Continuous Evaluation for a Multi-Dimensional Violent Crime Prevention and Recovery Policy

Crime is consistently ranked as a top concern of citizens. In the past five years there has been a real increase of violent crime, complemented by a citizen perception of increased crime. There have been a few successful initiatives for reducing crime, especially violent crime, which take a multi-dimensional approach. Policing alone is not enough. Teams need to include mental health experts for the crime victims and family, in/formal educators and mentors, and community activists and spiritual leaders who are familiar with the facts on the ground. The Newark City Office of Violence Prevention and Trauma Recovery (OVPTR) has taken this multi-faceted approach with some success in Newark, NJ. The multi-dimensional crime fighting city’s policy required implementation programs led by these diverse community institutions. The challenge is how to evaluate and measure the success of these policy programs, especially when many participating entities and actors provide services and activities to their target population involved. In this paper, we propose Crime Prevention and Response Program Evaluation System that can provide capabilities of monitoring progress and evaluation of programs, and of measuring their overall outcome and impact of policy implementation. The system can provide the visibility of each program and participant progress, and measure the accountability of the crime prevention policy services and activities. This support the city to make a decision on policy efficacy and rearrangement in crime prevention and recovery.