Roll Call: Keeping neighborhoods safe requires a crime prevention strategy, not the ‘same old policing’

In my last column, I asked, “Are we safe in America today?” Today, I ask: “What can we do to keep ourselves and our neighborhoods safer?”

I am sure you have heard the term perception is reality, and it is directly on point when it comes to crime. It has been reported that crime has dropped nationwide over the past several years, but you sure could not convince many nationwide of that.

Crime is very regional, and your perceptions are developed based on what is happening in your neighborhood. Prevention is the best medicine for lowering crime. It has been reported repeatedly that roughly half of violent crimes are never reported to law enforcement throughout the United States. So, the data we receive is incomplete because of that type of reporting.

What we can do in Illinois is produce a statewide crime prevention strategy. This must be a solid, data-driven set of investments matching local needs. This can be done at the direction of our legislators in Springfield by passing specific state requirements to which all municipalities in Illinois would adhere.

We must deter crime by making accountability more precise, not severe. What do I mean by that? Illinois certainly has enough criminal statutes on the book to enforce laws. We do not need any more criminal statutes, let alone felony criminal statutes. It is widely acknowledged that arrest rates have fallen over the past three years throughout the United States. In the Chicago metropolitan area, arrest rates have plummeted. Officer morale is low, staffing is inadequate, recruiting is becoming impossible and dissatisfaction with the criminal justice system is at an all-time high.

What we can do and what our leaders should do to deter crime is provide law enforcement with the resources they need to investigate crimes, make arrests and secure convictions. We need to support more focused, research-based policing strategies that concentrate on areas with high crime numbers.

We should also start holding our elected officials, judges and police executives accountable. Why is accountability necessary? Accountability is essential for many reasons. People need to feel that they have faith in our police, law enforcement leaders, the court system and our criminal justice system.

We also need to make the most out of our probation and parole system in Illinois. It has been estimated that one in every 10 violent felonies is committed by people already involved in the criminal justice system or who are under probation or supervision. Too often, the parole and probation systems are under-resourced and do not use data-driven policies and practices. If it is done right, probation can increase safety and accountability at a fraction of the cost of incarceration. There is no doubt about that.

We must also enlist other agencies and entities such as health departments as well as education, labor and housing agencies to help reduce recidivism and strengthen our communities. Incarceration alone cannot reduce recidivism. Coordinating all these agencies with law enforcement is critical to enabling the justice system’s efforts to change people’s behavior, reduce recidivism and make neighborhoods safer.

Quality also matters. Why? Programs that do not work or ones that provide treatment and programming without monitoring these programs for data-driven results are a disaster. State and local leaders need to ensure that they are investing wisely in data-driven programming and treatment.

Data on arrests, case backlogs and punishment are hard to come by. In 2019, the most recent year for which data is available, the National Incident-Based Reporting System received violent and property crime data from 46% of law enforcement agencies, according to a Pew Research Center report.

You undoubtedly cannot fix what you do not measure. To put this in perspective from a local angle, when I was police chief in Riverside, the village manager and elected officials constantly asked for data-driven information during the budget season and also requested data-driven details when I was seeking new programs or to purchase equipment that was beyond the regular requests made to operate the Riverside Police Department. If I did not have the data to back it up, I was less likely to get the funding. The same type of approach needs to be taken statewide regarding reducing crime and measuring the outcomes.

We also must turn silos in the systems. The criminal justice system, for example, is a collection of independent justice agencies with different goals, funding and lines of accountability. Without functional ways of coming together in a meaningful, coordinated and collaborative way at local and state levels, there will not be an accountable criminal justice system. Additionally, we will not have an open and transparent criminal justice system without this collaboration.

So, what does this mean? This means we need to push our local and state elected officials to move the criminal justice system forward. As I stated many times during my career, we cannot arrest ourselves out of this uptick or the perception that we are not safe in America. Early on in my career, I did think we could control our way out of this situation. Still, the reality was that my small suburban police agency kept stopping the same people repeatedly, which never made an impact long term.

It took a long time to come to that realization. I do not want our future leaders to take a long time to realize that we cannot continue to do the same old policing repeatedly because if we do, we will get the same old results. After all, perception is reality when it comes to “Are we safe in America today?”

• Tom Weitzel was chief of the Riverside Police Department. Follow him @chiefweitzel.