Prevention Strategies for Policing Gun Violence

• Published date: 01 November 2022
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/00027162231164481
• Author: Anthony A. Braga,Philip J. Cook,Stephen Douglas
• Date: 01 November 2022
• Subject Matter: The Efficacy of Interventions

158 ANNALS, AAPSS, 704, November 2022

DOI: 10.1177/00027162231164481

Prevention

Strategies for

Policing Gun

Violence

By

ANTHONY A. BRAGA,

PHILIP J. COOK,

and

STEPHEN DOUGLAS

1164481ANN THE ANNALS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMYPREVENTION STRATEGIES FOR POLICING GUN VIOLENCE

research-article2023

The police have the unique capacity to preempt and

deter violence and to reduce the use of firearms in

violent encounters. But overly aggressive policing tac-

tics have contributed to a fraught relationship with

low-income minority communities in which gun vio-

lence is heavily concentrated. Increased resources

should be devoted to policing gun violence, but efforts

of this sort must be targeted and disciplined. Effective

policing requires a focus on the places and people that

are at greatest risk; and there is a strong case for police

agencies to increase the resources devoted to investiga-

tions of all criminal shootings, not just homicides.

Successful policing of gun violence requires a produc-

tive working relationship with victims and their neigh-

bors, which can be facilitated through observing

community policing principles and respect for resi-

dents’ interests.

Keywords: gun violence; proactive policing; shoot-

ings; prevention; harm reduction

Introduction

Between 2019 and 2020, the U.S. national

homicide rate increased 29 percent, the largest

proportional increase on record. Almost all of

this increase was due to the surge in gun vio-

lence: the proportion of homicide victims killed

by gunshot has grown to 79 percent (Kegler

et al. 2022). In some cities, the homicide rate

Correspondence: abraga@upenn.edu

Anthony A. Braga is the Jerry Lee Professor of

Criminology and director of the Crime and Justice

Policy Lab at the University of Pennsylvania.

Philip J. Cook is the ITT/Sanford Professor Emeritus of

Public Policy and professor emeritus of economics at

Duke University.

Stephen Douglas is a research associate in the Crime

and Justice Policy Lab at the University of Pennsylvania

and a doctoral candidate in the School of Criminology

and Criminal Justice at Northeastern University.

PREVENTION STRATEGIES FOR POLICING GUN VIOLENCE 159

has returned to levels not seen since the crack cocaine–era peak of the early

1990s. Given the social costs of gun violence in heavily impacted jurisdictions, it

is reasonable to conclude that it is the most pressing crime problem (Cook and

Ludwig 2022), and reversing the recent surge in criminal shootings should be of

the highest priority to law enforcement.

The cost of gun violence can be measured by the toll of death and injury—five

victims are wounded, sometimes grievously, for every one killed (Barber, Cook

and Parker 2022)—but also by the consequences for the overall quality of life in

hard-hit communities. The psychological trauma of gun violence extends well

beyond immediate victims to those who witness or have reason to worry about

this threat (Sharkey 2018). A broad research literature documents how trauma

disrupts normal child development. From the community perspective, gun vio-

lence is a drag on economic development and property values; out-

migration is closely linked to the homicide rate (Cook and Ludwig 2000). Since

gun violence is so highly concentrated in low-income minority communities,

redressing these consequences is an imperative of any social justice agenda. Fully

55 percent of homicide victims are African American, the result of a victimization

rate nearly ten times as high as non-Hispanic Whites (Centers for Disease

Control and Prevention [CDC] 2022).

What is to be done to prevent gun violence? We argue here that the answer

must give a prominent role to the police. The police have a unique capacity to

prevent violence and deter the use of guns in violence. In many jurisdictions, that

capacity is underutilized or diluted by conflicting demands on police resources.

The evidence, reviewed here, suggests that much can be done to improve polic-

ing effectiveness, through better targeting and management of resources.

Of course, police agencies are imperfect instruments. Low-income minority

communities typically have a difficult relationship with the police, with residents

perceiving both abuse and neglect—both overpolicing and underpolicing (Braga,

Brunson, and Drakulich 2019; Brunson and Wade 2019; Chalfin et al. 2020). The

extreme version of abuse is cases in which the police shoot suspects in circum-

stances in which the shooting is unjustified and even criminal. While only about

one-quarter of law-enforcement-involved shootings involve African American

victims,1 it is those cases that have produced mass demonstrations and outrage—

reflecting the endemic distrust of the police. On the other hand, residents of

these communities also have reason to believe that the police are neglecting their

concerns. In this view, the police could gain control of the gun violence problem

if they chose to do so. The high rates of violence thus contribute to the belief that

the police simply do not care. The way forward for effective policing requires

navigating this complex terrain.

Our focus here is on making the police more effective in preventing gun vio-

lence, not because we believe that the police are the only answer, but because

their role in prevention is essential and has been misunderstood or doubted by

many commentators (Cook and Ludwig 2019a, 2019b). A common assertion is

that the police are not in the prevention business because they become involved

after the crime has already taken place. That view can be readily challenged, both

because it wrongly suggests that all police resources are focused on responding