Service Program to Take Aim at Crime

WASHINGTON — Reflecting a rising federal emphasis on anti-crime initiatives, the White House said Monday that its new national service program will concentrate on helping make American communities safer next summer.

The estimated 3,500 participants in the summer part of the 1994 national service program could perform such duties as joining in community policing, conducting crime prevention training for the elderly and children, helping clean up dangerous areas to return them to neighborhood use and counseling crime victims, Administration officials said.

“It was an idea formed after listening to the passion in the President’s Memphis speech last week,” said Eli Segal, president and chief of the new Corporation for National and Community Service, which will administer the national service program. “It’s a way of reinforcing the President’s commitment to public safety and a way of reinforcing that national service gets things done.”

The White House announcement followed earlier pleas by President Clinton for communities to become more engaged in dealing with crime and violence.

“There are some changes we can make from the outside in--that’s the job of the President and the Congress and the governors and the mayors and the social service agencies,” Clinton said in his appeal to black church leaders in Memphis earlier this month. “And then there are some changes we’re going to have to make from the inside out or the others won’t matter.”

National service, which has been described as a domestic Peace Corps, could help communities combat the sources of crime and violence from the inside out by involving young people in their own neighborhoods.

The concentration on community safety next summer will draw a spotlight to national service, Segal said, because crime is a top concern of the public, the President and the Congress.

But it also presents a significant risk for the new program, which has been ordered by Congress to show measurable results if it wants to receive future funding. Community service programs have proved their effectiveness in environmental, education and urban renewal projects but public safety is a relatively untested area.

In signing the National and Community Service and Trust Act in September, the President fulfilled a major campaign promise to help young people pay for education by serving their country. In 1994, 20,000 participants are to be engaged in full-time community service and will receive a low-wage salary and benefits in addition to awards of $4,725 each year of service to apply toward their education or training. Summer-only participants will receive smaller awards of $1,000.

Although the size of the summer program is small, some law enforcement experts said that the impact on communities will be significant.

“Getting these young adults involved will be a tremendous asset for crime prevention,” said Joseph Wright, executive director of the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives. “They can persuade other young adults not to follow criminal lifestyles.”

“I’ll take about 50 of them,” said Darrel Stephens, the police chief in St. Petersburg, Fla. He said he envisions national service participants organizing neighborhoods to work with police, walking the streets with beat cops, working in police stations so officers are free to patrol and being positive role models for children.