Whither streetwork?

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1745-9133.2011.00770.x
• Date: 01 November 2011
• Published date: 01 November 2011
• Author: David M. Kennedy

POLICY ESSAY

COMMUNITY-DRIVEN VIOLENCE

REDUCTION PROGRAMS

Whither streetwork?

The place of outreach workers in community violence

prevention

David M. Kennedy

Center for Crime Preventionand Control John Jay College of Criminal Justice

Wilson and Chermak’s (2011, this issue) evaluation of Pittsburgh’s One Vision

One Life program adds to a growing body of evaluation research and field

experience showing that outreach workers do not reliably reduce, and can

even promote, street violence. More precisely, this study, and the broader record, shows

this about outreach workers operating in a particular way. This result should probably not

surprise us. Although this kind of streetwork has enjoyed a recent national vogue, it in fact

has a history that goes back a couple of generations, and it is not particularly promising. At

another point in that history, findings similar to Wilson and Chermak’s and to other recent

research effectively put an end to streetwork as an important element in community violence

prevention. To do that again, I firmly believe, would be a great error. This policy essay will

look at where we currently are, and what we currently know, about streetwork; what that

should tell us about the kind of streetwork we should be pursuing; and how we should

understand and act on the most recent body of research. In particular, it will look at the

way streetwork organizations and streetworkers themselves do and do not coordinate and

cooperate with law enforcement, particularly police departments. It will make a case that

both research and field experience favor appropriately close relationships. It will then raise

the idea that different sorts of relationships could have different meanings for community

and offender notions of police legitimacy, with potentially powerful criminogenic or crime

control implications.

I should say here that I have been actively involved in this debate for some time. In

the relatively small world of community violence prevention, it has often been said that I

Direct correspondence to David M. Kennedy, Director, Center for Crime Prevention and Control, John Jay

College of Criminal Justice, 555 West 57th Street, Room 601, New York, NY 10019 (e-mail:

dakennedy@jjay.cuny.edu).

DOI:10.1111/j.1745-9133.2011.00770.x C2011 American Society of Criminology 1045

Criminology & Public Policy rVolume 10 rIssue 4