The term community watch covers several programs based on the idea of crime prevention through citizen surveillance. These include neighborhood watch programs, block watch, home watch, and apartment watch. The term can also be used to cover citizen surveillance in nonresidential areas, such as boat watch, farm watch, park watch, and car watch.
The idea of watch programs emerged in the United States during the 1960s and 1970s out of a broader movement to involve citizens in crime control. Other collective responses to crime introduced at that time were citizen patrols, police-community councils, citizen alerts, and citizen anticrime crusades. One of the earliest community watch programs in the United States was established in 1966 in Oakland under the name of Home Alert. Participants in the scheme attended regular meetings, displayed window stickers, marked their property, and acted as the ”eyes and ears” of the police (Washnis 1976). Perhaps the best known of these early programs was the Seattle Community Crime Prevention Project launched in 1973 (Cirel et al. 1977). The Seattle program encouraged citizens to obtain home security inspections, mark their property, organize block watches, and ”augment the range of vision” of traditional policing.
Community watch programs were also developed in other countries about the same time. Most of these drew on the U.S. model and incorporated similar components and terminology. One of the earliest neighborhood watch schemes in the United Kingdom was established in 1982 in Mollington, Cheshire. The program was based on the American model and comprised neighbors keeping their eyes and ears open for suspicious persons and reporting anything suspicious to the police, property marking, and improvements in physical security. The first scheme in Australia was launched in Victoria in 1984 and the first scheme in New Zealand began in 1980.
Structure
Community watch programs are usually made up of a number of component parts. The typical package in the United States is sometimes referred to as the ”Big Three” and includes community watch, property marking, and home security. In the United Kingdom, the typical package is similar and comprises neighborhood watch in conjunction with property marking and home security surveys.
Comprehensive packages sometimes include other crime prevention measures in addition to the ”Big Three.” A notable difference between schemes is the choice of these additional elements. They are often idiosyncratic and fit the needs of particular communities. A community watch program in Wilmington, Delaware, for example, included in its package a ”Senior Citizen’s Educational Program” and an ”Auxiliary Police Unit” to support the watch groups (Decampli 1977). A Block Watch program in Philadelphia included providing emotional support for victims of crime during court proceedings (Finn 1986).
There is also some variation in the size of the schemes. Block watches and block clubs in the United States typically cover a small number of households (sometimes less than fifty), whereas neighborhood watch programs in the United Kingdom typically include entire residential areas, covering perhaps thousands of households. While there was some early interest in ”cocoon” watch schemes in the United Kingdom, based on just a handful of households, the dominant form has tended to be much larger than this. Schemes in Australia are more variable and sometimes cover entire residential areas and sometimes smaller locations such as high-rise apartment blocks and specific institutions such as hospitals.
There is also some variation in the way schemes are established and funded. Watch schemes in the United States and the United Kingdom are sometimes police initiated and sometimes public initiated. The choice is often a result of the stage in the development of watch schemes in the area. Early schemes tend to be police initiated to assist their establishment, whereas schemes launched at a later stage, after the program has become well developed, are often public initiated. However, police involvement may continue for other reasons. The police in Detroit, for example, continued to launch police-initiated schemes to ensure that disadvantaged areas that were unlikely to generate requests from the public were also covered.
Function
There is a clear consensus in the literature that the main aim of watch programs is to prevent crime. There are some variations in terms of which crimes are to be prevented. The most commonly identified crime targeted is residential burglary. Programs sometimes aim to reduce street robbery, auto thefts, and vandalism. Schemes also report supplementary aims such as reduction of fear of crime and improvements in police-community relations, crime reporting, and the quality of life.
Watch schemes are typically operated by local citizens who watch out for suspicious incidents and behavior and report these to the police. There are many references in the publicity material to the idea of citizens becoming ”the eyes and ears” of the police. Some police departments ask the public to look out only for crimes rather than anything else suspicious.
Others encourage reporting of anything suspicious and issue recording cards for the public to complete when identifying suspects. Some programs include additional activities that the public can take to prevent crimes in their area. In some areas, community watch residents are encouraged to ensure that neighbor’s homes look occupied while they are away.
Mechanisms
The most frequently recorded mechanism by which watch programs are supposed to reduce crime is as a result of residents looking out for suspicious activities and reporting these to the police. There are at least three ways in which surveillance and reporting might reduce crime. First, visible surveillance might reduce crime as a result of its effect on the perceptions and decision making of potential offenders. Watching and reporting might deter offenders if they are aware of the propensity of the local residents to report suspicious behavior and if they believe that this increases their risks of being caught.
Second, community watch schemes might reduce crime as a result of an increase in the flow of useful information from the public to the police. This might involve reports of crimes in progress and early warning of suspicious persons and events. These reports might then lead to a greater number of arrests and convictions, which might in turn result in individual deterrence or (when a custodial sentence is passed) incapacitation of local offenders.
Third, watch programs might reduce crime through the mechanisms of social control. Community watch might enhance a sense of community cohesion, community activism, and collective efficacy, which might in turn increase the ability of communities to control crime in their neighborhoods.
Effectiveness
Several evaluations of community watch programs have been conducted. One of the earliest conducted in the United States was by Titus (1984) who summarized the results of nearly forty community crime prevention programs. Most of these included elements of community watch. The majority of the studies were conducted by police departments or included data from police departments. Nearly all of the studies found that community watch areas were associated with lower levels of crime. However, most of the evaluations were described as ”weak” in terms of research design.
Another review of the literature looked mainly at community watch programs in the United Kingdom (Husain 1990). The study reviewed the results of nine existing evaluations and conducted an original analysis of community watch in six additional locations using police-recorded crime data. The review of existing evaluations concluded that ”the published evidence to suggest that [neighborhood watch] can prevent crime is extremely thin.” The results of the original analysis in six locations concluded that there was strong evidence of a reduction in crime in one location, but weak or no evidence of a reduction in the remaining five.
One of the most recent reviews of the literature on the effectiveness of community watch programs selected only evaluations with the strongest research designs (Sherman et al. 1997). The authors included only studies that used random assignment or studies that monitored both watch areas and similar comparison areas without community watch. The review found just four evaluations that matched these criteria. The results of these evaluations were mainly negative. The authors concluded, ”The oldest and best-known community policing program, Neighborhood Watch, is ineffective at preventing crime.”
These three reviews of the literature have produced mixed results. One explanation for this is that the nature of the findings might be affected by the quality of the research methods used. Evaluations based on ”before” and ”after” measures only with no comparison area can provide false results because they do not show what might have happened in the absence of the scheme. Evaluations based on a comparison of community watch and non-community watch areas at a single point in time can also produce false results because they do not show whether there were preexisting differences between the areas. The best research designs are either random allocation studies or carefully controlled ”before” and ”after” studies using matched comparison areas. Unfortunately, there are very few studies of these kinds. More research needs to be done, therefore, before the effectiveness of community watch can be finally determined.
