Since the early 1990s, civic participation has been presented as an important resource for urban security policies in the context of community policing in the USA and municipal crime prevention in Germany. This work empirically addresses the question of whether participatory project forms have been able to establish themselves permanently in the field of security policy and whether they have had an impact on the public life of cities. The study empirically examines the situation of crime prevention committee work in twelve major cities in Germany and delves deeper into two case studies focusing on Berlin and Stuttgart. The situation in the USA is analyzed in detail through a case study of Chicago.