Citizen Participation and Solving Serious Crime

Enhancing Citizen Participation for Solving Serious Crime

The Presentation Includes

The need of involving communities in crime controlling activities

The stake of community

The approach of the crime stoppers

Greg MacAlesse, 1976

Enhancing Citizen Participation and Solving Serious Crime: A National Evaluation of Crime Stoppers

National Evaluation 1984

The research work

THE NEED OF INVOLVING COMMUNITIES IN CRIME CONTROLLING ACTIVITIES

Communities form a major portion of the society, the fact can therefore not be neglected that with the active involvement of communities in crime controlling menace can yield to the results that the law enforcing agencies can not achieve alone

THE STAKE OF COMMUNITY

The different communities living and working together form societies, and therefore have a greater stake

So with the increasing number of crimes the it is the human community that is affected the most.

THE APPROACH OF THE CRIME STOPPERS

One such movement that has come about and has been incredibly successful in countering the effect of crime has been Crime Stoppers. Crime Stoppers today is not only popular within America, but its model has been adopted the world ever, notably in Australia, United Kingdom

GREG MACALESSE, 1976

The first ever time that this method was employed was in 1976 by Greg MacAlesse, a police officer in Albuquerque, New Mexico, who not only contacted the media and through it the citizens at large to resolve a homicide crime, regarding which he had run out of leads, but he also even made the first re-enactment of the crime scene and publicized it through the media. This then has been the launching pad of Crime Stoppers movement which has become increasingly popular since the 1976

ENHANCING CITIZEN PARTICIPATION AND SOLVING SERIOUS CRIME: A NATIONAL EVALUATION OF CRIME STOPPERS

"Enhancing Citizen Participation and Solving Serious Crime: A National Evaluation of Crime Stoppers," it is made clear that the major impact on any investigation is made by through community initiated contacts, instead of police initiated contacts, and it is in few cases that police or detectives can get the lead from the community that is needed in solving a crime. This is further made clear and evident by the look at the numbers, which show that only 1 of 5 felony crimes are resolved through police initiate contacts.

NATIONAL EVALUATION 1984

There has only been only one National Evaluation in 1984 regarding the Crime Stoppers and how important a role they can play in the society overall

THE RESEARCH WORK

The research basically sought to answer questions regarding the Functioning of the Crime Stoppers, the disadvantages or advantages of having such a program and most importantly, do they in a fact play a considerable role in solving any crimes through the involvement of citizens, and how important a role does cash incentives play in this?

THE RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

Various methodologies were employed to gain the answer to these questions. Telephone Screening Survey was one of the most basic one; besides this Police Coordinator Survey was also employed in which a 42-page questionnaire covering the various aspects regarding media and the community, including other aspects of the Crime Stoppers crime were covered. The questionnaire was mailed to 443 operational programs in USA and Canada; however, only 203 returned the complete form. The boards of Directors of these programs were also contacted in this regard but only 37% of the questionnaire were completed and returned, and most importantly, the media was also made part of this research and a total of 235 media executives were contacted from various dimensions of the media, including newspapers, radio and TV Stations. In this way, the three major parts of the Crime Stoppers working model were made part of the survey to calculate the desired results.