New Approaches to Stop Gang Violence

Cities across the country are trying alternative approaches to stem gang violence - from hiring former gangbangers to mediate disputes to offering life coaches and job training - and they're working.

In St. Louis, a program called Aim4Peace is borrowing a page from Chicago's Ceasefire, a non-profit  initiative that seeks to treat violence like an epidemic and stem its spread through intervention at critical moments. I wrote about Ceasefire here.

In Kansas City, people like Jason Broom (above left) use their life experiences to intervene before violence can escalate.

"I've done everything they're thinking about doing," Broom said.

Broom and the other half-dozen or so Aim4Peace street intervention workers, also known as "violence interrupters," say they resolved 22 conflicts last year in Kansas City and at least 14 this year. And the east side — where poverty, gangs and drugs have conspired against residents for years — no longer leads the city in killings, according to crime data.

"The work they're doing in that area is having an impact," said Maj. Anthony Ell, commander of the Kansas City Police Department's violent crimes division.

And a great piece in the New Yorker last month profiled a program helmed by John Jay Professor David Kennedy, also called Ceasefire, that brings more of a carrot and stick approach and has been tried by 60 cities, with varying success.

In Cincinnati, Kennedy explained, the police would first idfentify gang members on parole or probation and compel them to attend a meeting. There, the cops would deliver an ultimatum: the shootings must stop. "And if they do not stop," Kennedy said, "the consequences will be swift, and certain, and severe, and punishment will be handed out not just to the individual involved in the shooting but to everyone in the individual's gang."

The young men in the gangs would also be given a phone number that they could call for help. The city would make life counseling and job coaching available for those who wanted out of the thug life. "We don't promise them jobs - we promise them to do the best we can for them," Kennedy said. Clergy, ex-gang members and victims and their families would be on hand to deliver the moral component of the message to offenders: "What you are doing is wrong, and we know you can do better."

The method has been a policing success in Cincinnati, murders are down and the chief says the city will never engage in gang intervention again without academic support. But the social services component has been less successful.

These models are still in the experimental phases, but treating violence as a human problem - and an epidemic not unlike an infectious disease - is a welcome and promising shift.