Urban Policy and Community Development
Program

IPR’s urban policy and community development faculty examine the shifting landscape of urban life, considering myriad issues related to today’s urban experience. Additionally, many IPR faculty work on projects that are closely tied to urban policy in areas such as education, housing, welfare reform, community policing, and philanthropy. The group, chaired by sociologist Lincoln Quillian, is targeting:

Overview of Activities

Project CeaseFire
Despite 15 years of declining crime, Chicago continues to be one of the nation’s leading cities for homicide. Project CeaseFire, an initiative of the Chicago Project for Violence Prevention (CPVP), aims to address this issue by reducing gun and gun-related violence in targeted areas in Chicago and the state. The program has five core components: client outreach, community mobilization, law enforcement collaboration, clergy intervention, and public education.

To investigate how effective a broad-based community partnership like the CPVP can be in reducing violent crime, Wesley G. Skogan and his team conducted a three-year evaluation of the multi-site program. In addition to conducting fieldwork, interviews, and surveys, the researchers also examined the impact of the program on shootings and killings through statistical analysis of time series data, a network analysis of gang homicide, and an innovative use of GIS-computerized crime mapping techniques. Skogan is currently at work on a book that will summarize the study’s major findings. The National Institute of Justice provided funding for the study.

Chicago Alternative Policing Strategy Program
The Chicago Alternative Policing Strategy program (CAPS) is the nation’s largest experiment in community policing. CAPS involves the creation of turf-oriented teams of police officers with long-term beat assignments, extensive community involvement and empowerment, and integration with improved city services. The program encourages police and residents to engage in neighborhood problem solving. Skogan has been evaluating the program since 1993 and has created one of the most comprehensive bodies of research on community policing available, with four books, 31 working papers, more than 50 journal articles, and six reports. Skogan continues to examine the implementation of CAPS, including studying participation in the department’s monthly beat meetings.

Why Police Reforms Fail
Because of widespread enthusiasm for innovations such as community and problem-oriented policing, third-party policing, “lever-pulling” policing, and evidence-based policing, it could appear that reform comes easily. In fact, it is hard, the political risks involved are considerable, and efforts to change the police often fall far short or fail. It is necessary to be clear-eyed about the difficulties of innovating in police organizations. In a recent article, Skogan outlines the sources of resistance to innovation, organizing them in eleven categories. Many of them reflect internal processes of police agencies. Others obstacles are endemic
to public sector organizations: These include problems of interagency coordination, the competing demands of differing constituencies, and the inability of the police to measure their success in the absence of a profit-and-loss statement. External community and political forces can stymie change as well.

Networks of Politically Active Lawyers
John Heinz, Owen L. Coon Professor of Law, Anthony Paik of the University of Iowa, and Ann Southworth of Case Western Reserve University analyze the characteristics of lawyers and the structure of their networks. They are using network analysis to study contacts between lawyers active in domestic politics, their patterns of integration and cleavage and cooperation and conflict. In the past, Heinz and his colleagues have studied how lawyers in the conservative coalition organize and mobilize interest groups. In their current project, the researchers are addressing whether some lawyers act as mediators or brokers, occupying the network’s center and serving to bridge the Left and the Right, or whether the network might have a hollow core, lacking actors who provide links between contending partisans. They are paying special attention to how gender and race might affect these networks.

Jury Deliberations
Shari Seidman Diamond, a law professor and psychologist, and her fellow researcher Mary Rose of the University of Texas are conducting a follow-up to their pioneering randomized experiment in the Arizona Jury Project, where they received unprecedented access to study jury deliberations in 50 civil trials, analyzing how juries deal with issues such as expert testimony and instructions on the law. In another recent study, Diamond and her colleagues surveyed Texas residents, asking whether they would prefer a jury or a judge to be the decision-maker in four cases. While finding that a majority of citizens generally prefer a jury to a judge, the researchers uncovered racial and ethnic differences in the level of support. Non-Hispanic whites strongly favored juries over judges. African Americans and Hispanic citizens showed more tepid support for a jury over a judge. Less culturally assimilated Hispanic non-citizens preferred a judge. The researchers suggest that a preference for a jury implies more trust in one’s fellow citizens, which a history of discriminatory treatment in the legal system can undermine.

Community Development
John McKnight made several presentations over the year, including the keynote talk at a workshop for representatives of the First Nations in British Columbia, discussing technology and community asset mapping.

John Kretzmann is looking at how community school connectors can build partnerships to benefit schools and their communities. In one Chicago school, the study examines a student-led community clean-up, a student internship program, and school safety measures. It is supported by the Chicago Community Trust.