Defining Community and the Role of Community Engagement in PSN

At meetings and conferences, various PSN task force members have raised basic questions about community and community engagement that are addressed in this section: What is “the community?” What community groups should get involved? What roles can the community play in PSN? And how does community engagement differ from media outreach campaigns?

What is the community?

The 2,000-page Encyclopedia of Community⁹ contains 500 articles, 250 sidebars, and a master bibliography that, together, represent hundreds of years of thinking about the meaning of community. Traditionally, “community” has referred to people living in a specific geographic locale who often have shared values or norms. Assets such as people, institutions like schools and hospitals, businesses, land, etc. are also commonly included in geographic based definitions of community. Community may also refer to people who share special interests but have no common geographic reference point (e.g., participants in Internet discussion groups). Although there are many ways to define community, this working definition is offered for PSN:

The community is all groups in a United States Attorney's district that have a specific role to play in creating safer neighborhoods by reducing gun crime and sustaining that reduction.

These groups typically include:

• Youth at high risk of involvement in gun-related crimes
  
  
• Family members of offenders and youth
  
  
• Neighborhood and citizens' groups, particularly in areas with high levels of violent crime
  
  
• Businesses and business associations
  
  
• Religious organizations and ministerial alliances
  
  
• Charitable foundations and organizations
  
  
• Agencies and organizations providing services, such as substance abuse treatment, employment training, housing, education, and victim advocacy
  
  
• Criminal justice system partners in PSN (including agencies focused on law enforcement, probation and parole, and corrections, but also specific initiatives such as Weed & Seed and community policing).
  
  
• Offender population (including ex-offenders, parolees, and probationers)

Including offender populations as part of the community may seem counter-intuitive to some groups or individuals whose primary concern is enforcement or prosecution. However, PSN outreach has always focused on offender groups through media campaigns and, in some districts, through meetings with probationers/parolees as part of a “lever pulling” strategy.¹⁰ In addition, a number of PSN partners, including community and faith-based groups, are committed to providing opportunities for offender populations and youth to break the cycle of violence.

Can PSN involve all of these groups?

The simple answer is yes. Some PSN task forces involve all or most of them. The qualified answer is that it may not be possible or desirable for every U.S. Attorney's district to involve all segments of the community in every PSN initiative. It also may not be possible to involve all groups at once, or to expect them to play the same roles and have the same level of involvement.

PSN task forces will need to consider their own objectives when thinking about who to involve. Many task forces are focused on reducing gun crime in a particular geographic area—sometimes in conjunction with Weed & Seed or Project Sentry efforts. This approach naturally lends itself to participation by community members living or working in that area. On the other hand, not every task force has a geographic focus. If a priority is to prosecute gun crimes associated with domestic violence, for example, the PSN community would include domestic violence coalitions. Similarly, task forces targeting illegal gun sales may or may not be neighborhood focused and would need to think about “community” in light of their own objectives and strategies.

What roles can the community play in PSN?

The examples in this guide demonstrate that the community can play a full range of roles in PSN at every stage of the initiative—from analyzing gun crime data to working with offenders upon their release from prison. It may be helpful to think of community roles in PSN along a continuum like the one below.

As the graphic above suggests, the actions associated with “level of engagement” (inform, consult, etc.) represent different ways in which PSN engages the community. When a PSN task force informs the community of its plans or reports on successful prosecutions, the community may be able to use the information, but it is not yet engaged in PSN at a high level. The level of engagement increases as the task force begins to consult with, involve, collaborate with, and empower various segments of the community. The illustration does not prescribe who should do what. It is meant to spark creative thinking about possible community roles. For example:

• Should youth at risk of involvement in gun crime only be potential users of PSN messages, or are there valuable roles they can play as advisors or even deliverers of services?
  
  
• If neighborhood or faith based groups were consulted as advisors, would they be more likely to get involved later in working with at-risk youth or offenders? Would they be more likely to provide information useful for investigations or protecting witnesses?
  
  
• What about the PSN task force members? Their individual roles may be enforcement and prosecution-based, but there may be others in their agencies who are knowledgeable about community engagement. Are they already working with community groups in a PSN target neighborhood?

Aren't we already engaging the community through our ad campaigns?

Community engagement often begins with outreach through the media, but much more can be done to engage the community in active roles. And more can be done through the media to support higher levels of community involvement in PSN.

PSN has invested a great deal in national and local media campaigns to deliver a consistent “gun crime means hard time” message to the general public and to segments of the community—primarily offenders and others at high risk of committing gun crime. The message has been delivered not only on TV, radio, billboards, and posters, but also on headrests in squad cars, clipboards in gun shops, and the paper liners on school lunch trays (to cite just a few examples). These campaigns have been effective in increasing awareness, but they are limited in their ability to inspire action and get the community involved.

To help clarify this distinction, take the example of the “Got Milk?” campaign.¹¹ After millions spent on advertising, a high percentage of the population was aware of the “Got Milk?” ads, but people were not buying any more milk than they had in the past. Although the message was noticed, it did not translate into action. Unlike the milk campaign, however, PSN ads can be supplemented by other media outreach efforts to help achieve greater community involvement. To do this, consider:

• Is all or most PSN media coverage about arrests, prosecution, or convictions?
  
  
• If conditions in a neighborhood have improved as a result of PSN interventions, does that success story need to be told as well?
  
  
• If a community forum on PSN is planned, how can media outreach be targeted to get the right people there and ensure diverse participation?
  
  
• How can the media be used to help acknowledge existing community efforts and support?

PSN task forces can leverage the media to increase community buy-in and participation for their local initiative. Each PSN task force works with an outreach partner or other partners who may be able to spearhead the activities.

¹⁰ The term “pulling levers” refers to a strategy that includes delivering a strong, consistent message to a specific group of offenders that any violation of the law or condition of release will result in swift and severe consequences. See D. Kennedy, “Pulling Levers: Getting Deterrence Right,” National Institute of Justice Journal, Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Justice, National Institute of Justice, July 1998. Also see “Pulling Levers” under “Engaging Offender Populations” in this monograph.

¹¹ This example is given by The Academy for Educational Development (AED), a non-profit organization that is currently the national media outreach partner for PSN.