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Date: April 29, 2024 Mon
Time: 10:44 pm
Time: 10:44 pm
Results for snitching
2 results foundAuthor: Bania, Melanie L. Title: Don't Snitch: Responses to Neigbourhood Intimidation Summary: Community-wide intimidation refers to a general atmosphere of fear, silence, and non-cooperation with the police and criminal justice system within a particular neighbourhood or community affected by crime and violence. This is distinguished in the literature from individual-level intimidation: scare tactics and threats specifically targeted at one person or one small group of people following a specific incident. While the literature on individual-level intimidation is vast, much less is known about community-wide intimidation. Despite many anecdotal reports of community-wide intimidation, there is currently very limited reliable information on the prevalence and severity of community-wide intimidation in Canadian communities and elsewhere. In an attempt to explain the dynamics surrounding the causes of community-wide intimidation, existing studies point to a lack of informal social control in disenfranchised communities, strong messaging from the current 'snitch culture' surrounding gang activity, and gang stereotypes that portrait every possible gang-involved person as disproportionality violent. Regardless of potential causes, when deciding whether or not to report an incident to police, victims and bystanders generally consider whether the expected gains of reporting (the 'pros') will outweigh the costs of reporting, including the potential for retaliation (the 'cons'). When it comes to responses to community-wide intimidation, the literature refers to a variety of general suggestions, including: community outreach and education for residents; creating avenues for safe communication between community members and police; community policing; community-based prosecution strategies; civil injunctions targeting the activities of gang-involved persons; and inter-agency cooperation at the neighbourhood level. Only a few concrete examples of these approaches are provided in the literature, primarily from the United States and the United Kingdom. Most have not been well documented or evaluated for their impacts on communities. The most documented model is the Making WAVES program from the United Kingdom, which supports victims and witnesses in a variety of ways. An evaluation of the program showed promising results and emphasized the importance of interagency cooperation with community members. In Canada and Ottawa more specifically, efforts have focused on education and awareness campaigns for residents, and efforts to facilitate safe communication between residents and police. These initiatives have generally not been well documented, researched or evaluated for their effects and impacts on communities. Overall, there is a large gap in knowledge regarding community-wide intimidation of residents in vulnerable and marginalized neighbourhoods, and effective ways of addressing this concern. Further research is needed in order to understand the dynamics, prevalence, severity, and impacts of communitywide intimidation in neighbourhoods affected by crime and violence. Future attempts to address community-wide intimidation should be based on an indepth understanding of the complexity of the issue at the local neighbourhood level, and should be evaluated for their intended and unintended effects and impacts on the community. Finally, much of the literature on community-wide intimidation focuses solely on the challenges it creates for the functioning of the criminal justice system, particularly residents' willingness to report to and cooperate with the police. Very little attention is paid to the effects of intimidation and fear on the quality of life of residents in disenfranchised neighbourhoods. Yet for service providers, community workers, and residents themselves, quality of life issues are of primary importance. Various stakeholders touched by this issue, then, may have different definitions of what "success" looks like in attempts to address community-wide intimidation. Future research and initiatives related to addressing community-wide intimidation in neighbourhoods should therefore reflect carefully on the intended impact of the approach - what do we hope to see change? Should the focus be solely or mainly on reporting to police as a solution? Or are there other, more sustainable ways to meet resident needs and ultimately improve the quality of life of vulnerable and marginalized groups affected by community-wide intimidation? Details: Ottawa: Crime Prevention Ottawa, 2016. 26p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed June 6, 2017 at: http://www.crimepreventionottawa.ca/Media/Content/files/Publications/Neighbourhoods/Don%20t%20snitch%20responses%20to%20Neighbourhoods%20Intimidation-EN-Final-Jan%202016.pdf Year: 2016 Country: Canada URL: http://www.crimepreventionottawa.ca/Media/Content/files/Publications/Neighbourhoods/Don%20t%20snitch%20responses%20to%20Neighbourhoods%20Intimidation-EN-Final-Jan%202016.pdf Shelf Number: 145944 Keywords: Communities and CrimeIntimidationNeighborhoods and CrimeRetaliationSnitching |
Author: Satterberg, Dan Title: Prosecution that Earns Community Trust Summary: We could think of this as the protest era. From the #MeToo movement to NFL players taking a knee, our country faces a period of serious upheaval. Marginalized people protest the oppression they experience on a daily basis. And these protests get the full attention of criminal prosecutors, because they go right to the heart of criminal justice and public safety. In some communities, when police arrive at a scene of violence, they encounter witnesses who choose not to help. Police often find people at the crime scene who feel that the police and courts have never treated them fairly, so in protest, they refuse to help solve serious violent crimes in their community, even when they hold valuable evidence. An individual who has been treated unfairly by the criminal justice system may choose to boycott that system by refusing to tell police who murdered their best friend. This sometimes leads to street justice, a different and often violent kind of retribution that only creates more victims of violence. This is called the "no snitch" rule. A more profound protest, we cannot imagine. This boycott of the criminal justice system takes other forms, including countless victims of domestic violence and sexual assault who choose not to report the crimes they suffer. These underreported crimes are a silent protest by the most vulnerable members of our society who do not believe that involving police, prosecutors, or courts will improve their situation. Women who face domestic abuse may fear the spotlight that reporting will place on their precarious situations, including the possibility of reprisal within their own neighborhoods. The boycott also extends to immigrant communities. Crime victims with unclear citizenship status may fear that asking for help from authorities will lead those same authorities to scrutinize their right to live in this country. Taken together, these boycotts amount to a public safety disaster. And they point to the greatest challenge for every District Attorney in America: to earn and keep the trust of the communities where crime has the greatest impact. In this essay, we aim to provide some fresh thinking that an elected prosecutor can use to apply justice outside the courtroom, working together with local community groups to create alternative forms of justice. We advocate for an expanded role of the prosecutor that reaches both upstream and downstream from the prosecutor's traditional role as courtroom adversary. Prosecutors who engage the community outside the criminal courtroom can help trust grow, step by step. The first step is to demonstrate that prosecutors can listen to our critics. When people in the community speak truth to power, the job of the powerful is to stop and listen. Another step prosecutors can take to earn public trust is to make concrete their commitment to treat crime victims with dignity and compassion. That means informing and including victims in the decisions that affect them. But the prosecutor's duties go beyond respectful treatment of victims; prosecutors also must inform and include the entire community as they create more effective accountability measures for low-level crimes and juvenile misconduct. Public safety is something that prosecutors must co-produce with their communities. It is not something they can simply deliver to the public. Details: New York, NY: John Jay College of Criminal Justice, 2018. 12p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed February 23, 2019 at: https://thecrimereport.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/IIP-Community_Trust-paper.pdf Year: 2018 Country: United States URL: https://thecrimereport.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/IIP-Community_Trust-paper.pdf Shelf Number: 154347 Keywords: AttorneyCommunity-Based ApproachesDistrict AttorneyProsecutionProsecutorSnitching |