Boston's Comprehensive Communities

Program: A Case Study, 2004

The Comprehensive Communities Program (CCP) played a pivotal part in Boston’s achievements, most notably by funding an unusually intensive planning process. This planning process brought together the Boston Police Department (BPD), community leaders, citizens, criminal justice agencies, and social service providers in each of Boston’s police districts over an extended period of time during which neighborhood problems were identified and tactics were developed to solve them. This planning process also laid the groundwork for an ongoing accountability process in each of the districts.

To achieve these goals, long-standing suspicions, indeed even antagonisms among participants, had to be overcome and/or managed. While this did not happen overnight, and while the BPD’s and other organizations’ capacities were strained by their new experiences and responsibilities, for the most part, problems were overcome. They were overcome in large part by the self-consciousness of the BPD: that is, by its willingness to learn from its experiences and its attempt to find new ways of solving problems, be they neighborhood or program administration problems.

This case study of Boston’s CCP program was written as a result of site visits made to various CCP programs and interviews with CCP participants between September, 1995 and April, 1997. It also incorporates data from BOTEC’s CCP Coalition Survey and Community Policing Survey, as well as information contained in federal and local documents and reports. Follow-up phone calls were made during December, 1997 and January, 1998, to key participants in order to write the epilogue.

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http://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/204680.pdf