Preventative Policing

After noticing a sharp increase in robberies in Brownsville, a New York City neighborhood with many public housing developments, New York City Police Department Housing Bureau Chief Joanne Jaffe first tried to increase conventional policing strategies. However, by early 2007 Chief Jaffe had begun to think of new ideas for police interventions in the neighborhood. Chief Jaffe had decided to compile a list of every youth under 18 who lived in Brownsville public housing who had been arrested for robbery. Based on this data collection the new and innovative Juvenile Robbery Intervention Program (J-RIP) of the NYPD was developed and launched in 2007 in this neighborhood.[1]

J-RIP is a new style of preventative policing in New York City. The program seeks out youth who have been involved in robbery and provides them with an option: the individuals can choose to cease their involvement in crime, or the justice system will discipline them especially harshly after their next offense. After committing an offense a young offender in the program is assigned NYPD officers to manage his or her case. As long as the youth elects the first option the officers will be there to support the participant and his or her family. In this way J-RIP seeks to prevent the individual’s next transgression before it occurs.

The J-RIP officers bring Turkeys to families on thanksgiving and designer shoes and clothing to younger siblings. Officers provide tailored support, such as driving family-members of program youth to doctor’s appointments. Officers may help program participants to finish high school, attain GEDs, or find work.1 However J-RIP officers do not only involve themselves with program participants in such pleasant ways. Officers also follow their assigned cases, alienating them from gang members or friends involved in crime. Officers make Facebook profiles, often of attractive females, that are then used to monitor the program participants on the social media site.1 Additionally, should a program participant fail to steer clear from the justice system, prosecutors collaborate with NYPD to harshly punish the program participant. It is what The New York Times calls, “The Police Department’s own brand of tough love.”1 Chief Jaffe says, “We tell these kids… If you commit a new robbery or any other crime that is going to hurt people, we are going to do anything we can when you get arrested to put you in jail.”¹

J-RIP expanded to public housing in the Rockaways in 2008 and to East Harlem in 2009.[2] A press release put out by the NYPD explains that, “Prior to entering the JRIP program, the youth invited into the program had been arrested for a total of 180 robberies. One year later, of the same group, police recorded only 29 robbery arrests.”2 This new and preventive style of policing is important for professionals interested in preventing youth violence and other crime to take note of. The J-RIP program may be attaining positive results through a number of factors such as increased social support, stronger future-orientation among program participants, positive adult role models, fear of harsher punishment, decreased access to negative peer-influences, etc. As the program grows and potentially is replicated to other sites it will be important for researchers to root out what factors lead to the success of the program. Additionally, the program raises important ethical considerations for practitioners to consider. For example, at what level of risk is it appropriate for interventionists to follow program participants and forcefully alienate them from their friends and peer-groups? What negative implications could this have for the participant’s mental and emotional wellbeing as well as for their physical safety? Grappling with these important questions will be an essential part of scaling up or adapting the J-RIP program to other communities and sites.