Title: National Evaluation of Weed and Seed Cross-Site Analysis.
Series: Research Report
Author(s): Terence Dunworth, Gregory Mills, Gary Cordner, and Jack
Greene
Published: National Institute of Justice, July 1999
Subject(s): Drug law enforcement, drug abuse prevention and education,
community policing, crime mapping, police manpower development, and
problem oriented policing
86 pages
206,000 bytes

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U.S. Department of Justice
Office of Justice Programs
National Institute of Justice

National Evaluation of Weed & Seed Cross-Site Analysis

Research Report

-------------------------------

U.S. Department of Justice Office of Justice Programs
810 Seventh Street N.W.
Washington, DC 20531

Janet Reno
Attorney General

Raymond C. Fisher
Associate Attorney General

Laurie Robinson
Assistant Attorney General

Noel Brennan
Deputy Assistant Attorney General

Jeremy Travis

Director, National Institute of Justice

Office of Justice Programs
World Wide Web Site 
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov

National Institute of Justice
World Wide Web Site
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/nij

-------------------------------

National Evaluation of Weed & Seed Cross-Site Analysis

Terence Dunworth
Gregory Mills
Gary Cordner
Jack Greene

July 1999
NCJ 176358

-------------------------------

National Institute of Justice
Jeremy Travis
Director

Steven Edwards
Program Monitor

Prepared for the National Institute of Justice, U.S. Department of Justice,
by Abt Associates Inc., under contract #95-DD-BX-0134. Points of view
or opinions stated in this document are those of the author and do not
necessarily represent the official position or policies of the U.S.
Department of Justice.

-------------------------------

The National Institute of Justice is a component of the Office of Justice
Programs, which also includes the Bureau of Justice Assistance, the
Bureau of Justice Statistics, the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency
Prevention, and the Office for Victims of Crime.

-------------------------------

Foreword

Weed and Seed represents a collaborative effort of Federal, State, and
local government agencies and private organizations to improve the
quality of life in targeted high-crime areas of American cities. Begun in
1991, the Weed and Seed strategy appears to be deceptively simple but is,
in reality, extremely complex and ambitious: drug trafficking, gang
activity, and violence are carefully targeted for intervention and
enforcement and community policing activities, human services programs,
and neighborhood improvement initiatives are introduced to infuse new
life into the community and deter future lawbreaking.

As the research branch of the Department of Justice, NIJ is charged with
evaluating major federally sponsored crime control initiatives. As this
report makes clear, evaluating programs such as Weed and Seed poses its
own set of challenges. The goal is to provide independent, objective data
that communities can use to modify programs or create new approaches.
At the same time, NIJ seeks to understand the nexus of crime in its
community context, expanding the knowledge base in this critical area.
Building on an initial evaluation of the program's implementation, NIJ
then set out to assess the impact of a variety of interventions in a variety of
communities with a variety of measures.

Evaluators asked basic questions such as: How well did the overall Weed
and Seed strategy live up to program expectations? What elements were
strongest, where did they succeed or fail, and what lessons can we learn
from the experience over the life of the program?

Equally important, the evaluation sought to shed light on how cities and
communities institutionalized their Weed and Seed programs--to what
extent can communities continue the programs, interagency task forces,
and organizational partnerships that were developed once official Weed
and Seed funding ends? To help other communities who may want to
adopt a similar strategy, evaluators asked more questions: What are the
indicators of whether Weed and Seed might take root in a community?
Conversely, what are the factors within a community that discourage
successful implementation of Weed and Seed?

Most important, the study sought to measure what impression, if any,
Weed and Seed left on the program participants and community residents,
the intended beneficiaries of the program.

To find answers, eight cities were chosen for the national evaluation of the
Weed and Seed strategy. This document synthesizes the research findings
and lessons of the eight case study cities (which are available separately).
As expected, the findings vary from city to city and from target site to
target site (even within the same city or community). Each Weed and Seed
site had its own successes. Every site had political, institutional,
situational, and funding challenges to overcome. These experiences, taken
together, suggest avenues for both the program and researchers to explore
and ideas about how to create more successful sites in the future. 

These research findings provide us with reason for optimism about a
comprehensive community-based approach to neighborhood safety. They
will serve as guideposts to future programs designed to prevent crime and
revitalize communities.

Jeremy Travis
Director
National Institute of Justice

Acknowledgments

This cross-site report draws heavily on the eight companion case studies
for Akron, Hartford, Las Vegas, Manatee/Sarasota, Pittsburgh, Salt Lake
City, Seattle, and Shreveport. Consequently, a considerable debt is owed
to those whose cooperation and support made the case studies possible.
Too numerous to name here, they include U.S. Attorneys and staff, FBI
personnel, city officials, and police department command and line officers.
Perhaps most important were the Weed and Seed staff in each city and the
neighborhood organizations whose efforts give community revitalization a
fighting chance. We also appreciate the assistance of contributing staff and
their skills in producing this report. Those individuals include: George
Bridges, Timothy Bynum, Scott Decker, Jennifer Frank, Kristen Jacoby,
Zachary Johnson, Ryan Kling, Thomas Rich, and Cheryl Roberts.

Throughout the evaluation, we have benefited from the support and
understanding of the two Federal agencies that we consider our partners as
well as our clients. Steve Rickman and Bob Samuels, Director and Deputy
Director, respectively, of the Executive Office for Weed and Seed, were
unflagging in their willingness to provide information, respond to
questions, critique observations, comment on reports, and generally
smooth our path to the Weed and Seed sites. At NIJ, Jeff Ross and Steve
Edwards were constant supporters and facilitators of our work. 

Of course, none of these people bear any responsibility for whatever flaws
this work may have. We were able to manage that aspect of things without
help.

Table of Contents

Executive Summary 
Organizational roles and community engagement
Grantee organization
Steering committees
Building trust and community capacity
Approach to law enforcement
Approach to seeding
Crime trends 
Community survey
Participant interviews
Conclusions
Factors favoring successful implementation of Weed and Seed
Community setting
Program design
Concentration of funds
Leadership and partnership
Strategic choices 
Note

Chapter 1 
Background and Objectives of Operation Weed and Seed
The Weed and Seed strategy
Organizational structure
The U.S. Attorney's Office
The Weed and Seed steering committee
The weeding committee
The seeding committee
Weed and Seed program staff
Number of sites and Federal funding
Design of the National Weed and Seed evaluation
Evaluation sites
Akron, Ohio
Hartford, Connecticut
Las Vegas, Nevada 
Manatee and Sarasota Counties, Florida
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Salt Lake City, Utah
Seattle, Washington
Shreveport, Louisiana
Evaluation activities
Notes

Chapter 2 
Program Implementation
Program framework 
Grantees and funding levels
Program goals
Demonstration sites
Hartford
Las Vegas
Manatee/Sarasota
Pittsburgh
Seattle 
Shreveport
Officially recognized sites
Akron    
Salt Lake City     
Organizational roles, community engagement, planning, and evaluation
Role of the steering committee and other key decisionmaking bodies      
Public agency participation at the steering committee level    
Community participation at the steering committee level
Role of the grantee organization      
Grantee institutional issues      
Police department
Mayor's office
Community-based organizations
Engaging the community in building capacity
Building community capacity
Program planning and local evaluation
Outside technical assistance and resources
Data collection by the program
External local evaluation
Approach to weeding and community policing
Multiagency task forces 
Prosecution
Community policing and resident involvement in law enforcement and
crime prevention
Approach to seeding
Developing a seeding strategy
Seeding program partnerships
Seeding funding strategies
Types of programming
Prevention and intervention programs for youths
Neighborhood beautification
Community building/community development initiatives
Adult employment/economic advancement programs 
Family support services targeted to adults
Community economic development facilitation
Notes

Chapter 3
Analysis of Law Enforcement Data
Arrest trends in the target areas
Crime trends in the target areas
Possible contributing factors
Crime trends in nontarget areas 
Preexisting crime trends in the target areas
Program intensity
Arrest volume
Notes

Chapter 4 
Perceptions of Community Residents and Program Participants
Distribution of respondents by age and length of neighborhood residence
Personal safety and neighborhood satisfaction
Severity of neighborhood crime
Victimization in the neighborhood
Police effectiveness and responsiveness
Awareness of Weed and Seed
General neighborhood quality of life
General assessment
Participant interviews
Youth recreation and education programs
Community-building programs
Employment and training programs
Violence prevention programs
Participant suggestions for program improvement
Summary overview
Notes

Chapter 5 
Assessing the Weed and Seed Strategy
Possible overstatement of program results
Possible understatement of program results 
Factors favoring successful implementation of Weed and Seed
Community setting
Strength of the social and institutional infrastructure
Severity of crime problems
Locational advantages favoring economic development
Transiency of the community population
Program design
Concentration of funds
Funding "intensity"
Channeling and leveraging other funds
Leadership and partnership
Notes

Chapter 6
Policy Implications 
Program effectiveness and community mobilization
Selecting sites and allocating funds

Appendix 1
1995 Community Survey: Basic Interview Data Questionnaire

Appendix 2
1997 Community Survey: Basic Interview Data Questionnaire

Appendix 3
Significant Differences Between 1995 and 1997 in Survey Results 
for Nonelderly, Long-Term Residents

Exhibits

1.1 Operation Weed and Seed: Number of Sites and Annual Funding
1.2 Target Area Characteristics for the Evaluation Sites
2.1Funding Designation for Weed and Seed Sites
2.2 Disposition of Hartford Weed and Seed Arrests
3.1 Part 1 Arrests Before and During Weed and Seed
3.2 Drug Arrests Before and During Weed and Seed
3.3 Part 1 Crime Before and During Weed and Seed
3.4 Change in Part 1 Crime Rate After 1 Year of Implementation: Target
Areas
3.5 Change in Part 1 Crime Rate After 1 Year of Implementation:
Non-Weed and Seed Areas
3.6 Change in Part 1 Crime Rate After 2 Years of Implementation: Target
Areas
3.7 Change in Part 1 Crime Rate After 2 Years of Implementation:
Non-Weed and Seed Areas
4.1 Distribution of Survey Respondents by Age and Length of Residence
in Target Area
4.2 Survey Responses on General Neighborhood Quality of Life
Evidence of Intended Changes in Measurable Crime-Related Outcomes

Executive Summary

Operation Weed and Seed represents an ambitious Federal, State, and local
attempt to improve the quality of life in targeted high-crime areas of
America's cities. First launched by the U.S. Department of Justice in 1991,
the program is designed to control violent crime, drug trafficking, and
drug-related crime and to provide a safe environment in which residents
can live, work, and raise their families. 

These are, by themselves, conventional law enforcement goals. What
makes Weed and Seed distinctive and innovative is that it couples
community-focused human services programs and neighborhood
improvement initiatives with intensified geographically targeted law
enforcement efforts. 

Weed and Seed is administered by the Executive Office for Weed and
Seed within the U.S. Department of Justice. Weed and Seed is considered
a strategy, not a program. That is, Weed and Seed is a means to mobilize
resources in coordinated efforts, not simply a mechanism to fund local
activities that share no collective aim. The key components of this strategy
are as follows: 

o Weeding--law enforcement efforts to remove violent offenders, drug
traffickers, and other criminals from the target areas. 

o Seeding--human services and neighborhood revitalization efforts to
prevent and deter further crime. 

o Community policing--proactive police-community engagement and
problem solving, in which police personnel are accountable for specified
geographic locations, regarded as "the bridge between weeding and
seeding." 

The number of sites served by Weed and Seed has grown rapidly since the
program's inception and currently stands at 200 sites. Eight sites
participated in this national evaluation: Akron, Ohio; Hartford,
Connecticut; Las Vegas, Nevada; Manatee and Sarasota Counties, Florida;
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; Salt Lake City, Utah; Seattle, Washington; and
Shreveport, Louisiana. Each of these sites had distinctive crime problems.
However, they all shared high rates of violent crime related to drug
trafficking and drug use. 

The national evaluation incorporated a wide variety of activities that
included a review of funding applications and other significant program
documents; individual interviews with key program administrators, senior
law enforcement staff, managers of seeding activities, service providers
(both current and former), and community leaders; analysis of automated,
incident-level records provided by the local police departments on crimes
and arrests; group interviews with participants in seeding programs; and
two surveys of residents in target areas conducted in 1995 by the Institute
for Social Analysis and in 1997 by Abt Associates Inc. 

Organizational roles and community engagement 

Grantee organization. The grantee and its staff assigned to the Weed and
Seed effort were among the most important factors in successful program
implementation at the eight evaluation sites. Sites without sufficient
dedicated staff resources, from both grantees and other participating
agencies, suffered in program implementation, oversight, and cohesion. 

Steering committees. The role and composition of steering committees
varied among sites. Some steering committees were dominated by
public-sector representatives, whereas others were more heavily
represented and guided by community residents. For several sites, the
steering committee or Weed and Seed resident bodies provided a critical
means of resident participation in program decisionmaking. 

Building trust and community capacity. Several of the evaluation sites
encountered early community resistance to Weed and Seed because
residents were concerned that the exclusive focus would be on
enforcement or targeted harassment. The clear lesson from these
experiences was the importance of involving residents early in Weed and
Seed planning, providing residents with substantial program authority, and
earning their trust. The seeding program component was typically the
means through which community trust was built and participation
fulfilled. 

To implement Weed and Seed, considerable resources were devoted to
effectively catalyze participation and increase capacity--even when sites
had a strong preexisting community organizational infrastructure. Weed
and Seed sites that employed a bottom-up, grassroots approach built trust
among residents and community-based leaders and enhanced community
capacity. 

Approach to law enforcement 

Law enforcement approaches across the eight sites typically included: 

o Increased police presence through additional personnel hours and
overtime, with the majority of sites assigning dedicated officers to the
target area. 

o Increased special operations for targeted law enforcement. 

o Varying degrees of increased local, State, and Federal coordination,
whether in targeting offenders, narcotics operations, prosecution, or
probation/parole. Local responses ranged from increased communications
via monthly meetings to the creation of formal interagency and 
multijurisdictional task force operations housed at the same facility. 

o Greater concentration, coordination, and integration of efforts within
police departments than before Weed and Seed and increased integration
of law enforcement with seeding-type activities. 

o Expanded or strengthened community policing efforts or instituted new
programs. 

o Mobilized residents who participate in crime prevention, in some cases
creating effective structures for community authority and leadership.
Responses ranged from increasing neighborhood watches, holding
community meetings, and receiving guidance on law enforcement
priorities from a citizens' advisory committee. 

Although weeding typically involves less resident participation than
seeding, communications between residents and the police seem to have
increased across sites. 

Overall, prosecution has been a relatively weak link in Weed and Seed due
to various institutional, political, and judicial issues. In the majority of
sites, there was no special Federal or local prosecution or tracking of
Weed and Seed cases. In many sites, however, communication and
coordination between law enforcement personnel and prosecutors
improved. 

Approach to seeding

Among the greatest challenges for Weed and Seed sites was to develop an
appropriate seeding strategy with community members that effectively
used Weed and Seed resources and leveraged existing community
resources. Simply selecting and successfully implementing seeding
programs, such as safe havens, were more difficult for most sites than
implementing weeding programs, with some sites initially stumbling at
this stage. Seeding was inherently a broader and more complex task, both
in the development of goals and strategies and in practical organization.
Seeding efforts required engaging participation and commitment from
numerous types of organizations, whereas weeding had a relatively clearer
mission, operating within the more established hierarchical structures of
law enforcement and criminal justice organizations. Due to the broader
and less defined nature of seeding, more time was needed for planning,
relationship-building, and gaining consensus and commitment from the
wide range of participants who shaped this domain. 

The eight Weed and Seed sites tried to build their programs around
existing resources, in addition to creating new partnerships. Seeding
program partners and providers emphasized how Weed and Seed increased
coordination and communication links across neighborhood groups and
other agencies. Weed and Seed sites reflected different emphases in
funding local seeding programs--with varying degrees of program breadth,
depth, and duration. In several sites, providing communities with authority
in the seeding grant award process was critical to gaining community
participation and trust. 

Youth programs were the primary focus of seeding activity, followed by
basic neighborhood beautification efforts. Seeding initiatives undertaken
by the evaluation sites can be clustered in the following order of
predominance: 

o Prevention/intervention programs for youths, with a strong mix of
programs.

o Neighborhood beautification, such as community cleanups and code
enforcement.

o Community building and community development initiatives.

o Adult employment and economic advancement programs.

o Family support services aimed at adults.

o Community economic development facilitation. 

Crime trends 

Across the eight sites, crime patterns varied widely. In comparing the
number of Part 1 crimes in the year prior to Weed and Seed
implementation with the second year of Weed and Seed, five target areas
had double-digit percentage decreases (Stowe Village in Hartford, 46
percent; Crawford-Roberts in Pittsburgh, 24 percent; North Manatee, 18
percent; the Shreveport target area, 11 percent; and the Central District in
Seattle, 10 percent).[1] One target area (West Las Vegas) had a
single-digit decrease (6 percent), and three target areas experienced
increases in Part 1 crime (South Manatee, 2 percent; Meadows Village in
Las Vegas, 9 percent; and Salt Lake City, 14 percent). During this same
time period, in six of nine target areas--Hartford, Pittsburgh
(Crawford-Roberts), North Manatee, South Manatee, Shreveport, West
Las Vegas--the Part 1 crime rates improved more than in the rest of the
city or county. Also, Part 1 crimes in the Salt Lake City target area and
South Manatee decreased in 1997, the latest reporting period. 

Although it is not possible to state definitively the extent to which
different factors contributed to the observed changes in crime, a number of
factors appear to have a strong correlation with these changes. For
example, Hartford and Pittsburgh, which experienced the largest Part 1
crime decreases in nontarget areas, are the same two sites whose target
areas achieved the largest Part 1 crime decreases. At the same time, the
site with the largest Part 1 crime increase in its target area--Salt Lake
City--also exhibited the largest Part 1 crime increase of all target areas. 

A relationship also appears to exist between crime trends and the
concentration of program resources in sites that had the largest increases
or decreases in crime. Hartford, for example, has the smallest target area in
terms of population and area, while Salt Lake City has the largest single
target area in square miles and, along with Akron, the smallest level of
Federal Weed and Seed funding. 

Finally, changes in the drug arrest rates appear to be associated with
changes in the Part 1 crime rate. For example, among the six target areas
for which arrest data are available, the four reporting decreases in Part 1
crime from the year prior to Weed and Seed through the second year of
implementation (Hartford, Pittsburgh, North Manatee, and Shreveport) all
experienced initial high rates of drug arrests--suggesting an initial period
of intense weeding activities--followed by declining drug arrest rates.
Assuming the level of enforcement as measured by police presence has
remained somewhat constant, this trend reflects success in reducing drug
activity. The Salt Lake City and South Manatee target areas both
experienced large increases in the number of drug arrests in 1997
compared to 1996, suggesting that perhaps these sites had not yet
succeeded in reducing the level of drug activity in the target areas. Thus,
across these six sites, the changes in drug arrest volumes follow the same
general pattern as the changes in Part 1 crimes. 

Community survey 

To understand the perspective of community residents, a survey of target
area residents was conducted for all eight sites at two separate time
intervals--in 1995 and 1997. The objective of the survey data collection
was to measure changes in residents' perceptions of public safety, crime,
police performance, general neighborhood quality of life, and awareness of
the Weed and Seed program. 

To the extent possible, the same methodology was used in both surveys.
There were, however, some notable differences. The 1995 survey
consisted of inperson interviews, while the 1997 interviews were
conducted by telephone. In addition, the 1997 survey consisted of fewer
questions than the 1995 survey. The decision to proceed in 1997 with
telephone interviewing and a shortened instrument was based on the
difficulties experienced in 1995 in completing the targeted number of
interviews per site. 

The methodological differences between the two surveys, combined with
underlying population changes in the evaluation sites, led to a shift
between 1995 and 1997 in the demographic profile of respondents in each
surveyed target area. A decision was made to focus the survey analysis on
a demographically comparable subset of respondents: nonelderly,
long-term residents. 

The sites appear to fall into three groups with respect to the overall pattern
of survey findings comparing 1995 and 1997 among nonelderly, long-term
residents. 

o Manatee and Pittsburgh exhibited substantial evidence of changes in
residents' perceptions across multiple outcome measures, including
severity of crime and police effectiveness in controlling crime. 

o Akron, Hartford, and Seattle exhibited some evidence of changes in
residents' perceptions of selected crime dimensions, either drug-related
crime (Akron and Seattle) or violent and gang-related crime (Hartford). 

o Las Vegas, Salt Lake City, and Shreveport exhibited little evidence of
changes in residents' perceptions of general public safety or the severity of
specific types of crime in the neighborhood. 

Participant interviews 

To gain the perspective of community residents whom the seeding
programs were intended to benefit, interviews were conducted with
seeding program participants. These interviews were not intended to
measure outcomes of the programs that were visited; rather, they were
designed to learn the perceived benefits and drawbacks of the programs
from the individuals who participated in them. Long-term effects of these
programs on the lives of the program participants cannot be deduced from
the interviews. 

The seeding programs that were visited fall into three general categories:
(1) youth recreation and education; (2) employment and training; and (3)
violence prevention. Based on participants' comments, the seeding
programs appeared to provide services that otherwise would not have been
available in the target areas. Most of those interviewed also indicated that
participation in the seeding programs was a positive experience that helped
them feel more secure emotionally, physically, or both. The general
themes that emerged focused on providing additional structure and
discipline in the lives of target area youths and opportunities and
assistance for adults to work toward personal and professional growth. 

Conclusions 

The experience of the eight participating Weed and Seed sites raised two
questions: Are sites achieving the intended changes in measurable
outcomes? What factors appear to promote successful implementation of
the program and thus promote achievement of the intended results? 

Based on the pattern of findings with respect to the rate of Part 1 crimes
and crime-related survey questions, one can group the sites into four
categories, first according to the evidence of reduced Part 1 crimes and
then (within each category) according to the evidence of improved public 
perceptions: 

o Hartford and Pittsburgh showed strong evidence of reduced Part 1
crimes and improved public perception of crime-related measures. 

o Manatee/Sarasota (North Manatee) and Shreveport exhibited substantial
evidence of reduced Part 1 crimes. 

o Seattle, Akron, Las Vegas (West Las Vegas), and Manatee/Sarasota
(South Manatee) exhibited some evidence of reduced Part 1 crimes. 

o Salt Lake City and Las Vegas (Meadows Village) showed no evidence
of reduced Part 1 crimes. 

Those sites in the first group (Hartford and Pittsburgh) stand out among
the rest, with strong evidence of favorable outcomes with respect to both
crime and public perceptions of crime. 

Factors favoring successful implementation of Weed and Seed 

What factors appear to have promoted successful implementation of the
program and achievement of the program's intended results? To address
this question, one needs to consider the site characteristics and program
features that appear to distinguish the target areas as categorized above,
according to their measurable crime-related outcomes. 

Community setting. There are preexisting features of the program setting
that may make Weed and Seed easier or more difficult to operate
effectively. Important factors included the strength of the social and
institutional infrastructure, the severity of crime problems, locational
advantages favoring economic development, and transiency of the
community population.

Program design. The mix of weeding and seeding activities and the
sequence of component implementation appear to be important factors in
gaining community support for the program. Important factors included
early seeding, sustained weeding, high-level task forces combined with
community policing, and an active prosecutorial role. 

Concentration of funds. Sites appeared to have greater success if they
concentrated their program resources on smaller populations, especially if
they could similarly channel other public funds and leverage private funds.
The important factors included funding intensity along with channeling
and leveraging other funds. 

Leadership and partnership. Finally, a less tangible ingredient that seemed
to characterize the more successful programs was the active and
constructive leadership of key individuals. By its very nature, Weed and
Seed places a great premium on effective coordination among groups with
different organizational missions, responding to different constituencies.
To establish effective working relationships among these organizations
required personal energy and initiative. 

The most effective implementation strategies were those that relied on
bottom-up participatory decisionmaking approaches, especially when
combined with efforts to build capacity and partnership among local
organizations. This required a longer term perspective about the program
and its potential to bring about community change. Such sites--including
some that achieved substantial crime reductions within the time period
analyzed here--have established a stronger foundation and more
sustainable basis for further community-targeted initiatives. 

Strategic choices

The strategic choices now faced by policymakers in charting the future
direction of Weed and Seed revolve around issues of designating sites for
continued funding, selecting sites for new awards, and allocating funds
among participating sites over time. 

The experience of the eight sites studied in the this evaluation suggests
that Weed and Seed has affected the target areas through either (or both) of
two avenues. The first, termed program effectiveness here, relates to the
specific initiatives that focus on law enforcement and crime prevention.
The second, called community mobilization here, is the process in which
Weed and Seed provides a catalyst for greater involvement of
neighborhood residents and community-based organizations. 

In the interest of program effectiveness and successful community
mobilization, the following inferences can be drawn from site experiences: 

o Weed and Seed should seek the highest feasible concentration of funds
in the program sites. Given the annual funding constraint provided by the
congressional appropriation, this implies a more selective process in
choosing sites to receive new awards and/or some shortening in the
number of years that ongoing sites receive program funding. 

o Weed and Seed should place its funding priority on sites with
geographically small target areas and with favorable community settings
and programmatic designs when selecting new program sites--i.e., with
features favoring successful implementation, as described in chapter 5. 

o Weed and Seed should consider additional effort in providing technical
assistance to the funded sites, given the importance of institutional
capacity-building and infrastructure development. The lessons learned
from the more successful sites--and the less successful ones--on these
issues can be generalized to a large degree, and new sites should receive
the benefit of this experience. This seems especially important in
promoting the partnership arrangements that characterize the more
successful programs examined in this research. 

Note 

1. Part 1 crimes include homicide, rape, robbery, aggravated assault,
burglary, larceny, and auto theft.

Chapter 1

The U.S. Department of Justice launched Operation Weed and Seed in
1991 as an initiative to control violent and drug-related crime and to make
communities safe for residents and businesses. The premise was simple:
use law enforcement tactics and resources to "weed" criminal activities
from targeted high-crime areas and "seed" those neighborhoods with
human services and revitalization projects to prevent and deter further
crime.

This distinctive collaboration between law enforcement and human
services relied on effective community policing--officers who not only
removed criminals from the streets, but who also engaged residents in
crime deterrence efforts and encouraged their participation in "seeding"
programs. The organization with which this was accomplished varied
among the eight sites evaluated.

Background and Objectives of Operation Weed and Seed

Operation Weed and Seed represents an ambitious attempt to improve the
quality of life in targeted high-crime areas of America's cities. First
launched by the U.S. Department of Justice in 1991, the program is
designed to control violent crime, drug trafficking, and drug-related crime
and to provide a safe environment in which residents can live, work, and
raise their families. 

These are, by themselves, conventional law enforcement goals. What
makes Weed and Seed distinctive and innovative is the means by which
these goals are achieved--by coupling community-focused human services
programs and neighborhood improvement initiatives with intensified,
geographically targeted law enforcement efforts. 

Weed and Seed is administered by the Executive Office for Weed and
Seed (EOWS) within the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ). The program
now operates in 200 sites. Current annual funding (for fiscal year 1999) is
$49 million, including asset forfeiture money. 

The Federal oversight responsibility for each participating site rests with
the U.S. Attorney's Office for the corresponding district. This
decentralized arrangement (versus one orchestrated from Washington,
D.C.) was intended to reinforce local control while providing a more
hands-on Federal role--in particular, to enable Federal prosecutors to be
more responsive to local law enforcement initiatives. 

The Weed and Seed strategy

Those who federally administer Operation Weed and Seed consider it a
strategy, not a program. That is, Weed and Seed is a means of mobilizing
resources in coordinated efforts, not simply a mechanism to fund local
activities that share no collective aim. The key components of this strategy
are as follows: 

o Weeding--law enforcement efforts to remove violent offenders, drug
traffickers, and other criminals from the target areas. 

o Seeding--human services and neighborhood revitalization efforts to
prevent and deter further crime. 

o Community policing--proactive police-community engagement and
problem solving, with police personnel accountable for specified
geographic locations, regarded as "the bridge between weeding and 
seeding."[1] 

Each of these three strategic components was viewed as a necessary
element for program success. Program effectiveness also required close
coordination among all three. 

EOWS characterizes Weed and Seed as an "incubator for social change" to
stabilize the conditions in high-crime communities and thus promote
community restoration.[2] In brief, the process by which the program
seeks to effect such change is as follows: 

o Additional resources for law enforcement and concentrated efforts of
police and prosecutors on targeted high-crime areas can more effectively
identify, arrest, and prosecute criminals, especially those engaging in
narcotics trafficking and violent crime. 

o More effective crime detection and response, speedier investigations
and trials, and stricter sentences serve to put drug dealers and street
criminals out of action. Additionally, others may be discouraged from
criminal behavior. 

o Awareness of the results of heightened law enforcement among
community residents and businesses means they will more readily
cooperate with community-assigned police and prosecutors, further
promoting arrests and prosecutions. By gaining the trust and support of the
community, police and prosecutors engage residents and businesses as
problem-solving partners in the law enforcement effort. 

o Human services programs, especially ones aimed at youths, address the
school, family, or peer group risk factors associated with criminal
behavior. Afterschool, weekend, or summer youth activities; adult literacy
classes; parental counseling; and similar programs improve the conditions
that might otherwise lead to the use of drugs or violence. 

o Reduced incidence of crime and enhanced perceptions of public safety,
along with improved housing, stronger schools and other public services,
and heightened community involvement in neighborhood beautification
improve the climate for economic development. 

Organizational structure

The coupling of human services with heightened law enforcement
distinguishes Weed and Seed from other location-specific crime-reduction
strategies. The program's local organizational structure is distinctive and
has the following features: 

o The U.S. Attorney's Office provides Federal oversight and coordinates
Federal, State, and local law enforcement and prosecutorial activities, as
well as general DOJ oversight of the Weed and Seed strategy.

o The Weed and Seed steering committee establishes operational goals,
designs and develops programs, guides implementation, and assesses
program achievements. The steering committee is headed by the U.S.
Attorney and includes the mayor (or elected county official); the district
attorney; the chief of police; other appropriate elected or appointed
Federal, State, or local officials (who control the allocation of resources
potentially available to serve the program's objectives); private-sector
representatives; and target area residents. The steering committee is further
organized into separate weeding and seeding components.

o The weeding committee plans and monitors the law enforcement efforts,
including interdiction and prosecution. 

o The seeding committee plans and monitors the prevention, intervention,
treatment, and neighborhood restoration efforts.

o Weed and Seed program staff are responsible for operating program
activities. Normally, a Weed and Seed program director has overall
management responsibility. Day-to-day program activities are operated by
a weed coordinator (usually a supervisory member of the local police
department) and a seed coordinator.

Another organizational element found in virtually all Weed and Seed sites
is the safe haven, defined by EOWS as "a multiservice center where a
variety of youth and adult services are coordinated in a highly visible,
accessible facility that is secure against crime and illegal drug activity"
and "a place where youths and other residents can access needed services,
develop relationships, find opportunities to be productive and successful,
and enhance skills."[3]

Indeed, EOWS requires all new Weed and Seed sites to have at least one
safe haven.[4] 

Number of sites and Federal funding

The number of sites served by Weed and Seed has grown rapidly since the
program's inception. Initial grants were awarded in fiscal year (FY) 1991
to Kansas City, Missouri; Trenton, New Jersey; and Omaha, Nebraska;
another 17 sites were added in FY 1992, 1 in FY 1993, 15 in FY 1994, 52
in FY 1996, 30 in FY 1997, 58 in FY 1998, and 24 in FY 1999. None
were added in FY 1995. 

Until very recently, funded sites were either officially recognized sites or
demonstration sites. Officially recognized sites qualified for initial
program funding in annual amounts of less than $250,000 by having
previously implemented Weed and Seed-like initiatives in their designated
target areas. Demonstration sites qualified for full program funding in the
range of $500,000 to $750,000. Currently, most funded sites receive
$225,000 annually. 

Total program funding for Weed and Seed rose rapidly in its early years,
from $11.5 million in FY 1992 to $31.5 million in FY 1994. Over the
succeeding 4 years, funding increased further by more than one-third,
reaching $42.5 million in FY 1998 and $49 million in FY 1999, as shown
in exhibit 1.1. (The exhibit includes funds provided to the program from
several sources--primarily from the Weed and Seed Program Fund, but
also from the Byrne Discretionary Grant Fund and the Asset Forfeiture
Fund.) 

Design of the national Weed and Seed evaluation

This report is the first multisite evaluation of Weed and Seed to include
findings on both the implementation of the program and measurable
outcomes related to crime and public safety. As early as 1993, single-site
local evaluations have been conducted in many participating sites.
(Starting in 1994, EOWS required sites to use some of their funding to
support local evaluations.) In addition, the implementation of the program
in the first 19 sites to receive Weed and Seed funding was studied under
the National Process Evaluation of Operation Weed and Seed.[5]
However, this earlier evaluation did not analyze any data on crime rates or
perceptions of public safety. 

Evaluation sites

Eight sites participated in this evaluation as identified in exhibit 1.2. These
sites were selected by the U.S. Department of Justice as examples of
different aspects of Weed and Seed. For each site, the evaluation focused
on one or two Weed and Seed target areas, as follows:[6]

Akron, Ohio: The West Side neighborhood has the largest population--
nearly 24,000--among the target areas included in the evaluation, with a
mix of both renter- and owner-occupied housing (one-third of which is
considered substandard) and several retail districts. Unlike the other
participating areas, the area's crime rate is somewhat below the
corresponding citywide average. This site was unfunded at the time of its
designation for the national impact evaluation.

Hartford, Connecticut: Stowe Village, one of the city's most impoverished
neighborhoods, is a public housing development in its northeast
neighborhood. This densely populated, multiracial community consists of
550 housing units in 31 two- or three-story buildings. This site was
selected for funding on the basis of the 1994 competitive solicitation. 

Las Vegas, Nevada: Meadows Village is a small and shrinking community
at the north end of the tourist district. It is populated primarily by
transient, foreign-born, primarily Spanish-speaking residents who make or
seek their livelihood in low-skilled service jobs related to the city's
entertainment industry. This site was also selected for funding on the basis
of the 1994 competitive solicitation. 

West Las Vegas, located further north and separated from the downtown
area by a major interstate highway, is a larger and less transient area than
Meadows Village. It has a predominantly black population, an active
commercial district, and established social infrastructure. This site was
added in 1995. 

Manatee and Sarasota Counties, Florida: This is a multijurisdictional site,
selected for funding through the 1994 competitive solicitation and for
participation in the Weed and Seed National Performance Review project.
Weed and Seed was implemented in six local target areas, two of which
were studied in the impact evaluation. 

North Manatee has a predominantly minority population; more than
three-fourths of the residents are black. More than one-third of the
residents are elderly, and nearly half of the adult residents did not graduate
from high school. One-fourth of the residents receive public assistance. 

South Manatee consists primarily of low-income duplex rental housing.
Compared to North Manatee, this area has a younger and more transient
population with a smaller percentage of minority and elderly residents.
Nearly one-half of the households contain children, many with single
parents. 

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania: The Hill District is located between the city's
main business center and its educational/cultural district. Historically a
center for black culture, commerce, and entertainment, this community has
experienced a dramatic population decline during recent decades. The area
consists of six separate neighborhoods, some experiencing unemployment
rates approaching 50 percent. This site was selected for funding in 1992
and for participation in the Weed and Seed National Performance Review
project in 1994. 

Salt Lake City, Utah: The West Side includes three neighborhoods
(Glendale, Poplar Grove, and a large section of Fairpark) that together
make up a larger geographical area (6.3 square miles) than any of the other
evaluation sites. Housing conditions and socioeconomic characteristics
vary greatly across these communities. Overall, most of the housing is
owner-occupied, but some areas have high concentrations of vacant or
boarded buildings. Some neighborhoods are relatively stable,
working-class areas; others are more transient and poverty-ridden. This
site was selected for funding and participation in the National Performance
Review in 1994. 

Seattle, Washington: The Central District is a highly congested section
east of downtown, consisting of eight separate neighborhoods with both
residential and retail areas. The diverse population includes both
university students and low-income families, with poverty rates in some
neighborhoods approaching 50 percent. This site was initially selected for
funding in 1992. 

Shreveport, Louisiana: The Highland-Stoner Hill area, the least densely
populated of the evaluation sites, is one of the city's oldest neighborhoods.
Economic difficulties in the oil and gas industry have contributed to a
decline in the community's business sector, declining property values, and
a deterioration in housing. This site was selected for funding in the 1994
competitive solicitation, and it also participated in the Weed and Seed
National Performance Review project. 

Although each of these areas had distinctive crime problems, they all
shared high violent crime rates related to drug trafficking and drug use.
Most also had serious gang-related crime problems. 

These sites were selected for the national evaluation during the fall of
1994. Pittsburgh and Seattle were chosen from among the first 19 Weed
and Seed demonstration sites, which received their initial demonstration
funding in FY 1992. Hartford, Las Vegas, Manatee/Sarasota, and
Shreveport were chosen from among the sites to receive their first
demonstration funding in FY 1994. Akron and Salt Lake City were
officially recognized sites in FY 1995 (and then subsequently became
demonstration sites). 

Evaluation activities

The national evaluation incorporated a wide variety of evaluation activities
at each site that included a review of funding applications and other
significant program documents; individual interviews with key program
administrators, senior staff within law enforcement agencies, managers of
seeding activities, service providers (both current and former), and
community leaders; analysis of automated, incident-level records provided
by the local police departments on crimes and arrests; group interviews
with participants in seeding programs; and two surveys of residents in
target areas, conducted in 1995 and in 1997. Based on these activities, a
separate case study was first prepared for each of the eight evaluation sites. 

There are numerous challenges to evaluating a comprehensive, locally
targeted initiative such as Weed and Seed. In the end, it is impossible to
reach any definitive conclusion about Weed and Seed's effectiveness; what
is most important, there is no reliable basis on which to determine what
would have happened in these sites in the absence of Weed and Seed.
Nonetheless, it is possible to examine carefully the manner in which the
program was implemented and to consider the changes in measurable
outcomes that occurred following implementation. One cannot attribute
such changes to Weed and Seed alone, but one can draw from the
experience of these sites to suggest those factors that appear to have
favored successful implementation of the Weed and Seed strategy and that
appear to have promoted achievement of the intended results.

Notes 

1. EOWS regards community policing as "increasing police visibility
and developing cooperative relationships between the police and citizenry
in the target areas." The associated techniques include foot patrols, police
ministations, nuisance abatement, victim referrals to support services, and
community relations activities, in which the community is encouraged to
undertake such initiatives as neighborhood watches, citizen marches and
rallies, drug-free zones, and graffiti removal. See Executive Office for
Weed and Seed, Operation Weed and Seed Implementation Manual,
Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs,
Executive Office for Weed and Seed: 1-3, 1-4.

2. Ibid., 9-6.

3. Executive Office for Weed and Seed, Weed and Seed Fiscal Year
1998 Program Guide and Application Kit for New Sites, Attachment 2,
Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs,
Executive Office for Weed and Seed, 1998: 2-1.

4. In its literature, EOWS describes safe havens as an integral part of a
"risk factor and protective factor" approach to crime prevention. This is
viewed as the counterpart to comprehensive community-based disease
prevention programs that have operated effectively in the public health
arena--for example, in combating heart disease. In the Weed and Seed
context, risk factors, those that make one susceptible to criminal behavior,
must be identified and addressed. At the same time, protective factors,
those that serve to counter or neutralize risks, must be enhanced.

5. Roehl, Janice A., et al., National Process Evaluation of Operation
Weed and Seed, Research in Brief, Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of
Justice, National Institute of Justice, 1996, NCJ 16124.

6. Several of these eight sites, including Las Vegas and Pittsburgh, have
implemented Weed and Seed in additional target areas not mentioned here.
However, because this additional experience has been relatively recent, we
have focused this report on the target areas noted, for which substantial
postimplementation data have been collected.

-------------------------------

Chapter 2

The most successful Weed and Seed efforts required the full cooperation
of human services programs, community buy-in, and, perhaps most
important, systemic commitment beginning with police officers on the
street and extending through the areas' political structure and prosecutors'
offices. The initiatives also relied on strong seeding programs, including
prevention and intervention programs for youths, neighborhood
beautification, community building and development efforts, adult
employment and economic advancement programs, family support
services, and general community economic development. 

Together, these elements were to achieve three key program objectives:

o Coordinate, concentrate, and integrate public and private resources in
target areas.

o Empower residents to solve neighborhood problems.

o Increase investment and commitment from the private sector.

Program Implementation

The Weed and Seed strategy had three key objectives: 

o Coordinating, concentrating, and integrating public and private
resources in target areas. 

o Empowering residents to assist in solving neighborhood problems.

o Increasing private-sector investment and commitment. 

Although the eight sites successfully implemented elements from the
weeding, community policing, and seeding program components, each site
had distinct local contexts which shaped its approach and community
responses.[1]

Program framework 

Grantees and funding levels. Exhibit 2.1 shows Weed and Seed grantee
organizations and funding awards for the eight evaluation sites. Grantees
included mayors' offices, local police departments, and local nonprofit
501(c)(3) organizations. Among the demonstration sites, the Pittsburgh
program began first, in April 1992, followed by Seattle in January 1993.
The remaining demonstration sites were awarded their first grants in
Federal fiscal year 1994, implementing their programs in late 1994 or
early 1995. Salt Lake City and Akron became officially recognized sites in
FY 1995 but did not receive significant funding until FY 1996 and FY
1997, respectively. As a result of the timing of its funding, the Akron
Weed and Seed program operated as an officially recognized but unfunded
site at the time of the evaluation. 

Among the demonstration sites, program duration and target area size and
population, all of which affect the breadth and intensity of the Weed and
Seed intervention and implementation strategies, need to be considered. At
the two extremes, Hartford received about the same amount of funding for
1,300 people in a 0.1-square-mile target area as did Manatee/Sarasota for
33,641 people in 6 noncontiguous target areas spanning more than 40
square miles. 

Program goals. Having been selected to participate in Weed and Seed, the
eight sites shared the fundamental goals of eliminating violent crime, drug
trafficking, and drug-related crime and providing a safe environment for
residents. The sites also set goals according to the other major Weed and
Seed components which included drug abuse  prevention, especially
activities for youths; expansion of community policing efforts, including
strengthening community-police relations and increasing resident and
business owner participation in crime prevention; and neighborhood
restoration, such as code enforcement, improving housing stock, and
attracting new investment. The following summarizes some of the
variations in local goals. 

Demonstration sites

Hartford. Because the Stowe Village target area was a city center for
narcotics and gang activity, improving public safety was the site's primary
goal. Program goals included reducing youth violence, narcotics
trafficking, and violent crime; reducing fear and reenfranchising youths
into the community; and returning community control to law-abiding
citizens. Key objectives included supplementing the U.S.
Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Family
Investment Center and other existing social services with youth and family
support programs, prevention activities, and employment-related training,
as well as mobilizing residents to participate in crime prevention and
seeding activities. 

Las Vegas. Suppressing high-level drug crime and youth gangs were key
goals for the two Las Vegas target areas, with the objectives of: (1)
targeting and eliminating the 50 most disruptive and violent offenders, and
(2) increasing community support for law enforcement. Seeding goals
included increasing child and family health care, strengthening youth
development and resiliency, and improving housing stock and property
appearance. In the Meadows Village target area, which had a more
transient population and a relatively high proportion of immigrants,
objectives included reducing legal and language barriers of residents,
developing a shared computer-based information system in the safe haven
to enhance the availability and effectiveness of health care, education, and
human services; and establishing a neighborhood association to promote
the identification and resolution of common community problems. 

Manatee/Sarasota. Law enforcement goals were to reduce street-level drug
dealing (and the open-air drug markets), reduce violent and property
crimes, increase citizen participation in neighborhood action teams, and
implement and integrate a community policing program in Manatee
County, where one previously did not exist. The seeding focus was on
youth-oriented or crime prevention programs, including education, job
training, and recreation, as well as the establishment of safe havens. A
central seeding component of the Manatee/Sarasota program was
community empowerment, including leadership development and
providing the community authority over nonenforcement domains of the
program. 

Pittsburgh. A key weeding goal was to eliminate open-air drug trafficking,
whereas seeding goals included integrating and expanding economic
development strategies, providing employment and job training
opportunities, and improving housing conditions. Pittsburgh's program
focused on building stronger community-level organizations to enable
communities to address their problems by obtaining resources through
community and economic development. The key strategies employed to
achieve the operational goals were: (1) providing training to community
members and Weed and Seed participating organizations, and (2)
systematically increasing the community's access to information. 

Seattle. In addition to controlling street-level gang-related drug and violent
crimes, goals included developing an effective managerial approach to
neighborhood problem solving involving community and business groups,
extending the partnership concepts to include agencies at the State and
Federal levels, and mobilizing residents to work with police in problem
solving. Seattle focused on youth antiviolence enforcement and
youth-oriented or crime prevention projects, as well as supporting broader
community efforts promoting employment (skills training and business 
development), education, and health care. A collective decisionmaking
process among community groups, residents, and participating public
agencies provided a broad foundation for the program. 

Shreveport. In addition to reducing drug trafficking, law enforcement
goals included reducing weapons violations, property crimes, and gang
influence; targeting and removing repeat offenders; increasing community
education on police services, crime prevention, and drug awareness; and
increasing participation in and effectiveness of the neighborhood watches.
Prevention goals centered on youth risk factors and education, and
neighborhood restoration focused on vigorous code enforcement with
resident participation. A key seeding emphasis was establishing safe
havens and afterschool programs (which were sorely lacking in the target
area), as well as coordinating existing public and private services and
resources to make them available to residents.

Officially recognized sites

Akron. This city received little funding during most of the national
evaluation period. Although Akron had not yet implemented its program,
strategies had been developed. Law enforcement goals included
eliminating drug markets and crack houses and reducing burglaries and
prostitution. Special community policing goals included restoring
neighborhood pride and achieving a higher percentage of high school
graduates. Seeding goals built on an existing program, the Crouse Caring
Communities Project. Goals included developing a model for integrated
service delivery to children and families, working with the city's public
schools to increase achievement and decrease counterproductive behavior,
building employment skills of residents, improving housing, and further
developing the business district. 

Salt Lake City. In its first year as an officially recognized site, the city's
goal was to extend technical assistance for community mobilization
activities in the three target neighborhoods and to empower the
community by providing small grants to fund high-priority projects for
residents. With increased recognition-level funding, law enforcement
goals included reducing levels of violent crime related to gang and drug
activities, focusing on high-level drug cases for Federal prosecution, and
increasing the implementation of community policing efforts, including
problem solving with the community and the integration of community-
oriented police officers with beat officers. Seeding goals included
increasing the coordination and planning around economic development
and addressing risk/protective factors for youths and families, including
intensive case management and community assessment. Salt Lake City
was already a recipient of a major Comprehensive Communities Program
grant and intended to use Weed and Seed to build on those efforts. 

Organizational roles, community engagement, planning, and evaluation

Among the eight sites, there were substantial variations in the role of the
steering committee, the role of the grantee organization, how the
community was engaged in capacity building, and the role of planning and
evaluation in the implementation of the Weed and Seed program. 

Role of the steering committee and other key decisionmaking bodies

In general, the steering committees played an important role in: (1)
establishing goals and objectives, (2) providing guidance and oversight on
key program design and implementation issues, and (3) integrating
weeding with seeding at the policy level. At most sites, the steering
committee also played a critical role in coordination across agencies,
sectors, and jurisdictions. Across all eight sites, steering committee
members included key public agency representatives and local government
officials; variations occurred around inclusion of social service providers,
community-based organizations, and residents. Although some steering
committees were dominated by public-sector agencies, others were more
heavily composed of and guided by community residents. 

Public agency participation at the steering committee level. Participation
and commitment among the public-sector steering committee members
varied considerably by site. The following illustrates the range of public
officials' involvement on the steering committee. 

At one site, a central problem was a lack of participation by key agency
officials, who sent delegates who had no decisionmaking authority to
committee meetings and did not bring to bear the resources of their
agencies on behalf of Weed and Seed. In this program, the mayor, U.S.
Attorney, and district attorney had relatively limited program involvement.
As one might imagine, with a lack of prosecutorial commitment at the
highest levels, prosecution remained a serious problem for this site, with
no Federal prosecutions and no special State attention for Weed and Seed
cases. At this same site, however, community participation and leadership
in the steering committee were strong, as were the leadership and
capabilities of the Weed and Seed program staff. These two factors
enabled successful implementation of many program elements, in spite of
the lack of participation of relevant agency heads. 

Conversely, another Weed and Seed site demonstrated too much
involvement and ownership by agency heads, such that conflict developed
between grantees and other agencies over the direction and
implementation of the program. The U.S. Attorney at this site was highly
involved in most aspects of the program but did not share the same vision
for the program as the local grantee organization. This conflict between
the two key leaders caused considerable disruption in the management of
the program and seems to have inhibited local ownership of the
program.[2] 

Although the role of the U.S. Attorney varied, the U.S. Attorney's Office
in a majority of the evaluation sites struck a balance between the two more
extreme cases described above. (See the section, "Approach to weeding
and community policing," in this chapter, for a discussion of Federal
prosecution issues.) 

Community participation at the steering committee level. For some sites,
the steering committee and Weed and Seed neighborhood bodies provided
the primary means of formal community participation in program
decisionmaking. Other sites incorporated resident participation at the
subcommittee level for weeding and seeding. 

The following illustrates the range of community participation in key
Weed and Seed decisionmaking bodies:

Seattle set up two primary governing bodies: (1) the steering committee,
which included the relevant agency heads with some social service
organizations, and (2) the Citizens Advisory Committee, consisting of
residents and community organizations. The steering committee provided
policy-level guidance and program oversight, while the Citizens Advisory
Committee provided program direction for both weeding and seeding
activities. A collective decisionmaking process among community groups,
residents, and participating public agencies provided a broad foundation
for the program. 

In Manatee/Sarasota Counties, the neighborhood action teams had
substantial program authority, guiding most of the nonenforcement efforts
in the target areas. There were six neighborhood action teams--one for
each target area--consisting of residents and representatives of
organizations, businesses, and law enforcement operating in the target
area. In addition, there was one overall steering committee for seeding and
one for weeding; the seeding committee comprised elected representatives
from the different neighborhood action teams, whereas the weeding
committee comprised law enforcement representatives. 

Shreveport provides an example where community participation in
decisionmaking was achieved primarily through its steering committee.
The steering committee included representatives of relevant public
agencies, but residents and community and nongovernmental
organizations accounted for more than half of the membership. The
program relied on its steering committee for policy-level guidance and
oversight, with program staff providing day-to-day management of
weeding and seeding program components.[3]

In Las Vegas, the steering committee--with representatives from law
enforcement and social service groups--functioned as the key
decisionmaking body for the first 2 years of the program. Later, a smaller
executive committee made up of executives or designees of some key
agencies was established as a first-line management structure. 

In spite of a strong executive committee, decisionmaking remained
decentralized for weeding and seeding, with residents helping to guide
seeding and community policing activities.[4]

In Hartford, the steering committee predominantly comprised public
agency officials and service providers. Attempts were made to foster
greater participation from the tenants' association and residents, but the
tenants' association was relatively inactive, and there was a lack of
community-based organizations in Stowe Village. Steering committee
meetings were, however, open to the public. The steering committee
typically made strategic decisions, although program staff were more
responsible for program management and implementation. 

The Seattle and Manatee/Sarasota program organizations show a more
bottom-up approach, with residents granted high decisionmaking authority
through formal resident bodies. Hartford, on the other hand, lies closer to
the other end of the spectrum, where public agency representatives were
primary decisionmakers. The remaining six sites fell somewhere in the
middle of this spectrum. 

Role of the grantee organization

The grantee and its staff assigned to the Weed and Seed effort were
probably the single most important factors in successful program
implementation among the evaluation sites. The capabilities, vision, and
commitment of Weed and Seed program staff and the grantee institution
were more important factors in program implementation than the type of
grantee organization. 

To implement the Weed and Seed strategy, it was necessary for sites to
have sufficient dedicated staff resources to guide the program, engage
resident participation and ongoing community leadership, build the
necessary network of relationships in the public and private sectors,
oversee implementation, and provide technical assistance to the
communities. Sites without sufficient dedicated staff resources, from both
grantees and other participating agencies, suffered in program
implementation, oversight, and cohesion. Structuring and setting in motion
a comprehensive and coordinated strategy was the principal challenge for
sites. Effective program staff leadership enabled implementation success
in spite of serious obstacles, and staff problems (including inadequate
staff, lack of competencies for the given role, and misunderstanding of the
mission) severely impeded program implementation. Even in such cases,
however, some program elements succeeded due to the leadership of other
Weed and Seed participants or to changes in staff. 

In keeping with the concept of Weed and Seed as a strategy, the
organization, staffing, and method of implementation evolved over time at
different sites. Weed and Seed was not a static program structure, and
lessons were often incorporated as the process unfolded. Shreveport, for
example, initially had inexperienced and insufficient staff, which led to a
long delay in implementing seeding programs and resulted in the failure of
the first afterschool program associated with Weed and Seed. One problem
was that the seed coordinator was a volunteer whose full-time job was to
run a large afterschool program. This person was not prepared for these
dual roles, nor were there appropriate Weed and Seed management and
accountability structures in place. Eventually a full-time seed coordinator
was hired, and the Weed and Seed program director was replaced. With
strong staff leadership and community participation, implementation
occurred smoothly, with considerable accountability. 

Consistent with the philosophy of building community capacity, Weed and
Seed programs also had to find the right balance between providing
needed assistance to communities and challenging them to mobilize more
community resources. The Manatee/Sarasota Weed and Seed effort
reorganized its initial program structure to reduce the number of staff
involved with neighborhood coordination. Although neighborhood
coordinators were initially helpful in mobilizing residents, too much staff
assistance decreased community initiative and was not an effective use of
resources. 

Grantee institutional issues 

The Weed and Seed evaluation sites demonstrated how different grantee
institutions can bring different institutional strengths, weaknesses, and
opportunities to the program and thus affect its design and operations.
Although the capabilities of the Weed and Seed program staff and leaders
are more important than the type of grantee institution, the latter is a key
factor in structuring a balanced program. The following discusses these
potential strengths and weaknesses. 

Police department. Since public safety and law enforcement are central to
Weed and Seed, it is important to encourage a high level of commitment
from police departments. Having a police department as grantee can
facilitate the engagement of greater police department resources and
ongoing department commitment. However, a police department as
grantee can also create distinct disadvantages. Police departments, for
example, are less equipped to handle the social services programming and
community consensus-building process than other types of grantees (given
the more hierarchical structure of police departments). For example, the
Shreveport police department, as grantee, initially encountered difficulties
of this nature but later adapted well. Furthermore, placing Weed and Seed
in a police department also tends to identify the program more strongly as
a law enforcement initiative, at least until seeding is implemented. In
Seattle, where the community policing department was the grantee, Weed
and Seed tried to overcome this perception by giving the seeding
component to the city Department of Housing and Human Services. This
arrangement probably facilitated community acceptance and broader
integration of seeding initiatives in the city.[5]

Given this concern about a focus on enforcement, it is interesting to note
in sites where the police department was the grantee that there was no
evidence of disproportionate focus and spending on law enforcement
efforts. In fact, Seattle and Hartford spent far more of their budgets on
seeding programs than on weeding. 

Mayor's office. Importantly, the mayor's office can bring the strength of a
city's full resources to the program and can translate program successes in
the target area to the city at large. The mayor as grantee can also facilitate
governmental capacity building and broadly strengthen collaboration with
citizens and community organizations. Pittsburgh provides an example of
these strengths. At one site, having a mayor as grantee placed the program
within a volatile political environment; the program became dominated by
individual political concerns and turf wars. Further, changes in
administration reduced program commitment in one city, while at another
it signaled the beginning of a more focused and productive effort.[6] A
mayor's office, however, brings both the assets and liabilities of political
office, which vary by city and shift over time. 

Community-based organizations. Among the eight evaluation sites, only
Manatee/Sarasota Counties had a nonprofit organization as grantee. The
grantee was Drug Free Communities, Inc., a nonprofit organization created
by the mayor. Although it was unusual for a Weed and Seed grantee to be
anything other than a police department, mayor's office, or similar
government agency, this approach seems to have worked well for
Manatee/Sarasota. As a practical matter, because the Manatee/Sarasota
Weed and Seed program stretched over two counties, it would have been
difficult for any single local government agency to serve as effectively as
the grant-receiving entity. In addition, Drug Free Communities already
had established strong grassroots organizational and political support in
Manatee County and had received a significant Federal grant from the
Center for Substance Abuse and Prevention (CSAP). 

Although based on limited data, the Manatee/Sarasota experience suggests
other community-based organizations might effectively serve as future
Weed and Seed grantees and can bring distinct strengths, including
community trust. It would be important, however, for such organizations
to have had a broad-based community constituency and positive
experience working with local governmental organizations, in
addition to a demonstrated capacity to manage Federal grants.[7]

Engaging the community in building capacity

Two central tasks of the Weed and Seed strategy are to engage residents in
problem solving from a comprehensive view and to gain commitment
from community members and key partners to construct and implement an
integrated strategy. Several evaluation sites encountered early community
resistance to Weed and Seed due to resident concerns of exclusive focus
on enforcement or concerns of targeted harassment. 

o When the city of Seattle proposed applying for funding from the Weed
and Seed program in the spring of 1992, many community groups
expressed public opposition, fearing the proposed weeding programs
would be measures to harass and control persons living in the target area.
After heated public debate, the mayor organized and held meetings with
community coalitions and representatives from the public agencies
involved with the proposal. These meetings culminated in revisions to the
city's proposal which increased the operational role of the Citizens
Advisory Committee, composed of residents and community organizations
within the Weed and Seed area.

o In the first 2 years of the Las Vegas Weed and Seed program, there was
negative publicity and organized opposition over concern that its
enforcement efforts would target young minority males. Eventually, as the
seeding component gained momentum and genuinely involved grassroots
community groups, these concerns were mitigated.

o In Pittsburgh, in the first 2 years of Weed and Seed, the program
focused primarily on enforcement and rarely involved residents in
program decisionmaking. Residents had expected to see community
development initiatives, not just crackdowns, and had become alienated
and angry about perceived broken promises. Subsequently, the program
was radically restructured to focus on community capacity building, with
substantial seeding program authority given to residents. 

According to leaders of community organizations and residents, Weed and
Seed sites that employed a bottom-up grassroots approach built trust
among residents and community organizations. As one community leader
said, "There's a trust level that had been developed with local people.... 
This gives [the program] a chance to mushroom." 

The clear lessons from these experiences were the importance of involving
residents early in Weed and Seed planning, providing residents with
substantial program authority, and earning their trust. The seeding
program component was typically the means through which community
trust was built and participation fulfilled. Citizen willingness to participate
in law enforcement was sometimes contingent on the trust built and
demonstrated through the investments in seeding. 

Building community capacity. Preexisting community organizational
infrastructures varied across target areas. In sites such as Meadows Village
in Las Vegas, a lack of social infrastructure made program implementation
difficult. Even when sites had strong community organizational
infrastructures, considerable resources were needed to effectively catalyze
participation and increase capacity to implement Weed and Seed.
Pittsburgh and Manatee/Sarasota, for example, focused on community
capacity building and devoted considerable ongoing resources to these
efforts. The following are examples of positive effects of such investment: 

o One Manatee community-based leader emphasized the importance of
Weed and Seed's work with the neighborhood action teams to "put
programs into action" that met community needs. He said, "I feel good
about what I'm doing because we [the community] do this for ourselves."
He said that for too long, the approach was to go after a quick fix and do
what benefited the provider more than the community. Outsiders were
brought in to "fix them up," only to take their funds and leave the
community worse off. 

o Another community leader said, "We didn't bring anyone into the
community ... We did it ourselves in the community   not with outside
services. This gives empowerment to the community; it shows our youths
the good example of seeing leaders active in their own community." 

Weed and Seed also provided a forum for leadership development among
residents. In Salt Lake City, for example, a resident took the lead in the
initial Weed and Seed grant application and played an instrumental role in
early program implementation. In the North and South Manatee target
neighborhoods, there emerged charismatic individual leaders who
essentially ran the safe havens as volunteers and directed a variety of
community activities. For all sites, it remained a central organizational
challenge to continuously develop and broaden leadership to implement
and sustain the Weed and Seed strategy. 

Program planning and local evaluation

Sites employed a variety of methods to improve their strategic planning,
including outside technical assistance, data collection by the program, and
external local evaluations. In general, sites would have benefited from
more technical assistance early in the Weed and Seed planning process.
Some demonstration sites felt they were not sufficiently prepared when
they received the grant money and would have benefited from a more
rigorous planning process, including technical assistance and
hiring a local evaluator, before receiving the full grant award.[8]

Weed and Seed goals and strategies needed to be focused--especially on
the seeding side--with clear criteria as to how resources should be
allocated and progress measured.[9] Sometimes this was achieved,
sometimes not. Strategic focus also needed to be integrated with other
goals, such as community participation and capacity building. 

Outside technical assistance and resources. Several sites engaged outside
technical assistance or resources to aid program planning. The following
are illustrations of some initiatives: 

o In the second year of the Shreveport program, the Communities That
Care strategic planning process provided a clear focus for Weed and Seed
planning and programming, especially on the seeding side. A total of 70
people participated in a process that identified several key community
issues and risk factors. Subsequent subcontract requests for proposals
(RFPs) and the local evaluation focused on these issues and risk factors.
Although this process proved to be time-consuming, it built consensus and
strengthened program coherence for both seeding and community-oriented
policing. Prior to that, there were no established criteria from which to
select seeding programs and on which to build consensus among
community groups represented on the steering committee. Consensus
building was particularly important for this site because the target area 
encompassed two diverse neighborhoods in which community-based
organizations did not share the same visions of community change;
otherwise, program efforts may have been more diffuse and fragmented. 

o Manatee/Sarasota Counties also benefited from the Communities That
Care process, except technical assistance came rather late in the program,
and community members thought the process too academic. Manatee also
employed a process of "asset mapping" the communities' strengths that
was used to build upon the Weed and Seed efforts.[10] This process drew
from the work of John Kretzmann and John McKnight of Northwestern
University's Neighborhood Innovations Network.[11]

o In Pittsburgh, community organizations received training under the
Communities That Care program. The Pittsburgh program also received
technical assistance from the National Congress on Community Economic
Development to assess the status of community economic development
and to provide training to communities. 

o Salt Lake City used its National Performance Review Laboratory grant
to refine local planning to improve the city's chances for being selected as
a Weed and Seed site, as well as to aid communities to clearly identify
local resources that might be drawn into crime reduction planning and
community improvement efforts.[12] Assessing community strengths and
needs with its members led to effective use of resources and helped to
build program coherence and consensus. 

Appropriate technical assistance can help grantees with methodology and
provide an objective outside perspective; this may be particularly
important for grantees lacking experience in this kind of planning and
consensus-building process. A partially funded 6-month to 1-year planning
period might be beneficial for some sites. 

Data collection by the program. Some sites undertook systematic data
collection efforts as part of their ongoing program planning and
management and made such information available to target area residents.
In Manatee/Sarasota Counties, for example, Weed and Seed staff
conducted community surveys and maintained a demographic database on
the target areas, which groups accessed for grant applications. The site
also maintained a community resource library and provided ongoing
technical assistance to a variety of community groups, with an average of
15 requests per month. 

External local evaluation. Half of the national evaluation sites--Shreveport,
Seattle, Las Vegas, and Hartford--undertook external local evaluations. In
three of the sites, the local evaluation played a constructive role in
program assessment. 

Shreveport Weed and Seed provides an example in which the local
evaluation played a central role in program planning and assessment.
Officials there felt that having a local evaluator was a critical factor in
successful program implementation. The firm they hired had experience in
evaluating comprehensive community initiatives and built a collaborative
relationship with program staff by using quarterly evaluation information
to guide program improvement.[13] Shreveport officials' major regret was
that the program was nearly 2 years old before a local evaluator was hired,
and they believe better decisions could have been made--especially on the
seeding side--if evaluation information had been available sooner.[14]

Approach to weeding and community policing

Most sites developed and implemented coherent law enforcement
strategies that responded to local conditions and incorporated stronger
street-level patrols with some degree of higher level interagency
coordination. Weeding approaches across the eight sites typically
included: 

o Increased police presence through additional officer hours and overtime,
with the majority of sites assigning officers dedicated to the target area. 

o Increased special operations for targeted law enforcement, especially for
drug-related and violent crime. 

o Greater concentration, coordination, and integration of efforts within
police departments than before Weed and Seed. 

o Varying degrees of increased local, State, and Federal communication
and coordination, whether in targeting offenders, narcotics operations,
prosecution, or probation or parole. 

The assignment of dedicated officers to the Weed and Seed target areas
was important in building relationships with residents and in aiding
enforcement through better knowledge of the neighborhood, better
intelligence, and the ability to operate proactively. In Shreveport, for
example, many residents knew the four dedicated "bumble bees," the
bicycle patrol officers in yellow shirts and black shorts; and, in Pittsburgh,
residents successfully lobbied to keep one of their Weed and Seed officers
from being reassigned. 

Most sites executed intensive initial weeding efforts, focusing on drug
enforcement and special joint operations.[15] At many sites, such as
Hartford and Las Vegas, drug enforcement efforts targeted major
offenders; other sites, including Pittsburgh and Manatee, focused more on
street-level dealers. The strategy depended in part on preexisting law
enforcement operations and, in some cases, concerns of residents.
Pittsburgh and Manatee already had other operations under way that
focused on the major dealers, and the weed task forces collaborated with
these efforts. Drug enforcement and suppression tactics typically included
use of informants, undercover operations (such as buy-and-bust tactics and
reverse sting operations), execution of search warrants, saturation patrols,
and surveillance. The Shreveport weed officers also employed a "zero
tolerance" approach, sometimes setting up checkpoints in problem areas. 

In addition to drug-related crime, property crimes were a major concern in
Shreveport and Manatee; early weeding efforts concentrated on improving
this situation.[16] Both sites have also focused more on quality-of-life
issues, especially as crime levels have been reduced.[17]

Increased interagency collaboration was a central component of most
weeding strategies. Such efforts included monthly meetings between weed
officers and probation/parole officers to catch parole violators, frequent
joint Federal and local special narcotics operations, and the creation of
formal interagency Weed and Seed law enforcement task forces, like those
in Las Vegas, Manatee/Sarasota Counties, and Pittsburgh.[18] 

Multiagency task forces 

Although multiagency task forces concentrated on the target area, they
pursued drug cases across jurisdictional lines. Consequently, the benefits
of these efforts extended beyond the target areas, particularly when the
focus was on high-level drug dealers who controlled large operations.
Task force missions varied according to the nature of crime in the target
areas and preexisting law enforcement operations, so Weed and Seed task
forces complemented existing efforts. Examples of task forces include: 

o In Las Vegas, the Joint Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department-FBI
(LVMPD-FBI) Task Force focused on relatively high-level drug
distribution in the West Las Vegas target area. The U.S. Attorney and FBI
organized the task force and helped foster Federal commitment to the
program. In an approximately 2-year period, the task force was responsible
for 137 arrests for State crimes and 40 Federal arrests and prosecutions. 

o In Manatee/Sarasota Counties, the cornerstone of the weeding strategy
was the creation of a multijurisdictional interagency Violent Crimes Task
Force (VCTF), which focused on street-level drug dealing and violent
crimes in the six target areas.[19] Coordinated by the FBI, VCTF included
the four local law enforcement agencies, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco
and Firearms (ATF), the U.S. Marshal's Service, and the Florida
Department of Law Enforcement. The task force involved the full-time
commitment of personnel by all participating agencies--Federal, State, and
local--and the officers all worked from a central location.[20] Between
October 1994 and March 1997, the task force made 2,766 arrests in both
counties, including 54 Federal cases. In the North and South Manatee
target areas, VCTF produced 231 cases during this period.[21] 

o The Pittsburgh Weed and Seed task force, coordinated by the narcotics
division of the Pittsburgh Police Department, focused on street-level
narcotics traffic in the target areas, while working collaboratively with an
established multijurisdictional task force that focused on major violent
drug traffickers in the Pittsburgh area. 

Prosecution

Overall, prosecution has been a relatively weak link in Weed and Seed due
to various institutional, political, and judicial issues. Although interagency
communications often increased as a result of Weed and Seed, in the
majority of sites, there was no special Federal or local prosecution or
tracking of Weed and Seed cases.[22] Shreveport provides an example of a
site with no Federal prosecution and no special efforts for local
prosecution or sentencing; there, program officials and residents were
extremely dissatisfied with the "revolving door syndrome," with repeat
offenders often released on parole.[23] Manatee and Sarasota Counties, on
the other hand, appear to be one of the few sites in which prosecution and
cooperation with Weed and Seed has been vigorous at both the Federal
and local levels. 

At the local level, although the district attorneys typically did not allocate
special resources to Weed and Seed, several sites specially stamped cases,
and communications often increased and improved between law
enforcement personnel and prosecutors. Although there was usually no
formal preference given to Weed and Seed cases ("a serious case is a
serious case," as one State attorney's office representative said), law
enforcement officials felt that such communication improved the focus on
important Weed and Seed cases. In Las Vegas, prior to 1996, Weed and
Seed cases did not receive special "fast track" attention in the prosecutor's
office. However, since that time, all Weed and Seed task force cases have
been screened and presented to the district attorney by task force
personnel. This has resulted in fewer of these cases being dropped. 

As an illustration of varying local philosophies, the district attorney at a
Weed and Seed site with strong prosecution felt the biggest benefit of
Weed and Seed was its ability to concentrate resources in the worst areas
and to focus on quality-of-life crimes. Conversely, a district attorney at a
site with extremely poor prosecution felt, politically, that his office could
not give any more attention--show favoritism--to one geographic area over
another. In general, the political environment in which district attorneys
operate, as well as limited resources, constrained special local prosecution
of Weed and Seed cases. 

At the Federal level, the U.S. Attorney's participation and Federal
prosecution was also uneven. Shreveport and Seattle processed no Federal
prosecutions for Weed and Seed cases, and Akron Weed and Seed cases
were prosecuted at the local and State levels. In Pittsburgh, Weed and
Seed participants initially attempted to take more cases federally, but there
was resistance from Federal judges. In Shreveport, where drug cases
typically did not have enough weight to qualify for Federal guidelines, the
U.S. Attorney's Office was unwilling to lower Federal guidelines to make
the case.[24] However, for drug cases that did not meet normal Federal
prosecution standards in Manatee and Sarasota Counties, the U.S.
Attorney sometimes lowered the Federal drug-level requirements to pursue
Weed and Seed cases.[25] In Las Vegas, Weed and Seed task force cases
received strong Federal prosecution. 

The Hartford Weed and Seed program, which had great success in arrests
of major gang narcotics traffickers, illustrates some criminal justice
challenges. As illustrated in exhibit 2.2, as of June 1997, more than half of
the Hartford Weed and Seed's 612 State-level cases were dismissed, with
only 18 percent of arrests resulting in incarceration. For felony arrests
which resulted in incarceration, 39 percent received a sentence of less than
2 years; the disposition distribution for felony drug arrests was nearly
identical to that for all felony arrests. Hartford did have important
Federal-level prosecutions of key gang leaders, however, resulting in
strong sentencing. 

One factor to consider is that Weed and Seed provides substantial
resources for law enforcement to generate more arrests, but the criminal
justice component often did not receive additional resources to pay for any
additional staffing or reorganization. Prosecutorial cooperation depended
primarily on politics, preexisting institutional capacities, and individual
dispositions. In several cases, Weed and Seed increased prosecutorial
cooperation--through increased communication or leadership of the U.S.
Attorney at the Federal level. Nonetheless, the criminal justice component
generally did not occur as envisioned in the original Weed and Seed
concept.[26] 

Community policing and resident involvement in law enforcement and
crime prevention

Weed and Seed enabled most sites to expand or strengthen community
policing efforts or to institute new programs. Although some sites, such as
Seattle, already had well-established, proactive community policing
programs, others had difficulty integrating community policing with
traditional law enforcement to adopt a problem-solving approach; in a
majority of sites, Weed and Seed advanced the process of integration.
Manatee County, for example, had a highly traditional police department
and had not yet embraced community policing methods; participation in
Weed and Seed enabled the county to launch its first community-oriented
policing program.[27] As they got to know the neighborhoods, the
community police officers also became key informants for the Weed and
Seed Violent Crimes Task Force. 

Community policing initiatives at various sites, including nuisance
abatement, landlord programs, graffiti eradication, code enforcement, and
neighborhood cleanups, helped improve property maintenance and
neighborhood environments. Officers also participated in a wide range of
youth recreation and education programs in the target areas; such activities
engaged local youths in constructive activity, provided positive role
models for youths, and built community relations. 

In addition to enhancing community policing efforts, Weed and Seed
provided a vehicle for mobilizing residents to participate in crime
prevention, in some cases creating effective structures for community
authority and leadership. In Seattle, the Weed and Seed Citizens Advisory
Committee determined weeding priorities; and in Manatee County, where
community policing was new, the Weed and Seed Neighborhood Action
Teams provided a structure for citizens to work with community policing
officers. For many sites, neighborhood watches became an increasingly
important means of citizen participation in crime prevention. Weed and
Seed led to more neighborhood watches and invigorated participation at
many sites; watch participants reported high satisfaction with their
participation and police support. At these sites, Weed and Seed seems to
have improved police enthusiasm for neighborhood watches, as well. 

Although weeding has typically involved less resident participation than
has seeding, communications between residents and the police increased
across sites through enhanced community policing efforts, public training
and education projects, regular neighborhood meetings, and increased
police participation in seeding-related programs. Law enforcement
personnel reported getting more information from residents and increased
responsiveness and cooperation in enforcement and crime prevention. 

The nature of resident involvement in law enforcement also was
influenced by preexisting organizational structures and cultures in both the
police departments and communities. For example, in Seattle, where the
Citizens Advisory Committee exerted authority over weeding, there was a
strong culture of citizen participation and a long history of community
policing. A key strength of the Salt Lake City Weed and Seed program
was its effective mobilization of residents in law enforcement and crime
prevention. Through the Comprehensive Communities Program, Salt Lake
City had already established an extensive network of mobile neighborhood
watches, with more than 800 participating residents and community action
teams that engaged in neighborhood problem solving. Weed and Seed
built on and strengthened this network. Such organizational infrastructure
facilitated citizen participation in crime prevention and law enforcement. 

For a majority of sites, police substations in central community locations
provided focal points for police contact with the community and furthered
program integration. For example, Hartford created a substation in Stowe
Village, and Salt Lake City, Seattle, and Manatee created substations at
their safe havens. 

Having a central location for the weeding and seeding also helped some
sites integrate the program and provided a focus for community
engagement. Shreveport, for example, had a dedicated Weed and Seed
site, which housed the weeding and seeding staff and served as a
community center and focal point for community participation and
response. In Manatee/Sarasota, the grantee, Drug Free Communities, was
co-located at the Police Athletic League with the Weed and Seed
multiagency Violent Crimes Task Force. 

Although Weed and Seed generally seemed to increase resident
involvement and improve community-police relations, achieving a
partnership with community authority is an ongoing and more difficult
process than selective participation. Such participation and
communications, however, are critical steps in building that partnership.
Weed and Seed advanced the dialogue significantly. 

Approach to seeding

Seeding typically was the gateway to community participation and
engendered the most community support. In many sites, providing
communities with authority in the seeding grant award process was critical
to gaining community participation and trust. 

In Seattle and Manatee/Sarasota, neighborhood bodies (the Weed and Seed
Citizens Advisory Committee and the Neighborhood Action Groups)
chose programs to fund. An executive of a national youth program in
Manatee/Sarasota said Weed and Seed makes it clear to providers that the
neighborhood makes the decisions, and the programs must justify
themselves to the neighborhood. She said Weed and Seed tries to involve
communities to accomplish community-determined needs. She described
it as a grassroots program, where Weed and Seed staff listen to what the
community says and try to figure out how to make it happen. 

Pittsburgh took the approach of giving community boards authority over a
substantial portion (35-40 percent) of the seeding budget, with the
community body responsible for issuing RFPs, making program
selections, and managing contracts and projects. 

Shreveport more broadly involved the community in the initial planning
phase via a public strategic planning process to determine the seeding
strategy and establish community participation on the steering committee
responsible for approving seeding programs. Shreveport issued RFPs, with
staff making initial program recommendations to the committee. 

At many sites, the RFP process provided valuable experience for
participating community-based organizations and for neighborhood review
committees. Las Vegas used the RFP process as an opportunity to train
potential seeding providers through a 2-day workshop in grant preparation
and management. Pittsburgh and Manatee/Sarasota also provided technical
assistance in grant writing to community-based organizations. In Hartford,
no RFPs were issued because the steering committee generally knew
which programs it wanted to fund. 

In their own ways, sites had to balance issues related to strategic
coherence of the program with goals of providing authority to residents
and engaging their participation in solving neighborhood problems; this
was where staff and community leadership played critical roles. 

Developing a seeding strategy

Among the greatest challenges for Weed and Seed sites was developing an
appropriate seeding strategy with community members to most effectively
target and leverage existing community resources. Simply selecting and
successfully implementing seeding programs, such as safe havens, in itself
was more difficult for most sites than implementing their weeding
programs. Seeding was inherently a broader and more complex task, both
in the development of goals and strategies and from a practical
organizational standpoint. Seeding efforts required securing participation
and commitment from numerous types of organizations, whereas weeding
had a relatively clearer mission, operating within more established
hierarchical structures of law enforcement and criminal justice
organizations.[28] Due to the broader and less defined nature of seeding,
relatively more time was needed for planning, relationship building, and
gaining consensus and commitment from the wide range of participants
who shape this domain. 

It is difficult to compare and assess seeding strategies across sites because
they arose from local context--the existing resources and programs,
capacities, cultures, and needs. Since sites varied widely in contexts and
preferences, the purpose of the seeding effort was to unite people in a
process that would build momentum toward neighborhood restoration,
creating a multiplier effect over time. Implementation during Weed and
Seed was only the beginning of this process, which has a longer time
horizon. 

Seeding program partnerships

The eight Weed and Seed sites built their programs around existing
resources, in addition to creating new partnerships. For example, Hartford
Weed and Seed integrated seeding efforts with the existing Department of
Housing and Urban Development Family Investment Center, and the 
Salt Lake City Weed and Seed program built on the Comprehensive
Communities Program. Extensive partnerships and collaborations were
created through Weed and Seed in the public and private sectors, with
most of the private-sector partnerships with nonprofit and
community-based organizations. In Shreveport, for example, Weed and
Seed arranged for public services to come to the target area, including free
immunizations for children from the State department of public health, a
library bookmobile, and free computer training from a local university. In
Seattle, the Washington Insurance Council joined Weed and Seed to
establish the Seattle Neighborhood Action Program as a private/public
partnership to help revitalize a neighborhood.[29]

Seeding program partners and providers emphasized how Weed and Seed
increased coordination and communication links between neighborhood
groups and other agencies. Almost all respondents said they felt more
connected to the community and service providers. A director of a youth
service organization in Shreveport said, "Establishing partnerships is the
key to Weed and Seed--cooperation on projects and working together to
bring the community together. [You] can touch more people as a group of
organizations than as a single entity." 

Many providers said working with Weed and Seed enhanced their
organizational capacity and enabled them to receive other grants to
continue their efforts. There were some former providers, however, who
said they accomplished their goals with Weed and Seed funding but, when
that funding ended, they were unable to sustain the same level of
services.[30] While it is too early in implementation to know which
program elements will be sustained, these observations reinforce the
importance of using Weed and Seed to build community partnerships and
capacity rather than as a primary means to fund services. 

Seeding funding strategies

Sites reflected their different priorities by funding seeding programs with
varying degrees of breadth, depth, and duration. For example, Shreveport
concentrated on funding five afterschool and summer youth programs that
previously did not exist in the target area, combining substantial reach
with intensity. These programs will receive about 2 years of Weed and
Seed funding before providers have to find replacement funding. (It
appears they may be successful through a combination of city and private
resources.) Conversely, Seattle initially funded more than 20 different
programs, mostly related to prevention and education activities for youths
and employment training, spreading funding more thinly across a variety
of organizations. In a later stage of the program, funding was concentrated
on a few key programs. Similarly, Salt Lake City initially provided partial
grants to numerous organizations but later chose a smaller number of core
programs to support. 

Manatee/Sarasota, which also emphasized youth programs, focused on
program sustainability by providing only partial funding for programs and
requiring programs to develop partnerships and other funding sources.[31]
In the two Manatee target areas, funding allowed new community-based
organizations to form, others to expand existing programs, and innovative
programs to be tested. In the Hill District, Pittsburgh funded a broader
range of projects, using money to establish and strengthen community
organizations but avoid creating competing structures. Training also has
been a central component of Pittsburgh's strategy, teaching and assisting
communities to develop greater self-reliance. In addition to funding a
strong mix of programs for youths, the Hartford Stowe Village program
provided a range of family support services. 

Types of programming

Seeding initiatives undertaken by the evaluation sites can be clustered as
follows, according to predominance: 

Prevention and intervention programs for youths. Sites focused most
heavily on prevention-oriented programs, with a strong mix of afterschool
programming and safe havens, recreation and sports, skills and
employment training, job development, and health/substance abuse-related
programs. By concentrating on this program dimension, many sites
achieved both significant reach and intensity among this segment of
residents. 

Neighborhood beautification. Sites also incorporated neighborhood
beautification efforts, such as neighborhood cleanups and code
enforcement. Shreveport used Weed and Seed funds to pay for a full-time
city code enforcer for the target area; this site also organized numerous
neighborhood cleanup efforts, which relied upon community groups, the
Shrevecorps service youths, and prison community-service workers. South
Manatee had a strong community leader who led code enforcement and
cleanup efforts. Residents and program staff expressed great satisfaction
with results of such beautification efforts. 

Community building/community development initiatives. Initiatives
specifically aimed at community development were underused in some
programs, given the importance of this dimension in the Weed and Seed
strategy. Of course, community development is both a process objective
and a desired outcome. Furthermore, community building occurs as a
byproduct of working together on common goals, such as various
community groups undertaking a neighborhood cleanup initiative.
Nonetheless, some sites developed initiatives that had community capacity
building as the central goal. 

Pittsburgh, in particular, made this a key program strategy, funding or
organizing a variety of programs, which included: 

o Workshops on community development through the Community
Technical Assistance Center.

o Neighborhood technology centers. Weed and Seed organized an effort to
create and maintain a community computer network, bringing together
partners that had not previously worked together, including public schools,
universities, libraries, neighborhood organizations, and the city. Recently,
the police department provided the community network with Internet
access to its new crime data mapping system. 

o A community development reference manual. With Weed and Seed and
other funds, the Center for the Community Interest developed a manual to
assist Pittsburgh community organizations in addressing neighborhood
problems. 

Hartford hired a professional community organizer for Stowe Village, but
that effort did not succeed in mobilizing residents as intended. A resident
building captain program is now being implemented to increase resident
capacity for self-governance. 

Across the sites, the safe havens and community centers supported by
Weed and Seed provided a focal point for residents and community
organizations. Regular outreach by Weed and Seed staff, including safe
haven coordinators at some sites, played a vital role in increasing
community awareness and gaining participation in neighborhood
activities. For example, Shreveport Weed and Seed published a monthly
calendar of events and programs in the target area. 

Adult employment/economic advancement programs. Hartford, Seattle,
and Pittsburgh undertook training initiatives for adults, as well as youths.
Computer programs were often well-received by the neighborhoods,
including Seattle's Mid-town Commons Advanced Computer Training
Project, which provided residents with Internet training and access.
Hartford Weed and Seed installed a computer lab, which became very
popular among Stowe Village residents who received computer and
educational training and Internet access. 

Family support services targeted at adults. Hartford employed more family
support service interventions than most sites because approximately 95
percent of its resident population was unemployed. Similarly, Las Vegas
undertook relatively more family support initiatives, particularly in the
Meadows Village target area, which had a relatively transient population
and a high concentration of recent immigrants. 

Community economic development facilitation. Although staff at some
Weed and Seed sites participated in economic development initiatives, this
program component usually received the least attention, particularly in the
beginning, when more basic neighborhood concerns needed to be
addressed. Pittsburgh was one of the few sites that focused on economic
development in any systematic way. 

In Pittsburgh's Hill District, located near the business center, the Weed and
Seed umbrella brought various parties together around economic
development issues. The Hill District had already received a major urban
revitalization grant, and community organizations were active in economic
development planning. Weed and Seed facilitated and advanced these
efforts. Conversely, economic development prospects were far different in
Pittsburgh's Hazelwood target area--a former mill town--which was less
geographically desirable for investors. 

Economic development, part of the neighborhood restoration phase of
Weed and Seed, was a program area that was difficult to define for most
sites. Of course, the principal goal of Weed and Seed was to improve
conditions to make economic development possible. One needs to 
consider the short timeframe covered in this discussion of program
implementation--only 2 to 4 years--when economic development is the
program component least under the control of a small target area and most
dependent on a variety of prerequisites. The implementation of such Weed
and Seed elements, as discussed above, provided target neighborhoods
with positive steps in the direction of community restoration. To assist in
this implementation, EOWS provided technical assistance to a number of
sites. 

Notes

1. Please refer to the case studies for a more indepth review of each site's
program.

2. The steering committee has an inherently complicated management
structure because the U.S. Attorney is its designated head, yet the grantee
is the organization responsible for fiscal management and day-to-day 
program operation. The Operation Weed and Seed Implementation
Manual suggests that the primary role of the U.S. Attorney, as leader of
the steering committee, is to bring Federal resources to the program--
particularly in the area of criminal justice--and to use the authority of that
office to advance consensual program goals.

3. Shreveport also held and publicized monthly neighborhood Weed and
Seed meetings. Weed and Seed program officials found initially that their
steering committee membership was overly large (30 members), and 
participants did not understand the magnitude of the commitment
involved. Eventually, however, a core group of 18 that met monthly
operated more effectively.

4. Five seed committees were formed--grants, community empowerment,
planning and strategies, youth focus, and budget administration.

5. Conversely, dividing Weed and Seed across city departments could
potentially increase program fragmentation and lead to a lack of
integration of weeding and seeding, without coordination. Having a
program in one place creates a synergy that otherwise may be harder to
achieve, depending upon preexisting relationships and program leadership.

6. Such political changes affected not only the role of the mayor's office
but also other participants including the U.S. Attorney.

7. On the other hand, potential weaknesses of community-based
organizations include lack of resources (as compared with a city grantee)
and less power to institutionalize changes citywide. With less institutional
authority, community-based organizations must rely more on consensus
building.

8. In addition to strategic planning, sites also must prepare for Federal
grant management and the required fiscal reporting; at least two cities had
difficulties setting up the necessary accounting systems.

9. In a site such as Hartford's Stowe Village, where Weed and Seed
funding per capita was greatest, a variety of programs could be funded
with significant reach and intensity while funding lasted; it is unclear,
however, how this will be sustained. For sites with larger populations and
multiple neighborhoods, careful planning and targeting became even more
important.

10. The Manatee/Sarasota program continues to advance this process as it
makes the transition from a demonstration to a training site.

11. Kretzmann, John, and John McKnight, Building Communities from
the Inside Out: A Path Toward Finding and Mobilizing Community
Assets, Evanston, IL: Northwestern University, Center for Urban Affairs
and Policy Research, Neighborhood Innovation Network, 1993.

12. Pittsburgh Weed and Seed used NPRL funds to hire a consultant to
assess the training needs of the community-based organization in the first
and second Weed and Seed locations. The program also used the funds to
automate financial recordkeeping and to enhance the technology project
that provided community residents with greater access to information.
Program participants had anticipated the NPRL funds would enhance the
city's access to other Federal funds--this leveraging did not occur because
the participation of other Federal agencies in this effort was minimal. The
Shreveport Weed and Seed program decided to decline its NPRL grant
award after the site was unable to get clear Federal NPRL program 
guidelines.

13. Incorporating the risk factors strategic approach into the evaluation
criteria, the evaluation firm relied upon a community survey, interviews
with project participants, and program documentation. Evaluation staff
also helped Weed and Seed staff review and assess proposed new seeding
programs.

14. In Shreveport, the first evaluation firm was dismissed because it could
not recognize and diagnose significant initial implementation problems;
the evaluator painted a false, rosy picture instead of providing constructive
analysis and feedback.

15. Shreveport did not begin with a major crackdown but rather with the
permanent assignment of a small number of additional officers to the
target area.

16. In its preweeding effort, Manatee initially focused on reducing
property crime.

17. For example, Shreveport has recently focused on such issues as
truancy, public drinking, and loitering.

18. Salt Lake City Weed and Seed worked closely with the existing Metro
Narcotics Task Force that focused on high-level drug dealers.

19. The Manatee/Sarasota program decided the most appropriate strategy
for the area was to target six noncontiguous neighborhoods
simultaneously. Law enforcement officials believed they could have a
much greater impact through a simultaneous, coordinated effort so that
crime would not simply be displaced from one neighborhood to the other.
Displacement problems would otherwise have been exacerbated by having
four different local law enforcement agencies that did not coordinate their
activities prior to Weed and Seed. Additional factors in having the six
target areas included the desire to rely on greater leveraging of resources
and issues of fairness.

20. While the agencies funded the core positions, a second law
enforcement position and enforcement overtime were funded by Weed and
Seed; Weed and Seed also paid for Violent Crimes Task Force overhead,
including rent, equipment, and training.

21. Violent Crimes Task Force report, June 1997.

22. Exceptions include the Las Vegas Weed and Seed task force and the
Hartford Police Department, which track Weed and Seed cases.

23. Typically, cases would get plea bargained with a sentence of
probation, often with probation on top of probation for repeat violators.
The Weed and Seed steering committee, not including the U.S. Attorney,
eventually wrote letters to judges expressing the community's concern
about the probation problem; the letters were received positively by the
majority of judges, and several judges met with the steering committee to
discuss this and related issues. In response to this sentencing problem,
Weed and Seed officers also met monthly with State probation and parole
officers to catch people in violation of parole, which leads to mandatory
sentencing.

24. Other complicating factors for sites such as Shreveport included
inadequate court capacity and judicial dispositions toward sentencing that
were beyond the control of Weed and Seed.

25. Manatee/Sarasota Counties already had strong prosecution and
sentencing prior to Weed and Seed; cooperation increased for Weed and
Seed cases, however.

26. As outlined in the Operation Weed and Seed Implementation Manual.

27. Weed and Seed led to Manatee County's COPS grant award, which
paid for its community policing staff.

28. Of course, with community-oriented policing, the boundaries expand
more.

29. This was one of the few examples of a substantial business-sector
partnership established in the Weed and Seed sites.

30. One provider indicated a year of funding was not enough time to
integrate a new service into her program.

31. Program staff also bartered services.

------------------------------
 
Chapter 3
 
Throughout the program, Weed and Seed officials targeted criminal
activity within the target areas, focusing specifically on seven Part 1
crimes--homicide, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, larceny, and
auto theft. The reduction of these crimes was generally viewed as one of
the most important Weed and Seed goals and a key indicator of its
success.

Results were generally positive. However, there was some variation by site
according to preexisting crime trends and the concentration of program
resources.
 
Analysis of Law Enforcement Data

To analyze arrest and crime patterns in the Weed and Seed target areas,
researchers requested computerized incident-level data from law
enforcement agencies in each of the eight Weed and Seed sites, including
basic facts about each arrest and crime (for example, when and where the
crime was committed) and each criminal charge associated with each
arrest and crime. Because the primary interest was in arrests that were
made and crimes that occurred in the target areas, procedures were
developed to identify those arrests and crimes in the jurisdictionwide files.
In most cases, the procedures involved geocoding the address where the
arrest was made or where the crime occurred.[1]

The focus was also on the seven Part 1 crimes. Although these crimes
account for only one segment of the overall crime problem (ignoring, for
example, order maintenance and other crimes closely associated with
quality-of-life issues), there are standard definitions of these crimes that all
law enforcement agencies follow, thus allowing for site-to-site
comparisons. Given that controlling drug trafficking and drug-related
crime is one of the key Weed and Seed objectives, researchers also
focused on drug arrests.[2]

Finally, researchers analyzed annual changes in these arrests and crimes.
More detailed analyses focusing on monthly trends are contained in the
case study reports on each site. 

Arrest trends in the target areas 

Chapter 2 discussed how the evaluation sites implemented the weed
component of their Weed and Seed strategy. In general, the approaches
included some form of increased law enforcement presence in the target
areas. One indicator of the degree of success in weeding is the number of
arrests made, which is examined in this section.[3]

Exhibits 3.1 and 3.2 show, respectively, annual figures for arrests for Part
1 crimes and for drug arrests.[4] "Weed and Seed years," rather than
calendar years, are shown in the exhibits. In both exhibits, the annual total
number of arrests, the annual number of arrests per 1,000 residents, and
the percentage change in arrests from the preceding year are shown for
both the Weed and Seed target area and for the remainder of the
jurisdiction. With the exception of Salt Lake City, only complete
(12-month) years are shown.[5] Salt Lake City is presented differently
because only 5 months of arrest data were available prior to the start of its
Weed and Seed program in August 1995.[6] Thus, to have any basis for
comparison to the period prior to Weed and Seed, year-to-year
comparisons in Salt Lake City were based only on data from March
through July. Annual arrest rates are therefore not shown for Salt Lake
City. Figures for Las Vegas and Akron also are not shown in these
exhibits--felony arrest data from Las Vegas were not available, and less
than 2 complete years of arrest data from Akron were provided. 

The annual arrest rates illustrate some differences across the sites and
between individual target areas and the remainder of each site's
corresponding jurisdiction. Hartford consistently has the highest Part 1 and
drug arrest rates per 1,000 persons across the evaluation sites. Hartford's
rates, in particular, are about 10-15 times higher than drug arrest rates in
any of the other sites. Ignoring Hartford, the Part 1 arrest rates are fairly
similar, although Pittsburgh's and Seattle's drug arrest rates are about twice
those in the other sites. In comparing the target areas to the rest of their
jurisdictions, in four of the six sites (North Manatee, South Manatee,
Seattle, and Shreveport), the target area Part 1 arrest rate is comparable to
the rate in the remainder of the jurisdiction. All of the target areas have
significantly higher drug arrest rates than their surrounding corresponding
jurisdictions. 

In interpreting year-to-year changes in arrest rates, one might expect to
find high arrest rates during the first year or so of Weed and Seed
implementation, reflecting an initial intense level of weeding. If these
initial weeding activities were successful, then, as implementation
continues into later years, one might expect a decline in the number of
arrests, assuming there was a fairly constant level of enforcement in the
target area. Exhibits 3.1 and 3.2 show this occurred in most of the Weed
and Seed sites. For example, drug arrest rates declined in five of the seven
target areas--Hartford, Pittsburgh, North Manatee, and, to a lesser extent,
Seattle and Shreveport. Drug arrest rates in both Salt Lake City and South
Manatee had not yet shown any decline. Changes in Pittsburgh are
especially significant. Prior to Weed and Seed, the Crawford-Roberts area
had a drug arrest rate four times higher than the rest of the city, but 4 years
after Weed and Seed began, the target area's drug arrest rate was about the
same as the rate for the rest of the city. Rates for Part 1 arrests also
declined in Hartford, Pittsburgh, North Manatee, South Manatee, and
Seattle. 

Crime trends in the target areas 

A reduction in crime is generally viewed as one of the most important
goals of Weed and Seed. Thus, the extent to which crime was reduced in
the target areas is an important indicator of Weed and Seed's overall
success, recognizing, of course, that a variety of factors unrelated to Weed
and Seed can affect crime rates. 

Exhibit 3.3 shows annual Part 1 crime statistics for the Weed and Seed
target areas and for the remaining non-Weed and Seed part of the
jurisdiction. The format of this exhibit is the same as the Part 1 arrest and
drug arrest charts shown in exhibits 3.1 and 3.2. As was the case with
arrest data, Salt Lake City is presented differently because only 5 months
of crime data were available prior to the start of its Weed and Seed
program in August 1995. 

The annual number of Part 1 crimes in the target areas shown in exhibit
3.3 highlights the significant differences across the target areas--there is
roughly a 10-fold difference in the number of Part 1 crimes between the
target areas in the low range (Hartford and North Manatee) and those in
the high range (Seattle and Shreveport). The Part 1 crime rates per 1,000
residents vary less, with about a threefold difference between the smallest
(Akron and North Manatee) and largest (Meadows Village and
Shreveport) rates. 

A primary area of interest in exhibit 3.3 is the difference between the
target area crime rates before and after the start of Weed and Seed.
Exhibits 3.4 and 3.6 highlight these differences, with exhibit 3.4
comparing the Part 1 crime rate per 1,000 residents in the year before
Weed and Seed to the first year of Weed and Seed and exhibit 3.6
comparing the Part 1 crime rate in the year before Weed and Seed to the
second year of Weed and Seed.[7]

Before discussing the numbers in these exhibits, three comments should be
made. 

o In each exhibit, the sites are ordered from the largest percentage
decrease in Part 1 crime on the left to the largest percentage increase on
the right.

o Akron is the only site for which researchers did not have 2 complete
years of crime data following the start of Weed and Seed; thus, this site is
not included in exhibit 3.6. 

o Salt Lake City's percentage changes are based on 5-month, rather than
12-month, periods.

Exhibits 3.4 and 3.6 show Part 1 crime decreases in most of the Weed and
Seed target areas. Comparing the first year of Weed and Seed to the year
prior to its beginning (exhibit 3.4), 7 of 10 target areas experienced
decreases (the exceptions being Seattle, South Manatee, and Salt Lake
City), and 7 of 10 target areas also experienced fewer Part 1 crimes in the
second year of Weed and Seed (exhibit 3.6) than in the year prior to its
beginning. The areas with increases over this period were South Manatee,
Meadows Village, and Salt Lake City. 

Eight of nine target areas (all areas except Meadows Village) showed a
decrease in Part 1 crime from the first year of Weed and Seed to the
second year. In both sets of comparisons, the Stowe Village target area in
Hartford experienced the largest percentage decrease in Part 1 crime across
all the target areas. 

Perhaps the most striking feature of exhibits 3.4 and 3.6 is the wide range
of Part 1 crime changes across the entire set of Weed and Seed target
areas, particularly after 2 years of implementation. The percentage changes
over 2 years range from a 46-percent decrease in Hartford's Stowe Village
to a 14-percent increase in Salt Lake City. Four other target areas had
double-digit percentage decreases (Crawford-Roberts in Pittsburgh, 24
percent; North Manatee, 18 percent; Shreveport, 11 percent; and the
Central District in Seattle, 10 percent). One site (West Las Vegas) had a
single-digit decrease (6 percent), and three target areas experienced
increases in Part 1 crime (South Manatee, 2 percent; Meadows Village, 9
percent; and Salt Lake City, 14 percent). Section 3.4 in this report attempts
to place these widely varying changes in some perspective by considering
a range of possible contributing factors. 

A final comment on exhibits 3.4 and 3.6 should be made regarding the Salt
Lake City target area, which had the largest crime increase in both
exhibits. As noted above, only 5 months of crime data prior to Weed and
Seed were available from this site; thus, year-to-year comparisons were
based only on the March-to-July time period. The year-to-year percentage
changes in Part 1 crime may in fact have been very different if information
from the entire 12-month pre-Weed and Seed period had been available.
Moreover, the lowest monthly Part 1 crime total over the entire period for
which there are data was April 1995 (the middle of the city's pre-Weed
and Seed period). Weed and Seed began amid an upsurge in crime that
started after that month and continued through October 1995. 

As an additional indicator of crime-related outcomes over time, crime
trends beyond the first 2 years of Weed and Seed implementation can be
seen in the Pittsburgh and Seattle numbers in exhibit 3.3, both of which
began Weed and Seed programs at least 2 years prior to the other sites in
the national evaluation. In Pittsburgh, the Part 1 crime rate in the fifth year
following the start of Weed and Seed in Crawford-Roberts was 44 percent
lower than the year prior to Weed and Seed (compared to 24 percent lower
after 2 years). In the Central District target area in Seattle, the Part 1 crime
rate in the fourth year following the start of Weed and Seed was 22 percent
lower than the year prior to Weed and Seed (compared to 10 percent lower
after 2 years). 

Possible contributing factors 

Criminologists, law enforcement personnel, and city officials have offered
a variety of explanations for the nationwide drop in crime, including
changing demographics, community policing, a healthy economy, and
increasing incarceration. Explaining crime rate changes in the Weed and
Seed target areas must obviously consider two additional factors--the
Weed and Seed program and other law enforcement or social programs
that either existed in the target areas prior to Weed and Seed or that started
during Weed and Seed. That Part 1 crime dropped in the target areas
cannot be disputed; however, it is not possible to state definitively the
extent to which different factors contributed to the decrease. That said, it is
nevertheless useful to qualitatively discuss possible contributing factors.
As discussed in this section, a number of factors have a strong correlation
with the observed changes in crime. 

Crime trends in nontarget areas 

By design, the Weed and Seed target areas constitute a small part of the
jurisdictions to which they belong. Three of the target areas contain less
than 1 percent of the jurisdiction's population; Salt Lake City's target area
contains 12 percent of the city's population, the highest percentage among
all the target areas. Given the size of the target area relative to the entire
jurisdiction, it is reasonable to assume that crime trends in the nontarget
areas of the jurisdiction would have some effect on the trends in the target
areas. 

Part 1 crime rates in the target areas can be compared to the Part 1 crime
rates in the nontarget parts of the jurisdiction by examining exhibits 3.4
through 3.7. Exhibits 3.4 and 3.6 show crime trend figures for the target
areas, while exhibits 3.5 and 3.7 show analogous figures for the nontarget
areas. 

Exhibits 3.4 (trends in the target areas after 1 year of implementation) and
3.5 (trends in the nontarget areas after 1 year of implementation) show
that, after 1 year of Weed and Seed implementation, in 7 of 10 target
areas--Akron, Hartford, Pittsburgh (Crawford-Roberts), Las Vegas (both
Meadows Village and West Las Vegas), North Manatee, and Shreveport--
the Part 1 crime rate improved more in the target area than in the rest of
the corresponding jurisdiction. 

Exhibits 3.6 (trends in the target areas after 2 years of implementation) and
3.7 (trends in the nontarget areas after 2 years of implementation) show
that, after 2 years of Weed and Seed implementation, in 6 of 9 target
areas--Hartford, Pittsburgh (Crawford-Roberts), North Manatee, South
Manatee, Shreveport, and West Las Vegas--the Part 1 crime rates
improved more in the target area than in the rest of the corresponding
jurisdiction. 

The Weed and Seed target areas, because they are so much smaller
geographically than their corresponding nontarget areas, show greater
year-to-year variation in crime rates. Still, one should note the magnitude
of the difference between the Part 1 crime rate change in Stowe Village in
Hartford and in the rest of Hartford, compared with the North Manatee
target area and the rest of Manatee County. After 2 years of
implementation, the Stowe Village Part 1 crime rate had dropped 46
percent, compared to 21 percent for the rest of the city (a 25-point
differential). The North Manatee Part 1 crime rate dropped 18 percent,
compared to an 8-percent increase in the nontarget section of the county (a
26-point differential). 

Also noteworthy is the pattern of target area changes in those sites whose
nontarget areas experienced large decreases or increases in crime. The two
sites with the largest Part 1 crime decreases in the nontarget areas
(Hartford and Pittsburgh) are the same two sites where target areas
achieved the largest Part 1 decreases. At the same time, the site with the
largest Part 1 crime increase in its target area--Salt Lake City--also
exhibited the largest Part 1 crime increase of all nontarget areas. 

Preexisting crime trends in the target areas 

Given that most of the Weed and Seed target areas experienced declining
crime rates during the implementation period, it is important to ask
whether these trends represent the continuation of a preexisting downward
crime trend or whether the Weed and Seed period coincided with the
reversal of an upward trend. The Part 1 crime statistics shown in exhibit
3.3 only partially answer this question, since only 1 complete year of
pre-Weed and Seed crime data are shown for Las Vegas, Manatee, and
Pittsburgh. For target areas in these sites, and to some extent for other
target areas as well, a review of the monthly Part 1 crime trends in the case
study documents creates a more complete picture of preimplementation
and postimplementation trends. 

The general preimplementation and postimplementation Part 1 crime
trends cast Weed and Seed in an especially favorable light in two sites--
Pittsburgh and Shreveport. At both sites, the implementation of Weed and
Seed coincided with a marked reversal of an upward crime trend in the
target areas. In one other site--Stowe Village in Hartford--there was a
preexisting downward trend in Part 1 crime, but the onset of Weed and
Seed coincided with an acceleration of the downward trend. In the Akron
target area, West Las Vegas, North Manatee, South Manatee, and the
Seattle target area, the preexisting downward trend continued at roughly
the same rate over the Weed and Seed implementation period. Finally,
both Meadows Village in Las Vegas and the Salt Lake City target area
experienced overall increases both before and after the start of Weed and
Seed. 

Program intensity 

Program intensity refers to the concentration of program resources. A
possible measure of program intensity is the level of resources per capita
or per unit area. However, the total level of program resources directed to
the target areas, including Federal Weed and Seed funds, other Federal
funds, State and local funds, and community-based resources, is not
known. The only monetary figures available are the Federal Weed and
Seed awards, which are shown in exhibit 2.1. This exhibit shows the gross
levels of Federal Weed and Seed funding at the eight sites, which can be
divided into two groups according to their funding status at the start of the
national evaluation--the six demonstration sites and the two officially
recognized sites (Akron and Salt Lake City). In addition to not accounting
for nontarget funds, the figures in exhibit 2.1 are site-specific and not
target area-specific. Thus, while crime data are target area-specific,
Federal Weed and Seed spending figures are not available by target areas
in Las Vegas, Manatee/Sarasota, and Pittsburgh, or for Seattle, which
expanded Weed and Seed beyond the original target area boundaries. The
population and area of each target area are available, however, and are
shown in exhibit 1.2. As shown, the target area populations range from
1,300 in Hartford to 24,000 in Akron; target area sizes range from 0.1
square mile in Hartford to 6.3 square miles in Salt Lake City. 

As was the case in the discussion of the relationship between crime trends
in the target area and the rest of the corresponding jurisdictions, some
relationship appears to exist between crime trends and program intensity at
those sites with the largest crime increases or decreases. For those sites
between these extremes, the pattern is less clear. Hartford, for example,
experienced the largest Part 1 crime decrease among all the target areas. At
the same time, it is also the smallest in terms of both population and area.
Moreover, unlike Crawford-Roberts in Pittsburgh and North Manatee,
which only received part of the site's Federal Weed and Seed award,
Stowe Village remained Hartford's sole target area throughout the
program. Salt Lake City, on the other hand, which experienced the largest
increase in Part 1 crimes, also has the largest target area in square miles
and, along with Akron, the smallest level of Federal Weed and Seed
funding. 

Arrest volume 

A final possible contributing factor is the volume of arrests made in the
target areas. In the case of interventions that are primarily arrest-oriented,
statistical tests could be performed to determine whether the arrest volume
in one time period leads to a subsequent drop in crime. Given the
multidimensional nature of Weed and Seed interventions, statistical
models attempting to link program effort to program impact would grossly
simplify reality. The approach taken here is to examine, in a qualitative
way, the relationship between arrests and Part 1 crime. 

Perhaps the most distinguishing feature of the target area arrest statistics
shown in exhibits 3.1 and 3.2 is that Hartford's arrest rates, especially drug
arrests, are so much higher than in other target areas. Thus, Hartford had
the highest Part 1 and drug arrest rates and also the largest decrease in Part
1 crime of all target areas. At the same time, as noted earlier, Hartford's
target area has the smallest population and area, and Hartford experienced
the largest jurisdictionwide drop in crime. 

Although there are no clear trends between Part 1 arrests and Part 1 crimes
across the sites, changes in the drug arrest rates appear to be associated
with changes in the Part 1 crime rate. For example, among these six target
areas for which researchers have arrest data, the four with decreases in Part
1 crime (Hartford, Pittsburgh, North Manatee, and Shreveport) all
experienced initial high rates of drug arrests, suggesting an initial period
of intense weeding activities, followed by declining drug arrest rates.
Assuming the level of enforcement as measured by police presence has
remained somewhat constant, this trend reflects success in reducing drug
activity. Salt Lake City and South Manatee, for which researchers have
arrest data that show increases in Part 1 crime, have not shown a decrease
in their drug arrest rates. Indeed, both of these target areas had large
increases in drug arrests in the last reporting period shown in exhibit 2.2,
suggesting, perhaps, that these sites have not yet succeeded in reducing the
level of drug activity in the target areas. Thus, across these six sites, the
changes in drug arrest volumes follow the same general pattern as the
changes in Part 1 crime. 

Notes

1. Geocoding is a process that involves assigning geographic coordinates
(latitude and longitude) to an address, in this case either the address where
the crime occurred or where the arrest was made. Once records are
geocoded, mapping software can be used to extract those arrests and
crimes that occurred within the Weed and Seed target area.

2. The definition of a drug arrest used in these analyses is an arrest for
which at least one charge explicitly involves drugs (for example,
possession with intent to sell narcotics).

3. An alternative outcome measure, which focuses more on the quality,
as opposed to the quantity, of arrests made, is the period of incarceration
to which arrestees were sentenced. As noted in chapter 2, prosecution and
court data were generally not available.

4. The source of the incident-level arrest data, on which the analyses in
this section are based, was the local law enforcement agency; thus, the
figures do not include arrests made by Federal law enforcement agencies
that were processed through Federal arrest booking facilities.

5. Data for partial years both before and after the time period indicated
in exhibit 3.1 are included in the arrest trends in the individual case
studies.

6. In 1997, a new law enforcement records management system was
installed in Salt Lake City. Only the automated records after March 1995
were converted to the new system.

7. Exhibits 3.5 and 3.7 contain Part 1 crime rates for the non-Weed and
Seed parts of the jurisdiction. The ordering and placement of exhibits 3.4
through 3.7 in this document are designed to facilitate comparisons
between the target areas and the non-Weed and Seed parts of the
jurisdiction.

-------------------------------

Chapter 4

An independent agency surveyed residents in the Weed and Seed target
areas in 1995 and again in 1997 to measure their perceptions of crime,
public safety, police performance, general quality of life, and awareness of
Weed and Seed itself. The opinions of nonelderly, long-term residents
were compared over the 2-year period to determine what, if any, effect
Weed and Seed had on their satisfaction with the community. 

Evaluators also interviewed participants in four types of seeding programs,
including youth recreation, community building, employment and training,
and violence prevention. According to participants, these programs
provided services that would otherwise not have been available and
increased feelings of overall security.

Perceptions of Community Residents and Program Participants

In all eight sites that participated in this evaluation, a survey of target area
residents was conducted at two separate time intervals--from March to
July 1995 (by the Institute for Social Analysis) and from December 1997
to January 1998 (by Abt Associates Inc.). The following discussion refers
to these data collection efforts as the 1995 and 1997 surveys, respectively. 

The objective of the survey data collection and analysis was to measure
changes in residents' perceptions of public safety, crime, police
performance, general neighborhood quality of life, and awareness of the
Weed and Seed program. In the interest of comparing the findings
obtained from the two surveys, the 1997 survey was designed with the
following features: 

o For each site, the geographical boundaries of the survey area were the
same as in 1995.[1] The survey areas by site were as follows: Akron, West
Side; Hartford, Stowe Village; Las Vegas, West Las Vegas;
Manatee/Sarasota, North Manatee; Pittsburgh, Hill District
(Crawford-Roberts neighborhood); Salt Lake City, West Side; Seattle,
Central District; and Shreveport, Highland/Stoner Hill.

o The wording of questions from the 1995 survey was retained verbatim
in 1997. (Refer to the questionnaires shown in appendixes 1 and 2,
respectively.) For selected questions, additional response categories were
added in 1997 to provide a more complete range of possible responses. For
these items, care was taken during analysis to aggregate responses in ways
that would preserve the comparability of the findings between 1995 and
1997.[2]

o There were also some notable differences in the methods used in the two
surveys. The 1995 survey consisted of inperson interviews, based on
city-provided address lists. The 1997 interviews were conducted by
telephone, based on listed telephone numbers for residential addresses
within the survey area. The 1995 survey consisted of 83 substantive items.
The 1997 survey included only a subset (31) of these 83 substantive items.
(For both surveys, the count excludes items related to respondent
demographic characteristics and other basic interview data.) The 1995
interviews required 30 to 40 minutes. The 1997 interviews typically lasted
12 to 15 minutes.

The decision to proceed in 1997 with telephone interviews and a shortened
instrument was based on the difficulties experienced in 1995 in
completing the targeted number of 400 interviews per site. (In none of the
sites was this target reached.) The 1997 survey design called for 300
completed interviews per site. 

Distribution of respondents by age and length of neighborhood residence 

The methodological differences between the two surveys, combined with
underlying population changes in the evaluation sites, led to a shift
between 1995 and 1997 in the demographic profile of respondents in each
surveyed target area. Exhibit 4.1 shows the distribution of respondents in
each site by two key characteristics: age and length of residence. Those 60
years of age or older at the time of the survey were defined as elderly;
those less than 60, nonelderly. Those residing in the target area for more
than 2 years were defined as long-term residents; those for less than 2
years, short-term residents. 

Two options were considered to account for the demographic shift in the
surveyed population and make the precomparison/postcomparison as valid
as possible. One option was a multivariate regression approach for
modeling the responses to each survey question as a function of the
respondent's demographic characteristics and an indicator of the survey
year. This was rejected on the basis of insufficient numbers of
observations in each site to reliably estimate such a model. A second
option, which was ultimately selected, was to focus on a demographically
comparable subset of respondents from both surveys: the nonelderly,
long-term residents. This group constituted 50 percent of total respondents
in 1995 and 49 percent in 1997. 

Because respondent age typically is a significant factor in responses to
survey questions of this type, a shifting age profile over time could cause a
change in the pattern of responses at any site. Elderly residents as a share
of total respondents across all eight sites rose from 29 percent in 1995 to
35 percent in 1997. For some sites--Akron and Pittsburgh, in particular--
this shift in age distribution was even more pronounced. It became clear
that any survey analysis that did not account for respondents' ages would
likely confound the effects of demographic change with the effects of
Weed and Seed in the target area. 

At the same time, any separate analysis of community perceptions among
elderly residents was hindered by the small numbers of elderly
respondents in some sites--even when using 60 years (rather than 65 years)
as the threshold age. Hartford had fewer than 10 elderly respondents in
both 1995 and 1997; three other sites (Akron, Salt Lake City, and
Shreveport) had 30 or fewer elderly respondents in 1995. 

In focusing this analysis on nonelderly residents, it was then decided to
exclude short-term residents for several reasons. First, some questions of
primary interest to the evaluation asked the respondent to assess
community conditions compared to 2 years ago or to report victimization
over the past 2 years. Second, even on other questions, the length of
residence was found to be a significant factor in the pattern of responses
and thus could confound the interpretation of findings with respect to
Weed and Seed. Any separate analysis of the short-term nonelderly
residents was precluded by their small numbers--fewer than 30
respondents in both 1995 and 1997 for three sites (Akron, Hartford, and
Manatee/Sarasota), with two other sites (Pittsburgh and Salt Lake) having
fewer than 30 such respondents in 1995. 

All of the findings that follow thus pertain to the survey responses of
nonelderly long-term residents. For all sites, there were more than 30 such
respondents in both 1995 and 1997. In three sites (Las Vegas, Pittsburgh,
and Seattle), there were more than 100 such respondents in both years. To
examine the possible impact of Weed and Seed on neighborhood residents'
perceptions, the responses of nonelderly long-term residents between 1995
and 1997 were compared question by question. Significant differences
between the two surveys are shown by site and by question in appendix
3.[3]

Personal safety and neighborhood satisfaction 

The first survey questions displayed in appendix 3 pertain to perceptions
of personal safety and general satisfaction with the neighborhood.
Researchers focused on changes in the proportion giving the most positive
response, reporting they feel either "very safe" or "very satisfied." 

Pittsburgh was the only site to show a significant increase between 1995
and 1997 in the percentage of nonelderly long-term residents indicating
they feel very safe out alone in their neighborhood during the day. (No site
showed a significant change between 1995 and 1997 on the survey
question regarding personal safety out alone in their neighborhood after
dark.) 

Similarly, Pittsburgh was the only site to show a significant increase in the
percentage of nonelderly long-term residents who were "very satisfied"
with their neighborhood as a place to live. 

Severity of neighborhood crime. Survey respondents were also asked if
they perceived specific crimes in their neighborhood to be a "big problem"
versus a lesser problem. For crimes related to drug sales or drug use,
depending on the particular type of illegal activity, four of the eight sites
showed some significant reduction between 1995 and 1997 in the
percentage of respondents indicating that such crimes were a big problem.
These four sites (Akron, Manatee/Sarasota, Pittsburgh, and Seattle) all
showed reductions between 1995 and 1997 in the perceived severity of
"drug dealers on streets, street corners, or in other public places." Three of
these sites (Akron, Manatee/Sarasota, and Seattle) also had significantly
fewer respondents in 1997 than in 1995 who indicated "drug sales out of
homes or apartments" were a big problem in their neighborhood.
Respondents in three of these sites (Manatee/Sarasota, Pittsburgh, and
Seattle) were also significantly less likely in 1997 than in 1995 to say
"drug sales" were a big problem in their neighborhood.

With regard to other types of crimes, Manatee/Sarasota was the only site
that showed any significant reduction between 1995 and 1997 in the
perceived severity of either "burglaries and other property crime" or
"robbery and other street crime." For "violent crimes (such as shootings,
assault, and so forth)," there was a significant reduction in perceived
severity in Hartford, Manatee/Sarasota, and Pittsburgh between 1997 and
1995. Similarly, the perception of "gang activity" as a big problem was
significantly lower in 1997 than in 1995 for both Hartford and Pittsburgh. 

Victimization in the neighborhood. In addition to questions regarding the
perceived severity of crime in their neighborhoods, residents were asked
whether they (or a member of their family) had been a victim of crime
over the past 2 years. For instance, residents were asked whether anyone
had "broken into their home, garage, or another building on your property
to steal something." Only in Manatee/Sarasota were nonelderly long-term
residents significantly less likely in 1997 than in 1995 to indicate such
victimization. This site, along with both Las Vegas and Pittsburgh, also
showed a significantly lower percentage of respondents who had been
"beaten up, attacked, or hit with something such as a rock or bottle."
Pittsburgh was also the only site in which nonelderly long-term
respondents were less likely in 1997 than in 1995 to have been "knifed,
shot at, or attacked with some other weapon" within the past 2 years. In
none of the sites was there a significant change between 1995 and 1997 in
the percentage of respondents who had been victims of robbery over the
last 2 years. 

Police effectiveness and responsiveness. Of the four sites that showed
significant reductions in the perceived severity of drug-related crime,
Manatee/Sarasota, Pittsburgh, and Salt Lake City showed a significant
increase in the percentage of respondents who said the police were doing
"a very good job of keeping order on the streets and sidewalks in this
neighborhood." Pittsburgh respondents were also more likely in 1997 than
in 1995 to indicate police were doing a very good job at "controlling the
street sale and use of illegal drugs." 

As evidence of increased police presence in the neighborhood, the
nonelderly long-term respondents in Salt Lake City and Seattle were
significantly more likely in 1997 than in 1995 to "have seen a police
officer chatting or having a friendly conversation with people in the
neighborhood." 

For Seattle respondents, however, this appears to contradict the finding
that they were less likely to perceive the police as "very responsive" to
community concerns. Only in Hartford was there a significant increase in
the percentage of respondents indicating the police were "very responsive"
to community concerns in the neighborhood. 

Awareness of Weed and Seed. In all sites except Akron, there was a
significant increase between 1995 and 1997 in the percentage of
nonelderly long-term respondents who indicated that they "have   heard
of a program called the Weed and Seed Program." The lack of program
awareness in Akron is understandable, given its much smaller scale and
more recent implementation. 

General neighborhood quality of life. A meaningful indication of the
changed living conditions in the Weed and Seed target areas is the pattern
of responses to the following survey question: "In the past 2 years, would
you say this neighborhood has become a better place to live, a worse place
to live, or stayed about the same?" 

Exhibit 4.2 shows the percentage distribution of responses by site, for
nonelderly long-term respondents. The 1995 responses correspond to
perceived change in neighborhood conditions during 1994-95; the 1997
responses indicate perceived changes during 1996-97. It is useful to
interpret these responses in light of Weed and Seed's start date for each
site, which is also shown in the exhibit. 

One can divide the sites into three different groups as follows: 

o Hartford and Seattle--where more than 25 percent of respondents
indicated the neighborhood had become a better place to live in both the
1995 and 1997 surveys. (In fact, in these two sites the corresponding
percentages approached or exceeded 50 percent in both surveys.)

o Las Vegas, Pittsburgh, and Shreveport--where the percentage of
respondents indicating the neighborhood had become a better place to live
was 25 percent or less in the 1995 survey but more than 25 percent in the
1997 survey. (In each of these sites, the difference in the percentages
between 1995 and 1997 was statistically significant.)

o Akron, Manatee/Sarasota, and Salt Lake City--where less than 25
percent of respondents indicated that the neighborhood had become a
better place to live in both the 1995 and 1997 surveys. 

The placement of Akron and Salt Lake City in the last group might be
explained by the relatively recent implementation of Weed and Seed in
these target areas. For Manatee/Sarasota, where the survey findings might
have suggested general improvement in the perceived quality of life, the
distressed local economy may be responsible.

Conversely, the placement of Seattle in the first group, and Las Vegas and
Shreveport in the second group, may reflect the improving economic
conditions in these metropolitan areas, as earlier noted survey evidence did
not indicate any significant favorable shifts in perceived personal safety or
police responsiveness. For the remaining two sites--Hartford and
Pittsburgh--the relatively high and rising perceptions of neighborhood
quality of life appear consistent with the pattern of responses to other
survey questions, which indicated a lessening in the perceived severity of
drug-related and violent crimes. 

General assessment. What overall interpretation should one give these
survey findings? Chapter 5 addresses this issue at some length, in the
context of the implementation experience and crime trends in target areas.
At this point, however, several observations deserve mention: 

o Where significant changes in the perceptions of residents were observed
between 1995 and 1997, the changes were in the favorable direction,
almost without exception.

o The choice of a threshold for statistical significance is ultimately
arbitrary. Some may consider the research team's use of the conventional
standard of 10-percent significance or better too strict. (The detailed
tabulation displayed in appendix 3 allows the reader to apply alternative
standards.)

o The lack of significance on some questions, especially in sites (such as
Hartford) where one might expect the target area's reduced crime rate to
influence residents' perceptions, may reflect a variety of mitigating factors.
First, it may be too early for residents to perceive the improved crime
situation, especially where the program was more recently implemented
(as in Akron). Second, where the program was implemented early (as in
Seattle), significant changes in residents' perceptions may have already
occurred by the time of the 1995 survey. Third, in some target areas, the
1997 responses may reflect a reversal of earlier improvements in the crime
rate (as occurred in late 1996 or early 1997 in Akron, Hartford, and
Seattle).

o The longest term community residents, those who have resided in the
target area for many years, may have difficulty perceiving recent changes,
as their feelings about the neighborhood may be colored by unfavorable
experiences, which long preceded Weed and Seed.

With these caveats in mind, the sites appear to cluster into three groups
with respect to the overall pattern of survey findings for nonelderly,
long-term residents, comparing 1995 and 1997: 

o Manatee/Sarasota (North Manatee) and Pittsburgh (Crawford-Roberts)
exhibited substantial evidence of changes in residents' perceptions across
multiple outcome measures, including the severity of both drug-related
and violent crime and police effectiveness in controlling street crime.

o Akron, Hartford, and Seattle exhibited some evidence of changes in
residents' perceptions on selected crime dimensions, either drug-related
crime (Akron and Seattle) or violent and gang-related crime (Hartford).

o Las Vegas (West Las Vegas), Salt Lake City, and Shreveport exhibited
little evidence of changes in residents' perceptions of general public safety
or the severity of specific types of crime in the neighborhood.

Participant interviews 

To gain the perspective of individuals in the community whom the seeding
programs were intended to benefit, interviews were conducted with 40 to
60 program participants in Pittsburgh, Salt Lake City, Seattle, Hartford,
Manatee, Shreveport, and Las Vegas. No interviews were conducted in
Akron because there were no seeding programs at the time. Evaluation
staff visited 4 to 6 programs in each of the sites and conducted interviews
in groups of  7 to 10 people. These interviews were not intended to
measure outcomes of the programs that were visited; rather, they were
designed to learn the perceived benefits and drawbacks of the programs
from individuals who participated in them. 

This analysis is about perceptions and not impacts, but there is no way to
be certain the benefits or hindrances these people experienced while in the
programs are explicitly due to their participation. Further, the analysis is
meant to present individual perceptions based on time-limited involvement
in these specific programs; long-term effects of these programs on the
lives of the program participants cannot be deduced from the interviews
conducted. 

It is also important to note the interviews were arranged by each site's
Weed and Seed coordinators, who worked with the program directors to
arrange the time, place, and individuals to be interviewed. Interviewees
were selected at the discretion of the program managers, based on
participants' availability and their willingness to participate in the
interview process. (The interviews should not be interpreted as
representative of all participants.) 

The seeding programs that were visited fall under four general categories:
youth recreation, community building, employment and training, and
violence prevention. The following is a synopsis of cross-site themes that
emerged from the participant interviews for each program category,
including descriptive quotations that illustrate participant perspectives. 

Youth recreation and education programs 

The purpose of these programs is to give young people opportunities to
participate in activities after school when many youths typically would be
without adult supervision. The programs visited included the Police
Activities (or Athletic) League, Boys and Girls Club Athletic Programs,
Safe Haven AfterSchool Programs, and Youth Enrichment Programs.
Depending on the age group served, these programs can provide a safe
haven for children who are afraid to be on the street, a place where they
can receive help with their homework, and/or a place where they can
participate in recreational athletic activities after school, instead of sitting
at home and watching television. This was the most prevalent category of
programs visited.

Many individuals interviewed noted the lack of quality programming in
their communities prior to Weed and Seed, commenting that without these
recreation programs they would have nothing to do after school. Youth
recreation programs offer young people ways to fill a void in the day that
may otherwise provide temptations or risks. A number of the participants
in various communities told evaluators if it were not for these types of
programs, they would be "getting into trouble," "doing drugs," or just
"hanging around their house and watching television." Further, many of
the participants indicated that their program leaders were role models for
themselves and other neighborhood youths. In addition, virtually all
individuals said participation in recreational activity has improved their
school performance, including helping them achieve higher grades. 

Those interviewed generally felt that homework assistance, provided in
many of these programs, was the aspect of the youth recreation programs
that most helped their performance in school. One child in Shreveport
said, "They make sure you do your homework; if you don't, you can get in
trouble. At home, my mama, she don't never help me." Others noted the
additional structure the program adds to their lives. Overall, the children
seemed pleased with the discipline and camaraderie many of these
programs provide. 

Parents of children who participated in afterschool recreation programs
reported the primary benefit to be improved school performance. Further,
they felt the programs helped their children to be versatile by involving
them in various activities which kept them constructively engaged. One
Seattle parent told evaluators, "It helps when the kids get out of school and
gives them somewhere to go and do their homework and help them with
activities. While if I get home from work at 6 o'clock, it is time to fix
dinner, get them ready for school the next day and that is it--there isn't
enough time for homework." 

Additionally, another mother in Seattle had this to say about her daughter's
recreation program: "My daughter loves coming here, and I would rather
have her here where she likes it and feels safe than being at home alone all 
afternoon. I think this place has made a difference with the children
because most of them would be latchkey children. With this program there
are not so many children at home. Kids have a more positive outlook on
things as opposed to just hanging out and not doing anything productive. It
gives them someplace to go where there is structure and respect." 

Although this particular woman's medical story is unique, the benefits she
reported were common among nearly all interviewed. This mother had two
daughters, ages 10 and 12, in the Police Activities League (PAL) Summer
Program, which is a recreation program for Manatee youths. The mother
had suffered a stroke and was concerned that her children would be idle
while she recuperated. She wanted her children to be engaged in
structured, productive activities and saw a lack of supervision in other
programs. At PAL, teachers and police officers provide instruction. She
said most of the police officers are male, and the kids stay on their toes
because of their authority and uniforms. 

She said her children have grown since participating in PAL. Before, her
daughters were harder to manage, fussy, and bored. Her eldest daughter
only wanted to hang out with her peers and was starting to go "the wrong
way." Now, her daughters have "totally changed" their attitudes and have
better morale. She said her oldest daughter, who is an artist, participated in
the summer art program and received an outside art scholarship with staff
assistance. She also became an A student and joined the PAL Academy
instead of public school. The youngest daughter is now on the PAL
basketball team and loves sports. Prior to her participation, she did not
want to do anything, according to her mother. 

This mother knows the police officers who work with her daughters at
PAL and has received valuable advice from staff members. She said, "I
don't think I could have made it through without having their support." 

Community-building programs 

Community-building programs are designed to enable residents to take
charge of their own safety and the safety of their communities. Examples
of programs visited under this category include neighborhood and crime
watch programs such as Mobile Watch. These programs involve volunteer
community residents patrolling their neighborhoods in marked vehicles to
look for and report suspicious or criminal activity. Often, these programs
also provide a mechanism for community members to work with and get
to know the police officers assigned to their neighborhoods. 

Participants in the community-building programs tended to be involved
and interested in affecting some change in their neighborhoods. Many
reported that their neighborhood or crime watch programs provided them
with a feeling of control over their own safety. Before participating in
these programs, many interviewees reported feeling unsettled and afraid to
go out alone in their own neighborhoods. Participants also indicated that
they enjoyed positive relationships with many of the police officers on
their beat, and they believed the activities of the community groups helped
officers make arrests. 

One man who participated in a community-building program in Salt Lake
City considered his Mobile Watch program a bridge for improving
relations between citizens and police officers. Program members generally
felt residents were more comfortable sharing information about criminal
activity with the neighborhood watch rather than with flagging down a
police officer, who often was too busy to deal with everyday individual
concerns. Police in many target areas often must focus on violent and
dangerous crimes, leaving them little time for nonviolent problems that
annoy community residents, such as noise disturbances. Members of
community-building groups, on the other hand, can spend the time
collecting data, observing, and documenting events. Participants in this
community believed this effort resulted in greater police attention to the
community's concerns. All participants reported that they perceived a
noticeable reduction of drug and criminal activity in their patrol areas.
They felt safer in their communities--despite other statistical
indications--and that is "all that matters to them." 

Further, many individuals across sites indicated that they now know their
neighbors, making it easier to notice when someone suspicious is in their
neighborhood. One woman who had children said her participation in this
type of program made her feel that if something happened, her children
could now go to one of the neighbors for help. Finally, participants also
felt there was high awareness of their particular programs in their
neighborhoods. 

Employment and training programs 

The purpose of employment and training programs is to help train
community residents and place them in jobs. The programs work with a
range of people, from high school students to adults who want to change
their career focus. Most programs offer a range of services, including
Graduate Equivalency Degree training, computer classes, English as a
second language (ESL), and medical assistant classes. Once participants
have completed their coursework, most agencies have a career center that
helps place them in jobs. 

One of the most obvious benefits of employment and training programs is
the income the individuals receive when they start working. Many
interviewees said they previously had been on transitional assistance and
were relieved to no longer have to "deal with the welfare office." Further,
the increased self-esteem that comes with finding successful employment
was brought up on a number of occasions. One interviewee from Seattle
exclaimed, "I never thought I could know so much. I am impressed with
myself; the teachers here are great and very patient." 

Another Seattle participant said he felt he was a role model for his peers.
After seeing what he accomplished, many of his friends enrolled in the
same vocational program. Further, he explained, "When people have jobs,
and therefore something income generating and productive to fill their
days, they are less likely to get involved in criminal activity."
Additionally, one of his classmates said, "There are lots of people who
would be jail-bound before this program, and some of my friends are so
impressed with me that they are starting to come here, also." 

Parents of children in a summer work program in Manatee thought their
children had very positive work experiences and had learned
responsibility, including budgeting the money they earned. One woman's
son bought his first pair of sneakers with his earnings. Another parent
explained that the experience was educational for her children, teaching
them responsibility and building their skills and confidence. 

Violence prevention programs 

Violence prevention programs work with young people and adults to help
end violence that is often present in their communities. Examples of
programs include school mediation programs, peer advisory programs, and
youth and family specialist programs, which work with participants to
peacefully resolve conflicts and deal with anger and frustration.
Participants often later serve as role models in the community and teach
others what they have learned. 

Particularly for teens, these programs help those who have trouble dealing
with anger. One teen in Salt Lake City explained that since working with a
youth and family specialist, she had gotten into less trouble. When she was
about to do something harmful, she called her specialist. Her specialist
then talked her through the problem and helped her find alternative ways
to deal with her feelings. She said her specialist was always there for her,
night or day, and "bailed her out" on a number of occasions. 

Another participant from Salt Lake City said his youth and family
specialist was extremely helpful. He appreciated that the specialist visited
him once a week to make sure he was not getting into trouble. The
specialist also provided the participant with his beeper number. If the
young man felt he was headed toward trouble, he always beeped his
specialist before acting on his anger. 

Finally, many participants told evaluators they had changed their future
plans because of these programs. For example, one girl who was promised
a job by her program director when she "cleaned herself up" explained that
she looked forward to getting a job and not just "kickin' it" with her
friends. 

Participant suggestions for program improvement 

Following is a selection of suggestions provided by the participants in
various programs in each of the sites: 

One Manatee County participant thought her program should be advertised
more; she would not have known about it if she had not known the
program director. Participants said that, in the black community,
communication through churches would be a good way to inform people
about summer jobs and tutoring. 

Another Salt Lake City woman said there were not enough activities for
children outside of school. She knew of no other organized programs or
activities. The children would play outside on the playground and hang out
with older kids, who could be a bad influence.[4]

Suggestions for improvements in the community-building programs often
focused on training. Many of those interviewed felt more extensive
training was needed before people became participants in these programs.
Many believed additional training would promote the safety of volunteers. 

In addition, many felt that, although positive relationships existed with
police, increased communication with police officers would help their
cause. Many participants found when they communicated with police,
their concerns often were more effectively addressed.

Summary overview 

Based on participant comments, seeding programs appear to provide
services that would otherwise not be available in the target areas. Most of
those interviewed indicated that participation in the seeding programs
helped them feel more secure emotionally, physically, or both. The general
themes that emerged revolved around providing additional structure and
discipline for target area youths and providing opportunities and assistance
for adults to work toward personal and professional growth. 

Notes

1. In Akron, Hartford, Salt Lake City, Seattle, and Shreveport, the
survey area consisted of the entire Weed and Seed target area under study
in this evaluation. Because the 1995 survey was conducted in only one
portion of the target area for Las Vegas, Pittsburgh, and Manatee/Sarasota,
it was decided to retain the same designated areas in 1997 to ensure
consistent comparisons.

2. For example, in questions on "how good a job are the police doing" in
different aspects of law enforcement, the 1995 survey allowed the
respondent to indicate "a very good job, a good job, a fair job, or a poor
job." The 1997 survey also allowed the respondent to indicate "a very poor
job." The findings aggregated the "poor job" and "very poor job"
responses for 1997 before comparing the pattern of responses with 1995
results.

3. For each site, the difference between 1995 and 1997 in the response
pattern to any given question was regarded as significant only if it met the
conventional statistical standard of 10-percent significance, based on a
t-test for differences in proportions.

4. It is important to note that in some Weed and Seed communities,
participants stated that over the past few years, youth recreation programs
have increased dramatically, to a level with which they are satisfied.

------------------------------

Chapter 5

Although it remains impossible to precisely state what the effect of Weed
and Seed has been given the number of programs and other funding
already at work in the target areas, the overall impact has been positive.

However, it was clear that several factors, including the strength of the
existing social and institutional infrastructure, severity of crime, economic
development advantages, and transiency, influenced success. Program
design, implementation procedures, concentration of resources, and
leadership also proved essential to a positive outcome. Comparisons of
target areas among the various sites and with nontarget areas provided
suitable backdrops for assessment.

Assessing the Weed and Seed Strategy

The most important questions to be answered are whether the sites
achieved the intended changes in measurable crime-related outcomes, and
what factors appear to promote successful implementation and
achievement of intended results.

As noted in chapter 1 and explained further in this section, it is extremely
difficult to draw definitive conclusions about the impact of Weed and
Seed. However, it was possible to consider changes in measurable
outcomes and, within the limitations of available data, to seek to assess the
nonprogram influences on these measures. 

As with any evaluation that seeks to identify program impacts, a major
challenge was establishing whether the observed changes could be
attributed to the program. To do this, one must rule out nonprogram
influences. This required a plausible "counterfactual"--a description of
what would have occurred in the program's absence.[1] In the analysis of
crime data, as presented in chapter 3, the counterfactual for each
evaluation site was the crime trend observed in the corresponding
nontarget area--the rest-of-city or rest-of-county area in which Weed and
Seed was not implemented. One presumes that the nontarget trend, as
observed during the postimplementation periods of 1 to 5 years, reflected
the pervasive underlying influences on crime. By looking at changes in
each target area's crime rate relative to its corresponding nontarget area,
one takes account of economic developments, demographic shifts, or
anticrime initiatives unrelated to Weed and Seed. 

There are inherent limitations to this approach which require a careful
interpretation of results. 

Possible overstatement of program results

The extent to which the Weed and Seed effort may have geographically
shifted criminal activity from a target area to other areas of the same city
or county to some extent mitigates favorable conclusions drawn from a
decline in the target area crime rate. Even without displacement, one
would overstate the program's effects on crime if there were other
simultaneous crime-reducing factors specific to the target area. The
displacement of crime does, however, still reflect some increased "cost" to
those engaging in criminal behavior. One should also note the Weed and
Seed strategy includes the implementation of weeding and seeding
activities in those areas to which crime has been displaced.

Possible understatement of program results 

To the extent that weeding efforts (such as high-level task forces) may
successfully put major drug traffickers out of business and interrupt the
supply of drugs in a city, it would be incorrect to conclude--from the
absence of any relative decline in the target area crime rate--that the 
program achieved no favorable outcome. Furthermore, selective high-level
antidrug enforcement of this kind--even if highly successful at
apprehending the major narcotics traffickers in the city--would typically
show no discernible effect on arrests in the target area. Similarly, this
analysis does not capture the extent to which youth-targeted seeding
activities reduce the tendency to commit crimes later in life. It also cannot
assess, except qualitatively, the upward pressure on crime rates that
derives from such things as increases in a target area of gang activity, new
illicit drug distribution channels, and the like. 

With respect to data analysis, a different approach was used to account for
effects unrelated to Weed and Seed. Because any shift in the demographic
composition of target area respondents might itself have shifted the pattern
of survey responses between 1995 and 1997, the chapter 4 analysis
focused on a specific demographic subgroup. This subgroup, nonelderly
respondents (those less than 60 years old) who had resided in the target
area for at least 2 years, constituted a significant minority (if not the
majority) of respondents in each target area during both survey years. 

Together, the findings from law enforcement data and the resident survey
allow an assessment of whether the evaluation sites achieved the intended
changes in measurable crime-related outcomes. Although one cannot
attribute these observed effects to Weed and Seed, the evidence can
suggest whether the program--perhaps in conjunction with other
developments--had the desired effect. The analysis involved investigating
a range of measurable outcomes, taking steps to account for nonprogram
influences, and examining the site-by-site pattern of intertemporal
changes. 

Exhibit 5.1 summarizes the findings from the analysis of law enforcement
data and survey data, as presented in chapters 3 and 4, respectively. For
any given outcome measure, an observed change in the favorable direction
is indicated by one, two, or three asterisks, depending on the strength of
the supporting evidence. A blank indicates no evidence of a favorable
change. An entry of "na" indicates data were not available from that site
for that outcome measure. 

Some of the outcomes shown in exhibit 5.1 are more important than
others. From the analysis of law enforcement data, the primary measure of
interest is the rate of Part 1 crimes. The rates of drug arrests and Part 1
arrests are intermediate measures, reflecting more the level of law
enforcement efforts than the results of such efforts. From the survey data
analysis, the primary crime-related measures are those pertaining to
personal safety, severity of drug crime, severity of violent crime, and
victimization. (Each of these measures refers to one or more related survey
questions.) 

Based on this summary of empirical evidence, one can group the sites into
four categories, first according to the evidence of reduced Part 1 crimes
and then, within each category, according to the evidence of improved
public perceptions:[2]

1. Pittsburgh and Hartford exhibited strong evidence of reduced Part 1
crimes and improved public perception of crime-related measures.

2. Manatee/Sarasota (North Manatee) and Shreveport exhibited
substantial evidence of reduced Part 1 crimes.

3. Seattle, Akron, Las Vegas (West Las Vegas), and Manatee/Sarasota
(South Manatee) exhibited some evidence of reduced Part 1 crimes.

4. Salt Lake City and Las Vegas (Meadows Village) exhibited no
evidence of reduced Part 1 crimes.

Hartford and Pittsburgh stand out among the rest, with strong evidence of
favorable outcomes regarding both crime and the public perception of
crime. At the other extreme are Meadows Village in Las Vegas and Salt
Lake City, which showed no improvement in their Part 1 crime rates
relative to their corresponding nontarget areas. The remaining six target
areas all exhibited either "some" or "substantial" evidence of reduced
crime. Among these, the survey findings ranged from strong evidence of
favorable change on multiple dimensions (North Manatee) to no evidence
of favorable change on any dimensions (Shreveport). 

Factors favoring successful implementation of Weed and Seed 

The final question addressed here is this: Based on the experience of sites
participating in the national evaluation, what factors appear to promote
successful implementation of the program and thus promote the
achievement of the program's intended results? To address this question,
one must consider the site characteristics and program features that appear
to distinguish the target areas as categorized according to their measurable
outcomes. We identify these distinguishing factors below, with respect to
community setting, programmatic design, concentration of funds, and the
exercise of leadership and partnership. 

To identify the distinguishing features, one quickly recognizes there are no
clearly defining characteristics among either the seemingly more or less
effective programs. Features that appear common among more effective
sites are not exclusive to such sites; the same is true for features more
commonly found among less effective sites. Factors that may appear
related to effective program implementation are neither necessary nor
sufficient for success. For this reason, the discussion below refers to
factors that appear to favor or promote successful implementation. 

Community setting

There are preexisting features of the program setting that may make Weed
and Seed easier or more difficult to operate effectively. 

Strength of the social and institutional infrastructure. In sites with an
established network of community-based organizations and community
leaders, it is often easier for a program such as Weed and Seed to find
ways to build consensus about program goals and strategies. This was true
in Seattle and Shreveport. The contrast was especially clear in sites with
multiple target areas. In Manatee/Sarasota, the community infrastructure
was better established in North Manatee than in South Manatee; in Las
Vegas, it was better established in West Las Vegas than in Meadows
Village. 

Severity of crime problems. Some types of crime are inherently more
intractable than others. For example, gang violence may be so deeply
wound into the social fabric of the community that progress will be slow,
perhaps barely discernible over multiyear periods. The level of overall
crime also seems to matter. Crime reductions may be easier to achieve in
areas that have exceptionally high crime rates, but less deep-seated crime
(such as Stowe Village in Hartford). Law enforcement efforts can proceed
on multiple fronts, with results attainable even in the short term. 

Locational advantages favoring economic development. Some sites may
have greater potential for economic development than others because of
their proximity to commercial areas, such as the Hill District in Pittsburgh.
Revitalization is easier to bring about amid a growing regional economy
(Seattle) than in a community suffering from a declining industry, such as
oil (Shreveport) or steel (the Hazelwood and Homestead areas of
Pittsburgh). 

Transiency of the community population. In neighborhoods where the
population is highly transient, such as Meadows Village in Las Vegas, it is
more difficult for seeding programs to "take root" or for community
policing to build strong police-community relations. This contrasts with
more stable populations, in which residents feel more committed to
neighborhood improvement, as in West Las Vegas or North Manatee. 

Program design 

The mix of weeding and seeding activities and the sequence of these
components appear to be important factors in gaining community support. 

o Early seeding. Chapter 2 noted the importance of building community
trust by implementing seeding activities at the same time as--if not before
--weeding activities. Early, intensive weeding, in the absence of seeding,
may stir opposition from residents who feel that a crime crackdown
without any simultaneous efforts to build community will succeed only in
giving a police record to neighborhood youths. This lesson was learned the
hard way in Las Vegas (Meadows Village), Pittsburgh (Hill District), and
Seattle. 

o Sustained weeding. It is misleading to think weeding can be effective as
a one-time or short-lived initiative. (This misconception--and the notion
that law enforcement efforts should precede human services--may be
encouraged, unfortunately, by the Weed and Seed name itself.) Sites such
as Pittsburgh learned that criminal activity will simply resume at its earlier
levels unless law enforcement efforts are sustained.

o High-level task forces, combined with community policing. Effective
strategies against drug trafficking appear to require a combination of
high-level interagency task forces and community-level police presence.
Such efforts appeared to be successful in West Las Vegas and North
Manatee.

o Active prosecutorial role. This program element, viewed as an integral
part of Weed and Seed, appeared to be lacking in most sites--even in
some, such as Pittsburgh and Shreveport, which achieved reductions in
their crime rates. Once again, West Las Vegas and North Manatee
appeared to succeed more than other sites in aggressively pursuing
prosecution at both the local and Federal levels. 

Concentration of funds 

Sites appeared to have greater success if they concentrated program
resources on smaller populations, especially if they could similarly
channel other public funds and leverage private funds. 

Funding "intensity." Not surprisingly, the more narrowly defined the target
population, the greater the chance of success in fighting crime with a
constrained program budget. Among the evaluation sites, Hartford used
the greatest funding intensity, applying more than $2.4 million to a
community (Stowe Village) of only 1,300 residents living in 0.1 square
mile. This contrasted sharply with Salt Lake City, where only $550,000
was committed to a target area of 22,000 residents in 6.3 square miles. 

Channeling and leveraging other funds. Also, as would be expected, sites
that commanded other funding, either by channeling public funds to the
target area or by securing private funding, mounted more effective
programs. This was especially true among sites where Weed and Seed
funding intensity was low. Las Vegas made considerable use of both
Federal and State program funds in West Las Vegas, as did Pittsburgh in
the Hill District. Manatee County and Seattle leveraged substantial
amounts of private funding. 

Leadership and partnership 

A less tangible ingredient that seemed to characterize the more successful
programs was the active and constructive leadership of key individuals.
Depending on the site, these key actors occupied different institutional
roles; they included community leaders, program staff, police personnel,
mayors, FBI Special Agents in Charge, and U.S. Attorneys. In all
instances, however, they adopted a style of leadership that encouraged
cooperation and coordination. In sites that struggled to implement the
program, individuals in these key roles adopted a more confrontational
style that bred conflict and divisiveness. 

By its very nature, Weed and Seed places a great premium on effective
coordination of groups with different organizational missions and who
respond to different constituencies. To establish effective relationships
among these organizations required personal energy and initiative.
Leadership meant persuading other partners to lay aside jurisdictional
"turf" issues or perhaps even personal rivalries. 

From their own early experiences, a number of sites learned the
importance of adopting a "bottom-up" approach to identifying problems
and proposing solutions. A participatory process involving community
leaders and residents--although more time consuming--typically produced
decisions that were more easily implemented and which had a greater
chance of success. A more heavy-handed, top-down approach, in contrast,
tended to break down. Once disagreements arose, it became difficult to
bring the key players back to the table. 

Finally, implementation strategies that relied on bottom-up approaches
were most effective when combined with efforts to build capacity among
participating local organizations. This required a longer-term perspective
about the program and its potential to bring about community change.
However, such sites--including some that achieved substantial crime
reductions within the time period analyzed--have established a stronger
foundation and more sustainable basis for further community-targeted 
initiatives. 

Notes

1. The most rigorous means of establishing the counterfactual is an
experimental design in which the intervention--in this case Weed and
Seed--is not implemented among a randomly selected set of subjects, in
this case, sites. Such a design was infeasible in this context. Another
approach would have been to match each evaluation site with a
comparison area of similar baseline characteristics. At an earlier stage of
this evaluation, NIJ and the Institute for Social Analysis identified such
comparison sites and included them in the 1995 survey of community
residents and other baseline data collections efforts. Soon thereafter,
however, NIJ and Abt Associates concluded that the comparison sites
were not sufficiently comparable with their corresponding target areas in
demographic characteristics and crime trends. The matched site approach
was not pursued further. See Dunworth, Terrence, et al., "Overview of
Institute for Social Analysis National Evaluation Baseline Data and
Implications of the Data for the Weed and Seed Impact Evaluation," Abt
Associates Inc., Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1996.

2. Meadows Village in Las Vegas and South Manatee in Manatee/Sarasota,
where the survey was not conducted, are considered to have indeterminate
evidence on improved public perceptions and are listed within their group
below the heading of sites for which the survey provided some evidence of
a favorable change in resident perceptions.

-------------------------------

Chapter 6

Federal funding for Weed and Seed is modest when compared to other
intervention programs and is only increasing slowly. Moreover, the
number of Weed and Seed sites is expanding rapidly. Assuring a
successful future for Weed and Seed therefore demands that policymakers
make the most efficient possible choices when awarding funds. Evaluation
results show that locations with clearly defined goals, small target areas,
and a high degree of resident support are most likely to have a beneficial
effect on crime rates. They also suggest that Weed and Seed has served as
a strong stimulant to community mobilization and interorganizational
cooperation and collaboration. Therefore, program focus and community
mobilization--program cornerstones--should be key in determining
program expansion.

Policy Implications

Policymakers now face a number of strategic choices as they chart the
future direction of Weed and Seed. These choices revolve around the issues
of designating sites for continued funding, selecting sites for new awards,
and allocating funds among participating sites over time. The central policy
question is how to use program funds most effectively in order to make the
greatest long-term contribution to the program's goals of controlling crime
and promoting a safe living environment for city residents. 

The findings presented in this report indicate significant favorable effects
of Weed and Seed on key outcome measures for some sites and for some
time periods. The evidence is modest in terms of statistical significance,
but the indicators consistently point in the favorable direction. It is
important to recognize that the standards of evidence applied in this
report--although fully consistent with those normally applied in evaluation
research--are considerably more strict than policymakers might consider
appropriate. 

Given the need for policymakers to consider the program's future and their
need to base decisions on whatever information is available, it is important
to speak to these policy issues as definitively as possible. 

Program effectiveness and community mobilization 

The experience of the eight sites studied in the evaluation suggests that
Weed and Seed affected the target areas through either (or both) of two
avenues. The first, here called "program effects," relates to specific
initiatives that focus on law enforcement and crime prevention. These
activities, on both the weeding and seeding side, appear to have had
varying degrees of success in reducing crime and improving perceptions of
public safety, within the 2- to 5-year postimplementation periods analyzed
here. As noted previously, the degree of success seems related to the
community setting, program design, and concentration of funds. 

The second avenue of change in these sites has been the process of
community mobilization. In many sites, Weed and Seed provided a
catalyst for greater involvement of neighborhood residents and
community-based organizations in community revitalization efforts.
Again, some sites were more predisposed to participatory problem-solving
arrangements than others, by virtue of their preexisting infrastructure and
active leadership by both individuals and established organizations. Such
factors enabled these sites to overcome the natural barriers to coordination
among local interest groups and public agencies.

This approach has long been a cornerstone of the Weed and Seed
philosophy, but it has been deliberately and strategically emphasized in
recent years. The consequence has been a significant increase in
community mobilization. 

These two mechanisms of change are clearly interrelated. To the extent
that program initiatives require organizational linkages and resident
support, such initiatives cannot be launched if the relevant actors have not
been mobilized. Similarly, the mobilization process is facilitated by first 
having demonstrated some effectiveness of early program initiatives. 

Sites differ in their emphasis on program initiatives (in the interest of
program effectiveness) and capacity-building or infrastructure
development (in the interest of community mobilization). These design
choices are somewhat like consumption-investment decisions. A series of
program initiatives may yield significant short-term results, which
cumulate over time--but where the effects may endure only as long as the
funding. By contrast, resources devoted to capacity-building may not yield
any effects for a substantial time period but may establish a foundation for
sustainable, long-term progress. 

It is useful to consider the interplay of these two forces--program
effectiveness and community mobilization--in sites of varying size,
assuming (as has been the practice) that Weed and Seed funding is
provided in annual grants that do not vary by size of site. In larger sites,
program effects are typically more difficult to achieve because the Weed
and Seed funding will constitute a smaller share of total public and private
resources devoted to reducing and preventing crime. In the extreme, Weed
and Seed may represent the proverbial drop in the bucket. In smaller target
areas, such as the Hartford site, a significant effect is more attainable
because Weed and Seed facilitates a meaningful increase in weeding- and
seeding-type activities. 

Selecting sites and allocating funds 

The growth in the number of sites receiving Weed and Seed funds each
year has far exceeded the growth in annual program funding. One result is
that demonstration sites, which previously received as much as $750,000
per year, now typically receive $250,000 per year. What do the findings
imply about the way policymakers should approach selecting sites and
allocating program funds? There are three major implications of this
research. It is important to note that the following points do not address
the issue of whether to increase or decrease the overall level of national
funding. Rather, they address the issue of how best to allocate funds. 

First, given the importance of institutional capacity-building and
infrastructure development and the increasing emphasis placed on these
factors by EOWS, Weed and Seed should consider providing additional
technical assistance to funded sites. The lessons learned from the more
successful sites--and the less successful ones--on capacity-building and
infrastructure issues can be generalized to a large degree, and new sites
should receive the benefit of this experience. This seems especially
important to promote the type of partnership arrangements that exist in the
more successful programs examined. 

Second, in the interest of maximizing program effectiveness and
community mobilization, Weed and Seed should seek the highest feasible
geographic concentration of funds in the program sites. Given
congressional funding constraints, this implies use of a highly selective
process in choosing sites to receive new awards and/or shortening the
number of years that ongoing sites receive program funding. 

Thus, in selecting sites, Weed and Seed should place its funding priority
on sites with geographically small target areas and with favorable
community settings and program designs--i.e., with features favoring
successful implementation.

-------------------------------

About the National Institute of Justice 

The National Institute of Justice (NIJ), a component of the Office of
Justice Programs, is the research agency of the U.S. Department of Justice.
Created by the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968, as
amended, NIJ is authorized to support research, evaluation, and
demonstration programs, development of technology, and both national
and international information dissemination. Specific mandates of the Act
direct NIJ to: 

o Sponsor special projects, and research and development programs, that
will improve and strengthen the criminal justice system and reduce or
prevent crime. 

o Conduct national demonstration projects that employ innovative or
promising approaches for improving criminal justice. 

o Develop new technologies to fight crime and improve criminal justice. 

o Evaluate the effectiveness of criminal justice programs and identify
programs that promise to be successful if continued or repeated. 

o Recommend actions that can be taken by Federal, State, and local
governments as well as by private organizations to improve criminal
justice. 

o Carry out research on criminal behavior. 

o Develop new methods of crime prevention and reduction of crime and
delinquency. 

In recent years, NIJ has greatly expanded its initiatives, the result of the
Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 (the Crime
Act), partnerships with other Federal agencies and private foundations,
advances in technology, and a new international focus. Some examples of
these new initiatives: 

o New research and evaluation are exploring key issues in community
policing, violence against women, sentencing reforms, and specialized
courts such as drug courts. 

o Dual-use technologies are being developed to support national defense
and local law enforcement needs. 

o The causes, treatment, and prevention of violence against women and
violence within the family are being investigated in cooperation with
several agencies of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. 

o NIJ's links with the international community are being strengthened
through membership in the United Nations network of criminological
institutes; participation in developing the U.N. Criminal Justice
Information Network; initiation of UNOJUST (U.N. Online Justice
Clearinghouse), which electronically links the institutes to the U.N.
network; and establishment of an NIJ International Center. 

o The NIJ-administered criminal justice information clearinghouse, the
world's largest, has improved its online capability. 

o The Institute's Drug Use Forecasting (DUF) program has been expanded
and enhanced. Renamed ADAM (Arrestee Drug Abuse Monitoring), the
program will increase the number of drug-testing sites, and its role as a
"platform" for studying drug-related crime will grow. 

o NIJ's new Crime Mapping Research Center will provide training in
computer mapping technology, collect and archive geocoded crime data,
and develop analytic software. 

o The Institute's program of intramural research has been expanded and
enhanced. 

The Institute Director, who is appointed by the President and confirmed by
the Senate, establishes the Institute's objectives, guided by the priorities of
the Office of Justice Programs, the Department of Justice, and the needs of 
the criminal justice field. The Institute actively solicits the views of
criminal justice professionals and researchers in the continuing search for
answers that inform public policymaking in crime and justice.