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Safe And Clean Neighborhoods Program Essay

Decent Essays

In the 1970’s a program named the “Safe and Clean Neighborhoods Program” was implemented in twenty-eight cities across the state of New Jersey. By taking police officers out of their patrol cars and into the neighborhoods, walking the beat, the program aimed to improve the wellbeing of communities as a whole. The effects of this program gave groundbreaking insight to the role law enforcement plays in providing the conformity necessary for a community to feel a sense of pride and security. The program also gave way to new understandings of how a community’s aesthetics can either discourage or entice criminal behavior. Ultimately, research following the enactment of the program provided a comprehensive look into the degression of a community’s safety as it becomes increasingly less respected by it’s inhabitants.
This program received much ridicule from law enforcement professionals as it decreased, in their eyes, the versatility of their service to the community. It seemed as that in removing officers from their patrol vehicles, it would not allow them to respond quickly to other calls and better protect their patrolled communities. As they came to find, it actually gave the people in those communities a greater sense of security and pride in their home turf.

II. INTRODUCTION and PROBLEM STATEMENT In relation to the advantages of officers walking the beat, James Q. Wilson and George L Kelling found in their article titled Broken Windows, that police presence would yield a

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