Community Policing Awards: Finalist - Savannah, Georgia Police Department

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Community Policing Case Studies with IACP/ITT Night Vision Community Policing Award

The Problem
In the late 1980s, the Savannah Police Department faced serious crime and related social problems. Racial tensions existed but were not acute, and fear and disorder associated with crack cocaine hit the poorer neighborhoods especially hard. Along with crack cocaine came higher crime rates and more violent crime. Poor neighborhoods, already suffering from physical deterioration, lack of education and high unemployment, became desperate. The City of Savannah viewed all of these problems as symptoms of a greater problem with crime.

Employees in the Savannah Police Department, the city’s Public Development Bureau and Bureau of Management Services then conducted a study. As a result, the city addressed these issues with a Neighborhood Services Program aimed at improving the quality of life in the city’s most distressed neighborhoods by working with the residents. The primary demand of citizens was to add police officers to the streets to improve response time and increase visibility. In early 1981, Savannah increased the number of police officers but recognized that crime is also a community problem.

This was the beginning of the SPD’s evolution toward Community Oriented Policing (COP) as its determining philosophy. The inception of COP at the Savannah Police Department required changes in the basic structure of the department itself, as well as in the practices and attitudes of the department’s employees.

Despite the evolution to COP, several years of declining violent crime came to an end in Savannah in 1999, and the number of incidences of violent crime began to move upward, increasing 22.4 percent from 1998 to 2001. This increase was a substantive community concern.

The Solution
The challenge was to develop a crime fighting strategy that was balanced between strong measures, such as revocation of parole or probation and incarceration of offenders with other means to change the behavior of offenders, and provide them with marketable skills to reduce the number of repeat offenses. The first step of a crime fighting strategy focusing on violent probationers and parolees was to ascertain those common characteristics of the target population that could be addressed in a rehabilitation program.

The characteristics of the offending population confirmed a common portrait of violent criminals: substance abusers, products of dysfunctional families and poorly educated people who are likely to be repeat offenders.

In late 1999, Savannah’s city council proposed to the Georgia General Assembly that a collaboration of local and state agencies join together to be known as the Savannah Impact Program (SIP). The goals of the SIP are:

• Reduce repetitive criminality, especially those violent crimes committed by persons on probation or parole.
• Change the behavior of young offenders to steer them away from a life of crime through substance abuse treatment, general education and job training.
• Reduce long-term unemployment by helping adult offenders obtain the skills and job experience needed for secure, long-term employment.

In 2000, the Georgia General Assembly agreed to support the SIP by providing for additional personnel in Pardons & Parole, the Departments of Labor and Corrections and Juvenile Justice. The SIP became operational on July 1, 2001. The SIP receives only sentenced offenders who have been assessed as high-risk for violent behavior and/or a history of drug usage. The SIP is designed to overcome the obstacles of substance abuse, lack of effective supervision, lack of education and lack of job skills that hinder reintegration of these offenders into the community.

A key element of the SIP is intensive supervision of probationers and parolees. To achieve this goal, a new Probation/Parole Unit was established in Savannah — this unit consists of one supervisor, four probation officers and three parole officers who direct their activities to the maximum supervision/ high-risk offenders, of which there are approximately 600 in Savannah. To provide intensive case management and in-field monitoring, the caseload per officer is limited. The new unit is part of the existing Savannah offices of the Georgia Department of Corrections and the State Board of Pardons and Parole. Probation/parole officers are paired with SPD officers as many of the probationers/parolees are very dangerous individuals, and the pairing enhances safety for the officers while increasing effectiveness of supervision.

The second component of the SIP is Building Better Lives. The SIP uses intensive case management to link probationers and parolees with drug counseling and education programs that teach marketable job skills training. Aspects of this component include:

• In-depth interviewing, evaluation and diagnostic assessment
• Development of individualized employment plan
• Individual or group career counseling
• Service coordination or case management
• Basic workforce readiness, pre-vocational skills
• Out-of-area job search, relocation assistance
• Internships, work experience
• Referrals to training
• Intensive job development

Also, two teachers from the Chatham County Adult Education Program have been assigned to the SIP. Class attendance is mandatory as part of the offender’s probation/parole requirement. The substance abuse treatment program offered by the SIP provides the offender the opportunity to change his/her life and break the cycle of abuse and criminal activity. The combined efforts of the agencies and personnel involved in SIP help offenders break out of their traditional lifestyle and provide them with the resources and support to become more productive and healthy citizens.

Evaluation
Prior to implementation of the Savannah Impact Program (SIP), the average parole/probation officer managed between 150 to 200 cases, a workload that did not permit intensive supervision. In the SIP, the workload is no more than 50 cases per officer, and by partnering with a Savannah police officer, intensive and constant supervision is the norm. This simplified the intensive supervision and kept attendance in the mandated support programs near the maximum.

The most important measurable objective identified was the violent crime rate in Savannah. Violent crime in Savannah has been reduced by 5.7 percent from 2000 to 2002 and is down by 30.4 percent so far in 2003 (through March). The response plan has had a significant effect on the problem of violent crime in the city.

Other objectives also were achieved, including:

• Intensive supervision of probationers and parolees can change behavior of those persons supervised. The 2002 Production Report included in the supporting documents show that revocations were only 14 percent for parolees, 8 percent for probationers and 24 percent for juveniles. These numbers are significantly lower than national averages.

• In the Building Better Lives component, job training and substance abuse treatment programs can have a positive effect, even on violence prone offenders. In 2002, 83 percent of adult participants in the SIP were employed, as were 50 percent of juveniles (some were in school). In comparison, in the state of Georgia, 76 percent of probationers are employed, and in Chatham County, only 65 percent are employed. For parolees, 62 percent were employed statewide and 82 percent in Chatham County.

The SIP demonstrated that Problem Oriented Policing (POP) is an effective means of getting at the root causes of crime. The SIP strives to reduce violent crime in the city and to reduce recidivism by focusing directly on the conditions and factors which give rise to crime (i.e., substance abuse, poor education and poor job skills). The tangible results — reduction of violent crime, reduction of revocation rates, reduction of positive drug tests (15 percent for 2002) and the increases in G.E.D. enrollment and job placement — have exceeded original expectations.

The SIP achieved other positive results as well. The collaborative approach has made handling the highrisk offenders much simpler. This, along with reduced caseload, has improved working conditions and allowed the officers to be more focused. The offenders are no longer confused about what is expected or what is necessary for their success. All in all, the philosophy of community policing and the innovative SIP program have allowed the Savannah Police Department to work with many stakeholders of the community to reduce crime and increase the quality of life in Savannah.

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