A project of: CENTER FOR CRIME PREVENTION AND CONTROL. Proven strategies for reducing violent crime and imprisonment

Transcription

1 A project of: CENTER FOR CRIME PREVENTION AND CONTROL Proven strategies for reducing violent crime and imprisonment 2

2 The National Network for Safe Communities supports cities around the country to apply and advance two crime control strategies that have been shown to Reduce violent crime Eliminate overt drug markets Minimize arrests and incarceration Increase police legitimacy Strengthen communities 3

3 Who we are The National Network for Safe Communities a project of the Center for Crime Prevention and Control at John Jay College of Criminal Justice is an alliance of cities dedicated to advancing proven strategies to combat violent crime, eliminate overt drug markets, and reduce incarceration. The National Network recognizes that both law enforcement and the community must play a critical role in addressing these problems but that neither can do it alone. Therefore, its strategies combine the best of law enforcement and community-driven approaches to dramatically improve public safety. More than 60 American cities are currently actively implementing the National Network s two related but distinct strategies: the Group Violence Reduction Strategy (GVRS), first implemented as Operation Ceasefire in Boston in the mid-1990s; and the Drug Market Intervention (DMI), also known as the High Point Model, after the North Carolina city that pioneered it in Evidence of the efficacy of both approaches has mounted steadily over the years as more and more cities put the strategies to the test. 1 Most recently, a Campbell Collaboration Systematic Review 2 the gold standard in assessing the body of evidence in social science interventions found strong empirical evidence for the effectiveness of the strategies to addressing serious violent crime and overt drug markets. 1

4 How we work The National Network for Safe Communities was created by the Center for Crime Prevention and Control at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City an internationally recognized leader in scholarly research on criminal justice. Center Director David Kennedy co-chairs the National Network together with Jeremy Travis, President of John Jay College. It is guided by an Executive Board and a Leadership Group, a smaller group of key jurisdictions working together to address the core issues of its mission. The Center coordinates the National Network s efforts by working in close partnership with law enforcement, community leaders, and service providers in member sites to sustain, enhance and evaluate their local work. National Network member sites and the Center also work closely with other crime reduction experts at Harvard University, Yale University, the University of Cincinnati, Rutgers University, Michigan State University, the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, the California Partnership for Safe Communities, and others. Image: Community leaders speaking at a call-in in High Point, NC. 2

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6 The problem High levels of violent crime, overt drug dealing, and imprisonment strain our most vulnerable communities. 4

7 The levels of violence in America are unacceptable. Amid the recent good news about a decline in the national crime rate, violent crime in certain neighborhoods of many American cities remains at appallingly high levels. Some 18,000 people die from homicide in America each year, at an average rate of four per 100,000. Among young men of color living in high-crime neighborhoods, the risk of becoming a homicide victim rises to an astonishing annual risk of 1/ Homicide is the leading cause of death among black men ages 15 to Between 2000 and 2007, the gun homicide rate for black men under the age of 17 increased by 43 percent; the gun homicide rate for men over the age of 25 increased by 27 percent 5. Thirteen major American cities continue to have homicide rates greater than 20 per 100,000, with many smaller cities suffering higher rates. Overall violent crime rates exceed 1,000 incidents per 100,000 residents for more than a third of all major American cities. 6 The realities of open-air drug markets are unacceptable. In many cities most troubled neighborhoods, drug dealers and drug buyers have taken over the streets, creating fear and disorder that forces residents to stay in their homes. These overt drug markets are violent and volatile, undermining community safety and inhibiting local economic development. Almost invariably located in poor, minority, disadvantaged communities, these markets cause and facilitate a range of severe direct and indirect harms. They ease initiation into drug use and support addiction; they draw local youth into the drug trade; they attract drive-through buyers into the neighborhood; they create attractive targets for armed robbers; they spur the creation of loose drug crews, who then feud with each other over turf and other issues; they lead to the acquisition and use of firearms; they encourage robbery, burglary, and other crimes by addicts; they lead to the loss of control of public space; they drive down property values, drive out businesses, and lead many residents who can to leave; and they create pro-drug, anti-school, and anti-work norms amongst youth. 5

8 The levels of incarceration in America are unacceptable. In 1970, about 250,000 people were incarcerated in prisons in the United States. Today, U.S. prisons and jails hold more than 2.3 million people as a result of the nation s enforcement focus. 7 This eightfold increase in the nation s incarceration rate has had a devastating effect on the same minority communities that are living with excessively high crime rates. African-Americans constitute 13 percent of the population but 39 percent of state and federal prison inmates. 8 9 One in three black men will serve a felony prison sentence over the course of his lifetime, and more young black men have served prison time than performed military service or earned college degrees. 10 One in nine black children has a parent in prison, and children with an incarcerated father are six times more likely to be expelled from school than other children. 11 One in eight black men can t vote because of a felony conviction, and much other permanent damage is done to schools, marriage, employment and earnings as a result of our excessive use of incarceration. 12 Our most vulnerable neighborhoods are given a false choice between lower crime rates and fewer arrests. Prison expansion has been driven particularly by violent crime and drug enforcement policies. Convictions for violent crimes accounted for 60 percent of the growth in the size of the U.S. state prison population from 2000 through 2008, 13 and over 50 percent of people currently in federal prison, and 20 percent in state prison, are incarcerated for drug offenses. 14 Since the late 1970s, the number of people incarcerated in state prison on drug offenses more than tripled. 15 The tensions between police and minority communities are unacceptable. Police and residents of minority neighborhoods too often distrust one another and carry profound misunderstandings about each other. These fraught relationships derive from America s very real and appalling racial history but are also the result of the very stark but largely unintended consequences of recent criminal justice policy, in particular the War on Drugs. They have led to rich narratives developing within both the African- American and law enforcement communities that blame the other for what is happening. The African-American community often sees police as uninterested in protecting them and even as a deliberate racist oppressor that locks up its young men and fails to keep it safe. Law enforcement believes that the community tolerates violent crime and open-air drug dealing because it is corrupt or too broken to stand up against it. Each side s perceptions, and the resulting narratives, are entirely plausible and make sense when viewed from one side or the other but both are wrong. They undermine community norms against crime and for the law, and prevent any possibility of meaningful partnership. What is true is that both sides deeply desire public safety but core misunderstandings block each from shifting towards this common goal. 6

9 Image: Q. Sakamaki Homicide is the leading cause of death among black men aged 15 to 34. 7

10 Strategies for Change The National Network strategies combine the best of law enforcement and community-driven approaches to create powerful, effective and resource-neutral solutions to violent crime and overt drug markets. It s grandma laying down the law, backed up by the feds. 8

11 The Group Violence Reduction Strategy (GVRS) The strategy, sometimes referred to as Operation Ceasefire after its original implementation in Boston in the mid-1990s, recognizes that violence in troubled neighborhoods is caused predominantly by a remarkably small and active number of people locked in group dynamics on the street. The internal dynamics of these groups, cliques or crews and the honor code of the street drive violence between them and among their individual members. The individuals that comprise these groups typically constitute less than 0.5 percent of a city s population. GVRS has repeatedly demonstrated that violence can be dramatically reduced when community members ministers, street outreach workers, members of neighborhood associations, ex-offenders, and others with positive influence over street groups join together with law enforcement and social service providers in a partnership to directly engage with these groups and clearly communicate: (1) a credible moral message against violence from key community leaders; (2) a credible message about the consequences of further violence from law enforcement; and (3) a genuine offer of help from social service providers for those who want it. A key moment in implementing GVRS is a call-in, or a face-to-face meeting between group members and the strategy partners, that is repeated as necessary. The partnership delivers the following central messages at the meeting: that the violence is wrong and has to stop; that the community needs group members alive, out of prison, and with their loved ones; that help is available to all who would accept it; and that any future violence will be met with clear, predictable, and certain consequences. The partnership must engage with the groups in the long term for violence reductions to be sustained. The Drug Market Intervention (DMI) This strategy, first demonstrated in 2004 in High Point, North Carolina (and often referred to as the High Point Model ), is designed to close neighborhood drug markets permanently. Moving drug market by drug market in any particular city, this strategy identifies street-level dealers; arrests violent offenders; suspends cases for non-violent dealers; and brings together drug dealers, their families, law enforcement, service providers and community leaders for a meeting that makes clear the dealing has to stop and the market is now closed. The partnership delivers the following central messages clearly and directly: the community cares for the offenders but rejects their conduct, help is available, and renewed dealing will result in immediate sanctions through the activation of any existing cases. Police-Community Reconciliation Both strategies have at their core a process of truth telling and police-community reconciliation. This term describes law enforcement partners and communities directly engaging with one another in order to dismantle the core misunderstandings that keep both sides from moving towards their shared goal of improving public safety. The process typically initiated by the police chief and initially involving small one-on-one meetings with community figures that expand to larger groups in the run-up to strategy implementation allows both sides to shift simultaneously. As a result of this process, law enforcement gains legitimacy in the eyes of the community, the community is freed to set its own public safety standards, and enforcement actions can be kept to a minimum. 16 9

12 Results The National Network strategies have been deployed in more than 60 cities from Los Angeles to Providence, from Chicago to Nashville over almost 20 years. A recent Campbell Collaboration Systematic Review of the strategies, and others related to them, concluded that there is now strong empirical evidence for their crime prevention effectiveness. Individual strategy effects were significant: Group Violence Reduction Strategy 63% reduction in youth homicide 17 Boston (MA), Operation Ceasefire 44% reduction in gun assaults 20 Lowell (MA) Project Safe Neighborhoods 42% reduction in gun homicide 18 Stockton Operation Peacekeeper 34% reduction in homicide 21 Indianapolis (IN), Indianapolis ViolenceReduction Partnership 37% reduction in homicide 19 Chicago (IL), Project Safe Neighborhoods 41% reduction in gang-member involved homicide 22 Cincinnati (OH), Cincinnati Initiative to Reduce Violence Drug Market Intervention 44 56% reduction in Part 1 UCR crime in 3 out of 4 DMI neighborhoods; 4 74% reduction in drug offenses in all 4 neighborhoods 23 High Point DMIs 55% reduction in drug offenses 24 Nashville DMI 22% reduction in non-violent offenses 25 Rockford DMI 10

13 Image: Courtesy of the University of North Carolina at Greensboro Safer streets Improving police legitimacy frees communities to set their own public safety standards. 11

14 Sources 1 Dozens of cities around the country implemented variations of Operation Ceasefire under the Strategic Approaches to Community Safety (SACSI) and Project Safe Neighborhoods (PSN) initiatives, including a highly effective intervention with individual parolees in Chicago (see: Papachristos, A. V., Meares, T., & Fagan, J. (2007). Attention Felons: Evaluating Project Safe Neighborhoods in Chicago. Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, 4 (2) ) The DMI was replicated in several dozen other cities with support from the Department of Justice. 2 Braga, A., Weisburd, D. L. (2012). The Effects of Pulling Levers Focused Deterrence Strategies on Crime. Campbell Systematic Reviews. DOI: /csr Klofas, J.M., Delaney C., & Smith, T. (2007, November). Strategic Approaches to Community Safety Initiative (SACSI) in Rochester, NY National Criminal Justice Reference Service 4 Center for Disease Control and Prevention. Retrieved from BlackMales2006.pdf 5 Fox, J.A.; Swatt, M.L. (2008). The Recent Surge in Homicides involving Young Black Males and Guns: Time to Reinvest in Prevention and Crime Control. Boston, MA: Northeastern University 6 Federal Bureau of Investigations (n.d.). Retrieved from gov/ucr/ucr.htm 7 Key Facts. Bureau of Justice Statistics (n.d.).retrieved from gov/index.cfm?ty=tp&tid=1#key_facts 8 Humes, Karen R.; Jones, Nicholas A; & Ramirez, Roberto R. (May 2010). Overview of Race and Hispanic Origin: 2010, U.S. Census Bureau. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Commerce, Economics and Statistics Administration, p Guerion, P., Harrison, P.M., Sabol, W.J. (2011). Prisoners in Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics. Retrieved from index.cfm?ty=pbdetail&iid= Pettit, B., Western, B Mass Imprisonment and the Life Course: Race and Class Inequality in U.S. Incarceration. American Sociological Review 69: Mumola, C.J. (2000). Incarcerated Parents and their Children. Bureau of Justice Statistics. NCJ Western, B., Pettit, B. (2010) Collateral Costs: Incarceration s Effect on Economic Mobility. Pew Charitable Trusts Economic Mobility Project, Washington DC. 13 West, H.C., Sabol, W.J., Greenman, S.J. (2010). Prisoners in Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics. Retrieved from content/pub/pdf/p09.pdf 14 Guerion, P., Harrison, P.M., Sabol, W.J. (2011). Prisoners in Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics. Retrieved from index.cfm?ty=pbdetail&iid= Bureau of Justice Statistics (n.d). Retrieved from content/glance/drug.cfm need correct source/data 16 Meares, T. (2009). The Legitimacy of Police Among Young African-American Men Marquette Law Review, 92 (4) Braga, A. A., Kennedy, D.M., Waring, E.J., & Piehl, A.M. (2001). Problem- Oriented Policing, Deterrence, and Youth Violence: An Evaluation of Boston s Operation Ceasefire. Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, 38 (3) Braga, A. A. (2008). Pulling Levers: Focused Deterrence Strategies and the Prevention of Gun Homicide. Journal of Criminal Justice, 36 (4) Meares, T., Papachristos, A.V., & Fagan, J. (2009, January). Homicide and Gun Violence in Chicago: Evaluation and Summary of the Project Safe Neighborhoods Program. Project Safe Neighborhoods Research Brief. 20 Braga, A. A., Pierce, G. L., McDevitt J., Bond, B. J., & Cronin S. (2008). The strategic prevention of gun violence among gang-involved offenders. Justice Quarterly, 25, McGarrell, E.F., Chermak, S., Wilson, J.M., & Corsaro, N. (2006). Reducing Homicide through a Lever- Pulling Strategy. Justice Quarterly, 23 (2) Engel, R.S., Tillyer, M.S., Corsaro, N. (2011): Reducing Gang Violence Using Focused Deterrence: Evaluating the Cincinnati Initiative to Reduce Violence (CIRV), Justice Quarterly, DOI: / Forthcoming: Graves, K. N., Rulison, K., Hunt, E.D., Sumner, M., Frabutt, J.M., Shelton, T.L., DiLuca, K., & Chiu, K. Officially Off the Market: Evaluation of a Pulling Levers Approach to Eliminating Open-Air Drug Markets in High Point, North Carolina. 24 Corsaro, N., McGarrell, E. F. (2009). An Evaluation of the Nashville Drug Market Initiative (DMI) Pulling Levers Strategy. Drug Market Intervention Working Paper. School of Criminal Justice Michigan State University. Manuscript submitted for publication. 25 Forthcoming: Corsaro, N., Brunson, R.K., McGarrell, E.F. Problem-Oriented Policing and Open-Air Drug Markets: Examining the Rockford Pulling Levers Deterrence Strategy. Crime and Delinquency 12

15 Contact us Please use the contact details below to speak with staff at the Center for Crime Prevention and Control about the National Network and its work. In addition, a number of expert advisers around the nation can field inquiries about the National Network strategies in general and about the work done in their respective jurisdiction. Center staff will be happy to connect you with them following your initial inquiry. National Network for Safe Communities CENTER FOR CRIME PREVENTION AND CONTROL 524 West 59th Street New York, NY Tel: infonnsc@jjay.cuny.edu 4

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