ÌÇÐÄvlog¹ÙÍø

In the summer of 2020, George Floyd’s video-graphed murder by Minneapolis police officers sparked a renewed public discourse about the role that police and policing play in the United States. Seared into the public’s consciousness, this event and its aftermath led to calls for an examination – or reimagining – of public safety, of what communities need to feel and be safe, to thrive, and to be healthy. Heeding these calls, we – the Program in Criminal Justice at Harvard Kennedy School – sought answers to these questions in our own backyard – Boston, Massachusetts – focusing our efforts on four Boston neighborhoods – Roxbury and Dorchester, East Boston, and South Boston – neighborhoods that share historically troubled relationships with law enforcement but that differ in their racial and class compositions. Our goal was to understand how residents of these communities conceptualize healthy, safe, and thriving communities and what role they saw for law enforcement in their communities. During the summer of 2022, we invited residents from each of these neighborhoods to participate in focus groups organized separately into youth and young adults, parents of dependent children, elders, and formerly incarcerated residents to capture residents’ diverse perspectives. These conversations revealed residents’ comprehensive ideas for what thriving communities look like, what impediments exist to creating and maintaining such communities and what types of investments would be needed to overcome these challenges, and, finally, where law enforcement fits into this picture. Across neighborhoods, two elements were seen as key to creating and maintaining healthy, safe, and thriving communities. The first was community cohesion and collective efficacy. Residents’ responses highlighted a desire for the activities and institutions that facilitate the development of bonds between and across residents, shared expectations, and a sense that they could come together to solve their community’s problems. Also foundational to creating and maintaining thriving communities is freedom from harm and violence. The expectation and fear of violence and crime inspire a pervasive distrust that causes residents to keep to themselves, to stay indoors, to avoid most others. Linking these core elements, residents emphasized how violence, endemic to some neighborhoods, erodes a community’s social fabric, puts in doubt shared expectations, and obliterates collective efficacy. But to achieve the levels of cohesion needed to thrive, residents emphasized the need for significant investment in the built environment, in human capital, and in residents’ health and well-being. To thrive, they underscored, means having one’s basic needs met – safe and affordable housing, good quality education, and freedom from hunger; access to quality health care, broadly defined; opportunities for upward mobility; initiatives and programs for youth engagement; and a robust physical infrastructure and green space. Residents’ views on the role that police and policing can and should play, however, ranged considerably. While some perceive police as protectors who assist people during times of distress, others view police as seriously flawed but potentially salvageable with more and higher quality engagement with community members, and still others see the police as violence workers, a key source of harm in their communities that must be replaced by more efficient, effective, and caring actors, including and especially members of their own communities, who can better help address persistent problems.