Community‐driven violence reduction programs
DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1745-9133.2011.00763.x |
Author | Jeremy M. Wilson,Steven Chermak |
Date | 01 November 2011 |
Published date | 01 November 2011 |
RESEARCH ARTICLE
COMMUNITY-DRIVEN VIOLENCE
REDUCTION PROGRAMS
Community-driven violence reduction
programs
Examining Pittsburgh’s One Vision One Life
Jeremy M. Wilson
Steven Chermak
Michigan State University
Despite some evidence of reductions (FBI, 2009a), violent crime remains among
the most important social problems affecting the quality of life in communities
throughout the United States. Aggregate reductions also mask the variability in
violence among and within communities. The total number of persons annually victimized
by violence remains high. In 2008, more than 9,000 persons were killed with guns (FBI,
2009b). In 2006, 71,000 persons suffered nonfatal gunshot wounds, and 2.1 million persons
sustained an injury requiring emergency-room treatment as a result of a violent incident
(CDC, 2010). Overall, more than six million individuals were victimized by crimes of
violence in 2006 (BJS, 2007). One comprehensive review of gun research indicated that
firearms play a significant role in violence and that young persons are particularly vulnerable
to violence and death from firearms (Wellford, Pepper, and Petrie, 2005).
The impact of violent crime on individuals, families, and communities is substantial.
Some estimates indicate that the annual costs of gun violence are approximately $100 billion
(Cook and Ludwig, 2000). The annual costs of all personal victimization by violence,
including intangible losses such as pain, suffering, and reduced quality of life, are more than
$450 billion (NIJ, 1996). This figure is dated and likely to be significantly higher today.
This research was supported by Grant 2006-IJ-CX-0030 awarded by the National Institute of Justice, Office of
Justice Programs, U.S. Department of Justice, and by the Richard King Mellon Foundation, and it was
conducted under the auspices of the Safety and Justice Program within RAND Infrastructure, Safety, and
Environment (ISE). The points of view or opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not
necessarily represent the official position of the National Institute of Justice, U.S. Department of Justice, or the
Richard King Mellon Foundation. Direct correspondence to Jeremy M. Wilson, School of Criminal Justice,
Michigan State University, 560 Baker Hall, East Lansing, MI 48824 (e-mail: jwilson@msu.edu).
DOI:10.1111/j.1745-9133.2011.00763.x C2011 American Society of Criminology 993
Criminology & Public Policy rVolume 10 rIssue 4
Research Article Community-Driven Violence Reduction Programs
Indeed, Cook and Ludwig (2000: 138) suggested that “the costs of violence are so greatthat
effective interventions essentially pay for themselves.”
The extent of violence and its impact highlight a critical need to develop and implement
effective programs to reduce it. Manycommunities have initiated a wide range of responses to
violent crime, firearm-related violence, and drug crimes. These interventions cover a wide
range of approaches, including public health, media publicity, technology, community-
driven, and criminal justice initiatives. Scholars have produced an overwhelming number
of studies on these initiatives using data and methods of evaluation that range greatly in
quality. Although previous evaluations indicate that there are certain types of strategies
and specific programs that are promising, there is still a great need for additional critical
evaluations. As the National Institute of Justice (NIJ) (2002: 19) noted, after compiling
and analyzing a representative selection of NIJ research on gangs, there remains “a need
to know ‘what works’...too little is k nown about the relative merits of comprehensive,
broad-based interventions.” More recently, Weisburd and Neyroud (2011: 11) reiterated
that, “what is most striking about policing is that we know little about what works, in what
contexts, and at what costs.” Moreover, most evaluations of gang interventions examine
enforcement strategies that are primarily implemented by law enforcement organizations.
In short, a critical need remains for researchers to evaluate promising strategies rigorously,
to broaden understanding of promising strategies by replicating them and their evaluations
at other sites, to identify why and what about such programs work, and to assess the impact
of nonenforcement-related strategies.
In this article, we assess a Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania–based violence-prevention strategy
known as One Vision One Life (or One Vision). In 2003, Pittsburgh had a record-setting
70 homicides, a 49% increase over 2002, with the homicide rate that year increasing from
14 per 100,000 to 22. The homicide rate in Pittsburgh in recent years has been higher than
that elsewhere in the nation and, since 2001, than in other cities with 250,000 to 500,000
residents. This increase in violence rallied a coalition of community leaders who formed
the Allegheny County Violence Prevention Initiative, which became One Vision One Life.
Real increases in certain types of crime, as observed in Pittsburgh, as well as perceptions
that a type of crime is “getting out of control,” can often lead communities and their
leaders to adopt well-meaning but not always well-considered responses. One Vision staff,
however,planned their response carefully by examining systematically the nature of violence,
considering best practices from other communities across the nation, coordinating with key
community partners, communicating with law enforcement, and adopting a strategy they
felt was appropriate for responding to the problem and consistent with the goals of the
initiative.
Borrowing aspects from several promising evidence-based models, One Vision seeks
to prevent violence using a problem-solving, data-driven model to inform how community
organizations and outreach teams respond to homicide incidents. It also uses street-level
intelligence to intervene in escalating disputes and seeks to place youth in appropriate social
994 Criminology & Public Policy
Wilson and Chermak
programs. One Vision shares information with law-enforcement officials, but it is truly a
grassroots effort. Its evaluation has practical and theoretical value.
This assessment of One Vision builds on prior research, and policy makers and scholars
should be interested in the findings for several reasons. First,although there is a rich literature
evaluating various types of violence-reduction strategies, there have been few quality studies
of community-initiated actions that could be thought of as an alternative to strictly an
enforcement strategy. Most evaluations have focused on interventions led by the criminal
justice community,but the initiative discussed in this article was designed to be representative
of evidence-based practices that have been shown to work from public health, social services,
and criminal justice disciplines. Second, a critical element of this strategy is to involve non–
criminal-justice personnel, usually former gang members, in mediating potential violent
conflicts. Although the involvement of “street workers” has been part of other well-known
violence reduction strategies like Boston’s Lever Pulling initiative, few studies are available
and some raise concerns about their effectiveness (see Klein, 1971). We discuss these studies
in the context of our results. Third, the intervention is modeled after (but does not mirror)
a similar strategy that has been implemented in Chicago, Baltimore, and several other cities.
In fact, personnel involved in the Pittsburgh program visited Chicago in late 2004 and early
2005 and attempted to model the intervention and their data collection after CeaseFire
in Chicago. Fourth, this type of intervention has been evaluated carefully in Chicago and
Baltimore (see Skogan, Hartnett, Bump, and Dubois, 2008; Webster, Vernick, and Mendel,
2009), but an additional evaluation of this type of intervention can yield new lessons about
the promise and possible pitfalls of such a strategy. Exploring the program’s effectiveness
relative to variation in implementation, local dynamics, and community characteristics is
helpful for assessing the likelihood that this program could succeed elsewhere. Such lessons
would be a useful resource for policy makers, practitioners, communities, and researchers.
Finally, the results in this article are not only different that what was observed in the
other studies, but it seems that this program led to an increase in violence in the target
neighborhoods. We discuss the potential reasons for these increases and the implications
for these types of strategies.
Literature Review
In this literature review,we review first the literature relevant to understanding the potential
impacts of the model. Specifically,we examine research on problem-solving, street workers,
and community outreach initiatives. Second, we review the small number of studies that
examined the impacts of programs designed similarly.
Problem Solving, Homicide Incident Reviews, and Collaborative Partnerships
One of the most significant developments for initiating change within criminal justice
organizations is the application and adoption of problem-solving approaches. The theory
behind the approach has been adopted widely and used successfully in multiagency
Volume 10 rIssue 4 995
To continue reading
Request your trial