Is it possible for marginalized communities to work together to create thriving neighborhoods? Is there a role for police officers, who are often mistrusted, in this effort?

This was the subject of the latest research from Harvard Kennedy School’s Program in Criminal Justice Policy and Management (PCJ), led by faculty director Sandra Susan Smith.

Smith, the Daniel and Florence Guggenheim Professor of Criminal Justice and the Carol K. Pforzheimer Professor at the Radcliffe Institute, formed the Roundtable on Racial Disparities in Massachusetts Criminal Courts at the PCJ in 2021. Its goal is to influence future policies, practices, and procedures to eradicate the sources of racial inequity and racial disparity in Massachusetts’s courts.

The Roundtable, under the direction of Smith, has studied issues such as jury exclusion and reducing racial disparities through decriminalization. The latest study, This is What Thriving Communities Look Like, looked at four neighborhoods in the greater Boston area to better define what is meant by “reimagining public safety.”

Smith, with Amisha Kambath, a research assistant at the PCJ who is beginning Yale Law School this fall, and Noor Toraif, an assistant professor at UPenn, wanted to understand what it meant for people to feel and be safe in their neighborhoods. Working with focus groups in Roxbury, Dorchester, East Boston and South Boston—communities that have different racial and class compositions but share a troubled relationship with law enforcement—the team gained insights on what residents need to thrive and what role policing can play.

“Ever since the murder of George Floyd in 2020 and the conviction of the Minneapolis police officer who killed him, we have heard this plea to reimagine public safety,” the authors wrote. “In working with the residents of these Boston neighborhoods, we hoped to understand what a safe, thriving community looked like to them. And how law enforcement fits into that picture.”

As Smith revealed in a recent PCJ report the residents of these Boston communities report higher rates of police harassment and as a result feel a deep distrust of law enforcement.

“We also knew that creating a thriving community required deliberate and sustained engagements with residents themselves, with a particular emphasis on those most often targeted for aggressive and harmful police interventions but least considered when questions about how to achieve public safety arise,” the researchers wrote.

Sandra Susan Smith headshot.
“What comes through powerfully from these focus group meetings is the level of sophistication that residents have in identifying the very real structural barriers to thriving their communities face ...”
Sandra Susan Smith

After a series of focus group sessions, which included participants from each of the four communities, people with diverse experiences and relationships to the state, including a range of age groups as well as formerly incarcerated residents, Kambath, Toraif, and Smith identified three themes:

  • What thriving communities look like
  • What communities need to thrive
  • What role police could play in creating and maintaining safe, healthy, and thriving communities.
     

What is “thriving”?
 

Inherent in thriving communities, Smith’s team found, was a sense of community cohesion and freedom from harm: as one young adult respondent put it, “everyone kind of having each other’s back.”

The research team noted one striking response when talking about a sense of community.

“Rather than look to more affluent neighborhoods as examples of community cohesion,” the researchers wrote, “these residents most often looked back in time at their own neighborhoods where they were born and raised.”

Respondents pointed out how neighbors would sit on their porches to watch the street, cleaned the areas of trash, and actively engaged with one another in public spaces—all positive signs of a thriving community.

Other respondents noted that local events can enhance a sense of belonging. A formerly incarcerated resident described the East Boston farmer’s market, saying “Every Wednesday they pass out fresh vegetables to the public. It’s a thriving place. It’s a place to bring people together.”

The study indicated that the prevailing threat to safety was easy access to guns, a fear supported by Boston police statistics for the communities. None of the respondents could envision thriving without freedom from violence. 

“Violence, experienced directly or indirectly and with or without guns, impacts the physical and mental health of residents,” said Smith. “It also erodes resident’s ability and willingness to engage in ways that contribute positively to their communities.”

What communities need
 

The focus group discussions led to the research team identifying three themes for creating a thriving community: a healthy built environment, greater investments in capital development, and access to high quality physical and mental healthcare.

“Our participating residents focused on specific aspects of the built environment,” wrote Kambath, Toraif, and Smith, pointing to greater access to green spaces, parks and recreation. Many spoke of the need for more trees. The team identified prior research that noted the benefits of green space to help reduce violent crime and found that tree canopy coverage—areas shaded by trees—were especially low in two of the focus group communities.

Neighborhood gentrification—where poorer, urban communities are revitalized by wealthier citizens, often displacing the current residents—was also systemic in these areas, contributing to housing instability for longtime residents. In fact, Boston ranks third among highly gentrified cities in the country, with the four neighborhoods in this study at risk, according to a 2020 study by the National Community Reinvestment Coalition.

Investment in human capital was also top of mind, not only enhanced, free education for the area’s youth, but skill-building opportunities for adults as well. And as one resident argued, there was a sense that jobs and contracts in these neighborhoods should go to community members first.

Residents in all four neighborhoods identified a need for far more resources to address health concerns, especially mental health and substance abuse issues, but feared that more affluent communities with far less need for public support would be privileged in the city’s decision-making.

What can policing do
 

“When imagining safe and thriving communities,” Kambath, Toraif, and Smith noted, “Residents offered a wide range of views about the role police can play.” Many saw “police as protectors” equating public safety with police.

Others identified the police as flawed, unresponsive, and failing to treat residents with respect. Nevertheless, the research found residents wanted police to be protective and believed that through training they could become better public servants. As one East Boston resident said, “We need more police officers” to provide a sense of security.

And then some respondents viewed police as “violence workers.” “They terrorize our young people” is how one formerly incarcerated Roxbury-Dorchester resident put it.

"In a related report that the PCJ released in June based on analysis of a representative sample of Boston residents,” Smith wrote, “Our analysis of this Boston survey not only revealed that police harassment is predictive of distrust and eroded feelings of community safety, but police harassment is also predictive of symptoms of trauma and associated with chronic health issues.”

“These findings, which are consistent with prior research in this area, suggest that police harassment might be a direct and indirect contributor in making communities unsafe, thwarting residents’ efforts to thrive,” she continued.

The study, while sobering on many fronts, also offered opportunities for collaboration in these communities. And residents felt they had taken the first important steps, being heard, voicing concerns, and participating in solutions.

"What comes through powerfully from these focus group meetings is the level of sophistication that residents have in identifying the very real structural barriers to thriving their communities face and offering concrete, workable solutions to overcome these,” said Smith. Responses from residents even included photographs of what a thriving community meant to them.

“They are the experts that we should be listening to. In this way, they are no different than generations of residents who have come before them. It is well past time that we take their ideas seriously." 

Banner photograph by Carlin Stiehl/The Boston Globe/Getty Images; inline photograph by Matthew J. Lee/The Boston Globe/Getty Images; portrait by Martha Stewart

Focus group participants submitted photographs that describe a thriving community. The second banner photo is from an East Boston young adult: “I just think it is cool, people can sit down with their friends, or just sit down.”