SITE OVERVIEW ♦ PORTLAND | OREGON
Target Area: Albina • Population: 12,000
Fiscal Agent: Multnomah County District Attorney’s Office
Research Partner: Multnomah County Local Public Safety Coordinating Council
Crime Concerns: Gang-related violence, aggravated assaults, robberies, and other violent crimes
BCJI Funding Year: 2012 Planning & Enhancement
Neighborhood Profile
Located in the northeast section of Portland, the Albina neighborhood is the historic center of the city’s African American community which boomed as a result of industrial activities in the World War II era. However, the decline of Portland’s industrial base led to a lowering of Albina’s economic base. This created a variety of challenges, including crime. The target area is one of the centers of gang activity within Multnomah County as well as Portland. Half of all areas identified as high gang-crime areas in Portland can be found within the Albina neighborhood and there were dramatic increases in gang incidents leading up to the application for BCJI funding. The area is also prone to high levels of public order offenses, such as public drinking and drug use.
Planning Process
The Portland BCJI project was the result of an ongoing partnership between the Multnomah County District Attorney’s Office and local community groups, most notably the 11:45 group founded and supported by local faith based partners. Other partners included the Portland Police Bureau, Albina Safe Neighborhood Commission, Humboldt Neighborhood Association, Boise Neighborhood Association, Piedmont Neighborhood Association, Office of Youth Violence Prevention, Portland Service Coordination Team, Multnomah County Circuit Court, Multnomah County North Community Court, Office of Neighborhood Involvement, and the Public Safety Coordinating Council. This partnership combined existing community efforts with a program of focused prosecutions, enhanced bench probations, and mentorship programs for targeted offenders. Under the gang-related efforts, convictions resulted in specialized probation conditions that included geographic exclusions from the target neighborhood and a mentorship component. Other components included efforts to eliminate high volume single alcohol containers and drug paraphernalia sales from area stores, and efforts to provide social services that addressed underlying issues of addiction and homelessness for chronic street-level offenders.
Implementation Strategies
BCJI partners implemented a variety of research-based and innovative strategies to achieve the goals of reducing crime and creating neighborhood revitalization. Their efforts for each goal emphasized:
Crime reduction: The project Deputy District Attorney (DDA) aggressively reviewed and prosecuted all misdemeanor criminal cases involving designated gang members. In addition, specialized probation conditions, databases and probation-based geographic exclusions for targeted offenders, and a mentorship component for gang affiliates as a condition of probation were implemented.
Neighborhood revitalization: Efforts to revive the neighborhood included coordinating monthly meetings of community mentors, judges, law enforcement, attorneys, providing offenders a faith-based community mentor as a condition of their misdemeanor probation and enrolling them in a mentorship program, training neighborhood resident on program principles such as Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED), working with local grocery retailers to identify and remove paraphernalia and certain alcoholic beverages, and other various social service components.
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