According to Lilley (2015), the Weed and Seed program was founded in the 1990s to dedicate law enforcement resources that minimized crime rates (weeding) and restoration activities (seeding). The program started with three pilot cities; Kansas City, Omaha, Hartford, and Trenton, where the primary goal was to stabilize communities with established high crime rates. Given the goals and methods of this program, they relate to the theories presented in this course in that they establish the interaction between government policing and its impact on the social aspects of different communities. The restoration strategies of the program are congruent with the ideas of social control theory and social disorganization theory in that by targeting high crime neighborhoods (location matters), punishing delinquency and rewarding compliance is more likely to change a community’s values, norms, and beliefs, thus discouraging them to breaking the law (Meeks, 2006; Warner et al., 2010).
However, of the neighborhood crime factors, only intensive drug enforcement, targeted patrol and enforcement, and community policing could be legitimately be handled by the police. Of these, community policing needed the involvement of the community because it would bring the neighborhood’s needs, objections, and opinions to the program.
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A report by Dunworth et al. (1999), for instance, shows that a city like Stowe Village in Hartford had a 46% drop in crime rates due to the program. However, this success was ensured because the program enforced compliance and punishing dissidents, just by the authority to focus on these communities. Therefore, better suggestions could be recommended to get better results. First, the program should have focused more on restoration than weeding, so as to avoid uniting the neighborhood against the authorities. Secondly, the program should have never been focused in specific communities as it would impact their economies where investors lacked confidence, leaving them with fewer opportunities for law-abiding lives. Thirdly, the program should have focused on protecting the younger generations through education, making the outcomes self-sustainable. Fourthly, the program should focus on improving positive police-community relationships to sustain low crime rates in the long term. Lastly, the program could be improved by making the community insecure about their activities through heavy policing, such as through patrols.
References
Dunworth, T., Mills, G., Cordner, G., & Greene, J. (1999). National evaluation of Weed and Seed: Cross-site analysis. Washington, DC: US Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs .
Lilley, D. (2015). The weed and seed program: A nationwide analysis of crime outcomes. Criminal Justice Policy Review , 26 (5), 423-447.
Meeks, D. (2006). Police militarization in urban areas: The obscure war against the underclass. The Black Scholar , 35 (4), 33-41.
Warner, B. D., Beck, E., & Ohmer, M. L. (2010). Linking informal social control and restorative justice: Moving social disorganization theory beyond community policing. Contemporary Justice Review , 13 (4), 355-369.
