In essence, Neighbourhood Watch is a crime prevention program that stresses education and common sense (Stegenga 2000). It teaches citizens how to help themselves by identifying and reporting suspicious activity in their neighbourhoods. In addition, it provides citizens with the opportunity to make their neighbourhoods safer and improve the quality of life. Most neighbourhood crime prevention grou
ps are organized around a block or a neighbourhood and are started with assistance from a law enforcement agency. Volunteers who donate their time and resources are typically at the center of such programs, since many do not have a formal budget or source of funding. One study (Garofalo and McLeod, 1988) found that most Neighbourhood Watches were located in areas that contained high percentages of single-family homes, little or no commercial establishments, and residents who had lived at their current address for more than five years. This study also found that most of the programs used street signs to show the presence of the program to potentially deter any would-be criminals. All Neighbourhood Watches share one foundational idea: that bringing community members together to reestablish control of their neighborhoods promotes an increased quality of life and reduces the crime rate in that area. if social disorganization is the problem and if traditional agents of social control no longer are performing adequately, we need to find alternative ways to strengthen informal social control and to restore a 'sense of neighbourhood'". That's precisely what Neighbourhood Watch strives to do. In fact, from the earliest attempts to deal with the neighbourhood structure as it relates to crime (through the Chicago Area Project of the early 1900s), to modern attempts at neighborhood crime prevention, collective action by residents has proved one of the most effective strategies. The reason for this effectiveness is rather simple: Involving community members in watch programs decreases opportunities for criminals to commit crime rather than attempting to change their behavior or motivation. Today's Neighbourhood Watch Program is an effective means of crime control and neighbourhood cohesiveness. While not all of the programs in place today go by the same name, they all accomplish the same goal: to bring community members together to fight crime. As Minor aptly wrote, "Neighbourhood is the key to maintaining successful relationships."
