April 2018  |  USA TODAY  

One local police department has spent the past six years pioneering a strategy that can help identify domestic violence abusers. High Point, N.C., had a problem. From 2004 to 2008, one-third of the city’s murders were related to intimate partner violence, well above both the state and national averages, according to former police chief Jim Fealy. So in 2009, the police department, in partnership with the National Network for Safe Communities, began to take action. Its approach tracks alleged abusers and intervenes accordingly depending upon the severity of the violence. From 2012, when the strategy was implemented, to 2014, there was just one intimate partner violence homicide in the city, compared with 17 from 2004 to 2011. Calls to police in High Point to report intimate partner violence declined by 20%, as did arrests, and the percentage of victims who were injured also dropped from 2012 to 2014.

Tags: High Point Intimate Partner Violence Intervention

April 2018  |  New York Times  

In this opinion piece for the New York Times, Tina Rosenberg highlights the NNSC's group violence prevention work across jurisdictions. 

In Pittsburgh, homicides hit a 12-year low in 2017; the mayor credited Ceasefire. Detroit’s homicide rate hit a 50-year low in 2017. Its police chief, James Craig, said in an interview that the city had started Ceasefire in two high-crime precincts in 2015 and has gradually expanded it. “I wasn’t much of a believer when I first got to Detroit,” he said. “But what we have in place now is probably one of the better-working Ceasefire models. It has had a profound impact on sustaining violent crime reduction.”

In Newburgh, statistics in a voluminous New York State report show shootings are way down (See pdf, page 1202) — from 55 victims in 2015 to 17 last year. Violent crime, especially firearm crime, has plummeted. In 2012, the year Oakland began its current version of Ceasefire, it was the third-most dangerous American city, with 126 murders. Last year it had 74. In 2017, Oakland had 277 nonfatal shootings — down from 557 in 2012.

Tags: DetroitNewburghOaklandPittsburgh Group Violence Intervention Custom NotificationsSupport and Outreach

March 2018  |  Pittsburgh Post-Gazette  

Through Tuesday afternoon, the city had seen 14 non-fatal shootings in 2018, Cmdr. Joseph said, compared to 31 through the same period last year — a 55 percent decrease.

He attributes the decline to the bureau’s Group Violence Intervention [GVI], a strategy that aims to reduce gang-related gun violence by targeting the city’s most violent gang members while also offering social services and support to those who agree to stop shooting.

Tags: Pittsburgh National Initiative for Building Community Trust and Justice Group Violence Intervention Support and Outreach

March 2018  |  Police Chief Magazine  

Today’s opioid markets are different from the open-air drug markets that were subject to special attention in past DMI implementations; they are, in particular, covert rather than overt. People are not, for the most part, standing out on street corners selling opioids or operating flagrant drug houses. The role that was played by geographic location in overt markets is instead played by social networks of dealers and addicts. But, within those networks, potentially similar elements operate: supply, demand, and the need for the successful functioning of markets. In principle, as long as the structure of an opioid market can be analyzed and its key dynamics identified, the logic of market disruption might be applicable. In considering a “covert market” DMI, the two most pressing practical questions seem to be: (1) Is it possible to identify the shape of the market and, especially, the key dealers in it? and (2) Is the number of key dealers manageably small, and can we imagine a practical and potentially meaningful intervention?

Tags: Rutland Drug Market Intervention

February 2018  |  York Dispatch  

Helfrich said York City residents need to understand that GVI isn't a short-term program. It's how the city will be doing business from now on. "We will be wherever the violence is," Helfrich said. "We will be there with all the services we can provide — and all the enforcement we can provide. Our mission hasn't changed." 

Tags: York Group Violence Intervention Support and Outreach

January 2018  |  Criminology & Public Policy  

An important new meta-analysis of 24 focused deterrence implementations—in particular, the National Network’s Group Violence Intervention and Drug Market Intervention—was published in Criminology & Public Policy. The systematic review, led by Professors Weisburd, Braga, and Turchan, found that focused deterrence strategies “generate noteworthy crime reduction impacts and should be part of a broader portfolio of crime reduction strategies available to policy makers and practitioners.”

In a companion paper analyzing the findings of the systematic review, Professor Robin Engel put a finer tip on their conclusion: "Focused deterrence strategies save lives." 

Tags: Drug Market InterventionGroup Violence Intervention