Promising Strategies To Reduce Gun Violence
Firearm violence has often been assumed
to be largely impervious to law enforcement
and community interventions. Recent
experiences in several cities that have
developed and implemented effective
strategies to reduce gun violence suggest
that this assumption may be erroneous.
In 1998, OJJDP identified more than 400
gun violence reduction programs around
the Nation. A study of these programs
yielded 60 individual programs that were
featured in the report Promising Strategies
To Reduce Gun Violence (Office of Juvenile
Justice and Delinquency Prevention, 1999).
The report highlights the programs in Baton Rouge and Boston and in COPS’ YFVI as examples of comprehensive initiatives that use multiple strategies to address risk factors associated with gun violence. These risk factors include aggressive behaviors at an early age, gun possession and carrying, substance abuse, exposure to violence, conflicts with authority, lack of anger management skills, poor parental supervision, low academic achievement, truancy, delinquent peers, and unemployment (Loeber and Farrington, 1998). Rather than focusing on one or two risk factors, these collaborative programs recognize that success is more likely to result from strategies that address identified risk factors in multiple ways.
The communities profiled in Promising Strategies incorporated productive capacity-building characteristics in developing their program structures. These activities included identification of high-risk populations and target neighborhoods based on data-driven problem-solving processes, enlistment of law enforcement agencies and other key stakeholders in a collaborative partnership, and development of a comprehensive plan with multiple strategies and measurable goals and objectives (Sheppard et al., 2000). The communities’ programs demonstrate the value of a local collaborative group’s ability to mobilize resources and transform them into strategies that address risk factors associated with gun violence (Kumpfer et al., 1997). Each program has involved community residents, law enforcement agencies, and other public and private agencies in developing a comprehensive plan and has created a strong collaborative structure to mobilize and sustain gun violence reduction strategies.
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