Voluntary Organizations and Crime Prevention

Voluntary, non-state and nonprofit organizations are commonplace in many regions as principal deliverers of services and programs to solve an array of social problems. From homelessness and poverty to human trafficking and youth and gang violence, voluntary organizations’ contribution is part of a broader ethos of “communities” and market-based solutions to urgent public problems. Often referred to as community-based organizations in the US-context, these voluntary agencies address people’s individual needs by developing services and increasing social, human, economic, and political capital (see “Community” in Oxford Bibliographies in Social Work). They consist of nongovernmental assemblages, foundations, charity groups, practitioners, and volunteers. A principal modality of community-based initiatives is to promote collective action against identified needs that replace, supplement, or extend functions of what had been the jurisdiction or obligation of the state. While serving this role, organizations often challenge, resist, or revise state policies, programs, or practices. In crime control and prevention, voluntary organizations are instrumental to justice system practices (see “Community-Based Justice Systems” in Oxford Bibliographies in Criminology). A frequent objective of voluntary organizations is preventing crime and delinquency (see “Delinquency and Crime Prevention” in Oxford Bibliographies in Criminology). Community-based groups work alongside or directly under government agencies through multi-agency partnerships, police-community collaborations, community courts, or several other collaborative ways. A feature of voluntary groups and organizations is that they are tailored to local conditions and local capacities. In some instances, they operate separately or in opposition to the state. Activists and those advocating for criminal justice reforms frequently work through or within voluntary organizations. Regardless of the political alignment, in this shift away from a moderately robust public sector to a nonprofit, nongovernmental, community-based voluntary sector, these organizations are where much of this occurs. As the state increasingly retreats from directly working against social problems, voluntary or community-based organizations have become vital to patching up the frayed social fabric of neglected neighborhoods in late modern neoliberal times.