Harvard Not Doing its Part in StreetSafe

For Harvard students, an unarmed robbery in the yard is cause for campus-wide alarm and Harvard University Police Department (HUPD) e-mail notification of every student. What, then, would the response be to 46 aggravated assaults a week?

Apparently, the answer is a study.

Indeed, 46 aggravated assaults per week is the average number endured by only one and a half square miles, or five specific neighborhoods of Boston, a community of which Harvard is a major part. These neighborhoods include Dudley Square, Grove Hall, the South End/Lower Roxbury, Morton and Norfolk Streets area in Dorchester, and the Bowdoin and Geneva Street area of Dorchester.

And yet, Harvard has not yet contributed financially to this initiative.

StreetSafe Boston is a new multi-year safety and youth development initiative being sponsored by the City of Boston and a number of local non-profits. Its primary mission is to focus crime-fighting resources on roughly 6,000 young people in Boston, both violent criminals and at-risk youth. The goals are to increase engagement of at-risk youth with community programs and services, develop a feeling of safety and security in the five targeted neighborhoods, and reduce violent crime and homicides.

StreetSafe Boston is a much-needed mixture of new and old-school approaches to helping violent and potentially violent youth. The program, due to its unusual mixture of public and private partners, will be able to hire 25 new street workers through the Ten Point Coalition (A Boston ecumenical group of clergy and other leaders), therefore bypassing Massachusetts’ Criminal Offender Record Information (CORI) laws which prohibit Boston from hiring street workers with a criminal background.

The ability to hire street workers with criminal backgrounds will hopefully bring a new and exciting energy to the street worker program. In the 1990s, after Boston suffered a high of 151 murders in a year, an initiative similar to StreetSafe Boston was able to achieve a glorious reduction in crime now referred to as the Boston Miracle. The street workers of this time were often former gang members or criminal offenders who were able to use their street credibility to persuade violent and potentially violent youth to choose a peaceful path.

StreetSafe Boston will allow street workers with street credibility to return to the targeted neighborhoods, and will extend hours of operation for proven organizations operating nearby. The idea is to use effective street workers to bring violent and at-risk youth to neighborhood organizations which can provide them with job training and other social services.

The truly fantastic part of this six-year, $26 million initiative is that it is a generous, cohesive, public/private collaboration. The Boston Foundation, a major funder of non-profit organizations in Boston, will be providing $1 million every year. In addition, the State Street Foundation, United Way, the Alchemy Foundation, the Lewis Family Foundation, the Josephine and Louise Crane Foundation, the Barr Foundation, and the Baupost Group will all be supporting the program financially.

That said, Harvard’s contribution has been a study out of the Kennedy School of Government providing the statistical basis for StreetSafe Boston. Of course, this is an important contribution, and on top of that, experts from our Sociology Department and the Kennedy School’s Criminal Justice Policy and Management program will be helping to develop and evaluate StreetSafe Boston.

But where is the cash? Harvard certainly has the money to spare, despite the recession. Look what the Boston Foundation, not even worth one billion dollars, has promised. Harvard can do better when it comes to improving its own community.

As both a Harvard student and a lifelong resident of the area, my lifetime here includes the Boston Miracle, and StreetSafe Boston’s remarkable similarity to action at the time of the miracle promises success.

Now, Harvard is in a unique financial position to ensure the success of StreetSafe Boston, as well as the safety, security, and well-being of its neighbors and community members.

Of course, Harvard can’t toss money towards every cause in the world, but there is a major problem throughout a community in which Harvard owns over 600 acres of land. Committing research to StreetSafe Boston is not enough. I think the wealthiest non-profit in the United States can afford to be added to the list of problem-solvers.

I would be proud to be a part of a university which can affix its name to the list of causes of the second Boston Miracle.


Joseph Poirier ’11 is the General Manager of WHRB 95.3 FM, and is a sociology concentrator in Adams House.