By Ruth Moyer

This evaluation suggests “the current GVI implementation in Philadelphia has been associated with significant reductions in group member involved firearm violence. The continued effectiveness of the implementation will likely depend on a range of factors, including necessary adjustments to evolving group activity and firearm violence.” Between January 2020 and May 2022, at least 1,147 Group Member-Involved shootings have occurred in Philadelphia. Approximately one out of every five of these shootings results in a death (23.1%). The current implementation of Group Violence Intervention (GVI) in Philadelphia has produced significant reductions in Group Member-Involved (GMI) firearm violence at the group-unit level during the study period, January 2020 to May 2022. It has also produced significant reductions in GMI firearm violence at the census tract-level during the study period. Importantly, due to COVID-19-related restrictions on public gatherings, the current GVI implementation in Philadelphia departed from the usual call-in meeting model. Instead, Mobile CallIn Team (MCIT) custom notification visits provided the primary means of GVI implementation. Given the results indicating a reduction in firearm violence, a GVI implementation through MCIT custom notification visits appears to maintain the effectiveness of GVI. Post-Treatment relative to Pre-Treatment, a group-unit, on average, experienced a significant 38.6% reduction in shootings per week. Notably, receiving 2 doses of treatment relative to 0 doses of treatment produced a significant 50.3% reduction in shootings per week for a group-unit. A census tract experienced a non-significant 25.1% reduction (p=0.07) in GMI shootings per week, Post-Treatment relative to Pre-Treatment. Importantly, however, where a census tract received 4 or more doses relative to 0 doses (Pre-Treatment), there was a significant 44.4% reduction (p=0.03) in GMI shootings per week. The effects of GVI on individual outcomes such as victimization and offending merit further research. A longer study period in prospective research will provide an opportunity to more precisely detect the effect of GVI on individual behavior and victimization risk. Enforcement actions were associated with a reduction in GMI shootings. Once it was subject to an enforcement action, a group experienced a significant 42.8% reduction (p=0.04) in shootings. Future research should identify the particular levers in an enforcement action that are most effective. This Evaluation conducted qualitative research to inform the quantitative findings. The qualitative research components were the following: (1) informal telephone conversations with GVI recipients; (2) surveys given to Philadelphia Police Department (PPD) officers involved in MCIT custom notifications; and (3) informal surveys distributed at two Philadelphia Roadmap for Safer Communities community meetings.   

Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 2023. 80p.

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.

By Magdalena Domínguez

Worldwide, gang proliferation is fought mostly with tough punishment strategies such as sweeps. In this paper, I study their causal effect on crime for arrested individuals and known peers following a difference-in-differences strategy. I also take advantage of the network structure I retrieved to assess peer effects and identify key players. I perform such an analysis with novel administrative data from the Metropolitan Area of Barcelona, where Latin gangs expanded rapidly and where a stark policy change occurred. Results show significant reductions in crimes of arrested individuals and their peers, particularly in crimes against the person. The areas of the sweeps benefit from improvements in crime, health and education. I further conduct an innovative counterfactual policy exercise comparing sweep outcomes with theoretically predicted crime reductions when removing key players. This exercise indicates that sweeps could have achieved a 50% larger reduction in criminal activity had key players been removed. In this way, a network analysis provides insights on how to improve policy design.

IEB Working Paper 2021/03. University of Barcelona, Institute of Economics, 2021. 55p.

By Irving Spergel, et al.

The goal of the GVRP was to achieve a significant absolute or relative decrease in the level of serious gang violence committed by 100 targeted gang members, as well as a reduction of serious gang violence in Little Village compared with 6 other similar Chicago communities. At least 50 of these gang youth were to receive intensive, collaborative services and supervision from the project team and associated community-based agencies and grass-roots groups. The Project Model called for a team approach that used interrelated strategies to address the gang problem; these included local community mobilization, social intervention, provision of social opportunities, suppression, and organizational change and development of local agencies and groups. In this final project report, a section on project implementation focuses on the genesis of the project, the beginning of field operations and research planning, organizational change and development, social intervention, suppression, community mobilization, and project transition (crisis, transfer, and termination). The second section of the report addresses project outcomes as determined by a survey of individual gang members, the documentation of program services/contact and effects, the criminal histories of program and comparison groups, the modeling of program effects, aggregate-level changes in gang crime, changes in community perceptions of the gang problem, and community and leadership perceptions of the GVRP. Regarding project implementation, this report concludes that although the project developed an effective collaborative approach among the members of a team of street-level police, probation, and community youth workers during the course of the 5-year project, the project did not adequately organize the local community or gain the full support of the administration of the Chicago Police Department. Regarding project outcomes, it did achieve a significant reduction in certain types of crime among approximately 200 targeted hardcore gang members served by the program. The coordinated approach was effective in reducing serious gang violence and drug crime by individual targeted youth. The strategies of social intervention, provision of social opportunities, and suppression were well implemented and effective in achieving their goals. Community and citywide institutional involvement must be achieved, however, if serious chronic gang problems are to be addressed. The lead agency would have to mobilize and encourage collaborative change in the policies and practices of city and county justice agencies, as well as social, education, and faith-based organizations, along with business and local community groups.

Chicago: School of Social Service Administration, University of Chicago, 2002. 100p.