My program of interest is the neighborhood watch program, which falls under the broad spectrum of community policing. Also referred to as the home watch, the block watch, the apartment watch or the community watch, the neighborhood watch has its roots in the year 1973 when it was first tested in the Seattle community crime prevention project (Hyde, 2012). The program is mainly concerned with active involvement of the public in safeguarding and upholding high quality of life of the residents through working in partnership with the police and other security agencies towards insuring the security and general wellbeing of their respective surroundings. The main goal of this program is to reduce crime rates in a neighborhood.
The primary indicators of the effectiveness of the program revolve around better security and social relationships (Hyde, 2012). The foremost indicator of the effectiveness of the neighborhood watch is lower crime evidenced by a notable reduction in the number of reported crimes. Secondly, the effectiveness of the program can be indicated by improved public attitude towards the program. A remarkable reduction in the incidences of social evils is another key indicator. For instance, a notable reduction in such evils as drug abuse, rapes and prostitution is a major indicator of the effectiveness of the neighborhood watch.
While there are many evaluation designs for the neighborhood watch program, the pretest and the posttest design. This design entails the comparative study of the statistics before and after the implementation of the program. This means that the crime statistics will be collected before the implementation, through such approaches as observing the number of reported crimes (Russell, 2012). For instance, if the crime statistics show that 95 people out of 1000 residents were victims of crimes in the pretest and that the number dropped to 25 out of 1000, then the program will be deemed effective.
References
Hyde, S. (2012). Classics of public administration. (7th ed., Vol. 1). New York: Cengage Publishing.
Russell, S. (2012). Introducing public administration. (8th ed., Vol. 1). New York: Pearson Publishing.
