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ABSTRACT
Using findings from a quasi-experiment, this study examines whether the implementation of community policing in Gonzales, a distressed Caribbean community, reduced fear of crime and increased perceptions of safety. We use a pre-post, comparison group design with two groups. Data are based on three waves of citizen surveys carried out in both groups. Our findings reveal that from wave 1 to wave 2, the treatment area experienced an increase in fear relative to the comparison area; the effect size was small and positive, but was not statistically significant. The change in perceived safety from wave 1 to 2 in the treatment area was trivial and non-significant. From wave 2 to 3, the treatment area experienced a significant positive increase in perceptions of safety relative to the comparison area. The treatment area also experienced a small reduction in fear relative to the comparison area, but the effect was not statistically significant. Overall, we conclude that the early stages of implementing community policing in Gonzales may have increased fear but had no effect on perceived safety. Later and more robust implementation was associated with a significant increase in perceived safety and possibly a small reduction in fear.
Acknowledgments
The authors are grateful to the Ministry of National Security for funding this study, the Trinidad and Tobago Police Service for its willingness to participate in the research, and all of the police officers, community residents, and other stakeholders who made the study possible.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes
1 Gill et al. (Citation2014b) conducted an exhaustive systematic review of experimental and quasi-experimental impact evaluations of community policing. They were only able to identify eligible studies from three nations: the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia. After the data collection for their study was completed, a randomised experiment testing the effects of community policing in Colombia became available, however, its outcomes included only measures of crime, not measures of fear or perceived safety (García et al. Citation2013).
2 ‘Community Policing Defined,’ http://www.cops.usdoj.gov/pdf/vets-to-cops/e030917193-CP-Defined.pdf
3 For instance, based on his study of police agencies in five nations, Bayley (Citation1994) concludes that community policing consists of four dimensions, which he abbreviates using the acronym CAMPS: consultation, adaptation, mobilization, and problem-solving. Although Bayley uses some different terminology than we use here, consultation and mobilisation both refer to different aspects of community partnerships and adaptation is equivalent to organisational transformation.
4 Broader evidence suggests that neighbourhood watch programmes do reduce crime (Bennett et al. Citation2006), which may subsequently reduce fear.
5 Trinidad and Tobago occupies different positions in the various international development rating systems. The United Nations classifies it as a ‘small island developing state' together with 37 other U.N. member states. As of 2015, the final year in which the World Bank classified nations according to development status, Trinidad and Tobago was listed as a developing nation with a ‘high-income’ economy. The United Nations Development Program lists Trinidad and Tobago in the second tier (‘High Human Development') of its four human development classifications (Very High, High, Medium, and Low). The International Monetary Fund classifies nations according to one of two categories based on their level of development: Advanced Economies, and Emerging Market and Developing Economies. Trinidad and Tobago is listed in the latter category.
6 Obtaining accurate population information for Gonzales is difficult because the community is spread across several different jurisdictions, the boundaries are debated, and the squatter community is underrepresented in official statistics. Moreover, the community-identified boundaries of Gonzales (which were used for this project) differ from the administrative boundaries set by various governmental agencies. For details, see Pride in Gonzales Committee (Citation2005), Gonzales Community Profile, East Port of Spain, Trinidad
7 The authors of this article played a leadership role in the implementation, maintenance, and evaluation of the Gonzales Community Policing Project.
8 Several different types of data were collected to ensure a rigorous evaluation, including calls-for-service, crime data, community surveys, systematic observation of community characteristics, field notes from participant observation, interviews and focus groups, and data on police patrol, training, and other activities.
9 The community was clear in its collective opinion that a woman would have a ‘softer touch’ and would ensure that policing in Gonzales became more civil and more just for residents and their children. The rank of Inspector in the Trinidad and Tobago Police Service is equivalent to the same rank in Australia, Canada, and the UK. It is equivalent to the rank of Lieutenant in U.S. police agencies.
10 The training was adapted from the Model Problem-Oriented Policing (POP) Curriculum (Kuhns and Leach Citation2011) and specifically tailored to crime and disorder problems in the Gonzales neighbourhood. The original POP curriculum included 14 learning modules that focus on the evolution of policing, community and problem-oriented policing, the SARA (Scanning, Analysis, Response, and Assessment) process, crime theories and situational crime prevention, strategies for responding to offenders, places, and victims (the crime triangle), and assessing and dealing with some challenges inherent in the problem-oriented policing process. Given technology and time limitations, the Gonzales training did not include Modules 7–9. However, by September 2007, a total of four supervisors and six constables had successfully completed the rest of the training, which involved in-class training sessions, group exercises, field homework assignments in the Gonzales community, and four multiple choice exams.
11 The mobile police post, like many mobile police command posts, was a small RV that included a sitting area, a bathroom and a small office space.
12 Unfortunately, funding to carry out the evaluation of the initiative was discontinued by the Ministry of National Security in August 2008, just as the project had begun to achieve significant momentum. Although our evaluation period ended in July 2008, the Gonzales Community Policing initiative continued on without our presence or significant involvement after that date.
13 Gonzales is a neighbourhood within Belmont. For the purposes of the evaluation, Gonzales was considered the treatment area, and the rest of Belmont (not including Gonzales) was the comparison area. Belmont serves as an ideal comparison site in this study because Belmont and Gonzales are similar in many ways (including socioeconomic status, demographics, and crime), but Belmont had no community policing intervention underway at the time of our study. Later, we describe the analytical steps, we took to address potential differences between the treatment and comparison areas other than the intervention. Unfortunately, we have no systematic method available for gauging any potential ‘diffusion of benefits' from Gonzales to Belmont as a result of the intervention. Although Gonzales is located within Belmont, it is a distinct community with clear geographic boundaries. The majority of the work carried out by the community policing officers in Gonzales did not occur near the border with the comparison area.
14 In Belmont, sampling was proportional to the size of the population, using community boundaries based on census files from the Trinidad and Tobago Central Statistical Office. The sampling boundaries for Gonzales were based on those identified by community residents because the boundaries of Gonzales are debated. The official boundaries from the Port of Spain Corporation and Central Statistical Office used for statistical purposes are smaller than the boundaries identified by community residents (see Pride in Gonzales Committee, (Citation2005) Gonzales Community Profile, East Port of Spain, Trinidad, ‘4.1.1 Population Size & Growth’). Gonzales was then split into eight zones (chosen to reflect smaller neighbourhoods within the community), and the sample was drawn proportional to the population within each zone. In order to select respondents, GIS maps for each area were generated showing roads and housing. A start house was located and a sampling interval calculated so that interviewers canvassed every ‘nth’ house from the start location. Once the household was identified, adult respondents within each household were selected using the ‘last birthday’ method to ensure that the probability of selecting an individual within the household was the same for all eligible respondents. If selected participants were not at home at the time of the visit, interviewers made three call backs before the case was coded as a non-response using AAPOR final distribution code 2.25 for non-contact (American Association for Public Opinion Research Citation2015).
15 These response rates were calculated using AAPOR Response Rate 1 (RR1), or the minimum response rate, which is ‘the number of complete interviews divided by the number of interviews (complete plus partial) plus the number of non-interviews (refusal and break-off plus non-contacts plus others) plus all cases of unknown eligibility (unknown if housing unit, plus unknown, other)’ (American Association for Public Opinion Research Citation2015, p. 52).
16 English is the official language in Trinidad, so no language translation of survey items was necessary. However, colloquial terms differ across cultures, and we wanted to capture these in the survey. For example, when asking respondents about ‘truancy’, interviewers may have also used the phrase ‘breaking biche’, which is a common term for skipping school in Trinidad.
17 With repeated cross-sectional data, the basic linear equation for the DD model can be expressed as: Yi,t=α+βDi,t+δt+γDi,1+εi,t.In this equation, i denotes the individual respondent and t denotes the time period (coded 0 for pre-test and 1 for post-test observations). Yi,t denotes the outcome score for individual i at time t. As we will explain shortly, the outcome scores in this study are not observed variables. Instead, they are latent variables which we estimate within a structural equation modelling framework. Di,t is a dummy variable that is coded 0 for the comparison area and 1 for the treatment area. Di,1 represents the interaction between the treatment area dummy (Di,t) and the time period dummy (t); it is coded 1 for observations in the treatment area during the post-test and 0 otherwise (Buckley and Shang Citation2003). The parameters to be estimated are α, which is an intercept term; β, which represents the effect of being located in the treatment area; δ, which represents the effect of time; γ, which is the difference-in-difference estimate of the impact of the intervention (and is thus the main quantity of interest); and ε, which is the disturbance term (Buckley and Shang Citation2003). Covariates can be added to this basic model to account for differences between the treatment and comparison areas on factors thought to influence fear and perceived safety.
18 As an additional diagnostic step to assess the comparability of the treatment and comparison groups, we estimated a logit model that included age, sex, race, and education as predictors of group membership. None of the predictors was statistically significant.
19 We attribute these changes to external factors that were not unique to the treatment or comparison areas and exerted similar effects on both areas. We can only speculate on what these factors were. The most likely possibility is a peace treaty that occurred in September 2006 involving gangs located throughout the Port of Spain metropolitan area (including Belmont and Gonzales). This peace treaty was highly publicized and involved several government ministries as well as the nation's Prime Minister. We emphasize that this is mere speculation on our part since we lack the data to test the effects of the peace treaty on fear of crime or perceived safety. However, our interviews with local officials did not reveal any competing interventions or other potential explanations for these changes.