NOTE: This resource has been borrowed from Gregory Saville of the University of New Haven The Center for Advanced Public Safety Research . Please contact Mr. Saville directly should you have any questions, comments or feedback about this resource or if you would like permission to use this resource.

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Introduction 

The Civitas Model represents one way to create a neighborhood capacity for community safety. The ingredients for safe and healthy neighborhoods are not a mystery. They have similar characteristics. They have a full range of citizen participation (Saville and Clear, 2000; Berry, Portney and Thomson, 1993), community dialogue and partnerships on important issues (Barton, 1993; Bazemore and Cole, 1994). They also have a measure of cohesiveness between residents and groups (Schorr, 1997; Brower, 1996). They have a distinct local culture and a diverse population with ample opportunities for positive interactions (Adams and Goldbard, 2001; Langdon, 1994; Spicer and Prince, 2000; Aberley, 1994). They also have a local capacity to reduce opportunities and motives for crimes and assorted problems (Gilligan, 2001; Wekerle and Whitzman, 1995). These are the kinds of characteristics the people within a safe neighborhood need to develop and cultivate. The term to describe the combination of all these characteristics is Civitas.

Civitas, the ancient Greek word referring to concepts of civil behavior and civic responsibility, is the ideal model for helping communities determine what services they require and how to get them. It emerged from combining existing research on community safety along with the professional experiences of it’s three founders; Gerry Cleveland, former police officer, high school principal and consultant in youth violence prevention; Ross McLeod, former university professor, founder of Intelligarde: The Law Enforcement Company and author of Parapolice: A Revolution in Law Enforcement; and Gregory Saville, research professor in criminology, former police officer and urban planner, and director of the CAPSR consulting center at The University of New Haven.

Civitas is a four-step model, not unlike some existing problem-solving and crime prevention models. The difference in this case is that Civitas is not a specific crime reduction approach. It is a tool to help a neighborhood define a crime profile and then tailor a set of preventive strategies to deal with its own problems.