIC OR REALITY, supra
note 18, at 103, 105 (“It is the commitment to listening to citizens (as opposed simply to
talking to them) and to taking seriously citizens’ definitions of their own problems that
distinguish the better programs of today from ‘community-relations’ programs ofthe 1960s
and 1970s.”).

8 JAMES FORMAN, JR. [Vol.95

(4) it gives police a chance to report back on what actions they have taken
and what successes (or not) they have had.’̂ ^ The second critical element is
that, citizens, again at the local level, take responsibility for helping to
address the problems that they have identified.’̂ ^

The distinctiveness of my definition becomes clear when it is
contrasted with how others have described community policing. Consider,
for example, David Cole’s account:

[Community policing], already under way in many departments across the country,
tries to make the police an integral part of the neighborhoods they serve through more
decentralized police stations, more foot patrols, and regular meetings with citizens in
the community. Where such programs develop effective channels for communication
between the police and the community about their respective needs, the programs can
play an important role in restoring corrununity trust and overcoming the adversarial
relationships too many police departments have with disadvantaged communities.̂ **

In Cole’s account, no one “channel of communication” is regarded as
primary. What’s said at “regular meetings” is not necessarily more
significant than what is said when officers talk to citizens while on foot
patrol or informally at decentralized police stations. In my account, by
contrast, these informal contacts matter,^’ but formal, deliberative meetings
between police and community residents are the heart ofthe matter.^*

Chicago, which I will discuss in additional detail in Section IV, has

^̂ Maguire & Katz, supra note 2, at 510-11.
^̂ KELLING & COLES, supra note 8, at 168; William Geller, As a Blade of Grass Cuts

Through Stone: Helping Rebuild Urban Neighorhoods Through Unconventional Police-
Community Partnerships, 44 CRIME & DELINQ. 154 (1998); Wesley G. Skogan, The
Community’s Role in Community Policing, NAT’L INST. OF JuST. J., AUG. 1996, at 31, 34.

^̂ COLE, supra note 4, at 192-93.
•̂ ‘ See infra text accompanying notes 76-78.
*̂ Many police programs that call themselves community policing do not systematically

involve community residents in the process of establishing policing priorities and tactics.
Jeffrey Fagan and Garth Davies have argued that the New York Police Department
abandoned such a community-centered practice in favor of one where community needs and
standards were defined by police leadership, relying on a sophisticated data driven
management accountability system known as Compstat. Jeffrey Fagan & Garth Davies,
Street Stops and Broken Windows: Terry, Race and Disorder in New York City, 28
FORDHAM URB. L . J. 457, 472 (2000); see also Skogan & Roth, supra note 12, at xxiii (“New
York’s model also did not feature any community input into identifying problems or setting
police priorities, ignoring the concept of partnership that figures so prominently in the
community policing paradigm.”). Michael Buerger warned that such an approach is not
atypical; too often community policing “is no more than a unilateral police decree, defining
the police relationship to the public in symbolic form only, without any necessary change in
police practice or structure.” Buerger, supra note 18, at 105; see also Greene, supra note 7,
at 50 (warning that police may not have changed their practices, but instead “effectively
repackaged their efforts with a community and problem-oriented label”).

2004] COMMUNITY POLICING 9

perhaps the most thoroughly developed (and thoroughly evaluated)
community policing program. In the Chicago Altemative Police Strategy
(CAPS), community policing is implemented principally through “beat
meetings,” v ‘̂here citizens and police from a particular neighborhood meet
regularly to discuss and define community crime and order problems. In
addition, Chicago employs “District advisory committees,” where selected
neighborhood representatives meet regularly with District commanders to
discuss neighborhood conditions and police responses.^^

As I have mentioned, a variety of tactics can emerge from this
organizational strategy. For example, citizens often say what matters most
to them are neighborhood disorder issues—which can include anything
from abandoned cars to rowdy teenagers. In other neighborhoods, the
problems might include loitering outside an un-staffed recreation center,
chronic drug dealing on a particular comer, or unsolved robberies.^^
Sometimes citizens wish to complain about the tactics of individual police
officers, including racial profiling, stopping of innocent young people in the
neighborhood, or disrespecting neighborhood residents.^’ In each of these
cases, community policing gives citizens a way to raise these issues directly
with police and one another, a process for collective deliberation, and a
mechanism to prompt both govemment and collective community action.^”

C. COMMUNITY POLICING AS REGULATION

This description of community policing highlights one of its greatest,
and at the same time most underappreciated, virtues—it provides a way to
achieve meaningful community-based regulation of a broad swath of police
conduct. Such community-based regulation is not the only way to influence
police behavior; indeed, it has not been the principal mode of regulation
with which the legal academy has been interested. The focus of the legal
scholars has traditionally been on what I call the “judicial control” model of
regulating police. But I will argue here that community policing has the
potential to regulate police more effectively than does the traditional model.

^̂ SKOGAN & HARTNETT, supra note 9, at 110-60.
^* ARCHON FUNG, EMPOWERED PARTICIPATION: REINVENTING URBAN DEMOCRACY 153-

58, 179-210 (2004) (describing beat meetings in three Chicago neighborhoods).
•̂ ‘ Jenny Berrien & Christopher Winship, An Umbrella of Legitimacy: Boston’s Police

Department-Ten Point Coalition Collaboration, in SECURING OUR CHILDREN’S FUTURE: NEW
APPROACHES TO JUVENILE JUSTICE AND YOUTH VIOLENCE 200, 216 (Gary S. Katzmann ed.,

2002); Jeffrey Fagan, Policing Guns and Youth Violence, 12 CHILDREN, YOUTH, AND GUN
VIOLENCE 133, 137(2002), a? www.futureofchildren.org.

‘” This process does not always work equally well. In Section IV, I discuss institutional
arrangements that impact the effectiveness of this process.

10 JAMES FORMAN, JR. [Vol. 95

The judicial control model of regulating the police is premised on
judicial oversight of police-citizen contacts, principally through
enforcement of the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition against unreasonable
searches and seizures.^’ Defenders of the judicial control model typically
criticize the post-Warren Court for cutting back on Fourth Amendment
protections, and argue that police over-reaching and abuse requires more
vigilant judicial enforcement ofthe Fourth Amendment.^^

This approach has not gone unchallenged. Some of community
policing’s staunchest defenders take the opposite perspective, arguing that
pervasive judicial regulation has hamstrung police, who they say need more
discretion.” George Kelling, for example, says that community policing is
“inherently proactive,” and that such a preventive approach to crime
fighting has inevitable consequences for police departments and local
govemments.

The main consequence is that police strategy shifts from a reactive and inherently
passive model to a preventive interventionist model that reopens policy issues about
police handling of the homeless, drunks, drug dealers and users, the emotionally
disturbed, and minor offenders that many believed had been addressed once and for
all during the period following the 1960s. This strategic change takes police to the
edge, or even over the edge, of constitutional law—at least as it has been interpreted
over the past 30 years.

Though I am advocating a form of community policing, I do not do so
on the grounds that police need license to go “over the edge . . . of
constitutional law.”^^ I do not share the view of community policing

” There are innumerable examples of this approach. Some of the most thoughtful
include BERNARD HARCOURT, THE ILLUSION OF ORDER (2001); Albert W. Alschuler &
Stephen Schulhofer, Antiquated Procedures or Bedrock Rights?: A Response to Professors
Meares and Kahan, 1998 U. CHI. LEGAL F . 215; David Cole, Foreword: Discretion and
Discrimination Reconsidered: A Response to the New Criminal Justice Scholarship, 87 GEO.
L.J. 1059 (1999); David Harris, Frisking Every Suspect: The Withering o/Terry, 28 U.C.
DAVIS L. REV. 1 (1994); and Tracey Maclin, Race and the Fourth Amendment, 51 VAND. L.
REV. 333(1998).

‘^ See Cole, supra note 31, at 1071; Lenese Herbert, Bete Noire: How Race-Based
Policing Threatens National Security, 9 MiCH. J. RACE & L. 149, 157 (2003); Yale Kamisar,
In Defense ofthe Search and Seizure Exclusionary Rule, 26 HARV. J. L. & PUB. POL’v 119,
122-25(2003).

^̂ See Dan M. Kahan & Tracey L. Meares, Foreword: The Coming Crisis of Criminal
Procedure, 86 GEO. L.J. 1153 (1998). For Kahan and Meares, the modem criminal
procedure regime tightly constrains police “and subject[s] them to stringent judicial
monitoring.”

Id

. at 1168. They argue that while such an approach may have made sense in
the historical context in which it arose, it no longer does. Id. at 1166-71.

•'” GEORGE L . KELLING, U.S. DEP’T OF JUSTICE, “BROKEN WINDOWS” AND POLICE

DISCRETION 9 (1999).

2004] COMMUNITY POLICING 11

advocates who argue that the judiciary has over-regulated police. To the
contrary, I argue that the police are under regulated in some important
ways. In fact, my suggestion is that both sides of this debate overstate how
much the Fourth Amendment matters to what happens on the street. The
pro-discretion camp overstates the extent to which judicial decisions have
limited police discretion. And the pro-regulation camp overstates the extent
to which the Fourth Amendment can ever effectively regulate police-citizen
encounters. What both sides overlook is how much of what the police do is
beyond the Fourth Amendment’s constraints. The truth is that no matter
how vigorously it is enforced, the Fourth Amendment governs a small slice
ofpolicing.

To see the limits of regulation via the Fourth Amendment, consider the
following scenario presented by Tracey Maclin, a leading proponent of the
judicial control model. His article. Race and the Fourth Amendment, opens
with a description of an incident that he says is “illustrative of the low-
visibility, high-tension police confrontations that often occur in black
neighborhoods and with black men:”

It was 72 degrees and sunny in Homestead, a town just south of Pittsburgh . . . .

At 3:10 in the aftemoon, the police and the young black men standing on Amity are
playing the usual cat-and-mouse game. Two officers in a cruiser drive slowly past the
men and stare, silently sending the word: don’t hang too long. The men shrug the
police off, walking casually away, but only until the car is out of sight. Then they
regroup.

The game continues for the rest of the day and into the night. Police drive quietly by
three more times. On the fourth pass, they order the men to move or “somebody’s
going to jail.”

Finally, two of the men give it up and leave for home. On the way, police stop and
search them. An officer notices a marijuana cigarette on the sidewalk and asks where
it came from. The men say they don’t know. The police let them go.

A half-hour later, officers stop three more of the original group on Amity Street and
pat them down.

No arrest is made. But the message has been sent.”

From the perspective of the men in this example, and others like them,
the episode raises numerous issues, in addition to the legality of the
officers’ decision to search them. Why were the police in that
neighborhood? Why were they patrolling in that manner? How long did
the police have the men under surveillance, and why? What remedies exist.

‘ ‘ Maclin, supra note 31, at 333 n. 1.

12 JAMES FORMAN, JR. [Vol.95

since the men were searched but not arrested? What are the mechanisms to
hold the officers accountable? What opportunities are there for community
members to complain to these officers or their supervisors about their
conduct? What structures exist to facilitate policy change based on that
dialogue? And what crime and disorder is going unaddressed while the
officers are playing this “cat and mouse game”?

Despite the breadth of issues raised, a focus on judicial enforcement of
the Fourth Amendment requires Maclin to propose a solution that is quite
narrow—he suggests that once a defendant has raised evidence of race-
based targeting, the govemment should be forced to provide a race-neutral
explanation for the stop.^’ Because this is regulation under the Fourth
Amendment, Maclin is limited to focusing on the moment of the stop or
seizure of the citizen. But as the example makes clear, from the citizen’s
perspective, the stop or seizure, while significant, is not all that matters.

One response to the problem I have identified is to offer a vision ofthe
Fourth Amendment that would sweep more than simply the stop itself into
the inquiry. For example, one reading of “search” would include the period
of purposeful surveillance that preceded the stop in Maclin’s example.^^
Terry v. Ohio does not indulge this reading—remember that in Terry the
officer watched Mr. Terry for ten to twelve minutes before actually making
physical contact with him, but the Court implied that the Fourth
Amendment did not come into play until the officer touched Terry.”’ But
even if the Court were to view the matter differently than it did, this broader
view of “search” to include surveillance would only help a little. Much
police conduct, including most of what upset the men in Maclin’s example,
would remain beyond reach of effective enforcement of the Fourth
Amendment.

Perhaps even worse than the fact that it covers only stops, the judicial
control model has almost nothing to say about the largest category of illegal
stops—those that uncover no incriminating evidence. Because such
searches rarely get reviewed in court, there has long been a question of how
common they are. Though many familiar with policing have always

^’ Id. at 340-41. I must stress that 1 do not intend to single out Maclin for criticism.
Instead, 1 am simply using this example as a way to highlight an endemic tendency in the
Fourth Amendment literature: to describe the problem (discriminatory policing) and the
solution (tighter judicial regulation of Fourth Amendment seizures) with little discussion of
whether the proposed solution would in fact remedy the problem.

^* Akhil Reed Amar, Terry and Fourth Amendment First Principles, 72 ST. JOHN’S L.
REV. 1097, 1102-04 (1998); see also William J. Stuntz, Privacy’s Problem and the Law of
Criminal Procedure, 93 MiCH. L. REV. 1016, 1021 (1995) (arguing the importance ofthe
right not to be stigmatized by being singled out and treated as a suspect).

” 392 U.S. 1, 19n.l6(1968).

2004] COMMUNITY POLICING 13

suspected that a substantial percentage of searches are unconstitutional,
there has been little empirical data on the subject. One ofthe problems with
the data is that the rate of unconstitutional searching has typically been
analyzed by examining the results of suppression motions.”*” But searches
that lead to suppression motions are a tiny (and likely unrepresentative)
sample of all searches. That sample does not include, for example, searches
that do not lead to arrests or those in which prosecutors dismiss cases (and
cases occasionally are dismissed precisely because the prosecutor concludes
the stop was bad).

More recent studies have tried to overcome these problems. For
example. New York and federal officials recently looked at the stop and
frisk practices of New York police officers. Though they found that a
remarkably high fifteen percent of searches were unconstitutional, they
relied on data from the officers themselves, which was frequently lacking
and raised questions of bias and selective reporting of facts.”‘

The best attempt to address these data flaws is a ground breaking new
study by Jon Gould and Stephen Mastrofski, which relies on direct
observation of officers in the field.”^ In this study, researchers rode with
officers in a medium-sized American city the authors dubbed Middlesberg.
They took notes of what they and the officers saw, and teams of experts
later evaluated the constitutionality of the searches. Evaluators resolved all
doubts in favor of the officers (for example, when an officer said that he
saw a “furtive gesture” that the researcher did not see, the gesture was
recorded as having occurred).”*^ Still, Gould and Mastrofski found that
thirty percent of the searches they witnessed were unconstitutional.””
Moreover, in a finding that I shall retum to, when younger suspects
(defined as those under the age of thirty) were searched, they were more
likely to be searched unconstitutionally (and the difference was of statistical
significance).”^

What role do courts play in monitoring these searches? For the

‘”‘ An example of such a study is Thomas Y. Davies, A Hard Look at What We Know
(and Still Need to Learn) About the “Costs” ofthe Exclusionary Rule: The NU Study and
Other Studies of “Lost” Arrests, 3 A M . B . FOUND. RES. J. 611 (1983).

•” CrviL RIGHTS BUREAU, OFFICE OF THE NEW YORK ATTORNEY GENERAL, THE NEW

YORK CITY POLICE DEPARTMENT’S “STOP & FRISK” PRACTICE: A REPORT FROM THE OFFICE

OF THE ATTORNEY GENERAL 160-62 (1999); Benjamin Weiser, U.S. Detects Bias in Police
Searches, N.Y. TIMES, Oct. 5, 2000, at A l .

”̂ Jon B. Gould & Stephen D. Mastrofski, Suspect Searches: Assessing Police Behavior
Under the U.S. Constitution, 3 CRIMINOLOGY & PuB. POL’Y 315 (2004).

••̂ M a t 319.
” ” M a t 331.
“‘ Id. at 339.

14 JAMES FORMAN, JR. [Vol.95

reasons I indicated above, very little. The searches were all warrantless, so
there was no ex ante judicial oversight.”* Like the men in Maclin’s
example, the majority of those searched illegally did not possess
incriminating evidence to suppress and were not charged. Though in theory
they could sue for damages, the researchers found only two or three cases
where the invasion was egregious enough to support a civil claim.'” As
Gould and Mastofksi put it, “[t]he abuses are, by analogy, a steady
drumbeat of droplets rather than a torrential deluge.””^

If the Fourth Amendment has little to offer those who are
unconstitutionally searched but not charged with crimes, it has nothing at
all to say about an even less visible problem—^police verbal disrespect of
citizens. Recall the men in Maclin’s example, who the police ordered to
move or “somebody’s going to jail.” Belittling remarks, illegitimate orders,
and cursing, are all—as much as unconstitutional searches—^part of what
Terry called “[t]he wholesale harassment by certain elements of the police
community, of which minority groups, particularly Negroes, frequently
complain.””^ Like unconstitutional searches (and for much the same
reasons) there is limited empirical data on this phenomenon. However, a
recent study of St. Petersburg, Florida, and Indianapolis, Indiana, provides
some important information.^” Field researchers there observed interactions
between police and suspects and recorded disrespectful police behavior.^’
Disrespect included things such as name calling, derogatory statements,
belittling comments, slurs, cursing, or interrupting the citizen (except in an

“‘ Id. at 335.
“” Id. Many have remarked on the inadequacy of civil remedies in cases where police

behavior is illegal but insufficiently damaging to support a lawsuit. See OGLETREE ET AL.,
supra note 4, at 68 (“[CJases of misconduct involving verbal abuse or humiliation, short-
term detention after a false arrest, or minor injuries are not likely to be litigated at all.”);
Angela J. Davis, Race, Cops and Traffic Stops, 51 U. MIAMI L . REV. 425, 442 n.lO8 (1997)
(tiny percentage of police misconduct cases that are referred to the ACLU result in action);
Pamela S. Karlan, Race, Rights and Remedies in Criminal Adjudication, 96 MlCH. L. REV.
2001, 2011-12 (1998) (inadequacy of damages and injunctions as remedies to police
misconduct); David Rudovsky, Law Enforcement by Stereotypes and Serendipity: Racial
Profiling and Stops and Searches Without Cause, 3 J. CONST. L. 296, 352-55 (2001)
(difficulty of using civil and administrative remedies to redress police harassment); David A.
Sklansky, Traffic Stops, Minority Motorists and the Future ofthe Fourth Amendment, 1998
SUP. CT. REV. 271, 325 (same).

‘*^ Gould & Mastrofksi, supra note 42, at 334.
“‘ Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 14 (1968).
‘” Stephen D. Mastrofski et al.. Police Disrespect Toward the Public: An Encounter-

Based Analysis, 40 CRIMINOLOGY 519 (2002).
” Citizens were defined as suspects if officers identified them as suspects, or

interrogated, searched, cited, or otherwise treated them as such. Id. at 529.

2004] COMMUNITY POLICING 15

emergency).^^ Being argumentative by itself was not considered
disrespect.”

Researchers found that police were disrespectful in nine percent of
interactions with suspects.'”* There are two additional fmdings of particular
importance to this discussion. First, as I will retum to later, police were
more likely to be disrespectful to the young and to citizens in
neighborhoods of concentrated disadvantage.” Second, and of direct
relevance to the current discussion of the limits of the Fourth Amendment,
is the question of race and police mobilization. Recall again the police-
citizen encounter described in Maclin’s example. It began when “two
officers in a cruiser dr[o]ve slowly past the men and stare[d], silently
sending the word: don’t hang too long.” Why were the police in that
neighborhood, and why were they patrolling like that? This example raises
the issue of police mobilization—which neighborhoods do police patrol,
who do they pay particular attention to, who do they decide to question?
Mobilization is then of fundamental importance because all subsequent
police-citizen interactions flow from it.

If police mobilize to engage minority citizens as suspects more often
than they do whites, or if they mobilize to engage young males as suspects
more often than they do others, then stops, searches, disrespect, and similar
acts are likely to fall upon that group more often. This is so even if the
police are no more disrespectful to the blacks (or young men) who they
stop. This is what the St. Petersberg/Indianapolis study discovered. In fact,
the researchers found that the police were more likely to be disrespectful to
the whites they stopped than to the minorities. But, because police
mobilized against minority suspects at much higher rates, an individual
minority citizen living in one of those cities was much more likely to be
stopped and disrespected than was his or her white counterpart.’^

To sum up, the judicial control model has little relevance to a large
chunk of what matters in policing. It places no limits on, among other
things, which neighborhoods police are deployed to, who they choose to
watch, and how they talk to the citizens they stop. It neither effectively
deters unconstitutional searches from occurring,’^ nor does it offer a remedy
for the overwhelming majority of unconstitutional stops and searches once
they have happened. These limitations, when compared to the scope of

” Id. at 529-30.
” W .

” Id at 539.
” Id at 543.
^’ See supra text accompanying notes 42-48.

16 JAMES FORMAN, JR. [Vol.95

police conduct that citizens can themselves regulate under some community
policing models, make community policing a project worth exploring.^^

II. POLICING YOUTH: WARRIORS STILL

Given the core principles I mentioned earlier, community policing’s
legitimacy and efficacy depend on community involvement that is both
broad and deep. Community policing also requires a re-orientation in
thinking, so that officers begin to see community members as allies, rather
than enemies. In this Section, I will discuss whether community policing
has achieved those goals. I will begin by reviewing community policing’s
efforts to secure the involvement of a representative cross-section of
neighborhood residents. The evidence here is mixed: while recent
initiatives have seen high participation rates in the poorest neighborhoods,
there is still a significant age bias, with younger residents less involved in
community policing. I will then examine policing toward the young, and
demonstrate how they continue to be policed exclusively as threats to order.
Finally, I tum to a discussion of the rhetoric around youth and crime, and
outline how community policing’s vision of citizens as assets has not yet
extended to young people.

A. WHO PARTICIPATES IN COMMUNITY POLICING?

Early research on community policing initiatives in practice showed
consistent disparities in participation rates. Wesley Skogan’s review of
Houston’s early program revealed that it favored racially dominant groups
and established interests, while renters, African-Americans, and Hispanics
benefited the least.̂ ^ Skogan found similar results in Chicago and
Minneapolis community programs in the 1980s. In those programs, whites
and higher income, long-term residents of single family homes were more
likely than others to get involved.*” Jerome Skolnick and David Bayley
reached similar conclusions in their study of community policing in Santa
Ana, California.*’

Community policing often relies on neighborhood organizations for its
implementation. This can have race and class implications, because
participation rates in local groups tends to be higher among married

*̂ As I discuss supra in text accompanying notes 21 to 30, and infra Part IV, the full
breadth of police conduct can appropriately be put on the agenda at neighborhood police-
community beat meetings.

‘ ‘ WESLEY G. SKOGAN, DISORDER AND DECLINE: CRIME AND THE SPIRAL OF DECAY IN

AMERICAN NEIGHBORHOODS 106-09 (1990).

^ Id at 148, 167.
*’ SKOLNICK & BAYLEY, supra note 11, at 31.

2004] COMMUNITY POLICING 17

citizens, those with a higher socio-economic status, and homeowners with
children.^^ In addition, some research indicates that neighborhood
organizations in wealthier and whiter neighborhoods are more likely to
invest in community policing initiatives than similar groups in
predominantly black and Hispanic neighborhoods.*^

In Houston’s community policing program, for example, citizen
meetings were almost all held in a part of the neighborhood dominated by
owner occupied single-family homes. Not surprisingly, participation rates
were lower for blacks, who generally lived in another part of the
neighborhood in rental property.*” Against this backdrop, Skogan
cautioned that,

[t]he police are likely to get along best with the factions that share their outlook. The
“local values” they represent are those of some of the community, but not all. In
heterogeneous neighborhoods, some residents can easily become the targets of the
programs, and are not likely to be happy about that.*’

More recent evidence suggests, however, that it is possible to
achieve high rates of community policing participation in lower income and
minority neighborhoods. Chicago’s CAPS program invested heavily in
mass media and community organizing, including a staff of organizers that
publicized the program by visiting churches, neighborhood groups, and
individual residences.** As a result, seventy-nine percent of Chicagoans
knew about CAPS in 1998.*^ Moreover, the beat level fmdings from
Chicago reveal that neighborhoods with greater percentages of black
residents or poor residents participate at equal or greater rates than others.*^
Significantly, the most important predictor of beat attendance rates is the
level of crime in a neighborhood, with citizens in high-crime neighborhoods

‘^ See, e.g., Stephen D. Mastrofski, Community Policing as Reform: A Cautionary Tale,
in COMMUNITY POLICING: RHETORIC OR REALITY, supra note 18, at 47, 51 (Neighborhood
organizations “are not a microcosm of the neighborhoods they are alleged to represent.
They, like all social institutions, are heavily influenced by the distribution of power, status,
and wealth within their domain.”).

” SKOGAN & HARTNETT, supra note 9, at 139,147, 239.
‘” SKOGAN, supra note 59, at 106-09.
” Id at 109.
*’ FUNG, supra note 28, at 75.
”Id
‘* Wesley Skogan examines data from 1998 and finds that attendance was higher in

predominately black neighborhoods than in predominately white ones, and higher in low-
income areas than wealthier ones. WESLEY SKOGAN ET AL., U.S. DEP’T OF JUSTICE, PUBLIC
INVOLVEMENT: COMMUNITY POLICING IN CHICAGO 20-22 (2000). Archon Fung takes data
from 1995 and 1997 and fmds that a neighborhood’s percentage of black or Hispanic
residents, like its income level, had no statistically significant impact on beat meeting
attendance rates. FUNG, supra note 28, at 109-11.

18 JAMES FORMAN, JR. [Vol.95

being the most likely to attend meetings.*’ These findings run contrary to
those of earlier community policing studies.™ They also contradict the
notion that individuals in disadvantaged neighborhoods lack either the
resources or the desire to participate in local democratic institutions.

Chicago’s success at securing participation from historically
disconnected groups raises important questions, which I will return to in
Section IV. For present purposes, though, there is one less hopeful result
from Chicago. As with other community policing efforts, younger Chicago
residents are still less likely to attend beat meetings or sit on District
advisory committees. In practice, most residents who attend beat meetings
are middle aged and older.^’ The same holds true with the District advisory
committees.’^ The absence of the young has, at times, undermined the
effectiveness of local community policing initiatives. In one Chicago
neighborhood, for example, citizens organized anti-drug marches, but their
efforts were short-lived and ineffective. Residents themselves cited the
absence of youth involvement as among the reasons for the failure.’^
Another reason the absence of young people matters is that their satisfaction
with the police differs from older residents. For example, seventy-four
percent of Chicago residents over sixty-five reported that, on average, the
police were doing a good job. By contrast, only forty-five percent of those

*’ FUNG, supra note 28, at 109-11; SKOGAN ET AL., supra note 68, at 20.
‘” At the same time, other aspects of the Chicago findings confirm earlier research

showing that class can infiuence participation rates. For example, within individual beats,
home owners were significantly more likely to attend meetings than non-homeowners.
Wesley G. Skogan, Representing the Community in Community Policing, in COMMUNITY
POLICING: CAN IT WORK?, supra note 2, at 57, 60. Residents with more education also were
more likely to attend beat meetings; for example, in beats where thirty percent of the
residents were college educated, seventy-five percent of participants reported having a
college degree. Id. at 62. Race also played an influence: although beats with greater
numbers of blacks had participation rates as high or higher as other beats. Latino
participation remained low, except in beats where Latinos were a large majority of the
residents. Id. Finally, beat meeting attendance was unrepresentative in one other important
respect. Those who attended beat meetings typically were more likely than their non-
attending neighbors to be satisfied with the quality of poliee services in the neighborhood.
Id. at 67. Interestingly, what Skogan calls the “optimism gap” is particularly large for
African-Americans. Fifty-nine percent of blacks who attended meetings were satisfied with
the police, while only forty-two percent of non-attenders were satisfied, a seventeen percent
difference. Id. at 68-69. For whites, the gap was only nine percent and for Latinos it was
fourteen percent. Id. Unfortunately, the design of this particular research project does not
allow us to know the direction ofthe causation arrow. Namely, are satisfied neighbors more
likely to attend meetings, or does meeting attendance produce satisfaction?

” SKOGAN & HARTNETT, supra note 9, at 114.

” Id at 149.
” Id. at 175.

2004] COMMUNITY POLICING 19

under the age of thirty felt the same
The Chicago research documents that youth and young adults do not

attend community policing meetings or participate in other official activity.
But another way to measure community policing’s effectiveness is to look
at more informal police-citizen contacts—in neighborhoods, stores, and on
street comers.^^ The absence of these informal contacts between police and
inner-city young people has long been of concem, and was documented by
the Kemer Commission over forty years ago. After surveying beat officers
regarding who they talked to, the Commission concluded that officers were
likely to know store-keepers and shop-owners by name, but were detached
from neighborhood young people.^*

These informal contacts matter to community policing, because they
are one way for officers to leam citizen perceptions of neighborhood
problems. They also are important to fighting crime and disorder, for they
are part of how police leam about who is doing what, and who can be relied
on.” Especially in light of the substantial evidence that police perceive
minority youth as hostile and threatening, it is critical that the police have
the sort of individualized information that lessens their need to rely on
group stereotypes.

The available research, however, suggests that the same age disparities

‘”* Skogan, supra note 70, at 69. Age disparities regarding police satisfaction raise (but
do not answer) questions about the argument that inner-city elders and young people share a
‘linked fate,’ so that burdens imposed on younger people are bome by a community’s elders.
See Kahan & Meares, supra note 33, at 1176 (“The pervasive sense of ‘linked fate’ between
the majority of inner-city residents and the youths affected by curfews and gang-loitering
ordinances furnishes a compelling reason not to second-guess the community’s
determination that such measures enhance rather than detract from liberty in their
communities.”). I am not suggesting that the linked fate argument does not have force;
indeed, I think it does. Rather I believe that more research is in order to clarify areas where
the link exists, where it does not, and precisely how it operates. Further, it is worth pointing
out that age differences do not always cut in predictable ways. For example, older Chicago
residents actually tended to see fewer crime problems than younger ones. Young people
between the ages of eighteen and twenty-nine were twice as likely as those over sixty-five to
say that street crime was a big problem in their neighborhood. Skogan, supra note 70, at 65.
The disparity was almost as wide for burglary. Id.

”^ See supra text accompanying notes 18-26, where 1 argue that these informal contacts,
while important, are not a substitute for formal, deliberative meetings between police and
neighborhood residents.

‘* Groves, supra note 10, at 112.
‘ ‘ This point is eompellingly made in a variety of police ethnographies. For example, see

Chapter 5 of JONATHAN RUBINSTEIN, CITY POLICE (1973).

‘* John Hagan & Ruth D. Peterson, Criminal Inequality in America: Patterns and
Consequences, in CRIME AND INEQUALITY 14, 24-25 (John Hagan & Ruth D. Peterson eds.,
1995).

20 JAMES FORMAN, JR. [Vol.95

that mark participation rates in the formal arenas also exist in the informal
ones. Roger Parks and his colleagues studied community policing in St.
Petersburg and Indianapolis, with a particular focus on how patrol officers
and community policing specialists chose to spend their time. Their
fmdings were not dissimilar to the Kemer Commission’s: they found that
community policing specialists were less likely to initiate contact with
young people (defined as under twenty-nine), and were more likely to
initiate contact with those who represent organizations—including local
business, govemment or not-for-profit agencies, and neighborhood
groups.^^

These fmdings led Parks to conclude that

[e]ommunity policing specialists, largely freed of responsibility to respond to radio
calls and empowered to select members of the public whom they would encounter,
were more likely than patrol generalists to engage “good citizens,” persons whose
social status or immediate circumstances remove them from that class of people and
conditions which contribute to the “tainted” character of police work.*”

These finding echoes the Houston officer who told James Wilson and
George Kelling that he liked community policing because, “[t]raditionally,
police officers after about three years get to thinking everybody’s a loser.
That’s the only people you’re dealing with. In community policing you’re
dealing with the good citizens, helping them solve problems.”^’ The St.
Petersburg and Indianapolis findings suggest that people under the age
twenty-nine were disproportionately not “good citizens” with whom these
officers sought contact.

B. POLICING YOUTH: PRACTICE

Not only are inner-city young people absent fi’om community
policing’s agenda-setting forums, they are still generally policed as they had
been under the warrior model—as threats to public order. Age persists as
one of the most reliable variables indicating a likelihood of negative
interaction with police. As I have mentioned, when they are stopped by
police, the young are (statistically significantly) more likely to be both
disrespected*^ and illegally searched.*^ Similarly, a recent study of police
use of force found that officers were (statistically significantly) more likely

” Roger Parks et al.. How Officers Spend Their Time With The Community, 16 JuST. Q.
483,514(1999).

^^ Id.
‘̂ James Q. Wilson & George L. Kelling, Making Neighborhoods Safe, ATLANTIC

MONTHLY, Feb. 1989, at 46,52.
*̂ Mastrofski et al., supra note 50, at 532, 539.
” Gould & Mastrofski, supra note 42, at 338-39.

2004] COMMUNITY POLICING 21

to use force on males, nonwhites, the young, and the poor.^”
These statistical studies echo what other researchers have observed.

For example, William Chambliss’ observational research with Washington,
D.C.’s Rapid Deployment Unit (RDU) caused him to conclude:

The RDU patrols the ghetto continuously looking for cars with young black men in
them. They are especially attentive to newer-model ears . . . based on the belief that
they are the favorite cars of drug dealers. During our observations, however, the RDU
officers came to the conclusion that drug dealers were leaving their fancy cars at home
to avoid vehicular stops. It thus became commonplace for RDU officers to stop any
ear with young black men in it.

One of the officers with whom Chambliss talked explained such tactics:
“This is the jungle.. . . We rewrite the constitution every day down
here. . . . If we pull everyone over they will eventually leam that we aren’t
playing games anymore. We are real serious about getting the crap off the
street.”^*

Despite my familiarity with the empirical and anecdotal evidence, I
was nonetheless shocked to personally confront similar police practices.^^
A charter high-school that I helped to start, called the Maya Angelou
School, is located in a neighborhood, and on a comer, long known for
substantial drug activity.^^ During the spring of 2001, for reasons that
neither the students, staff, nor I were ever to leam, police became
particularly active on our comer.

Neither I nor any of the teachers were ever stopped. Our kids, on
break between classes, were not so lucky. On numerous occasions, officers
arrived at the comer in front of the school, threw students against the wall,
and searched them. These searches were not polite encounters. Teens were
forced to spread their legs, faces against the school wall or a squad car,
hands behind their heads. They were then searched by officers, who felt

‘̂’ William Terrill & Stephen D. Mastrofski, Situational and Officer-Based Determinants
of Police Coercion, 19 JUST. Q . 215, 236 (2002).

^̂ William Chambliss, Policing the Ghetto Underclass: The Politics of Law and Law
Enforcement, 41 Soc. PROBS. 177, 179 (1994).

”Id
^’ I relate these incidents and student reactions to them in greater detail in James Forman,

Jr., Children, Cops, and Citizenship: Why Conservatives Should Oppose Racial Profiling, in
INVISIBLE PUNISHMENT: THE COLLATERAL CONSEQUENCES OF MASS IMPRISONMENT 150

(Marc Mauer & Meda Chesney-Lind eds., 2002).
** The Maya Angelou Public Charter School was founded in 1997, and today serves 185

students, many of whom had not succeeded in traditional schools. For more detail about the
school, see James Forman, Jr., Foreword, Separate but Unequal: The Status of America’s
Public Schools, 8 MICH. J. RACE & L. 151 (2002), or the school’s website at
www.seeforever.org.

22 JAMES FORMAN, JR. [Vol.95

every area of their body. At no point during these searches did the officers
recover any drugs, and none of the students was found in violation of the
law as a result ofthe stops.

This was not a neighborhood with community policing; beat officers
did not attend regular meetings with area citizens.^’ Nonetheless, school
staff did their best to raise the issue with the local precinct. It was
remarkably difficult to find any officer or supervisor who would claim
responsibility for this comer, and the staff who tried remained pessimistic
that their complaints ever got through. Their worst fears were realized a
few weeks later when another officer chased one of our male students into
the school, wrestled him to the ground, and searched him. Staff later found
out that the officer explained his actions by claiming that he “knew this kid”
and believed he was bad, likely carrying drugs. No drugs were found.

Two weeks later, after one of our students refused to leave the comer
in front of our school (the student was in compliance with school rules and
D.C. law, taking a short break between classes), an officer grabbed the
student and began to arrest him and place him into a police van. Only after
a staff person came outside did the officer let the student go. As
demoralizing as these police actions were individually and collectively for
students, I was stmck then (and still am) by what the students wanted in
response: they did not want to sue, and they were not especially interested
in the quasi-adjudicative citizen complaint review process. They wanted to
talk to the officers and a supervisor, and to do so quickly, in the hope that
the searches would stop.

C. POLICING YOUTH: RHETORIC

The warrior model in practice has been accompanied by rhetoric
regarding the inner-city young which portrays them exclusively as threats to
order. Consider James Q. Wilson and George Kelling—in discussing
sources of fear in inner-city neighborhoods, they argue that, “law-abiding
citizens who are afraid to go onto streets filled with graffiti, winos, and
loitering youths yield control of these streets to people who are not
frightened by these signs of urban decay.””

There are two features of this formulation that are important to note.
First, in juxtaposing “law-abiding citizens” with “loitering youths,” Wilson

*’ For a discussion of the Chicago CAPS program, which operates in this fashion, see
supra text accompanying notes 21-27 and infra Part IV.

‘” For a discussion of how community policing might provide a framework for such a
conversation, see infra Part IV.

” Wilson & Kelling, supra note 81, at 48.

2004] COMMUNITY POLICING 23

and Kelling define the youth as not law abiding. Indeed, their presence is a
sign of “decay.” Second, in juxtaposing “afraid” citizens with “loitering
youth,” the authors define the young people themselves as not “afraid,” and
presumably, therefore, not interested in improving public safety.

My point is not to single out Wilson or Kelling. Their description of
youth as threats, not assets, is typical. For Sykes, for example, youth
appear only as “youthful male ‘trouble-makers'” who “loiter on street
comers, harass elderly citizens, intimidate passersby and generally add to
the fear and uncertainty of urban life . . . .”‘^ For these young people, he
concludes, “the police become the only institution available for remedy.”‘^
Skogan, for his part, writes of “congregating bands of youth” who violate
“widely approved standards of public conduct.””’

In one sense, it should not come as a surprise that the young are
defined as hostile enemies, hardly likely to be co-producers of public safety.
Recall the warrior model ofpolicing: in it, the entire inner city is defined in
such a manner. Yet this view of the young as threats was being elaborated
at precisely the same time as many (including some of the same authors)
were finally beginning to reject that vision of the inner city as a whole.
Why are young people in the inner city still largely viewed as threats when
the rest of the inner city is, at least in part, beginning to overcome that
stigma?’^

Has the inner-city minority community writ large been rescued from
its historical association with criminality by identifying an even more
marginal sub-group on which to pin the blame? That view would gamer
some support from Tim Hope’s suggestion that modem community crime
control programs require an outsider, against whom community members
can mobilize in defense.’* Perhaps the young have become such outsiders,
but I suggest we consider another possibility as well, one that is attentive to

‘^ Gary W. Sykes, Street Justice: A Moral Defense of Order Maintenance Policing, 3
JUST.Q. 497, 506-07(1986).

”’ SKOGAN, supra note 59, at 2.
‘^ One response to this question is the straightforward proposition that youth eommit a

disproportionate share of crime. I diseuss this issue, and its implications, in Section III.A.
Another response, which is beyond the scope of this article to address, would be that
Americans have a deep-seated investment in demonizing inner-city young black men. See,
e.g., N. Jeremi Duru, The Central Park Five, the Scottsboro Boys, and the Myth of the
Bestial Black Man, 25 CARDOZO L . REV. 1315 (2004) (describing historical creation and
perpetuation of belief in black male criminality).

‘* Tim Hope, Community Crime Prevention, in BUILDING A SAFER SOCIETY: STRATEGIC
APPROACHES TO CRIME PREVENTION 67-68 (Michael Tonry & David P. Farrington eds.,
1995).

24 JAMES FORMAN, JR. [Vol.95

the particular historical context in which community policing gained
traction.

Community policing’s growth in the early 1990s occurred alongside a
dramatic rise in homicides committed by those between the ages of sixteen
and twenty-four.” Moreover, demographic data indicated that this age
cohort was growing in size. The combination of more young people, and
more violent young people, gave rise to predictions that crime by the young
would increase at even greater rates in the early twenty-first century. The
Justice Department, for example, predicted that the number of juvenile
arrests for violent crimes would double between 1992 and 2010.’^
Criminologist James Alan Fox warned that “[w]e are facing a potential
bloodbath of teenage violence in years ahead that will be so bad, we’ll look
back at the 1990s and say those were the good old days.”” In an article
entitled Why Kids Are Ruining America, author Bret Easton Ellis argued
that

things have ehanged drastieally in the last 20 years, to the point where one ean only
really chuekle in grim disbelief. Cheating on exams? Smoking cigarettes?
Shoplifting? You wish. Murder, rape, robbery, vandalism: the overwhelming
majority of these edmes are committed by people under 25, and the rate is escalating

•JI 100
rapidly.

Some criminologists cast doubt on these predictions.”” In fact, crime
by the young began to decline precipitously in 1994.”‘^ Yet that news was
largely lost against the backdrop of the “super-predators” theme that had
already captured America’s attention.'”^ William Bennett, John Dilulio,
and John Walters argued that “today’s bad boys are far worse than
yesteryear’s and tomorrow’s will be even worse than today’s.”‘”” As a
result, they said, “America is now home to thickening ranks of juvenile
‘super-predators’—radically impulsive, brutally remorseless youngsters.

” Alfred Blumstein, Violence by Young People: Why the Deadly Nexus?, NAT’L INST.
JUST. J., Aug. 1995, at 3.

“* Howard N. Snyder et al.. Juvenile Offenders and Victims: 1996 Update on Violence,
JUVENILE JUST. BULL. (Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention), 1997, at 5.

” Melissa Rossi, Why Kids Are Running America,GEOK0?.yihG.,i\xr\d]\x\y 1996, at 98.
“”‘ Bret Easton Ellis, Why Kids Are Ruining America, GEORGE MAG., June/July 1996, at

97.
“” Philip J. Cook & John H. Laub, The Unprecedented Epidemic in Youth Violence, 24

CRIME & JUST. 27, 28,52 (1998).
‘”̂ Howard N. Snyder, Juvenile Arrests 2001, JUVENILE JUST. BULL. (Office of Juvenile

Justice and Delinquency Prevention), Dee. 2003, at 1.
‘ ” ‘ W , at52.
‘”^ WILLIAM J. BENNETT ET AL., BODY COUNT: MORAL POVERTY . . . AND HOW TO WIN

AMERICA’S WAR AGAINST CRIME AND DRUGS 26-27 (1996).

2004] COMMUNITY POLICING 25

including ever more preteenage boys, who murder, assault, rob, burglarize,
deal deadly drugs, join gun-toting gangs, and create serious communal
disorders.”‘”^

These themes also loomed large in mass media coverage, with national
magazines running stories such as Now for the Bad News: A Teenage

^’^^ Children Without Pity,^”” and A Generation of Stone
Indeed, even as crime began to decline, media coverage of crime

increased.”” This finding is especially important given that most people’s
opinions about crime come from what they see or read in the news, rather
than from their own personal experience.”” Given such media focus, it is
not surprising that most people believed that youth crime was rising even
when it was declining.'”

Some have argued that the fervor surrounding the threat of violence by
the young during this era amounted to a “moral panic”—a period in which a
publicized incident or series of incidents triggers an intense community
reaction, an exaggerated sense of threat, and collective hostility toward the
offenders.”^ Whatever the name assigned, I would suggest that this was a
particularly inopportune historical moment to expect that the public, police,
or policy-makers would be likely to embrace a vision of policing that
emphasized young people as assets to public order.

III. YOUTH AS ASSETS TO COMMUNITY POLICING: W H A T ‘ S AT STAKE?

To this point, I have suggested (in Section I) that community
policing has potential both to mobilize residents toward community crime
prevention and to regulate police conduct. I have specifically argued that

‘”‘ Id at 27.
‘”^ Richard Zoglin, Now for the Bad News: A Teenage Timebomb, TIME, Jan. 15, 1996, at

52.
“” Nancy Traver, Children Without Pity, TIME, Oct. 26, 1992, at 46.
‘”* Scott Minerbrook, A Generation of Stone Killers, U.S. NEWS & WORLD REP., Jan. 17,

1994, at 33.
” ” LORI DORFMAN & VINCENT SCHIRALDI, OFF BALANCE: YOUTH, RACE AND CRIME IN

THE NEWS 10 (2001), available at http://www.buildingblocksforyouth.org/media/media.html.
“” /(/ at 4 (seventy-six percent of the public say they form their opinions about crime

from the media and twenty-two percent base them on personal experience); see also
Ernestine S. Gray, The Media—Don’t Believe the Hype, 14 STAN. L . & POL’Y REV. 45, 48-49
(2003) (collecting polling data).

‘ ” DORFMAN & SCHIRALDI, supra note 109, at 3-4. For a thoughtful discussion of how
violent crime on local news can exacerbate implicit racial bias, see Jerry Kang, Trojan
Horses of Race, 118 HARV. L. REV. (forthcoming 2005).

“^ Elizabeth S. Scott & Laurence Steinberg, Blaming Youth, 81 TEX. L. REV. 799, 807
(2003).

26 JAMES FORMAN, JR. [Vol.95

community policing has greater potential for regulating the police than does
the model of judicial enforcement ofthe Fourth Amendment. At the same
time, I have outlined (in Section II) that inner-city young people are still
policed under the pre-community policing warrior model. I concluded
Section II by outlining some assumptions we make about the young that I
believe perpetuate the warrior model’s continued application to this group.

In Section III.A, I will tum to evidence suggesting that our existing
assumptions are wrong, and argue that we have every reason to believe that
inner-city young people can be assets to the community policing project.
Further, in Section III.B, I will explore why it is so urgent that law
enforcement engage in this project. There is a values battle underway in
inner-city areas, and law enforcement currently is on the wrong side.
Finally, in Section III.C, I will suggest that this need not be the case, and I
will discuss how law enforcement can be in the business of strengthening
the legitimacy of its own authority.

A. THE SILENT MAJORITY

But what of the reality that young people are disproportionately likely
to commit crimes? Youth is correlated with offending to such a great extent
that criminologists refer to an “age-crime curve.” The teens and early to
mid-twenties are the prime offending years for most violent crimes, and the
tendency to commit crime declines as people get older.”^

This fact may not tell us as much as it might appear, however. We
must first consider, of course, that the existence of an age-crime curve tells
us very little about the likelihood that a particular young person is a
criminal. Consider my earlier example ofthe searches at the Maya Angelou
School. Imagine three black males—a student aged seventeen, a graduate
aged twenty-three, and a teacher aged fifty—all standing in front of the
school. Knowing nothing else, it would be reasonable to assume that the
seventeen and twenty-three year-olds were more likely than the fifty year
old to, say, be selling drugs. But for purposes of this discussion, that is not
what matters. Instead, what is important is that the seventeen and twenty-
three year-olds are much more likely not to be selling drugs than to be
doing so.”‘*

See Blumstein, supra note 97, at 3; Cook & Laub, supra note 101, at 35-37.113

“‘* My argument here fmds analogy in the racial profiling literature, where many have
pointed out that although blacks are arrested for a disproportionate amount of crime, the
overwhelming majority of black citizens are never arrested for a crime. CoLE, supra note 4,
at 42; DAVID A. HARRIS, PROFILES IN INJUSTICE: WHY RACIAL PROFILING CANNOT WORK 106

(2002); Jody D. Armour, Race Ipsa Loquitur: Of Reasonable Racists, Intelligent Bayesians,
and Involuntary Negrophobes, 46 STAN. L . REV. 781, 791-92 (1994). This argument should

2004] COMMUNITY POLICING 27

As it tums out, despite the existence of an age-crime curve, the
majority of criminal activity is concentrated among a small portion of the
young. This was first documented in Marvin Wolfgang’s landmark study.
Delinquency in a Birth Cohort.^^^ Wolfgang tracked 10,000 Philadelphia
boys through childhood, adolescence and into adulthood. He found that a
small group of boys committed the majority of serious and violent juvenile
crime. Chronic offenders constituted six percent of the cohort, hut were
responsible for fifty-one percent of all offenses and about two-thirds of all
violent crime. In a study of a second Philadelphia birth cohort, researchers
found that seven percent of the boys committed sixty-one percent of
homicides, seventy-five percent of rapes, seventy-three percent of
robberies, and sixty-five percent of all aggravated assaults.”* Subsequent
studies have confirmed these original findings.”^ For drug offenses, for
example, less than five percent of youth commit seventy-five percent of
sales. “^ A related line of research has found that although many violent
juvenile offenders live in high-risk neighborhood, “the majority of youth
who live in such environments are not involved in serious delinquency.””‘

In addition to the fact that offending is highly concentrated among a

be distinguished from two related arguments common to the racial profiling debate: (1) that
the costs of racial profiling outweigh its benefits (1 make a form of this argument infra note
147), and (2) that racial profiling is wrong because it is immoral or unconstitutional,
regardless of whether it works. See, e.g.. COLE, supra note 4, at 42 (“[O]ur nation’s
historical reliance on race for invidious discrimination renders suspect such consideration of
race today, even if it might be ‘rational’ in some sense.”); RANDALL KENNEDY, RACE, CRIME
AND THE LAW 146-47 (1997) (Even “[i]f taking race into account in making determinations
of suspicion is a rational adaptation to the racial demographics of criminality,” courts should
carefully scrutinize police use of race because “[r]ace is different” and “the making of racial
distinctions has proved to be more destructive and more popularly distasteful than other lines
of social stratification.”); Jerry Kang, Thinking Through Internment: 12/7 and 9/11, 27
AMERASIA J. 43, 49 (2002) (Even if a particular racial profiling policy can be justified on
utilitarian grounds, “aren’t moral principles embedded in our Constitution supposed to trump
utilitarian calculations?”).

‘ ‘^ MARVIN E . WOLFGANG ET AL., DELINQUENCY IN A BIRTH COHORT (1972).

‘ ‘* PAUL E . TRACY ET AL.. DELINQUENCY CAREERS IN TWO BIRTH COHORTS 280 (1990).

‘ ” SERIOUS & VIOLENT JUVENILE OFFENDERS: RISK FACTORS AND SUCCESSFUL

INTERVENTIONS 25-28 (Rolf Loeber & David P. Farrington eds., 1998) (summarizing
studies); Barbara Bennett Woodhouse, Youthful Indiscretions: Culture, Class Status, and the
Passage to Adulthood, 51 DEPAUL L. REV. 743, 744-45 (2002).

‘ ‘̂ Johnson et al.. Concentration of Delinquent Offending: Serious Drug Involvement and
High Delinquency Rates, 21 J. DRUG ISSUES 205,206, 222 (1991).

‘ ” OFFICE OF JUVENILE JUSTICE AND DELINQUENCY PREVENTION, REPORT TO CONGRESS

ON JUVENILE VIOLENCE RESEARCH 9 (1999); see also Steven D. Levitt & Lance Lochner, The
Determinants of Juvenile Crime 13 (2000) (unpublished manuscript) (on file with author)
(self-report data indicating that seventy-four percent of males ages 15-19 do not report a
major violent or property crime).

28 JAMES FORMAN, JR. [Vol.95

few offenders, there is yet another reason to see the law-abiding majority as
potential assets to community policing’s public safety project. Polling data
suggests that both public safety and police conduct are issues that matter to
the young. Chicago residents aged eighteen to twenty-nine were more
likely than older residents to say that street crime and burglaries were big
problems in their neighborhood.’^” In Between Hope and Fear, a 1995
survey, almost half of urban African-American students, and seventy-two
percent of those who live in neighborhoods defmed as at-risk, reported that
they or their friends had been “hassled by the police when [they] weren’t
doing anything wrong.”‘^’ In a 1999 survey, two-thirds of youth said that
they felt their streets were “dangerous” and “full of gangs.”‘^^ Half said
they therefore curtailed activities.’^^ Between Hope and Fear reached
similar conclusions: forty-four percent of all urban students, and sixty-two
percent of African-American urban students, said that neighborhood crime
was a serious problem.’^’*

In line with these results are fmdings that the majority of inner-city
youth hold lawbreakers in low regard. For example, in a Washington, D.C.
survey eighty-two percent said that they “did not at all admire” a person
who sold drugs.’^^ Similarly, seventy-eight percent of urban African-
American teens characterized gangs as “violent and destructive.”‘^^

These attitudes about crime are not surprising when we consider that
teens and young adults are the group most at risk of criminal victimization
(including crime by their age peers, as well as by those older than them).’^^
These victimization levels provide some reason to suspect that some young
people would consider participating in a community policing program.
Recall that Chicago’s current community policing initiative sees highest

‘̂ ^ See supra note 74.
™ THE NATIONAL TEENS, CRIME AND THE COMMUNITY PROGRAM, BETWEEN HOPE AND

FEAR: TEENS SPEAK OUT ON CRIME AND THE COMMUNITY 97 (1995) [hereinafter BETWEEN

HOPE AND FEAR]; see also infra text accompanying notes 151-54 for a discussion of how
younger citizens are more likely to believe they have been victims of racial profiling.

‘ ” Karen Pittman, Youth Engagement, 8 YOUTH TODAY 55, 55 (1999).
‘ ” Id
‘ ̂ ” BETWEEN HOPE AND FEAR, supra note 121, at 32.

‘ ^ ‘ PETER REUTER ET AL.. MONEY FROM CRIME: A STUDY OF THE ECONOMICS OF DRUG

DEALING IN WASHINGTON, D.C. 82-83 (1990).
‘̂ ^ BETWEEN HOPE AND FEAR, 5wpra note 121, at 103.

‘ ” DORFMAN & SCHIRALDI, supra note 109, at 22; Regina Austin, “The Black
Community,” Its Lawbreakers, and a Politics of Identification, 65 S. CAL. L . REV. 1769,
1781 (1992); see also Joy D. Osofsky, Addressing Youth Victimization 2 (Office of Juvenile
Justice and Delinquency Prevention 2001) (juveniles are twice as likely as adults to be
victims of crime).

2004] COMMUNITY POLICING 29

participation rates in neighborhoods with the most violent crime.’^^ This
fmding suggests that the desire to achieve personal and community safety is
sufficiently powerful to generate participation even among groups that are
disproportionately disengaged.’^’

B. THE VALUES BATTLE

By this point, many readers will have identified a tension in my
argument. On the one hand, I have just argued that many of the inner-city
young are law-abiding citizens, disproportionately victimized by crime, and
for that reason potential allies in a project to ensure community safety.’^”
On the other hand, I have suggested already—and will do so more
forcefully in the pages to follow—that current police practices toward
inner-city youth engender hostility and alienation that undermines
community order. I embrace this tension; indeed, in many respects, its
existence is the heart of my argument. As I explore in this Section, young
people in the inner-city communities operate in a complicated world of
competing values and conflicting norms. “Decent” and “street” attitudes
and behaviors co-exist within the same neighborhood, and often, within the
same person.’^’ But my claim is that the presence of these conflicting
attitudes—some of which are hostile to law enforcement—does not mean
than an effective community policing relationship cannot be reached.
Instead, it makes the need for such more urgent.

Elijah Anderson’s research suggests that “street” and “decent” values
are in tension within a neighborhood. As Anderson argues, “in underclass
communities, conventionality and the street culture wage a constant battle
for the hearts and minds of the younger residents, and this dichotomy has

‘̂ * See supra text accompanying notes 68-69 and infra text accompanying note 175.
‘^’ See SKOGAN ET AL., supra note 68, at 22. The evidence that younger people are less

likely to be civically engaged is substantial. ROBERT D . PUTNAM, BOWLING ALONE: THE
COLLAPSE AND REVIVAL OF AMERICAN COMMUNITY 247-48 (2000). There is one piece of
data that cuts the other way: the 1990s saw a substantial increase in volunteering and
community service by young people. Id. at 265.

”” See supra Part III.A.
‘ ” The terms “decent” and “street” come from sociologist Elijah Anderson. For

Anderson, characteristics of decent families include hard work, thrift, self-sacrifice,
politeness, a consideration for neighbors’ well-being, a focus on child-rearing and
educational success for children, and acceptance of mainstream culture and values.
Characteristics of street families include disorganized lives, lack of consideration for others,
a superficial sense of family and community, idleness, incivility, the inability to remain
committed to a job, a willingness to resort to violence to settle disputes, inattention to the
demands of child-rearing, and a rejection of mainstream culture and values. ANDERSON,
supra note 5, at 35-65.

30 JAMES FORMAN, JR. [Vol.95

become an organizing principle.”‘^^ Moreover, those who work in or study
inner-city communities know that this tension can exist within the same
individual.’^^ In the words of the principal for the high school serving
Chicago’s Robert Taylor housing project, “folks think you got good and
bad around here, but you got good and bad in the same person. That’s what
you see if you stay around here long enough.”‘̂ “^ Or, as the director o f a
program for inner-city youth explains, many teens are “walking the fence
and could fall on either side.”‘^^

Even many gang members, the group we might reasonably assume had
most rejected conventionality, indicate being tom between a street and a
decent orientation.’^* For example, John Hagedom found that there were
four types of members among the Milwaukee gangs he studied.’^^ First,
were the “new jacks,” the most committed to the gang life style, who
viewed the dmg business as a career. At the other end ofthe spectrum were
“legits,” who over the course of their adolescence and yoiuig adulthood left
gang life and adopted legitimate lifestyles. The third category was “dope
fiends,” who were addicted to dmgs and were involved in dmg selling as a
way to sustain their habit. The fmal group was “homeboys,” who aitemated
between conventional jobs and dmg selling. Hagedom found that
homeboys were the majority of Milwaukee gang members. They tended to
be unskilled, insufficiently educated, and had met with limited success in
the conventional labor market. They were not committed to a gang
lifestyle, nor were they committed to conventionality. Instead, they moved
back and forth between legal work and dmg selling.’^^

Homeboys by and large expressed “conventional aspirations; their core
values centered on finding a secure place in the American way of life.”‘^’
Many clung to the dream of settling down and leading legitimate lifestyles.

‘̂ ^ Id at 287.
‘ ” ANDERSON, supra note 5, at 153, 237-289; DONALD BRAMAN, DomG TIME ON THE

OUTSIDE: INCARCERATION AND FAMILY LIFE IN URBAN AMERICA 149-51 (2004).

‘ ‘ • ‘ SUDHIR A L L A D I VENKATESH, AMERICAN PROJECT: THE RISE AND FALL OF A MODERN

GHETTO 175 (2000).
“^ MILBREY MCLAUGHLIN ET AL.. URBAN SANCTUARIES: NEIGHBORHOOD ORGANIZA-

TIONS IN THE LIVES AND FUTURES OF INNER-CITY YOUTH 96 (1994).

‘^* FELIX M . PADILLA, THE GANG AS AN AMERICAN ENTERPRISE 157 (1992); JAMES

SHORT & FRED STRODBECK, GROUP PROCESS AND GANG DELINQUENCY (1965); Jeffrey

Fagan, The Social Organization of Drug Use and Drug Dealing Among Urban Gangs, 27
CRIMINOLOGY 633 (1989).

‘•” John M. Hagedom, Homeboys, Dope Fiends, Legits, and New Jacks, 32
CRIMINOLOGY 197 (1994) [hereinafter Homeboys, Dope Fiends]; John M. Hagedom,
Homeboys, New Jacks, andAnomie, 3 J. AFR. AM. MEN 7 (1997).

‘•’* Hagedom, Homeboys, Dope Fiends, supra note 137, at 207-11.
‘ ” Id at 209.

2004] COMMUNITY POLICING 31

despite their inability to achieve it. In the words of one, when asked what
he would like to be doing five years in the future: “I want to have a steady
job, I want to have been working that job for about five years, and just with
a family somewhere.”””‘ Another explained his similarly conventional
aspirations:

Because I see a lot of brothers out here now, that’s forty-three, forty-four and ain’t got
shit. They’s still standing out on the comer trying to make a hustle. Doing this, no
family, no stable home and nothing. I don’t want that s h i t . . . . I don’t give a fuck
about getting rich or nothing, but I want a comfortable life, a decent woman, a family
to come home to.

Bobby, a student I taught at the Maya Angelou School, expressed the
difficult challenge that many inner-city teens face as they attempt to
straddle the line between delinquency and conventionality. In an interview
for a documentary about the school, Bobby was asked about his ability to
abandon his former life of intermittent delinquency, and instead commit to
school and work:

My past life . . . has affected me a lot. It’s got me in a confused little w o r l d . . . . Am I
going to be an ignorant fool all my life, am I going to do all the bad shit that I can, or
am I going to just try to do something with my life, to make it? It’s like one or the
other, one or the other. You can’t do both. You can, but, it’ll be harder. You gotta do
one or the other, which one would you pick? Right now I’m trying to pick the good
thing. It’s easy to pick the bad thing, that’s the easy way out.

A variety of forces in the inner city operates against this backdrop and tries
to infiuence values, attitudes, and behaviors. This includes, on one side,
teachers, counselors, church leaders, and others, wbo typically attempt to
persuade young people to remain committed to decency. Against this group
is arrayed a variety of anti social forces pressuring young people to choose
crime and other irresponsible options.

As the most prominent representative of state authority in the lives of
inner-city teens,”’^ the police necessarily have the potential to infiuence
this debate as well, for their actions can infiuence attitudes in a number of
directions. Prevailing police practices in the inner city—such as gang
loitering ordinances, order maintenance policing, and crackdowns on street-

‘”” Id.
‘”” M a t 210.
‘••̂ INNOCENT UNTIL PROVEN GUILTY (Big Mouth Productions 1997).

‘•”̂ See, e.g, Paul G. Chevigny, Foreword to ZERO TOLERANCE: QUALITY OF LIFE AND THE
NEW POLICE BRUTALITY IN NEW YORK CITY vii (Andrea McArdle & Tanya Erzen eds., 2001)
(“For a great many people—the poor and the dispossessed, the minorities, immigrants, and
the thousands of others who are victims of crime, violators of city ordinances, as well as
perpetrators of crime—the police are the cutting edge of government.”).

32 JAMES FORMAN, JR. [Vol.95

level drug dealing—continue to reinforce norms of opposition.”*”
This is clearest in the context of gang loitering ordinances, which

authorize police to order the dispersal of those who appear to be gang
members, and those who are with them. Such measures have been cited as
reinforcing norms of law-abidingness among inner-city youth. “‘̂ Yet there
is reason to question this. Tbe social norms argument for gang-loitering
laws goes as follows: (1) teens in bigh-gang neighborhoods do not value
gang membership but mistakenly believe tbat their peers do, and tbey
therefore feel compelled to join gangs; and (2) tbe best way to attack tbe
misperception that others value gang membership is to restrict the ability of
gangs to operate visibly in a neighborhood.”’* There is undoubtedly some
truth to both these premises. But tbe argument understates the costs of gang
loitering ordinances. If police orders to disperse are perceived as arbitrary
by neighborhood teens, or if sucb orders are understood to be
manifestations of an approacb to policing tbat treats youtb as tbreats, tben a
willingness to defy sucb orders will be interpreted as a sign of strengtb.
Tbis will in tum raise tbe status of gang members in tbe eyes of otber
neighborhood youtb, and reinforce hostility toward law enforcement.”’^

Support for such a view comes from gang researchers tbemselves, wbo
bave long suggested tbat police practices, particularly tbose that are
perceived as biased, can in fact strengtben gangs.”’^ Bill, a Milwaukee gang
member, explained bow police anti gang tactics bad driven bim toward a
gang identity:

Bill: [W]hat got me into the gangs was SH (a gang squad officer).
Interviewer: Why do you say that?
Bill: OK. 1 would be walking with (two of my friends) and he says, “Oh three [gang
members], huh.” 1 told him, “Man, I ain’t gang-related, man.” And he goes, “Oh,
who you walk with is who you are.”

While sucb tactics may bave sbort-term benefits, over tbe longer term
hostility toward police will rise, causing police to adopt yet harsher tactics.

”*” Cole, supra note 31, at 1091 (emphasizing extent to which discriminatory policing
can “reinforce social norms that are antithetical to the law”).

“^ See, e.g., Meares & Kahan, supra note 19, at 819-21.
”’ Id
‘*” As I indicated supra note 114, this form of utilitarian argument against gang loitering

ordinances is similar to the arguments commonly advanced against racial profiling more
generally. See, e.g., KATHERYN K . RUSSELL, THE COLOR OF CRIME 44-46 (1998)
(emphasizing costs of racial profiling).

‘”* JOHN HAGEDORN, PEOPLE AND FOLKS: GANGS, CRIME AND THE UNDERCLASS IN A

RUSTBELT CITY 160 (1988) (“[W]e should not underestimate the effect police policies play
in strengthening and forming gang identities.”); VENKATESH, supra note 134, at 163.

“” HAGEDORN, supra note 148, at 159.

2004] COMMUNITY POLICING 33

wbicb in tum will increase hostility and reduce cooperation further.’^”
But even in jurisdictions without gang loitering ordinances, the

aggressive stop and frisk practices I described earlier can bave a similar
impact. Consider Lee, one of the inner-city young men Elijah Anderson
studied. Lee exhibits “decent” values. He gets good grades and is planning
to attend community college. But he dresses like most young men in the
neighborhood, some of whom are more street-oriented.

Wben tbe police cruise bis drug-infested neighborhood and see bim in
his Timberland boots, his striped shirt, and his hooded sweatshirt, they stop
him and ask him where his drugs are, and this makes him bitter. Tbe
knowledge that tbe wider system in the person of cops, teachers, and store
managers downtown is instantly ready to lump them with the street element
takes a psychological toll on boys like Lee.’^’

The psychological toll about wbicb Anderson speaks includes
increased resentment of tbe police tbemselves. For example, in a study of
Wasbington, D.C. neighborhoods, forty percent of blacks said they believed
they had been stopped by the police on tbe basis of tbeir race or ethnicity.’^^
Yet the proportion is dramatically higher among black men between the
ages of eighteen to thirty-four—seventy-three percent of tbis group believes
it has been victimized by racial profiling at least once.’^^ Moreover,
personal experience is a strong predictor of attitudes toward the police.
Those wbo believe they were stopped because of their race are significantly
more likely to be dissatisfied with police and to believe tbat racial profiling
is widespread.’̂ “* Not surprisingly, then, younger respondents hold the
police in a less favorable light than do older ‘̂ ^

” ” Kahan, supra note 3, at 1529-30 (elaborating downsides to order maintenance
policing).

‘^’ ANDERSON, supra note 5, at 104.
‘̂ ^ Ronald Weitzer & Steven A. Tuch, Perceptions of Racial Profiling: Race, Class, and

Personal Experience, 40 CRIMINOLOGY 435, 443 (2002).
‘ ” ld.\ see also Brooks, supra note 15, at 1249-50 (younger blacks are more likely to

believe that police are “gang-like”).
”•’ Wietzer & Tuch, supra note 152, at 449.
” ‘ Id. at 448. Weitzer’s project contains a wealth of provocative findings. In a related

paper, Weitzer examines attitudes about policing in a middle-class white neighborhood, a
middle-class black neighborhood, and a lower-class black neighborhood. See Ronald
Weitzer, Citzens’ Perceptions of Police Misconduct: Race and Neighborhood Context, 16
JUST. Q . 819 (1999). He generally finds that class matters more than race. He finds greater
similarity in attitudes between the two middle-class neighborhoods than he does between the
two black neighborhoods of different classes. Id. at 830-31, 834-39. For another discussion
of the ways in which race and class influence perceptions of the police and the legal system,
see Brooks, supra note 15, at 1250-51, who finds that while better-off blacks are more
distrustful of the legal system generally than poorer blacks, poorer blacks are more

34 JAMES FORMAN, JR. [Vol.95

The resentment, in tum, bas costs for community safety. The most
immediate is the reluctance of many in poor and minority communities to
participate in police investigations. Imagine tbat you are eighteen, standing
outside of your school during a break from class. For no reason (that you
can discern or is ever explained to you), squad cars pull up, officers come
out shouting, guns drawn, and you are thrown up against the wall, elbowed
in the back, legs kicked apart, and violently searched. Your books are
strewn on tbe ground. You ask wbat’s going on and are told to “shut the
fuck up” or you will be taken downtown. Wben it finally ends, the officers
leave, no apology, no explanation, and you are left to fix your clothes, pick
up your books, and gather your pride. Now imagine that there is a crime in
your neigbborhood, about which you have beard a rumor. Tbe police are
looking for infonnation. What are tbe chances you will cooperate?’^*

Not only does tbis type of policing make it harder to gather
infonnation, it also reinforces the alienation of youth like Lee—repeated
over time, it can cause youth who are straddling the line between
delinquency and law-abidingness to think of themselves as delinquent.'” In
so doing, the police undermine the message of those who are trying to push
youth towards conventionality, and reinforce tbe cause of those who are
pushing youth toward opposition.

C. WHY POLICING MATTERS: PROCEDURAL JUSTICE

Many wbo bave examined police practices in the inner city have
argued tbat they can undermine the law’s legitimacy in tbe eyes of the

distrustful o f t h e police.

”* Forman, supra note 87, at 158-59; see also K E N N E D Y , supra note 114, at 153
(identifying toll that hostile police-community relations take on police information gathering
ability); Tracey L. Meares, It’s a Question of Connections, 31 V A L . U . L . R E V . 579, 590
(1997) (“The mutual distrust between African Americans and law enforcement officers
makes it less likely that African Americans will report crimes to the poliee, assist the police
in criminal investigations, and participate in community policing programs that lead to
greater social control of neighborhoods.”).

‘ ” A N D E R S O N , supra note 5, at 312-13:

The extent to which some children—particularly those who through upbringing have become
most alienated and those who lack strong and conventional social support—experience, feel, and
internalize racist rejection and contempt from mainstream society may strongly encourage them
to express contempt for that society in retum. In dealing with this contempt and rejection, some
youngsters consciously invest themselves and their considerable mental resources in what
amounts to an oppositional culture, a part of which is the code of the streets. They do so to
preserve themselves and their own self-respect. Once they do, any respect they might be able to
gamer in the wider system pales in comparison with the respect available in the local system,
thus they oflen lose interest in even attempting to negotiate the mainstream system.

Id

2004] COMMUNITY POLICING 35

policed.”^ There is now a growing body of social psychology research
validating these concems. Tom Tyler and others have shown tbat people’s
evaluation of tbe legitimacy of police and courts is based on their sense of
whether authority has acted fairly.’^’ The most counter-intuitive part ofthe
fmdings is that people’s assessment of tbe faimess of decisions is based
principally on the process of decision-making, rather tban on wbether they
received a favorable outcome.’^” For example, the bulk of citizens do not
object to being stopped in tbeir cars or on tbe streets if those stops “are
handled in interpersonally sensitive ways.”‘*’ Similarly, among otber
measures of procedural justice, citizens care a great deal about voice and
representation—they want the chance to have tbeir views heard before a
decision-maker who renders judgment (including the decision whether to
cite or arrest the citizen).’*^ The other critical fmding from this literature is
that people’s assessment of whether authorities bebaved fairly influences
tbe likelihood tbat tbey will comply witb future legal directives.’^”

Tbese fmdings were originally taken from studies of mostly white
citizens, but since have been replicated among African-Americans and
Latinos. Huo and Tyler, for example, interviewed whites. Latinos, and
African Americans in Oakland and Los Angeles. They measured
satisfaction levels among those who bad interactions with the police (either
calling the police or being stopped by the police). All three ethnic groups
reported similar outcomes, but African-Americans and Latinos perceived

‘̂ * Forman, supra note 87, at 155-56; Brent Staples, Growing Up to Fear the Law, N.Y.
TIMES, Mar. 28, 1991, at A25 (“With reason, African-Americans tend to grow up believing
that the law is the enemy, because those who are sworn to uphold the law so often enforce it
in a biased way.”); see also William J. Stuntz, Race, Class and Drugs, 98 COLUM. L. REV.
1795, 1798 (1998) (“Apparently racist enforcement standards tend to undermine the
normative force of the drug laws among targeted groups, to delegitimize the system in the
eyes of those whose behavior the system seeks to influence.”); MARK H . MOORE & MARK A.
R. KLEIMAN, NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF JUSTICE, PERSPECTIVES ON POLICING: THE POLICE AND

DRUGS 6 (1989) (stating that the current approach to drug enforcement “may alienate
communities from the police rather than build effective partnerships to control drugs,” and
will thereby “inhibit the development of the self-defense capacities of the communities that
must, in the long run, be the route to success”).

‘ ” See generally YuEN J. Huo & TOM R. TYLER, HOW DIFFERENT ETHNIC GROUPS REACT

TO LEGAL AUTHORITY (2000); TOM R. TYLER, WHY PEOPLE OBEY THE LAW (1990); Tom R.

Tyler, Trust and Law Abidingness: A Proactive Model of Social Regulation, 81 B.U. L. REV.
361 (2001) [hereinafter Trust and Law Abidingness]; see also Kahan, supra note 3, at 1515-
20 (applying procedural justice literature to outline of theory of reciprocity).

‘*” Tyler, Trust and Law Abidingness, supra note 159, at 367-68.
” ‘ Id. at 383.
‘*̂ Raymond Paternoster et al.. Do Fair Procedures Matter? The Effect of Procedural

Justice on Spouse Assault, 2 \ LAW & Soc’Y REV. 163, 166-67 (1997).
‘ ” Id. at 192; Huo & TYLER, supra note 159, at 36-37.

36 JAMES FORMAN JR. [Vol.95

lower levels of procedural fairness.’^” These groups also reported lower
levels of overall satisfaction with the encounter, results that were driven by
a sense of unfair process, not unfavorable outcomes.’*^

This procedural justice research cuts both ways. On the one hand, it
supports the notion that when authorities act in ways that are considered to
be procedurally unfair, they undermine their own legitimacy. They also
make it less likely that those who perceive they have been treated unfairly
will obey the law in the future. On the other hand, it suggests that
authorities have the power to increase their own legitimacy among the
policed. Especially promising is the fmding that although ethnic groups
differ regarding whether they are treated fairly, they agree on what
constitutes fair treatment. For example, Huo and Tyler measured three
components of procedural faimess: (1) neutrality (“he/she treated me the
same as he/she would treat anyone else in that situation”); (2) benevolence
(“he/she cared about my concerns”); and (3) status (“he/she treated me with
dignity and respect”). They found that for all three ethnic groups, these
process measures were more important in explaining variations in
perceptions of faimess than was outcome favorability.’** In other words,
“[w]hen people said they were treated fairly, they meant that their standards
of neutrality, benevolence and status recognition had been met.”‘*’

The procedural justice literature, therefore, presents cause for
optimism. A fundamental premise of this Article is that the current
debilitating level of hostility between police and inner-city young people is
not inevitable. The procedural justice literature supports that notion. Law
enforcement cannot guarantee outcomes. At a community-wide level, the
police cannot, by and large, promise only to patrol certain areas or enforce
particular crimes. And at a personal level, they cannot guarantee the
outcome of any individual police-citizen encounter. Process, however, is
much more within their control. Moreover, as I will explore in the next
Section, community policing has the potential to deliver some of the
specific components of procedural faimess that researchers have found
matter.

IV. YOUTH AS ASSETS TO COMMUNITY POLICING: SOME PRINCIPLES OF

ENGAGEMENT

In this Section, I will discuss principles to govem a community

Huo & TYLER, supra note 159, at 31.
Id at 35.
Id at 56.
Id

2004] COMMUNITY POLICING 37

policing project that seriously engages young people. Though there
currently are no full-fiedged programs along the lines of what I am
proposing, uniquely innovative community policing programs in Chicago
and Boston provide some important guideposts. First, a successful program
will offer participants real power over a broad scope of neighborhood
public safety issues. Second, increasing the diversity of the deliberative
body by adding younger participants makes it essential that the meetings be
led by trained facilitators using a structured deliberation process. Finally,
intermediary organizations, including churches, schools, and community
non-profits will likely need to have a rule to facilitate engagement and build
working partnerships.

A. POWER AND SCOPE.

As I discussed earlier, Chicago has the most thoroughly elaborated
community policing program of any large city in the country.’** Among its
successes has been generating high levels of participation in disadvantaged
neighborhoods.’*’ Significant to that success has been that, unlike advisory
commissions, community boards, or discussion groups common in many
cities, in Chicago the neighborhood beat meetings have real power.””
Rather than simply places to meet and talk, beat meetings are where
policing priorities for the community are established.’^’ Chicago Police
Department General Orders require that the police “beat teams” (typically
five patrol officers and their sergeant) attend beat meetings and “give . . .
special attention to the problems identified” there.’^^ Still, police may
override the resident recommendations, both because “beat community
meetings may not be representative ofthe entire beat, and the problems they
identify may not be representative of the problems on the beat.”‘^”
Residents, in tum, may respond to objectionable police decisions (including
the decision not to follow their recommendations) at subsequent beat
meetings.’^’* Fung cites the power afforded to citizens under the Chicago
community policing model as central to its success at securing high levels
of participation: “[e]ven the least well-off participate when doing so confers
powers upon them to address urgent issues such as neighborhood safety.”‘^^

‘** See supra text accompanying note 26.
” ‘ See supra notes 68-72 and accompanying text.
‘™ FUNG, supra note 28, at 4.
‘ ” Id at 65.
“^ Id. (quoting General Orders).
” ‘ Id. (quoting General Orders).
“” Id
” ‘ Id. at 111. An intriguing parallel to community policing in this regard is the teen

38 JAMES FORMAN, JR. [Vol.95

Related to power is scope. By scope, I mean that the community
policing agenda must include a forum for regulating police conduct. Like
other citizens, neighborhood youth who come to the beat meetings will be
interested in working toward safer neighborhoods. But many of them are
also likely to bring concems regarding police abuse or harassment. It is not
impossible to address both crime and police behavior, but it will only
happen if the space to do so is consciously created.

Boston provides some evidence that these two goals are compatible.
Boston had a severe crime problem that was accompanied by high levels of
hostility between police and the inner-city community. Boston tackled both
simultaneously. First, Boston recognized that its homicide problem was
highly concentrated: less than one percent of the adolescent and post-
adolescent age group was responsible for sixty percent of the city’s
homicides.’^* By concentrating its efforts on this small group, Boston
officials capitalized on the desire of many young people, even some gang
members, to reduce their own exposure to violence.’^’

At the same time, Boston enlisted community members in addressing
the problem of police harassment, another issue of great concem to the
community’s young. Boston had previously fought gang and youth
violence under the warrior model. Boston’s specialized anti-gang unit had
a mandate to, according to one police captain, “go in, kick butts, and crack
heads.”‘^^ To bridge the divide between police and community youth,
Boston officials worked closely with a group of ministers of inner-city
churches (the Ten Point Coalition). The ministers were an effective
intermediary due to their close connections with neighborhood youth and

court movement. Teen courts are those in which teens serve as judges or juries in cases
where other teens are charged with less serious offenses (e.g., shoplifting, vandalism, and
disorderly conduct). See, e.g., Jeffrey A. Butts & Janeen Buck, Teen Courts: A Focus on
Research, JUVENILE JUST. BULL. (Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention),
2000. The rapid growth of teen courts and their popularity with teens themselves is some
evidence that teens are willing to participate in programs—even those associated with law
enforcement—when such programs provide them with real influence in domains that they
feel matter. Furthermore, there is a substantial youth development literature suggesting that
a critical component of successful youth programs is that they offer the young the chance to
“matter”—to be efficacious in their social worlds. See, e.g.. NATIONAL RESEARCH COUNCIL,
COMMUNITY PROGRAMS TO PROMOTE YOUTH DEVELOPMENT 103-06 (Jacquelynne Eccles &
Jennifer Appleton Gootman eds., 2002).

””‘ Berrien & Winship, supra note 29, at 208.
‘ ” David Kennedy, Pulling Levers: Chronic Offenders, High-Crime Settings, and a

Theory of Prevention, 31 VAL. U . L. REV. 449, 478 (1997) (Boston’s successful effort was
“due to the fact that not even gang members like being subjected to violence. . . . There was
thus an important, if generally unstated shared interest between the gangs and the authorities.
Both wanted the violence to stop.”).

™ Berrien & Winship, supra note 29, at 205.

2004] COMMUNITY POLICING 39

long history of speaking against police abuse.’^’
As I will discuss below, intermediaries are not the only approach. The

Chicago model of direct democratic govemance would provide a forum for
interested youth to themselves raise concems about police conduct in
neighborhood beat meetings. But the essential lesson of the Boston story is
that many youth and young adults will be concemed about crime and police
conduct, and the community policing model must be capable of addressing
both.

A community policing model that did this would not only have more
salience for many youth and young adults, it would also reduce the
likelihood that their more skeptical peers would object to their participation.
Currently, many youth and young adults avoid contact with law
enforcement because to be seen with the police signals to peers that one is
snitching, cooperating, or otherwise helping the enemy. The stigma against
participation can be counterproductive, for both parties benefit from citizen-
police cooperation. The police benefit from the information that citizens
provide, and citizens are better off with a police force that does not feel it
needs to rely on heavy-handed tactics to gather information. Community
policing might undermine the stigma against participation by making what
it means to engage with law enforcement more ambiguous.’^” Perhaps the
youth attending the beat meeting wants to provide infonnation to the police
about law-breaking, but perhaps she seeks to protest police abuse, raise
concems about a particular officer, or encourage the police to develop a
more narrowly tailored profile of what constitutes a potential drug dealer.
Rather than participation necessarily meaning cooperation with an alien
force, as it currently does, participation under this model might well be
interpreted by others as an act of community self-govemance.’^’

To highlight what I mean by power and scope, let me contrast this
community policing model with what historically has been meant by youth

‘ ” In this brief account of Boston’s response to its youth violence crisis, 1 do not pretend
to do justice to the complex, multiple partnerships that ultimately proved essential to the
effort’s success. In particular, it is worth noting that Boston invested in increased support
services for young people who were in trouble or at risk of becoming so. ELIKANN, supra
note 4, at 190-97. There is some evidence that the most successful efforts to replicate
Boston’s success have also included such services. FiGHT CRIME: INVEST IN KIDS, CAUGHT
IN THE CROSSFIRE: ARRESTING GANG VIOLENCE BY INVESTING IN KIDS (2004) (identifying

successful programs in Boston, Philadelphia, and Baton Rouge).
‘*” Cf. Lawrence Lessig, Social Meaning and Social Norms, 144 U. PA. L . REV. 2181,

2186-87 (1996) (state can “ambiguate” the social meaning of conduct based on how it
chooses to punish it).

‘*’ Kahan, supra note 3, at 1537 (suggesting that those who participated in Chicago’s
community policing program were viewed as acting on behalf of the community, not the
police).

40 JAMES FORMAN, JR. [Vol.95

engagement. The history of community crime prevention is littered with
programs that were marked by police talking to citizens. In this regard,

anyone who has observed a variety of community crime prevention programs readily
ascertains that the bulk of the communication is from the police to the citizen,
explaining and selling prepackaged strategies devised without the particular
neighborhood and its residents’ preferences in mind. Several evaluations of these
programs show that they emphasize organizing to do crime prevention, not to
stimulate the neighborhood to voice its demands in matters of police business.

This is especially true of law enforcement programs aimed at youth.
Modem community policing initiatives are not designed to engage young
people on either of the axes that matter most: they neither involve them in
the process of setting the neighborhood public safety agenda, nor do they
provide space for them to raise concems regarding police conduct. Instead,
these programs typically involve police or other adults teaching lessons or
offering services to adolescents. Typical are these programs funded by the
Justice Department’s Office of Community Oriented Policing Services
(COPS): school based probation officers, violence prevention programs,
police magnet schools (in which students have the chance to work in police
stations, leam “lessons in fingerprinting, report writing and courtroom
procedures,” and “wear Police Academy uniforms, which foster a sense of
cohesion and give them the feeling of being valued members of a peer
group”).’^^ Whatever the merits of these programs, they serve a different
purpose, and have different benefits, than the type of community policing I
am emphasizing.

B. STRUCTURED DELIBERATION

Even in a relatively homogenous neighborhood, it is easy to imagine
community policing meetings falling apart quickly. In heterogeneous
groups, the concem is even greater. Some residents may come to the
meeting with an agenda, cling to it, and refuse to compromise or deliberate.
Others may try to exploit their cultural advantage or other sources of
relative power. And the more heterogeneous the group—including adding
younger citizens—the greater the risk that rifts will develop. As one person
asked me in a conversation about this project, “what happens at your

‘̂ ^ Mastrofski, supra note 62, at 52.
‘ ” DYLAN PRESMAN ET AL., U.S. DEP’T. OF JUSTICE, CREATIVE PARTNERSHIPS:

SUPPORTING YOUTH, BUILDING COMMUNITIES 2, 6, 9, 13-14 (2002); see also Jeff
Slowikowski & Helen Connelly, Community Policing and Youth, JUVENILE JUST. BULL.
(Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Programs), 1999, at 4-8 (describing similar
programs around the country).

2004] COMMUNITY POLICING 41

community policing meeting when the grandmothers say the young guys
standing on the comer at night are scary and need to go and the young guys
respond, ‘we are just hanging out.'”‘^”

Before addressing this quite serious concem, I should point out its
limits. As a preliminary matter, it is worth noting that if such divisions
exist within communities, they do so regardless of whether a wider range of
neighborhood residents attend community policing meetings. Having
young people at the meeting is not what causes the disagreement with the
grandmothers about who should be on the street comer—it simply provides
a fomm for that issue to arise. Moreover, just as the disagreement pre-dates
youth attendance at the community policing meeting, so does its resolution.
Currently, the issues are, as we have seen, largely resolved at the expense of
the young people who are not engaged in the agenda-setting process. As a
result (at least in part) of their non-participation, they become targets of a
police force mobilized on behalf of those constituents who are present and
helping to set policing priorities.

But even if it is tme that community policing meetings do not create
community divisions, it is nonetheless the case that the meetings provide an
opportunity for the divisions to come to the fore. There is no easy answer
to the question of how to ensure effective deliberation among diverse
constituencies.’^^ But Archon Fung’s detailed analysis of Chicago’s
community policing program in action helps provide a context in which to
think about these questions. Although community policing in Chicago did
not have to bridge substantial age differences (most participants were
middle-aged and over), some of the neighborhoods were racially and
economically diverse. Some heterogeneous neighborhoods succeeded in
having effective meetings, bridging differences, and reaching a shared
vision. Others did not. Typically, what made the difference was the
presence (or absence) of a trained facilitator to lead the group in a

‘*” It is worth reiterating that the discussion may go in counter-intuitive directions.
Remember that young people in Chicago were more likely than older residents to perceive
that street crime and burglaries were neighborhood problems. See supra note 74. For a
discussion of the tensions that arise when police engage communities that are not of one
mind, and which may not be of the same mind as the police, see generally David Thacher,
Conflicting Values in Community Policing, 35 LAW & Soc’Y REV. 765 (2001).

‘*’ There is an extensive political science literature regarding the design of deliberative
democratic institutions. For a recent review, see ETHAN J. LEIB, DELIBERATIVE DEMOCRACY
IN AMERICA: A PROPOSAL FOR A POPULAR BRANCH OF GOVERNMENT 92-103 (2004); see also
Carrie Menkel-Meadow, The Lawyer’s Rolefs) in Deliberative Democracy, 5 NEV. L.J.
(forthcoming 2004) (describing variety of attempts to “operationalize democratic
participation in contested legal and social issues”).

42 JAMES FORMAN, JR. [Vol.95

stmctured, deliberative process.’^^
As part of CAPS, Chicago hired a community-based organization to

provide facilitators to neighborhoods. The facilitators spent three to six
months attending a particular neighborhood’s beat meetings, and trained
both officers and community residents in the deliberative problem solving
approach that the city hoped would guide beat meetings.’^^ To summarize,
the approach had five steps.’^^ First, meeting participants identified and
prioritized neighborhood problems, with an eye toward taking vague or
general concems and breaking them into component parts. Second,
participants proposed, justified, and selected provisional strategies to
respond to the problems identified in step one. Discussion and deliberation
were central here, because typically more strategies were proposed than
could be adopted. Step three was implementation of the strategies. The
fourth step was monitoring and evaluating, in which participants would
report back on the results of the implementation stage, and agree to
continue, abandon, or modify the strategy originally adopted. The final step
was reiteration, which encouraged the group to begin steps 1-4 over again,
and invited participants to see the process as ongoing and iterative.

To understand the role played by facilitators in overcoming some of
the deliberation challenges I identified previously, compare two Chicago
neighborhoods that participated in the community policing project. Traxton
is a neighborhood divided by race, class, and geography.’^’ On the west
side of the tracks, the neighborhood is wealthier and whiter, and on the east
side, while not impoverished, it is poorer and blacker. The crime problems
on the east side of the neighborhood are, most objective observers would
agree, more serious. However, before the arrival of a trained facilitator,
west side residents dominated the unstructured, town hall style meetings—
they spoke more, they articulated their concems in a way that police could
understand more easily, and they demanded (and received) more concrete
police responses. At one meeting for example, a west side complaint of
“noise at the pancake house” received more attention (and greater police
response) than east side complaints of an unsolved homicide and intrusive
police surveillance.

It would be tempting to conclude that the west side residents were
determined, at all costs, to prioritize their concems, even if they were
objectively less urgent. At it tums out, this was not the case. Some months

‘*’ See LEIB, supra note 185, at 102 (discussing research suggesting the importance of
moderators).

‘ ” FUNG, supra note 28, at 73.
‘** This process is outlined in greater detail in id. at 56-60.
‘*’ This summary ofthe Traxton experience is drawn from id. at 173-97.

2004] COMMUNITY POLICING 43

after the meetings began, a trained facilitator (who was also a west side
resident) began leading them. Using the deliberation process described
above, the facilitator encouraged east side residents to state and discuss
their problems, and did not allow the meeting to move on until all the
problems had been identified. The principal east side concem was a drug
house, which further discussion revealed had been close to the epicenter of
much criminal activity, including two homicides over the previous three
years. Although the issue of the noise at the pancake house was raised
again, all residents—both west and east siders—agreed that the dmg house
was the most important issue. The months that followed were similar, with
the bulk of police and community attention focusing on east side problems.

Consider next Southtown, a Chicago neighborhood that faces arguably
even greater challenges to effective community self-govemance.”” Poorer
than Traxton, Southtown is also more divided—while Traxton’s two halves
had ignored each other, Southtown is divided between blacks and Hispanics
who, at times, have been in conflict with each other. Further, relations
between residents and police are even worse than relations between
different groups of residents. As with Traxton, the presence of trained
facilitators leading discussions would prove critical.

One particularly vexing neighborhood problem was a park and
recreation center that the city had closed in response to gang violence.
Despite (or more likely, because of) its closing, the park continued to be a
focal point for violence. Hispanic residents originally opposed identifying
the park as a top priority because it was in the black part of the
neighborhood and therefore largely a “black” problem. Through a series of
facilitated discussions, black residents were able to produce data to
demonstrate that the park was truly an urgent crime priority. Further, they
pointed out that the park was near the border with the Hispanic
neighborhood and promised to make it accessible to all ethnic groups. The
Hispanic participants eventually were persuaded, and blacks and Hispanics
agreed that the next priority would be chosen from the Hispanic part of the
community. Eventually, with the help of increased police surveillance and
by lobbying the city, residents were able to re-open the park. The “Friends
of the Park” group they created made good on the promise of opening the
park to everyone—they began multi-cultural programming and hired two
full time staff members, one Spanish speaking and one black.

While this was unquestionably a community policing success story,
after six months the facilitators left. Almost immediately, the deliberative
process began to break down. The facilitators had put extra effort into

This summary ofthe Southtown experience is drawn from id. at 197-210.

44 JAMES FORMAN, JR. [Vol.95

ensuring Hispanic participation, but after their departure fewer and fewer
Hispanic community members attended the meetings. Small decisions
matter in community organizing: after the facilitators left, the remaining
participants moved the meeting space to a location in the black community,
further depressing Hispanic participation.

This downward spiral was matched by the steady deterioration of
police-community relations. The facilitators had worked to ensure that
residents identified specific problems that allowed for concrete police
responses. In their absence, residents proved unable to break down their
complaints in such a manner. Officers, for their part, lacked the skills to do
this themselves, and instead rejected citizens’ concems as vague and
unworkable. This frustrated residents, and as all sides became increasingly
dissatisfied, the Southtown beat meetings fell apart.

The Traxton and Southtown experiences suggest that diverse groups—
even those who see each other as the problem—can participate in effective
public deliberation around community safety issues. This is good news for
the youth-engaged model that I am proposing, for it is likely that young
people initially will be viewed with suspicion by some community
members and officers. But these examples also suggest that community
members cannot do it alone. Particularly with a heterogeneous group, the
presence of trained facilitators leading a structured deliberation process
must be continuous and ongoing. Chicago was right to invest in facilitators;
its mistake was to think that they would be able to train residents and move
on to the next community. Years (indeed centuries, in some cases) of
hostility, mistrust, or non-cooperation cannot be overcome in a six month
training period.

I have focused on trained facilitators leading a process of structured
deliberation because I believe it presents the greatest prospect of systemic
success. It is nonetheless true that enlightened police leadership, guided by
a series of ethical commitments, can play a similar function and bridge
disagreements in heterogeneous communities. Consider David Thacher’s
example of former Lowell, Massachusetts, Police Chief Ed Davis.'” Davis,
an early advocate of community policing, faced a decision about where to
place a police substation. These substations were very popular with Lowell
residents, and residents of the mostly white and politically well-connected
Cupples Square neighborhood had mobilized effectively to demand that
their area receive the next one.

‘ ” For a longer discussion of this example, and for other similar instances of effective
police leaders working with community partners, see David Thacher, Equity and Community
Policing: A New View of Community Partnerships, 20 CRIM. JUST. ETHICS 3 (2001).

2004] COMMUNITY POLICING 45

But Davis believed that crime rates and other concems suggested that
the substation was most needed in the nearby, largely Cambodian, Lower
Highlands neighborhood. There was a community meeting scheduled on
the issue; without intervention, Davis knew that the wealthier and whiter
residents would tum out in great numbers and demand the substation. In
response, Davis gathered all the data he could on the needs of the two
neighborhoods and, with assistance, encouraged large numbers of the
Cambodian community to attend the meeting. After hearing the evidence
and discussing it and other concems, the majority of the Cupples Square
residents were persuaded to change their positions, and agreed that the
Cambodian neighborhood needed the substation more.

This is another example that, under the right conditions, “public
deliberation may filter self-regarding, individualistic demands in ways that
lead to public-regarding choices.”‘^^ As a reform model, however, it relies
on the presence of particularly effective leadership that is guided by
commitments to both equity and public participation. Therefore, though it
is worth aspiring to, it is more difficult to institutionalize than the facilitated
deliberation model I have described.

C. INTERMEDIARY ORGANIZATIONS

The community policing programs in Chicago and Boston both rely on
intermediary organizations to achieve their goals. Chicago’s community
policing project is an exercise in direct democracy, with citizens speaking
for themselves at neighborhood beat meetings. Nonetheless, it relies on
community organizers to serve as intermediaries, especially with
populations that have not historically been active in politics or voluntary
organizations. Community organizers play a key role in mobilizing these
populations in Chicago. In addition to the massive public awareness
campaign, at the grassroots level community organizers make phone calls
and go door-to-door to increase awareness and participation.”^ Boston
relies even more heavily on intermediary organizations—there the Ten
Point Coalition of ministers plays this role and represents the interests of
community residents, including young people.

The need for intermediary organizations will be especially crucial in a
community policing project that seeks to engage young people, who have
not historically seen high levels of civil engagement. As Southtown
organizers found when working with a Hispanic community previously

“^ Id at 12.
” ‘ See supra text accompanying note 66; see also FUNG, supra note 28, at 197-206

(describing community organizing efforts in Hispanic community).

46 JAMES FORMAN JR. [Vol.95

disconnected from politics, the process will require the involvement of
intermediary adults who are, unlike the police, trusted. As the Southtown
experience further suggests, physical location matters—to that end, places
where the young already meet and form organizations are among the most
promising venues. These principles suggest that schools and other youth-
serving organizations may be appropriate intermediaries.

In communities with established networks of community-based
organizations working with young people, such groups might be a natural
choice to play the intermediary role of mobilizing the young, ensuring turn-
out, facilitating meetings, and gaining the trust of local police officials and
other community leaders.’^” Though a less obvious choice, some schools
also might perform this function. Schools have certain natural advantages.
Students spend eighteen percent of their waking hours in school—no other
institution has similar access.”^ Accordingly, many teachers, counselors,
and coaches have already built relationships with, and eamed the trust of,
both current students and recent graduates. Perhaps as a result of this adult
influence, students whose schools encourage community service and
volunteering are more likely to participate than those from schools who do
not.”* Further, schools have their own stake in protecting students from
both crime and unfair police targeting, as students are especially likely to
fall victim to crime while going to or from school.’^^

Moreover, some trends in education practice suggest that at least some
schools want to push beyond the boundaries of the typical school function
and embrace a broader agenda. The community schools movement, for
example, calls for schools to become hubs for a variety of community-
based resources (including health centers, family counseling groups,
tutoring, and mentoring organizations, etc.).”^ A related movement calls

“” See generally MARCIA R . CHAIKEN, U.S. DEP’T OF JUSTICE, KJDS, CoPS, AND
COMMUNITIES (1998) (describing efforts by youth-serving organizations to address crime
and delinquency issues); MILBREY W. MCLAUGHLIN, PUBLIC EDUCATION NETWORK,
COMMUNITY COUNTS: HOW YOUTH ORGANIZATIONS MATTER FOR YOUTH DEVELOPMENT

(2000), available at www.publiceducation.org/PENreports.asp (describing role that
community-based youth-serving organizations play in youth development).

” ‘ Denise C. Gottredson et al.. The Schools, in CRIME: PUBLIC POLICIES FOR CRIME
CONTROL 149, 159 (James Q. Wilson & Joan Petersilia eds., 2002).

” * VIRGINIA HODGKINSON ET AL.. VOLUNTEERING AND GIVING AMONG TEENAGERS 12 TO

17 YEARS OF AGE, at 3-57 (1997).

” ‘ Id at 158.
” * COALITION FOR COMMUNITY SCHOOLS, COMMUNITY SCHOOLS: PARTNERSHIPS FOR

EXCELLENCE 2-3 (2000), available at www.communityschools.org/pubs.coal.html; see also
METRO. FORUM PROJECT, WHAT IF? 3-4 (1999), at http://www.nsbn.org/publications/whatif

(arguing that community schools should be supported as part of the “smart growth”
movement).

2004] COMMUNITY POLICING 47

for schools to explicitly foster a sense of civic mission in students.”‘
Recognizing the limits of doing this simply through teaching govemment
and history classes, this movement seeks to involve students in
extracurricular activities in which students participate directly in matters of
politics and local governance.^””

In addition to traditional schools, locally controlled schools, such as
charter schools, might serve as partners. Locally controlled schools arise
from the same impulse as community policing: both reflect a
disappointment with the failure of administrative bureaucracies to deliver
basic public services, especially in urban areas. Both are premised on the
notion that direct democratic govemance of local institutions may, under
the right circumstances, improve the quality of educational and public
safety institutions.^*”

Charter schools, for example, are disproportionately located in urban
areas.’̂ “^ Many of the same teenagers who are the least likely to have been
engaged in positive collaboration with law enforcement attend such
schools.^”^ Moreover, many charter schools are started by community-
based organizations and coalitions of various local constituencies, many of
which have a mandate that is broader than simply education.^”” These
groups are substantially more likely than the traditional school system to
welcome such opportunities for police-student collaboration, and to be
willing to make their school facility and students available for meetings and
other activities. In addition, the stmcture of the schools makes it easier for

‘ ” Cf Bethel School Dist. No. 403 v. Fraser, 478 U.S. 675 (1986) (“[P]ublie education
must prepare pupils for citizenship in the Republic. . . . It must inculcate the habits and
manners of civility as values in themselves conducive to happiness and as indispensable to
the practice of self-government in the community and the nation.”) (quoting C. BEARD & M.
BEARD, NEW BASIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 228 (1968)).

°̂° David Broder, Schools’ Civic Mission, WASH. POST, Feb. 16, 2003, at B7. For an
especially thoughtful collection of essays making the argument for civie education, see
MAKING GOOD CITIZENS: EDUCATION AND CIVIL SOCIETY (Diane Ravitch & Joseph Viteritti
eds., 2001).

‘̂” See, e.g., FUNG, supra note 28, at 2-5.
^”^ ERICA FRANKENBERG & CHUNGMEI LEE, THE CIVIL RIGHTS PROJECT AT HARVARD

UNIV., CHARTER SCHOOLS AND RACE: A LOST OPPORTUNITY FOR INTEGRATED EDUCATION 26-

27 (2003).
^”^ SRI INTERNATIONAL, EVALUATION OF THE PUBLIC CHARTER SCHOOLS PROGRAM: 2000-

2001 EVALUATION REPORT 16 (2002) (low-performing students and students from low-
income communities frequently drawn to charter schools); JoE NATHAN, CHARTER SCHOOLS:
CREATING HOPE AND OPPORTUNITY FOR AMERICAN EDUCATION 134 (1999) (same).

^”^ JOSEPH MURPHY & CATHERINE DUNN SHIFFMAN. UNDERSTANDING AND ASSESSING THE

CHARTER SCHOOL MOVEMENT 84-87 (2002).

48 JAMES FORMAN, JR. [Vol.95

them to act on these impulses.^”^ Charter and other locally controlled
schools typically are less hierarchical, and more nimble. They are therefore
more equipped to create effective partnerships with other organizations,
including police departments and other neighborhood community safety
groups.

V. CONCLUSION

This Article’s central claim has been that community policing falls
short of its potential as long as the young are excluded from the community
policing agenda-setting process and, instead, are policed under the
discredited warrior model of policing. More optimistically, I have
suggested that it is possible to build on existing community policing models
to develop an approach that would, for the first time in modem policing,
fiindamentally alter the relationship between police and the young in the
inner city. One reason to be optimistic about the prospect of reform now is
that crime has declined significantly in the past decade, and drops in youth
crime have led the way. For example, the juvenile arrest rate for serious
violent crimes fell forty-four percent between 1994 and 2001, putting it at
its lowest level since 1983.̂ “* It is possible that just as rising crime rates
helped create an image of the young as threats, declining crime might create
an opportunity to change that image, thereby allowing us to see the young
as the potential assets that they are.

“̂̂ Judith Johnson & Alex Medler, The Conceptual and Practical Development of
Charter Schools, 11 STAN. L . & POL’Y REV. 291, 303 (2000).

“̂̂ Snyder et al., supra note 98, at 1.