By Northwestern Neighborhood & Network Initiative (N3).

A new research brief from Northwestern Neighborhood & Network Initiative (N3) was just published affirming that Chicago CRED:

works with the highest-risk individuals.

successfully connects them with needed services.

“potentially” reduces their likelihood of being shot or arrested by 50% and 48% respectively. As always, they are cautious about suggesting direct causation, but it is nevertheless encouraging.

The report explicitly mentions that “other outreach-focused programs such as Communities Partnering 4 Peace (CP4P) and READI Chicago find similar results.”

The report also says, “for every one CRED participant, we found more than 20 other individuals with similar risk profiles who were not receiving similar services,” so the case for going to scale is real.

” Chicago CRED is a multifaceted approach to reducing gun violence that strives to create lasting change by working directly with individuals who are most likely to be involved in serious gun violence. Beginning with direct street outreach efforts, CRED invites its participants to engage in a comprehensive intervention that connects this hard-to-reach population to services, including dedicated life coaching, trauma counseling, education, and, ultimately, reliable jobs. CRED launched its efforts in 2016 and operates in communities on Chicago’s South and West Sides. The current study examines the 234 men who entered the CRED program in 2019 from Roseland and West Pullman. All of these participants are Black, the average participant age at intake is roughly 24 years old, and the average level of completed education was 11 years of school. Some 85% of participants reported a personal or familial history of gang/group involvement, 75% reported a criminal record, and 9% reported being a gunshot victim prior to intake.

Chicago: Northwestern Neighborhood & Network Initiative (N3) at the Institute for Policy Research, Northwestern University, 2021. 5p.

By Marisa C. Ross, Erin M. Ochoa, and Andrew V. Papachristos

The past several years have witnessed increased calls for community violence interventions (CVIs) that address firearm violence while centering local expertise and avoiding the criminal legal system. Currently, little evidence exists on CVI effectiveness at the individual level. This study presents an evaluation of the impact of a street outreach-based CVI [Chicago CRED (Create Real Economic Destiny)] on participant involvement in violence. We used a quasiexperimental design with a treatment sample of 324 men recruited by outreach staff from 2016 to 2021 and a balanced comparison sample of 2,500 men from a network of individuals arrested in CRED’s service areas. We conducted a Bayesian survival analysis to evaluate CRED’s effect on individual violence-related outcomes on three levels of treatment: All enrolled participants, a subsample that made it through the initial phase, and those who completed programming. The intervention had a strong favorable effect on the probability of arrest for a violent crime for those completing the program: After 24 mo, CRED alumni experienced an 11.3 percentage point increase in survival rates of arrest for a violent crime relative to their comparisons (or, stated differently, a 73.4% reduction in violent crime arrests). The other two treatment levels experienced nontrivial declines in arrests but did not reach statistical significance. No statistically significant reduction in victimization risk was detected for any of the treatment levels. Results demonstrate that completion of violence intervention had a strong favorable effect on the probability of arrest for a violent crime for those completing the program: After 24 mo, CRED alumni experienced an 11.3 percentage point increase in survival rates of arrest for a violent crime relative to their comparisons (or, stated differently, a 73.4% reduction in violent crime arrests). The other two treatment levels experienced nontrivial declines in arrests but did not reach statistical significance. No statistically significant reduction in victimization risk was detected for any of the treatment levels. Results demonstrate that completion of violence intervention programming reduces the likelihood of criminal legal involvement for participants, despite the numerous systemic and environmental factors that impede personal success.

PNAS, Vol. 120 | No. 46, 2023. 8p.

By Lily Robin, Josh Fording, Travis Reginal, Paige Thompson, Andreea Matei, Jerome Louison, Ramik Jamar Williams

Since the peak of violent crime in the early 1990s, New York City has experienced a sustained decline in violence but, like many cities across the country, has seen an increase in violent crime since 2019. In the 67th Precinct in particular, where the East Flatbush neighborhood is located, there were 34.5 shootings per 100,000 people in 2022. There are several community-led, government-led, and law enforcement–led initiatives in East Flatbush and surrounding areas to address violent crime and gun violence. This report examines gun violence and gun violence prevention and intervention initiatives in the 67th Precinct and surrounding neighborhoods.

WHAT WE FOUND

• Community organizations employ a holistic approach to violence prevention that addresses root causes of violence using a multifaceted approach to mitigate and address violence and diffuse tension between communities and law enforcement.

• Community members had negative views of criminal legal system actors and generally lacked awareness of community-based organizations involved in violence prevention work.

• Several barriers exist to community-led anti–gun violence, including limited funding, a lack of supports for staff, a lack of visibility in the community, and a lack of housing for people in crisis.

We make the following five recommendations:

• Rely on evidence to target research, funding, and initiatives to the areas most in need.

• Leverage and grow the existing strengths of communities.

• Identify and address drivers of gun violence.

• Develop funding opportunities for gun violence prevention and intervention programs that encourage collaboration and visibility in the community.

• Invest in community engagement and cultural competency for law enforcement and other criminal legal system actors.

HOW WE DID IT

With funding from the New York City Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice (MOCJ), Urban, in partnership with the Kings Against Violence Initiative (KAVI), investigated gun violence and gun violence prevention and intervention initiatives in the 67th Precinct and surrounding neighborhoods through a review of existing literature, analysis of crime and shooting data, and interviews and focus groups with gun violence prevention and intervention initiative staff and community members.

Washington, DC: Urban Institute, 2025. 44p.

By The Center for Neighborhood Engaged Research & Science (CORNERS) at Northwestern University

The Peacekeepers Program originally launched in Chicago in the summer of 2018 as the Flatlining Violence Inspires Peace (FLIP) Strategy. FLIP began as a summer-based community violence intervention program and grew to provide services in 16 Chicago community areas (CCAs) that held the lion’s share of violence in the city of Chicago. FLIP combined group violence intervention, violence prevention, and workforce development strategies designed as a street outreach apprenticeship program. Its immediate goal was to reduce gun violence in hotspots—areas with disproportionately high levels of shootings and victimizations. FLIP theorized that if gun violence could be reduced in these spatial pockets within a program community, it would create extended periods of peace across the broader community, ultimately contributing to a citywide decline in gun violence victimizations over time. In January 2023, the Illinois Office of Firearm Violence Prevention (OFVP), housed within the Illinois Department of Human Services (IDHS), supported FLIP’s transition into a year-round initiative, piloting their involvement and investment in the re-branded Peacekeepers Program (the Program). At the conclusion of the pilot period, two critical milestones occurred: the Program was integrated into the Reimagine Public Safety Act (RPSA) portfolio and, for the first time, received public funding to operate year-round. Moreover, with this funding, the Program was required to expand into RPSA priority communities, allowing the intervention to extend beyond Chicago and into surrounding Suburban Cook County  

  The report begins by providing an analysis of the 14 communities that implemented the Program for two consecutive calendar years. This exploration seeks to understand violence trends during the 2023-2024 year-round implementation of the Program compared to 2021-2022 calendar years, when the Program was only implemented during the summer months. Additional analyses will examine violence trends at both the community area and city-wide levels to assess the Program model’s claim that a reduction in hotspots might contribute to broader reductions across Program communities and the City of Chicago. The report also provides a brief overview of the year-over-year violence trends in the 13 Chicago-based Program expansion communities and their respective hotspots, during their launch year, to better understand violence trends following their start dates. This focus on both established and expansion communities highlights the progress made across all program community areas and offers insights into how implementation over consecutive 24-month periods aligns with observed violence trends. This report does not seek to establish causation or correlation between violence trends in program community areas and the implementation of the Program. Instead, it provides an exploratory analysis of gun violence trends in these areas, with a particular focus on program hotspots. Finally, the report concludes with early findings and recommendations on the implementation of the Program.  

Evanston, IL: Center for Neighborhood Engaged Research & Science (CORNERS) at Northwestern University 2025. 34p.

By Everytown Research & Policy

he intersection of gun violence and domestic violence has a devastating impact on families and communities across the country, with an average of 76 women in the United States shot and killed by an intimate partner every month, and many more shot and wounded. It is therefore crucial for law enforcement to be vigilant about recognizing warning signs of potential lethal violence by abusers, and to implement policies that help prevent this violence rather than only responding after a tragedy occurs.

One key piece of information that law enforcement should take seriously as a potential warning sign of future violence is a report that an individual who is barred from gun possession because of a disqualifying domestic violence-related conviction or restraining order has attempted to purchase a gun in violation of the law. As the result of a new federal law enacted in 2022, the NICS Denial Notification Act, state and local law enforcement are now notified—within 24 hours—every time a prohibited domestic abuser attempts to buy a gun and fails a background check. But in most states, there is no policy in place to follow up in these cases to investigate whether the survivor of abuse is in imminent danger.

Everytown for Gun Safety obtained data from the FBI that reveals a stunning reality: every year thousands of prohibited abusers attempt to purchase guns and are prevented from doing so because of the background check system: From 2018 through 2022, 135,243 background checks were denied because the purchaser was a prohibited domestic abuser. While this is an example of the background check system working as designed to prevent gun sales to prohibited individuals, each of these cases also raises a new red flag about a potential risk of violence and presents an opportunity to intervene and prevent future homicides of women by an intimate partner.

In light of the significant risk of future violence by domestic abusers with firearms, federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies should implement a policy of investigating each of these cases as part of a proactive approach to preventing gun violence. This type of investigation should include assessing whether there are other risk factors of imminent violence, determining whether the individual has unlawfully obtained firearms through other means, following up with the individual to reiterate that they are prohibited from buying and possessing firearms, and working with victims’ services staff and local domestic violence service providers to notify the survivor that the abuser has attempted to purchase a gun and offer assistance with safety planning. In addition, appropriate cases should be referred to prosecutors for further investigation into whether criminal charges should be pursued for the unlawful attempted gun purchase.

New York: Everytown Research & Policy, 2024 11p.

By Jeffrey W. Swanson, April M. Zeoli, Shannon Frattaroli, Marian Betz, Michele Easter, Reena Kapoor, Christopher Knoepke, Michael Norko, Veronica A. Pear, et al..

More than half of suicide deaths in the United States result from self-inflicted firearm injuries. Extreme risk protection order (ERPO) laws in 21 states and the District of Columbia temporarily limit access to firearms for individuals found in a civil court process to pose an imminent risk of harm to themselves or others. Research with large multistate study populations has been lacking to determine effectiveness of these laws. This study assembled records pertaining to 4,583 ERPO respondents in California, Connecticut, Maryland, and Washington. Matched records identified suicide decedents and self-injury method. Researchers applied case fatality rates for each suicide method to estimate nonfatal suicide attempts corresponding to observed deaths. Comparison of counterfactual to observed data patterns yielded estimates of the number of lives saved and number of ERPOs needed to avert one suicide. Estimates varied depending on the assumed probability that a gun owner who attempts suicide will use a gun. Two evidence-based approaches yielded estimates of 17 and 23 ERPOs needed to prevent one suicide. For the subset of 2,850 ERPO respond ents with documented suicide concern, comparable estimates were 13 and 18, respectively. This study’s findings add to growing evidence that ERPOs can be an effective and important suicide prevention tool.

J Am Acad Psychiatry Law 52(3) online, 2024. DOI:10.29158/JAAPL.240056-24