Interventions to Prevent Violence
Interventions that provide wrap-around services (services to individuals/families with more than one barrier to vulnerability), skills-building, support, and opportunities to vulnerable populations can significantly reduce violence and improve connectedness, stability, mobility, and feelings of safety for an entire community.
Strategies
(1) Community violence intervention (CVI) programs use evidence-informed strategies to reduce violence through community-centered initiatives. These strategies engage individuals and groups to prevent and disrupt cycles of violence and retaliation and establish relationships between individuals and community assets to deliver services that save lives, address trauma, provide opportunity, and improve the physical, social, and economic conditions that drive violence.
(2) Violence Interrupters or Street Outreach programs hire and train workers who actively work to mediate conflicts and prevent retaliatory violence between those at risk of committing or becoming the victims of violence. These workers are often more times than not directly linked to the communities they serve.
(3) Hospital-Based Violence Intervention programs (HVIPs) are typically located in trauma centers and emergency departments. They engage patients while in the hospital to reduce the chance of retaliation, violent injury recurrence, and individuals who do not typically receive services.
(4) Community-driven crime prevention through environmental design programs are programs in which communities aim to reduce crime and violence by using architecture and urban planning to create or restore public spaces where the community can gather and feel a sense of safety. For example, the restoration of vacant lots and investment in a community’s landscape has been proven to reduce crime and gun violence.
Community-Based Violence Intervention Programs
(1) Advance Peace, Richmond, California
(2) Alliance for Concerned Men, Washington, D.C.
(3) ROCA, Baltimore, Maryland
(4) Newark Community Street Team, Newark, New Jersey
(5) Baton Rouge Community Street Team, Baton Rouge, Louisiana
(6) Detroit Ceasefire, Detroit, Michigan
(7) YouthAlive, Oakland, California
(8) King County Hospital-Based Violence Intervention, King County, Washington
(9) Healing Hurt People, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
(10) Injury and Violence Prevention Program at VCU Medical Center-formerly bridging the gap, Richmond, Virginia
What does the research say about violence intervention strategies and programs?
These programs (Community Violence Intervention) have proven successful in reducing gun violence and violent crime more broadly in communities over the past two decades—in some communities by as much as 60 percent. Read more from this report here.
Cities such as Baltimore, New York, Philadelphia, and Chicago have each implemented a Cure Violence program and have seen a more than 30 percent reduction in shootings and killings. Read more here.
Community-based Violence Intervention (CVI) strategies have promising potential to help quell violence and address public health and safety around the country. But without a clearer grasp of the elements that help make these strategies successful and the challenges that must be mitigated for successful implementation and operation, they may fail to achieve the reductions in violence they desire. Read the full report here.
A Case Study in Hope tells the remarkable story of Oakland’s long struggle to reduce gun violence and identifies key takeaways for cities facing this epidemic. Read the full study here.
In this cross-sectional study using difference-in-differences analysis of 13 632 houses on 6732 block faces in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the housing repair intervention analyzed was associated with a 21.9% reduction in total crime. Increasing the number of houses that received the intervention on a block was associated with a dose-dependent decrease in crime. Read more here.
The 4 Community-Based Public Safety Solutions
Scaling Safety recommends four core community based safety solutions that are supported by research and capable of preventing—and even stopping—the cycle of crime.