Fixing Stainedglass Windows
DIIULIO, JOHN J. Jr.
Fixing Stained-glass Windows By John J. Dilulio Jr. Ram A. Cnaan is anything but a born-again religious crusader or right-wing Bible thumper. Instead, Cnaan, 46, is a brilliant, urbane, slightly...
...On average, each congregation supplies 5,300 hours a year in community volunteer work, the equivalent of about two and a half full-time volunteers stationed year-round at each "sacred place...
...Seventy-five percent of the community services are provided in buildings or spaces owned or occupied by the churches and synagogues...
...They crumble, too...
...Ask not, How come, if the churches are doing so much, the neighborhoods are still so bad...
...Ask, How much worse would these neighborhoods be without the millions of dollars in social-service subsidies supplied by congregations...
...In Brooklyn, the DA's office has proposed linking offenders with faith communities in their neighborhoods for support and guidance...
...As go the religious properties, so go the services they supply...
...But Philadelphia and other cities are also striving to learn from the remarkable example of Boston, where police chief Paul Evans, probation chief Ron Corbett, and a network of Dorchester ministers are working to link juveniles on probation with faith-based counseling and education programs in their neighborhood...
...Arguably, however, the most profound implication for social policy of these new findings is that supporting church-anchored volunteer efforts in poor urban neighborhoods is the only practical way to sustain and extend the recent success of police in big and medium-sized cities at putting crime and disorder on the run...
...Already, the police-probation-preacher partnership has effected a reduction in inner-city crime and disorder such that the city has not suffered a single gun-related youth homicide in over two years...
...William Bratton, New York chief of police from 1994 to 1996, applied the broken-windows thesis almost to the letter...
...Recently, Philadelphia joined the cities that have invited Bratton (now a private consultant) and members of his former NYPD brain trust to assist police in "fixing broken windows...
...After all, what police precinct or neon-lit police mobile unit can be more than a trivial presence in an inner-city neighborhood...
...As has been widely reported, one key to New York City's dramatic reduction in crime has been policing premised on the "broken-windows" thesis developed by criminologists James Q. Wilson and George L. Kelling...
...It must build on the community presence of both older and newer religious congregations, physically preserving both big-tower temples and tiny store-front "blessing stations" that are the symbol and substance of community norms of civility, sobriety, and responsibility...
...Instead, they focus on "street prostitution, low-level drug dealing, underage drinking, blaring car radios and a host of other quality-of-life crimes that contribute to a sense of disorder and danger in the street...
...Over a quarter of the properties are in severe physical disrepair...
...As a result, New Yorkers haven't been so relatively free of crime and disorder since the Mets won the World Series in 1969...
...Their research, preoccupied with abstract theories, overlooks the issue of who is actually in the trenches, helping "the neediest members in the community such as the hungry or new homeless...
...The study was supported by the Lilly Endowment in Indianapolis and commissioned by Partners for Sacred Places (PSP), a national, non-profit, non-sectarian organization with offices in Philadelphia that helps congregations care Contributing editor John J. Dilulio Jr...
...Prompted by his own data, Cnaan preaches the hitherto untold good news of these congregations' unique contribution to sustaining life in the poorest neighborhoods...
...Still, even the biggest devotees of quality-of-life policing, including Bratton, acknowledge that police alone cannot solve urban crime or cure the worst inner-city ills...
...Ever notice," asked one veteran prosecutor at a recent meeting of the National District Attorneys Association, "how even on the most desolate streets there is always a church nearby, and how the church is often the only building around that's not sprayed top to bottom with graffiti...
...is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and directs the research program on religion and at-risk youth at Public/Private Ventures...
...With proper support, they have the potential to help consolidate social gains, as crime-weary neighborhoods begin to enjoy a desperately needed reprieve...
...Thus, if we are truly interested in resurrecting the civil society of inner-city America, where fixing-bro-ken-windows policing ends, "fixing stained-glass windows" social policy must begin...
...for and make good use of older buildings for community programs...
...In their famous 1982 essay in the Atlantic Monthly, Wilson and Kelling posited that if a broken window in a building goes unfixed, soon all the windows will be broken...
...Politically, he is, if anything, a man of the Left...
...Published under the title Sacred Places At Risk: New Evidence on How Endangered Churches and Synagogues Serve Communities, Cnaan's work has been vetted for methodological soundness and enthusiastically endorsed by me and by research colleagues at Pub-lic/ Private Ventures and other research organizations, as well as by George Gallup Jr...
...Cnaan's own work is based on a detailed survey of over 100 urban congregations that have owned property in six metropolitan areas (Chicago, Indianapolis, Mobile, New York, Philadelphia, and the Bay Area of California) since before 1940...
...Of all the windows that need tending in America's cities, those in churches and synagogues deserve attention first...
...Return to the words of the 1982 broken-windows thesis statement quoted above...
...Their research ignores "a willing and powerful partner in helping the needy in this era of devolution...
...The replacement value of the volunteer services, staff support, and space provided by the churches and synagogues—that is, what it would cost government or for-profit agencies to provide the same services—is at least $100,000 per congregation...
...But as the principal author of a new study of how older urban churches and synagogues serve poor communities, the good professor has the zeal of the convert...
...In a 1995 essay, he stressed that, with "rare exception, residents, even in the highest-crime areas, usually do not talk about murder ...and the other violent crimes that make the headlines...
...Its findings include facts like these: •Ninety-one percent of the congregations actively serve the larger community and make their buildings available for day care, food banks, clothing drives, tutoring, after-school "safe haven" programs, healthcare programs, job counseling, substance-abuse counseling, and more...
...meanwhile, untended property is fair game for plunder or destruction...[and] a concentration of supposedly 'victimless' disorders can soon flood an area with serious, victimizing crimes...
...Instead, Cnaan, 46, is a brilliant, urbane, slightly balding, Israeli-born associate professor of social work at the University of Pennsylvania...
...Since the congregations receive under $10,000 in payment from the beneficiaries of their programs, they are giving more than 10 times what they receive...
...Unlike their counterparts in Israel and Europe, Cnaan argues, scholars in the United States "have failed to recognize how much important social work is done in poor communities by volunteers with no professional training" and, in particular, how vital "religious congregations and faith-based programs" are to the social health and future well-being of the people who inhabit inner-city America...
...Such forward-looking efforts ought to be encouraged at all costs...
...I am," he says, "a secular Jew, not a religious person...
...Start with the extent and efficacy of church-anchored community programs in urban America...
...When church towers crumble or synagogue doors close, even the oldest, strongest, most volunteer-rich congregations don't rent rooms at the downtown Ramada or physically transplant themselves...
...In many cities, district attorneys are taking the lead in forging such partnerships and trumpeting the need to support sacred places...
...Kelling himself was a key adviser to Bratton, with a front-row seat for the implementation of the strategy...
...The broken window, they argued, is a virtual invitation to incivility, disorder, and crime: "Where disorder problems are frequent and no one takes responsibility for unruly behavior in public spaces, the sense of 'territoriality' among residents shrinks to include only their own households...
...The story has gone untold, Cnaan says, because social-work professionals have cut their personal ties with "the religious community...
...To the extent that religious architecture is community fate, corporate and philanthropic organizations have every reason to get behind the preservation of sacred places with dollars, and governments have every reason to facilitate their flourishing, by granting zoning waivers and implementing such measures as the "charitable choice" provision of the 1996 welfare-reform law, which allows religious organizations to receive federal funds for the faith-based delivery of social services...
...And in Philadelphia, the DA's office, led by Lynne Abraham, has expressed a strong interest in exploring new ways of working with faith-based social-service providers to help rescue the city's most severely at-risk youth and steer petty juvenile offenders away from the criminal-justice system and into adult-rich, values-centered alternatives...
...Even with first-rate leadership, police can do only so much to restore a "sense of 'terri-toriality' among residents," to take back public spaces, and to give juveniles and young adults prone to high-risk behavior something better to do, someplace other than the streets to go, and some adult other than gang members to hang out with, turn to with problems, and count on in emergencies or for basic life necessities...
...Under Bratton's leadership, the NYPD not only cracked down on squeegee men but followed a well-developed strategy for curbing youth violence in schools, reclaiming public spaces, reducing car thefts, and more...
...Several sets of social-policy implications flow from this and other ongoing research on inner-city churches...
...Eighty percent of the beneficiaries of church-anchored programs are not members of the congregation, and most are neighborhood children...
...As Kelling beautifully details in his recent book Fixing Broken Windows, Bratton's efforts included everything from a new computer-assisted crime-data management system, to special narcotics and gun units, to a citywide offensive against crack houses, illegal liquor outlets, and other illegitimate businesses...
...It's time to notice these sacred places and to appreciate the service to the needy that goes on in them...
Vol. 3 • November 1997 • No. 9
