St. Helena Parish Sheriff, Nathaniel Williams is proud to announce our participation in the Neighborhood Watch Program.  Neighborhood Watch Since 1972, the USAonWatch-Neighborhood Watch Program (housed within the National Sheriffs’ Association) has worked to unite law enforcement agencies, private organizations, and individual citizens in a nation-wide effort to reduce crime and improve local communities. The success of the program has established Neighborhood Watch as the nation’s premier crime prevention and community mobilization program.  Visible signs of the program are seen throughout American on street signs, window decals, community block parties and service projects. The roots of neighborhood crime prevention, including Neighborhood Watch, can be traced back to the Chicago School and its focus on the relationship between the social environment of neighborhood and crime. From the earliest studies on communities and crime, to much more recent works, research has shown that there is a link between areas with high crime rates and neighborhoods characterized by a mix of economics and ethnicity, high levels of population turnover and death, and other physical and economic conditions. Most of this line of research has concluded that crime is higher in "socially disorganized areas" marked by weakened informal control due to an erosion of shared norms. Since law enforcement cannot be in all areas at one time, informal control of residents is necessary if that community is to experience low crime rates. When neighborhoods become disorganized, the people and institutions that once assisted in maintaining standards of behavior no longer hold such status, resulting in a breakdown in informal control. This, in turn, produces high crime rates. Neighborhood Watch is one of the oldest and best-known crime prevention concepts in North America. In the late 1960s, an increase in crime heightened the need for a crime prevention initiative focused on residential areas and involving local citizens. The National Sheriffs’ Association (NSA) responded, creating the National Neighborhood Watch Program in 1972 to assist citizens and law enforcement. For more information and how to get a program started in your community, click here LinkClick.aspx