Does neighborhood watch reduce crime? A systematic review and meta-analysis

Abstract

Neighborhood watch grew out of a movement in the USA during the late 1960s that promoted greater involvement of citizens in the prevention of crime. Recent estimates suggest that over a quarter of the UK population and over 40% of the US population live in areas covered by neighborhood watch schemes. The current paper presents the results of a recent systematic review of evaluations of neighborhood watch. The main findings of the narrative review were that about half of the schemes evaluated showed that neighborhood watch was effective in reducing crime, with most of the other evaluations having uncertain effects. The main findings of the meta-analysis were that 15 of the 18 studies provided evidence that neighborhood watch reduced crime. While the results of the review are encouraging, it was concluded that more high-quality research needs to be done to help explain why study variations exist.

Guardianship for crime prevention: a critical review of the literature

“…For example, for security guards, the following terms were used: security guards, private police, formal surveillance, and guardian. (For more details on the inclusion criteria and search strategies, see [3,55]). These searches of systematic reviews yielded 62 studies.…”

“…Neighborhood watch Neighborhood watch is a form of residential guardianship that developed in the 1960s in the U.S. in an effort to increase citizen involvement in crime prevention [3]. Neighborhood watch has also been referred to as block watch, apartment watch, home watch, and community watch.…”

“…Bennett et al [3] carried out a systematic review of neighborhood watch, which included 18 high-quality studies. They found that this form of guardianship was associated with a 16% reduction in crime in communities where it was implemented compared to similar communities that did not receive it.…”

Comunes urbanos: de la gestión colectiva al derecho a la ciudad

“…También hay autores que incluyen como recursos compartidos aspectos más inmateriales, como el de la seguridad, abordando -por ejemplo-cómo la comunidad se organiza para prevenir la criminalidad en un área determinada de la ciudad (Bennett, Holloway & Farrington, 2006;Wagenaar & Soeparman, 2004). En una escala mayor, ha habido tentativas de conceptualizar las infraestructuras básicas que posibilitan la vida en la ciudad como comunes urbanos (Bravo & De Moor, 2008;.…”

Predicting the performance of users as human sensors of security threats in social media

“…Zheng et al, 2014), road traffic anomalies (B. Pan et al, 2013) monitoring water availability (E. Jurrens et al, 2009), neighborhood watch schemes (T. Bennett et al, 2006), detecting unfolding emergencies (M. Avvenuti et al, 2016) and generally augmenting the situational awareness of first responders through social media (S. K. Boddhu et al, 2013). Yet, rather surprisingly the concept is very new in relation to detecting and reporting threats in cyber space.…”