Community engagement is a way of collaborating and communicating with communities. It prioritizes equity, meaningful participation, and trust.

Thick engagement is a process that occurs over time. It is led by an impartial person trained in facilitating and includes discussion around issues such as addressing equity and differences, problem-solving, and generating ideas.

Participation

Community engagement is based on the idea that every person who wants to can and should participate in decision making that affects their lives. This democratic model allows communities to share in the ownership and realization of sustainable visions for their future.

Participation in community engagement can be difficult for people from marginalized communities, who may not have access to resources or power. However, these groups can have a big impact on social change, and they should be considered in all engagement efforts.

To identify key stakeholders, use specialized software tools to analyze the structure of your community network. This process, known as social network analysis (SNA), helps you determine who are the most influential nodes in your community and tailor your outreach strategies accordingly.

Collaboration

Community engagement is a process of working collaboratively with groups of people affiliated by geographic proximity, special interest, or similar situations to identify and address issues affecting their well-being. It includes an ongoing dialogue with a diverse range of stakeholders and a commitment to building trust.

Many communities struggle with equity challenges, such as unequal access to resources and systems of power that exacerbate inequities. This can make it difficult for organizations to engage in meaningful ways with community members.

In addition, some agencies use community engagement as a public relations strategy, asking for input mainly for optics without communicating how that input influences decisions and actions. This type of engagement can cause community distrust. To build a stronger foundation for community engagement, agencies should focus on building relationships and collaboration over time.

Empowerment

Empowerment is a process through which people develop autonomy and self-determination. It involves gaining skills and resources to address community issues. It can also include challenging societal norms and structures that oppress individuals and communities.

Embracing community engagement can empower your pretrial system to improve incarceration practices and build relationships with your local communities. However, a lack of resources or misguided assumptions can limit the effectiveness of your engagement efforts.

Often, the term community engagement is interchangeable with citizen participation or public participation. But community engagement is more specific, embracing the democratic idea that intentional interactions between communities and government organizations can – and do – influence policy decisions. It builds and sustains partnerships between community members and government entities into the future. This is a different approach than conventional engagement, which typically occurs in large settings where officials and citizens are physically separated (often behind a podium) from one another.

Trust

Those who participate in community engagement are often vulnerable to distrust. They need to trust that their energy and scarce time won’t be wasted, that their needs will be prioritized, and that their agency will be respected. Building trust takes time. It requires open, honest communication and attention to community’s individual customs and cultures. It also requires transparency and the acknowledgment of harms and missteps in the past.

One way to build trust is by recruiting “community champions,” who are familiar with a research project and can facilitate recruitment and introductions. They can also help ensure that research is accessible and understandable to a diverse population. Additionally, researchers should be transparent about their own motivations and limitations, to prevent rumors of hidden agendas or ulterior motives.

Transparency

Community engagement is a process that empowers people to influence decisions that affect them. It also builds relationships and trust between communities and government organizations.

Thick engagement allows large numbers of people to participate in facilitated small-group discussions that explore a range of options and policy choices and allow for exploration of trade-offs. Unlike thin engagement, thick engagement is time intensive and may last from several hours to months.

The challenges to effective community engagement include racial equity, communicating the criminal legal system’s commitment to public service and building trust with communities that are often distrustful of government agencies. These obstacles are even more pronounced in communities that face structural inequality, like poverty and gentrification. These communities need more than just listening, but meaningful collaboration and partnership.