How to Change Your Local System: Tips on Action Planning

The Community Needs To:

• Go to where the energy is (80/20 rule)
• Reclaim their moral authority
• Be guided by shared principles
• Establish collaborative, diverse, and multi-disciplinary teams

The Government Needs To:

• Delegate power to shape and decide
• Be patient and listen
• Give information (e.g. effective PSI strategies, reducing risk, increasing protective factors)
• Practice restraint
• Be clear on roles and expectations

System Features that Isolate and Insulate

• Data privacy and access to information
• Sterilization of information
• Removal of emotion from process
• Intimidating and foreign structures
• Professionalism
• Public service convenience

Crime Provokes Community Responsibility by:

• Calling attention to social problems and harmful social conditions.
• Providing opportunity for the community to affirm its values and behavioral norms.
• Causing a community obligation to provide a process through which this conflict can be resolved.

Thus, Crime is a form of "social fuel."

Sustaining Community Involvement

Solutions:

• Must win support of public, not assume
• Train citizens, not just practitioners
• Get organizations involved

Challenges:

• History of justice system-citizen cooperation
• Lack of organizational involvement
• Lack of understanding-i.e., message
• Previous victim experiences
• Community diversity

Four General Principles About Behavioral Change:

1. Behavior is derived from thoughts
2. Relationships count
3. Community accountability counts
4. Humans do not always follow principles