Guardian Angels South Africa

Fear influences people’s behaviour.  If there are disorderly conditions in the neighbourhood and people feel powerless to do something about it then fear goes sky-high.  Police are often unable to pay attention to ‘petty’ or quality-of-life crimes and focus almost exclusively on serious crimes.  Very often prosecutors do the same thing.  In the Cape Town suburb of Atlantis, Cape Town City Police performed well over 300 arrests for public drunkenness and riotous behaviour.  Not one of those cases ever saw the inside of the court house and did not result in a single conviction!  The prosecutor simply did not think it important enough and merely considered it to be ‘petty’, with the result that the same persons were out on the streets night after night eating up valuable police resources. 

When the City of Cape Town introduced by-laws against aggressive begging in 2006 they were slammed with the threat of law suits and blamed for ‘victimizing’ the homeless.  Whenever residents fear things like aggressive begging, or unruly youths and withdraw from use of the streets crime starts to rise because citizen ‘surveillance’ (and consequently reports to police) become extremely limited.

Many things are blamed for crime.  Genetics is given the fault, but that does not explain why some adopted children, coming from ‘bad’ families will grow into responsible adults with loving foster parents.  Unemployment is given the fault, but that does not explain why India with its extensive poverty and unemployment has very low crime.  Overpopulation also gets blamed, but Tokyo which is a city that has almost as many people as the whole of South Africa, has low crime as does China.  Henan, a province in China, which has 92 million people, experienced 1700 murders per year a while back.  South Africa with its 42 million people experienced almost 20 000 murders in the same period.  So overpopulation by itself does not cause crime.

There is only one common denominator as far as violent crime is considered, and that is disorder. 

The following are some of the indicators you will find that indicate disorder in a community.  When they reach a certain critical mass it will erupt in crime.

Businesses, Parks, Homes and Buildings

• Broken windows on buildings (not only on abandoned buildings)
• Graffiti
• Neglected public facilities (such as transportation)
• Businesses in distress
• Parks being avoided because of groups of youth taking over.
• Vandalised public telephones
• Abandoned, weed-choked properties with suspicious characters hanging out.
• Areas that are no longer as nice as you remember it
• Several dark areas
• Sleazy hotels or illegal liquor traders (shebeens)

People

• Large numbers of vagrants
• Public drinking
• Adults afraid of scolding rowdy children
• Families moving out
• Unattached adults moving in
• Teenagers gathering in front of stores and refusing to move when asked to
• Drunks sleeping it off on the sidewalk
• Disorderly behaviour
• Pedestrians being approached by beggars
• Residents withdrawing physically
• People afraid to get involved in helping each other

Crime

• Known gangs
• Open-air drug markets
• A visible increase in street crime
• Open-air prostitution markets

Streets

• Litter
• Groups of unruly youths
• Prostitutes
• Many unsupervised children after dark
• Street parties
• Racing
• Abandoned cars in the streets
• Obstructed Sidewalks and public spaces
• Broken streetlights
• Public urination and defecation
• Unlicensed hawking
• Unlicensed ‘car-guards’
• Public drunkenness
• Beggars showing harassing or menacing behaviour
• Citizens staying off the streets, avoiding certain areas, and curtailing their normal activities and associations

Feelings of safety

• Few law-abiding citizens on streets after dark
• Many high fences with barb wire and security lights
• Strong presence of security companies, panic buttons, satellite tracking, anti-hijacking devices or dogs to guard properties?

What are the steps that lead to a community becoming crime-ridden?  The tipping point in a stable neighbourhood that leads to it going downhill is a small, minute thing.  We have seen it everywhere and this may be the reason why we are staying in the most violent city in the world.  The item: A broken and un-repaired window.

When a window gets broken and no-one fixes it, it will be only a matter of time before the whole neighbourhood has gone to hell in a handcart.  Let us examine the process.

Someone throws a brick through a window.  No-one fixes it.  This window starts to ‘broadcast’ a message, and this message is that; “It’s OK to break windows here, because no-one cares”.  Very soon, people who like to break windows will notice that the window hasn’t been fixed and they will break more windows.  Within a matter of weeks all the windows in the structure will be broken, and every single one of them will be communicating to suspects that this is an area in which they can flourish. 

Normal citizens in the area will also be more inclined to litter and every scrap of paper will be sending the same message.  Pretty soon the whole area will look out of control. 

Soon graffiti will go up and groups of unruly youths will start meeting in the area.  If the building is empty you will find homeless people moving into it.  They will be joined by youth who use the building to play hooky.  Then a gang will move in. 

Public drinking in the area now becomes a normal fixture and soon you will see your first prostitute on the corner.  Streetlights will be thrown or shot out.

At this point law-abiding citizens will curb their activities and leave the area or barricade themselves in their homes unless necessity forces them outside.  They will purchase weapons, security systems and dogs, and abandon community facilities such as public transportation and parks, only going out when absolutely necessary.  Law-abiding residents from other areas of the city will also start to avoid this area.

Street parties will become common along with racing, drunken driving, spinning of wheels and soon you will find abandoned cars in the streets, total disregard for traffic laws, open-air drug markets, and gangs of youth taking over parks.

Soon a stable neighbourhood of families who care for their homes, mind each other’s children, and confidently frown on unwanted intruders can change, in a few years or even a few months, to an inhospitable and frightening jungle.  A piece of property is abandoned; weeds grow up, a window is smashed.  Adults stop admonishing unruly children; the children, encouraged, become more rowdy.  Families move out, unattached adults move in.  Teenagers gather in front of the corner store.  The vendor asks them to move; they refuse.  Fights occur.  Refuse accumulates.  People start drinking in front of the grocers; in time, a drunk slumps to the sidewalk and is allowed to sleep it off.  Pedestrians are approached by beggars.  Responding sensibly, and fearfully, citizens stay off the streets, avoid certain areas, and cut back their normal activities and relations. 

Disorderly behaviour, if unregulated and unchecked, signals to citizens that the area is unsafe.  As the general public withdraw physically, they also withdraw from those roles of shared support with neighbours, thereby surrendering the social controls they previously helped to keep up within the neighbourhood.  Ultimately the result for such an area, whose foundation of inner-city life and community interaction has been damaged, is growing defencelessness to a flood of more antisocial activities and serious crime.  Serious street crime flourishes in areas in which unruly behaviour goes free.  The unimpeded beggar is, in effect, the first broken window.  Muggers and robbers, whether opportunistic or professional, believe they reduce their chances of being caught or identified if they operate on streets where potential victims are already intimidated by prevailing conditions.  If the neighbourhood cannot keep an annoying beggar from annoying passers-by, the thief reasons, it is even less likely to call the police to identify a potential attacker or to interfere if the assault actually takes place.

The signals that this neighbourhood now transmits are beggars, prostitutes, drunkenness, public drinking, menacing behaviour, harassment, obstruction of sidewalks and public spaces, vandalism and graffiti, broken streetlights, public urination and defecation, unlicensed hawking, unlicensed ‘car-guards’ and other such acts.

The general public is offended by, and afraid of, such acts because when the number of these acts reaches a critical mass it becomes a very real danger and leads to more serious crime, urban decline, and decay that ultimately follow on the heels of unconstrained disorder.

The nice quiet neighbourhood has become eroded and is now a haven of criminals.

Foot patrols have proven themselves to be the most effective means of enhancing feelings of safety.  Police, typically, see foot patrols as a waste of resources, which is where Guardian Angels come in.  A Guardian Angels patrol will absorb itself in the life of the area it is deployed in, often knowing by name, the regulars – residents, business owners, and street people alike.  Such a patrol keeps abreast of local problems, assumes a type of responsibility for key places or people, developing regular sources of information and becoming regulars at certain venues.

Community response to Guardian Angels foot patrols is uniformly positive.  Overwhelmingly, fear declines and citizen approval for the patrols soar.  Even though foot patrol frequently does not reduce the occurrence of serious crime by itself, residents of foot-patrolled neighbourhoods feel more secure than do those in other areas, believe crime to have been reduced, and appear to take fewer measures to protect themselves from crime (such as staying home behind locked doors).  Normal street crime usually visibly reduces in a matter of weeks.  Even just a few hours of patrols on a consistent basis will have these effects.  A pretty small measure of foot patrols delivers a large amount of fear reduction.

Guardian Angels do not obtain their order-maintenance ‘authority’ from criminal law, or the police, but largely as a mandate from those they shield, that is, from people who use the streets, live in or perform their businesses in the local neighbourhood, and even those who “hang out.”  Over time, through regular interaction, residents and the patrol comes to know each other and to recognize their shared concern in the peace and order of the streets.  Eventually the patrol and residents ‘negotiate’ a “disorder threshold” for the neighbourhood, and rules of conduct that would be applied when that threshold was breached.  While the patrols’ immediate involvement in this process is key, their activities may also help to develop a consensus regarding appropriate neighbourhood conduct strong enough to persist even during those times of their absence, thus heightening the effect of actual patrol presence.

Reducing crime through order maintenance, in the final analysis, requires the exercise of good citizenship.  Citizens must accept responsibility both for their own behaviour and for helping to ensure the safety and security of fellow citizens.  Order arises out of the day-to-day respect with which people deal with each other and the concern that they exercise for their privacy, welfare, and safety.  Such respect and concern does not divide rich from poor, black from white, or one ethnic group from another.  Instead, it unites diverse neighbourhoods against those who behave in outrageous ways, and who prey on the weak and vulnerable.  

Many people consider the causes of crime to be some metaphysical, indefinable ‘something’ which it is impossible to understand.  The fact of the matter is that it is a simple thing to understand, easy to solve and does not take a lot of money to turn around either.

The only model that has shown itself to be highly effective against crime is the Broken Windows Theory.

Studies have revealed that people are influenced by their environment to a very large extent.  Criminals have shown themselves to be surprisingly sensitive to the messages broadcast by any community and to be drawn to the ‘right’ (for them) kind of environment.  The criminal is acutely sensitive to his environment; he is alert to all kinds of cues and is prompted to commit crimes based on his perception of the world around him.

A neighbourhood is very similar to an eco-system.  Various factors impact on it and the totality of those factors gives you the final product.  Growth in any eco-system is limited by the necessity that’s available in the least amount.  If safety is lacking it has a certain impact, if ethics lack another.  If there is insufficient personal space or excessive use of resources by a small group another effect becomes apparent.

Crime is the inevitable result of disorder and it is contagious, like a fashion trend.  It starts with a broken window and spread to an entire community.  

The Broken Windows theory proves that a crime epidemic can be reversed by tinkering with the smallest details of the immediate environment.  

With violence rampant in many cities, residents become preoccupied with issues such as squatters, ‘car-guarding’, begging, prostitution, and other forms of disorder.  Working persons of all races are fed up with crime and crave a decent and civilized society.

Those demanding order are not, for the most part, moral do-gooders.  Most persons opposed to prostitution, are not prudish vigilantes concerned about commercial sex as a matter of principle.  They simply object to the immoral activities of prostitutes and johns, who visibly perform sex acts in parked cars, discard condoms on side walks, parking lots, and in public parks, unmindful of the play of children, and who ignore public requests for some maturity in their behaviour.

We do not suggest some form of oppression of the law.  South Africans are well aware of the excesses of the past and the dangers inbuilt in balancing individual rights against broader community claims.  We speak here of behaviour that violates widely accepted standards and norms of behaviour, and about which a broad consensus exists, in spite of racial, ethnic, and class differences.

As citizens experience crime problems it includes graffiti and loitering as much as more violent crimes.  Those of us who live, work, and play in cities face a mixture of disorder, fear, serious crime, and urban decay: the crime problem does not begin with serious crimes.  The distinctions among disorder, fear, and serious crime are not trivial.  Citizens understand the experiences of disorder and fear, quite apart from serious crime, and want something done about them.

Rowdy or unpredictable behaviour scares people, so they stay indoors, and when they do go out they keep to themselves.  Citizen surveillance thus decreases, making the streets more attractive to criminals.

Reducing disorder will reduce crime.

Enter the Guardian Angels.

It is our firm belief that order can be restored in our cities.  We are uniquely positioned to assist in order restoration and maintenance through our role as problem solvers in the community.  A new paradigm of community-based policing is taking hold in various forms around the world, offering citizens the opportunity to redefine and become directly involved in crime control and quality-of-life programs in their communities.  The viability of life in our cities may depend upon whether order can be restored before urban decline has progressed to irreversible proportions.