The Milwaukee Homicide Review Commission: A National Model for Violence Prevention

By Mallory O’Brien and Michael F. Totoraitis

In 2005, the Mayor of Milwaukee, the Milwaukee Police Department’s Chief of Police, and the Milwaukee County District Attorney formed the Milwaukee Homicide Review Commission (MHRC) to address lethal violence in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Modeled after other review processes such as child death or crime incident reviews, homicide reviews were rare and information about them was scarce. Since then, the MHRC has been a central component of the City of Milwaukee’s violence prevention efforts. The MHRC strives to reduce homicides and nonfatal shootings through a multilevel, multidisciplinary, and multi-agency homicide review process. The commission was designed to achieve the following goals: 1 . Gain a better understanding of homicide through strategic problem analysis. 2 . Develop innovative and effective responses and prevention strategies. 3 . Help focus available prevention and intervention resources. Guiding the creation of MHRC were four tenets that would inform the entire initiative and affect its governance, leadership, and staffing structure; partnership development; collection and use of real-time data; and preference for multilevel and multi-agency decision-making. These four tenets were 1 . Homicide is preventable; 2 . Only a collaborative and well-coordinated effort of community, nonprofit, business, government, academic, legal, and medical partnerships will lead to lasting change; 3 . Data-driven strategies are essential; 4 . Multi-level responses help ensure meaningful, robust, and sustainable results over the long term.

Washington, DC: Office of Community Oriented Policing Services, 2021. 18p.