By Anthony A. Braga,  Lisa M. Barao. Gregory Zimmerman,  Rod K. Brunson,  Andrew V. Papachristos, George Wood,  Chelsea Farrell

The City of Oakland, California, has long suffered from very high levels of serious violence. According to the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports, Oakland’s homicide rate (31.8 per 100,000) was almost 6.8 times higher than the national homicide rate (4.7 per 100,000) in 2012. That year, the City of Oakland engaged the California Partnership for Safe Communities (CPSC) to help design and implement a focused deterrence program to reduce serious gun violence. The CPSC collaborated with the Oakland Police Department (OPD) on ongoing problem analysis research to understand the underlying nature of gun violence in Oakland. The OPD led an interagency Ceasefire enforcement group comprised of federal, state, and county criminal justice agencies. The broader Oakland Ceasefire Partnership included the Mayor’s Office, social service agencies led by the Human Services Department, and community leaders from local organizations such as Oakland Community Organizations (OCO). The Oakland Ceasefire program closely followed the key elements of a focused deterrence Group Violence Reduction Strategy (GVRS). Briefly, GVRS programs seek to change offender behavior by understanding underlying crime‐producing dynamics and conditions that sustain recurring crime problems, and implementing a blended strategy of law enforcement, community mobilization, and social service actions. The Oakland Ceasefire program was fully implemented in early 2013. Between 2010 and 2017, total Oakland shooting victimizations peaked at 710 in 2011 (93 gun homicide victims and 617 non-fatal shooting victims) and decreased by 52.1 percent to a low of 340 in 2017 (63 gun homicide victims and 277 non-fatal shooting victims). The impact evaluation was designed to determine whether the Ceasefire intervention was associated with this steep decline in serious gun violence and assess how Ceasefire partners and community leaders perceived the implementation of the strategy.

Unpublished report, 2019.   113p.