COMMUNITY CRIME-PREVENTION - ADDRESSING BACKGROUND AND FOREGROUND CAUSES OF CRIMINAL BEHAVIOR

A case study of one inner-city neighborhood in St. Louis (Hyde Park) i ndicates that community members in partnership with city and other out side entities are implementing a comprehensive crime prevention approa ch, addressing both background (social malaise) and foreground (opport unity) causes of criminal behavior. The Friedens Haus (house of peace) coalition of school church, private social service agency, and commun ity furnishes educational, social, and health services while another o rganization, the Hyde Park Safety Committee with its mobile patrol com ponent, implements deterrent measures regarding opportunity for crimin al behavior. Comparisons are made among eight demographically similar St. Louis neighborhoods over a period of six years, linking demographi c characteristics to rates of crime in the categories of robbery, aggr avated assault, and burglary. This, along with trend analyses of crime frequencies in four of the neighborhoods, t-tests performed regarding mean rate differences of reported crime in Hyde Park, and a contiguou s neighborhood during the same time period, strongly suggest that the Hyde Park Mobile Patrol component of a comprehensive crime prevention program had a curtailing effect on at least one type of crime-robbery. Copyright (C) 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd.