Category Archive for: News & Updates

News & Updates October 10, 2017

Tackling history of race and policing starts with well-informed officers

In this op-ed for The Hill, two Pittsburgh Bureau of Police officers involved with the National Initiative for Building Community Trust and Justice explain why they feel it's important for police to understand the history of race in America (and how police departments are perceived by marginalized communities). “By addressing concrete aspects of local and national history, procedural justice training

Read More

News & Updates October 6, 2017

Why Do We Ignore Initiatives That Reduce Gun Violence?

“While movies, television and news outlets often give the impression that entire cities and neighborhoods are filled with thugs, criminals and killers, the reality is that those responsible for a majority of shootings represent a tiny percentage of the residents of any given city. In response to this fact, effective gun violence reduction strategies adopt

Read More

News & Updates October 5, 2017

Pastor tasked with beating gang violence

Pastor Leroy Bean was announced yesterday as Bermuda’s gang violence reduction co-ordinator. Mr Bean brings personal experience to the position. He explained: “I’ve had family members killed, I’ve had family members that have been shot.” The pastor believes that helping the public understand the mindset of those involved in antisocial behaviour is one of the

Read More

News & Updates October 2, 2017

Here’s What Actually Reduces Gun Violence

Some of the strongest evidence on reducing gun violence comes not from controls on gun purchases, but from an approach to policing called “focused deterrence.” Since rolled out in dozens of other cities, repeated studies have shown that the approach can reduce urban gun violence — typically by between 20 and 40%.

News & Updates September 26, 2017

How Not to Respond to the Rising Murder Rate

In an op-ed for the The New York Times, Harvard researcher Thomas Abt responds to the 2016 FBI crime data report & makes the case for a new national dialogue on crime—a dialogue informed by evidence and not by ideology. He also had more than a few things to say about why our Group Violence Intervention is

Read More

News & Updates September 21, 2017

States move to restrict domestic abusers from carrying guns

Michael Siegel, a professor of community health sciences at the Boston University School of Public Health, published a study this week showing that states that require people with restraining orders to relinquish the firearms they already own have a 14 percent lower rate of intimate-partner gun-related homicides than states that don’t.

News & Updates September 20, 2017

New Orleans sees recent dip in murders after spike in first half of 2017

New Orleans averaged a murder about every other day in the first six months of 2017 – startling for a city of less than 400,000 people – but the police chief said last week he was encouraged by a dip in killings that started the second half of the year. The city went without a murder

Read More

News & Updates September 20, 2017

Jeff Sessions’s evidence-free crime strategy

In an op-ed for The Hill, Director David Kennedy pushes back against Attorney General Jeff Sessions's “tough-on-crime” rhetoric and regression to War on Drugs-style policies of the 1980s. “We need effective crime reduction strategies, just as we did in the '80s … and we know enough to do better this time,” Kennedy says. “We should do

Read More

News & Updates September 17, 2017

Intervention, other initiatives help turn around young lives in Newburgh

Before Joe Alvarez landed a job welding for renowned sculptor Frank Stella, and before the Newburgh native founded the grassroots organization behind many of the city’s positive initiatives, he was “Florida Rock.” Alvarez is one example of how teenagers and young men mired in drug dealing and violent crime can turn around their lives. That

Read More

News & Updates September 12, 2017

Stripping elected officials of power only undermines voters

In an op-ed for The Hill, IIP Executive Director Meg Reiss argues that the Florida Supreme Court disenfranchised the will of the people in its Aramis Ayala vs. Rick Scott decision, and that this decision impacts the fate of all democratically elected prosecutors.