All my data analysis and findings collected for this projects were incredibly useful and what most important fit together helping me in answering my question. Starting with field notes/observations, my goal was to take as many notes on behaviors, work conditions, procedures, people and even the office interior, to get an idea of how this and other institutions work. It was very important to get a sense of where I was going to work as well as what this place could offer to me. Spending my three days at my CBO side I did my best to complete everything I needed; it was challenging, but interesting.
While I was at my CBO site, I had time for document collection. Starting from little articles and finishing on thick books, I had a lot of work to do. There were struggles with understanding, and finding the proper information, but what kept me going was the fact that everything I read, took notes on and tried to understand, seemed ideal for my research question. Full of energy to continue my work, time was moving on, and I had to start doing my interviews. There was nothing to worry about I asked, she did the rest. Still a little stressed, with my questions in my head, I went to Deborah Prothrow-Stiths office and started to do my work, asked questions related to my topic. The answers to my questions were unexpected. They gave me so much information, satisfying me 100%. Completing analysis of the most important responses, typing my transcripts and interview questions I was ready to continue. The next step was to put together my surveys. Making my own questions and setting it up on paper I was prepared to give out from 50-100 copies to a diverse group of people. Finding different kinds of people, with different status, races, and gender I was able get different kinds of responses making everything more interesting. I graphed the results of my survey and analyzed them. This gave me a clearer picture, of real people. At the very end I worked on the Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to put together two maps and the analysis for both. That was something that consumed a lot of time. I had to figure out how the whole program worked, and what the most important data would be to help me in my project. From the choices I decided to use for my project I chose two maps representing homicide rate/prisons, and the other one was a map of education spending in years 1992, and 2002. Both topics were very useful and related to my research. Homicide/prisons map showed me the most dangerous places in Boston, where on the other side I had a picture of money spent on education in last 15 years giving me a relation between education and crime.
That was my last part of this section that I wanted to describe. As we see everything fits together perfectly. Nothing was missing, there no unneeded information or anything that will be useless at the end. Everything was planned to the very detail, so at the end I could get the best possible picture of the issue. It’s very important to make those steps, to follow what needs to be done, because we won’t claim anything without effort from ourselves. We need to remember that whatever is done now can bring enormous effects in the future, making others lives better.
In all three days I had to do my field notes, I focused on detailed observation.
I observed and wrote down everything that may be useful in my project. From how the office looks, to how many people work at the CBO, to what each person’s role in the institution is, and how their normal day looks as they help our neighborhoods. In my field notes there are many positive observations that really impressed me. First of all, people working there were engaged in their duties so much that it resulted in making a harmonious group. Second of all, the whole goal of the institution made me blossom. Efforts to improve the cardiovascular health of African-Americans in the Roxbury neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts are the goal of Cherishing our Hearts and Souls Coalition. All this information and observations helped me to answer my research question. How? Being there, in such useful place, with such great goals you just want to be a part of it working hard making your little piece of work count.
There was one critical incident during my visit. I remember on the second day there was a meeting with all the staff and some outsiders, about 15-20 people.
Everything looked and sounded normal, just like an average meeting. However something has changed after couple hours. The atmosphere took a hotter level and I started to hear louder voices. Being very curious I left my station and went to the kitchen passing by the conference room. I saw Deborah Prothrow-Stith sitting in front of everybody hitting her fist on the table. God, that was something amazing, to see how involved a person can be in an issue. I saw the desire in that room, I felt like they here “fighting” for a better change. I saw an amazing example of how people are willing to change society at all costs.
For my interviews, I had a chance to talk with two people. The first one was my chemistry teacher, Mr. Pentidis who was chosen as a person who lives in a safe neighborhood (Allston/Brighton), and could share important information about our society. The second person was a Professor of Public Health Practice and Associate Dean for Faculty Development, Deborah Prothrow-Stith, who I had a chance to question during my visit at the CBO site. The reason why I chose this person was based on her knowledge of many societal issues. She was a golden example of person who could really help me understand the topic, tell me very good points, as well as present the opinion of a professional person who helps and solves problems for a living.
According to the first interview with Mr. Pentidis there was a question asked. Do you think Brighton/Allston is a safe place to live? The response was as following:
One of the things, I would assure quite safe to live. A lot of people with families live there. And a lot of immigrant I think. Immigrants are usually who live with families here, causing less crime. The fact that student lived there I think it makes it a little bit safer, we don’t have drug, at least we don’t have a place that people sell drugs. That is very important things to keep it safe. Aw... Maybe the fact that we have two universities. We have BU and BC. A lot of Police is also important reasons in keeping the neighborhood safe. The last reason may be that Brookline is an expensive area to live in and it may affect the safety as well. It was a very confident answer; he knew the answer vary well. Responding to the question for the most part I saw the positive feeling and satisfied opinion about the neighborhood. During the second interview, Deborah and I had a great conversation about neighborhood safety and its impact. I decided to push the conversation a little, to get even more interesting results. I asked a question about the race problems that influence everybody, in almost every neighborhood. Question was as follow: Do you think the race problem is really the problem? Do you think that people that consider black people as more dangerous, worse people, at risk… is it right to do such things? After Deborah listened to the question, she made some very good points…
Yeah, no... I definitely don’t consider a racial predisposition towards violence, and I actually think it’s part of the problem that there’s a way that we through entertainment, media and just through the bias of society that certain people are more dangerous because they’re black or are more likely to be a criminal. There’s nothing to suggest that that’s the case, and interestingly, when we were looking at homicide rates, for instance, in the mid 1800s in the United States, because of dueling, the homicide rates for white men who had money were high, and higher than many of the urban settings today. So when we talk about violence, particularly about peer violence or street violence, we are talking about learned behavior and young men being more vulnerable because of the expectation that men are tough, and there’s a way that you equate masculinity with violence. But it’s in many ways, what we expect of our children that they in fact give us and so part of the problem of violence, especially when we start looking at African Americans….
We have a chance to see to deep truth about the issue. As Deborah said, there is no reason to consider black people as worse, more dangerous, etc. Even though it seems so obvious, and every Homo-sapiens should know about it, we still make this mistake and consider opposite races in negative light.
One of the goals in this project was to make a really good survey, one that would help me a lot in answering my main question. The idea was to ask easy, and, at the same time, helpful questions. I wanted honest answers; I wanted people to take it seriously and to be truthful. The kind of people I wanted to survey wasn’t part of my agenda, the more diverse the better for me. Thanks to the diversity among the people I surveyed, I was able to gather interesting and fascinating information. Who would give me more than people from different cultures, races, manners, ages or genders? As a researcher of my own project I decided and really depended on diversity among people, and answers because it can draw me a nice picture of the issue I am studying.
After graphing my results on Microsoft Excel I’ve got some very nice results that pop out immediately. I would like to start with the pie graph of people living in different Boston’s neighborhoods. After surveying about 50 people I got 34% people living in Dorchester, and 18% in South Boston. The rest was average with small percentage of people. I’ve gotten what I wanted, people from more dangerous neighborhoods appears for the most parts. Do you recognize differences in different neighborhoods besides your own, was a question to start the whole thinking process. On start I see ration 40-8 on yes. Continuation of the survey intended to bring me closer, and understand the living situation of people. Questions and statements such as, Is there enough security in my neighborhood? I feel safe coming home late at night or I believe there is nothing going on to improve safety conditions in my neighborhood, brought me negative answers predominating in the survey. Another questions, such as How safe do you feel in your neighborhood or what grade would you give your neighborhood based on safety issues, gave me more middle choices, 2 or 3 improving the picture a little but still making the negative overall impression. At the end, there were questions related to education and justice. Asking, how would you rate the quality of education that you received, and do you think by putting people in jail your neighborhood will become safer, I received most answers between 3 and 5 giving me pretty strong agreement on questions. From every answer I could make some conclusions, assumptions and opinions. The most important part of the survey is that I could understand and see the real picture, of real people, living in Boston’s neighborhoods. Every survey question helped me to answer my main research question in its own way. I must admit that this survey gave me a great source in becoming a better research with richer knowledge.
I have completed decent document collections from my CBO site. During my three visits in “Cherishing our Hearts and Souls Coalition” I gathered and analyzed different types of documentation.
The first piece of documentation I found helpful and interesting was the information from the Boston foundation community safety initiative. They had an overview of a forum on community safety. Their information was on the reduction in violence during the late 1990’s. The neighborhoods where the majority of the violent incidents occurred began to be viewed in a more positive way. Also, an increase in communication and trust between law enforcement agencies and community members began to develop. Among this impressive and good news, the document also mentioned crime prevention strategies for urban communities. For example criminal justice agencies focused on issues that enhance community living (i.e. clean streets, graffiti-free buildings), and reduce fear (i.e. the ability to leave one’s home and walk in the neighborhood without fear of becoming a crime victim). Formation of effective partnerships with a wide-range of stakeholders including criminal justice groups, community-based groups, faith-based organizations, and the business community was another key ingredient in crime prevention.
The last parts of the document mentioned challenges the city of Boston and its neighborhoods faced. Despite many successes in Boston’s history there are many challenges that must be faced. The challenge for the future is to move youth away from gangs, drugs, and violent behavior, and to work with offenders to successfully transition back to the community and live crime-free lives. That information was very helpful in answering my research question. First of all they showed me what needs to be done to make neighborhoods safer, what the problems are that make our neighborhoods unsafe, and finally how to make them safe.
The second source I would like to mention is a book titled “Murder is no accident, Understanding and preventing youth violence in America,” by Deborah Prothrow-Stith and Howard R. Spivak. One of the authors, Deborah Prothrow-Stith, was my interviewee which was a great help and an unforgettable experience.
This book mentions a lot of societal facets that people deal with everyday. Among the many chapters in the book there was one particular one that interested me. The Chapter titled, “What do we know and how do we know it” explains the problems of violence, homicide, and danger in neighborhoods. Statistics pop out immediately. The United States has an annual rate of homicides of 37 per 100,000 young men-compared to Scotland at 4.2 per 100,000 and Japan at 0.03 per 100,000. We always look for the answers; the issue is how we look and where we look for them. In searching for the truth, many times we overlook history. Although the homicide rates for young black men in the United States are currently the highest rate, this was not always the case. Homicide rates among rural, rich southern whites in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries rivaled the current rates in urban America, showing us a little lesson from stereotyping and making assumptions. The book mentions much we should be aware of. “Urban America’s structural conditions of overcrowding and poverty neighborhoods are strongly associated with homicide. “Everything from malnutrition to witnessing violence can have structural impact on the brain that can lower the threshold for violence, producing a biological problem that is not genetic.” (P.43-44, Murder is no accident). Such problems are also mentioned in an article titled, “Does Neighborhood matter? Assessing recent evidence,” where the author says that “simply witnessing crimes or knowing people who have been victimized may also profoundly affect people’s outlook, leading them to see the world as fundamentally violent, dangerous, and unjust.” (p.841, Does Neighborhood matter? assessing recent evidence). It shouldn’t be surprising that what “goes around comes around.” On the other side, but connecting to the topic, Deborah Prothrow-Stith notes as her last reason violence occurs as, a chemical reaction that happens in the body when anger, fear, occurs; it can affect body chemistry in ways that can influence risks of violence. It’s amazing what our bodies are able to do. It’s very interesting and amazing fact, however dominant factor for acts of violence are social forces mentioned above that influence people to commit acts of violence making our neighborhood poor and unsafe.
To show more about our neighborhoods safety and consequences of this fact I created maps showing those factors. The first map shows the data on property crime rate per 1000 residents in 2004, violent crimes rate per 1000 residents in 2004, as well as prisons in Boston’s neighborhoods. These are important information related to my research question. Estimated numbers show me what I was expecting. The darker areas of Massachusetts including Boston, Cambridge, Everett, and Chelsea have the highest rate which is more than 30 people for property crimes and more than 10 people for violent crimes. Suburbs however shows us very small crime rate varying the numbers of less than 10 people for property crimes and 1-2 people for violent crimes.
Another element appearing in the map are prisons. Most of people recognize prisons as very important and useful for our societies. We want as many of them as possible to keep criminals locked up and make neighborhoods safer. This is all true, I can’t argue that, but is this the only solution in improving public safety? Looking at the map we see bunch of prisons in the region. Only in Boston we can find 5 of them, which consume enormous amounts of money making big percentage in city’s spending. The question is, whether we could limit the spending on prisons and give piece of it for other solutions such as education. There should be always a hope for change because hope is a good thing and no good thing ever dies.
This map is a great source in understanding the public safety issues. There is no better image than a clear map with good information. This may help many organizations, groups, and individuals to take the right steps in solving problems, as it did for me.
We need the geographic information system to show people an issue in a little different way and hopefully bring improvement.
“Education spending” is the title of the second map. This map has been chosen because of mine and other’s, opinion that education has a great impact on public safety and can definitely reduce crime rate making our neighborhoods safer. According to two maps of Boston areas, one from 1992, another from ten years later there have not been many changes in education spending. As it was in 1992, the year 2002 shows us almost the same data with exception of rapidly growing suburb communities which spend over 55% of their budget on education needs. Less than 40% of the budget was spent in urban core communities. There were no changes in 10 years, not even 5% bringing the question, where does the money goes?
It’s a very complex and related issue. Comparing my two maps, the one with crime rate and the other with education I see a bone connecting these two categories. First of all, we all know how big a part of life education plays. We spend half of our time in schools. We learn from these places, we find help, support, and fun; in general, schools educate us. What if such important institutions don’t get enough support from government? Just look at the maps. We can see the connection. The urban core communities in proportion to lowest spending on education have the highest crime rate and have more prisons than suburbs. I don’t have to be a genius to realize where the money is spending for.
It’s hard to make a change, but harder still is wanting to make those changes and not being able to. It would be nice to have a government willing to change something instead putting all money in prisons. In my opinion, the situation won’t change as long such political priorities are taking place in our city. We need new paths of action to help our neighborhoods improve public safety.