Violence reduction playbook

Combating violence is one of the most complex and visible challenges cities face. Policy is an important tool to curbing crime, but choosing the right strategy revolves around many questions:

What has worked in other cities? How expensive is implementation? Is a place-based approach better than a people-based approach? What stakeholder partners are needed? How well does a policy balance community safety with that community’s values?

The Metro Ideas Project created a rubric comparing eight anti-crime policies. Our violence reduction playbook reflects existing research and interviews with criminal justice experts across the U.S.

Focused deterrence

Focused deterrence is a suite of crime reduction actions with a common goal: find the most violent offenders and stop them. Beginning with Boston’s Operation Ceasefire in the 1990s, focused deterrence strategies promote intelligence-based, responsive policing and lifelines for those affected by violence.

It utilizes police intelligence to identify the small percentage of people who commit disproportionately high levels of crime. These individuals are then brought together into call-in meetings. During a call-in, law enforcement informs offenders they will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law, often with judicial priority for any offense, if they do not stop violent activities. The speech is followed up by a community member asking for a stop to the violence. This method has grown over the past two decades, and it continues to lead the charge of smart policing policy.

Cure Violence

Cure Violence started in Chicago. Dr. Gary Slutkin realized there were similarities between violence and contagious diseases. By treating violence as a public health issue, the strategy attempts to address those at risk and treat those affected through a network of volunteers, mediators and city officials. When violence is treated in this way, they argue, it creates a societal change among the affected area and reverses an epidemic of violent crime.

Disorder policing

Disorder policing (aka hot-spot policing) uses data to identify and commit more resources to high crime areas. These efforts are directed toward reducing open crimes like drug dealing and public intoxication, as well as improving parts of high-crime areas that may be neglected — like poor street lighting, run-down buildings and abandoned vehicles.

This method can also include more aggressive enforcement measures, including vehicle searches and stop-and-frisk. The category applies to a broad spectrum of measures, but it is universally understood that best practices are based on data-driven resource allocation, neighborhood revitalization and protection for those in the neighborhood. Stop-and-frisk and other overly aggressive tactics have a history of encouraging racial profiling and police violence and are not recommended.

School-based programs

School-based programs attempt to address root causes of violence before it happens. While other strategies share similar goals, school-based programs encourage positive conflict resolution skills and students to stay in school. They teach that violence is not a problem-solving tool and the value of an education.

Prison programs

Prison-based programs attempt to reduce the likelihood of recidivism. While numbers vary widely between studies, 30 to 60 percent of prisoners will go back to jail. Earning a GED diploma or other high school equivalency are one common tactic. Some prisons partner with community colleges for secondary degrees or provide industrial certification and vocational classes. Some prisons also offer counseling and cognitive behavioral therapy.

Minimum sentencing laws

Mandatory minimum sentencing laws have existed in the U.S. since the 18th century. Today there is an extensive rubric of penalties for hundreds of crimes. The foundational philosophy behind minimum sentencing is deterrence theory, which assumes a consideration of potential benefits versus potential costs and the likelihood of being caught by every person who commits a crime.

Experts debate whether deterrence theory works, but it informs the thinking behind minimum sentencing. It assumes that the worse the punishment, the less likely a crime will be committed. While credited with an increase in the U.S. prison population, there has also been a large national decrease in crime since the 1980s.

Civil gang injunctions

Civil gang injunctions originated in California in the ’80s. They are a legal tool to create a civil nuisance abatement against gangs in a prescribed area. They list gangs and gang members within a specific geographic area and prohibit them from associating with each other or committing crimes. While popular on the West Coast and in some parts of the South, they have mixed results due to the large differences in how gangs operate.