NCJ Number
216779
Journal
The Police Chief: The Professional Voice of Law Enforcement Volume: 73 Issue: 12 Dated: December 2006 Pages: 80-83,85,86
Date Published
December 2006
Length
6 pages
Annotation
This article describes the downtown livability project in Portland, OR, a comprehensive series of programs designed to solve the city’s crime and public nuisance problems.
Abstract
The downtown livability project, which rolled out crime and nuisance prevention programs in Portland’s high crime downtown area over the past 4 years at little to no cost, relied heavily on close partnerships between government departments, social service agencies, and criminal justice agencies. The project has enjoyed significant success, which has been attributed to three main factors: (1) statistical analysis of data to define problems; (2) involvement of community partners; and (3) a champion of the project. The authors describe each of the five programs that comprise Portland’s downtown livability program. Each of the programs focuses on one of four main strategies: (1) crime prevention; (2) crime prevention through environmental design; (3) communication with parole and probation officers; and (4) rehabilitation and enforcement. The car prowl program used police data to identify the three types of car prowlers committing the majority of larcenies from cars in the downtown area. The data was used to focus the crime prevention strategy, which took the form of a public education campaign. The transportation right-of-way camping cleanup program focused on cleanups and environmental design issues on the highway and railroad properties where individuals conducted illegal activities. The alcove abatement program installed reinforced gates on private business alcoves to keep illegal drug activities out of alcoves in the downtown area. The parole and probation EPR mask program created an electronic communication system between parole/probation officers and the Multnomah County Community Justice Department’s Division of Adult Probation and Parole. The result is that local probation/parole officers receive daily reports regarding their clients’ behavior. The neighborhood livability crime enforcement program was designed to have a concentrated impact on the 35 chronic offenders who had been identified as committing the bulk of crime in the area. Many of these chronic offenders now have access to housing and treatment.