Non-police community guardians can effectively reduce crime by creating relationships in urban disorder hotspots, according to a study. Forrest Stuart and colleagues evaluated the success of Urban Alchemy, San Francisco’s civilianized public safety practitioner program, in reducing crime. Public safety practitioners are not police and are not armed. Rather, they are individuals with experience with poverty, homelessness, substance use, and the criminal legal system, who seek to defuse tensions, help those in the throes of behavioral health crises, and curb disorder. The goal is to intervene early through informal means and prevent circumstances from escalating to the point of warranting a call to the police. The authors compared crime rates in the Tenderloin, Mid-Market, and South of Market (SOMA) neighborhoods in San Francisco when safety practitioners were present and when they were absent, both by comparing the times before and after the program began and by comparing crime rates during and after practitioner work hours, controlling for time-of-day effects. The authors also compared intersections where practitioners were posted to intersections without practitioner presence. Overall, the authors found significant reductions in behavioral health-related and total crime in areas with practitioners compared to areas without practitioners. Reductions in drug crime in areas with practitioners were modest, but reductions in behavioral health-related incidents were strong and consistent. There was a slight reduction in violent crime and no change in property crime. According to the authors, civilianized safety interventions reduce crime—and help tackle root causes of disorder by providing a consistent relationship and referrals to services, accomplishing with care what society more often seeks to achieve with enforcement.
PNAS Nexus
Civilianized safety practitioners reduce crime and disorder: Evidence from a quasiexperimental evaluation in San Francisco
1-Sep-2026