Focused Deterrence And “Pulling Levers” Research Paper ⋆ Research Paper Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

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Overview

The last few decades have witnessed considerable developments in both research and practice with respect to both offender and place-oriented strategies aimed at reducing crime and violence. One such offender-oriented approach is based on the concept of focused deterrence and includes what is sometimes referred to as a pulling levers strategy. This research paper describes the focused deterrence pulling levers strategy, reviews the research suggesting its capacity to affect levels of crime and violence, and poses a series of practical and research questions related to the model.

One of the most consistent findings of criminological research has been that a relatively small number of people and a relatively small number of places generate a disproportionately large amount of crime and calls-for-service to the police. The focus on recurring places such as street block segments and particular businesses has resulted in a variety of intervention strategies that research suggests have crime prevention and control efficacy. Similarly, recent years have witnessed the emergence of offender-oriented strategies that follow a focused deterrence logic model and demonstrate promise for violence and crime prevention and control. One particular strategy that has emerged has become known as the “pulling levers” approach.

Foundations

In the early to mid-1990s, officials in Boston began experimenting with a new approach to addressing the very serious issue of youth violence and youth gun violence in particular. Like many cities in the USA, the period coinciding with the crack cocaine epidemic generated elevated levels of homicide and gun crime, much of which involved youths in their teens and early twenties. To address this problem, Boston convened a multiagency working group consisting of federal, state, and local law enforcement; the US Attorney’s and the District Attorney’s Offices; probation and parole; street outreach workers; a coalition of faith leaders; and community leaders. Also included was a team of researchers from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. The working group agreed to follow a problem-solving approach that would begin with systematic analysis of the youth gun crime problem.

The analysis proved to be very insightful and ultimately shaped the offender-oriented pulling levers strategy. Specifically, gun violence in Boston was largely concentrated among a small group of chronically offending youth estimated at 1–3 % of the youth population. Further, these violence-involved youths were typically part of loosely organized gangs and street crews. Finally, these youthful offenders had long histories of involvement in the juvenile and adult criminal justice systems and homicide victims, and offenders often were mirror images of one another (Kennedy et al. 2001).

The strategy that emerged was based on these findings. First, the concentration of violence in a small subset of youth meant that a surgical intervention aimed at high-risk individuals would likely be more effective and generate fewer collateral costs than large-scale crackdowns affecting large proportions of the youth population. Second, extensive criminal histories meant that these individuals were subject to the sanctions and coercive power of the criminal justice system. For some this equated to incapacitative sentences; for others it meant that the criminal justice system had credible leverage over their behavior. Third, the group or network structure meant that it was possible that influencing a subset of the individuals involved in these social networks could have a broader impact on the larger group. Additionally, it might be possible to impose “group accountability.”

The actual strategy involved delivering a highly focused deterrence message to youths involved in these violent street groups. Analysis would reveal groups currently believed to be involved in violence. Intelligence would identify members of the groups on probation and parole. These probationers and parolees would be ordered to attend what has come to be known as a “notification” or “call-in” meeting. At the meeting, a specific and focused deterrence message would be communicated to these individuals. Essentially, police, prosecutorial, and/or probation and parole staff would inform the attendees that officials know who they are, believe that they are at high risk for being involved in violence based on their behavior and their associations, and inform them that the violence must immediately stop or the task force will do everything possible, pull every lever, to try and get them off the streets. Attendees were reminded that as convicted felons they were prohibited from possessing or carrying a firearm and that there were severe sanctions in the federal system that would be imposed on felons in possession. For example, simple possession by a felon could carry a 5-year sentence in the federal system, along with no right to bail before trial and an anticipated time served of 85 % of the sentence.

If the firearm was used as part of a drug trafficking operation or in the commission of a violent crime, much more substantial sentences were available in the federal system. Although there is significant variation across the states, typically the federal sanctions are more severe than those in the state court system. The message sought to gain credibility, and shift the perceived threat of sanction, by using examples of similar individuals often from the same network of street crews who had received stiff sentences.

An additional unique feature of the call-in meeting strategy was that the focused deterrence theme was coupled with two other key messages. The first involved the expression of the community voice. Typically community members would express their concern for the well-being of the attendees, their exasperation with the level of neighborhood violence and the loss of young people to violence and prisons, their hope that the attendees would go in another direction, and their support for the police and prosecutors. The community voice was considered important for “resetting” and clearly communicating community norms. The second key message was an offer of support from various social service providers. The social service providers and the community would typically describe various supports available (mentoring, housing, drug treatment, vocational and educational programs, work preparedness, etc.) should the meeting attendees seek assistance.

The community voice and the expression of social support were considered important in terms of increasing the perception of fairness and legitimacy of the overall stop the violence message. This was based on theory and research findings that compliance with the law increases with perceptions of fairness and legitimacy (Tyler 2003).

The Boston Ceasefire focused deterrence pulling levers approach has received significant attention for its apparent impact on youth homicide and shootings. A series of studies demonstrated that there was an approximate 63 % reduction in youth homicides and substantial declines in shots fired ( 32 %) and gun assaults ( 25 %) (Braga et al. 2001). These findings were contrasted with trends in other Massachusetts cities as well as major US cities, and Boston was distinct in terms of the timing and magnitude of the reduction.

The Diffusion Of An Innovation

Although the peak of the homicide epidemic was ending, in many cities and for the country as a whole, homicide and gun homicide in particular remained at very high levels as news about the Boston Ceasefire program and its apparent impact began to spread. One of the first manifestations was US Department of Justice support for what became known as the Strategic Approaches to Community Safety Initiative or SACSI. SACSI provided technical support and research funding for ten participating cities. The sites received training in the Boston Ceasefire model including the research-based problem-solving process as well as the focused deterrence strategy involving offender notification meetings and the pulling levers approach. Overall, the SACSI evaluation team found that the SACSI cities experienced a reduction in violent crime compared to other US cities (Roehl et al. 2008).

One of the participating cities, Indianapolis, implemented an approach and strategy very similar to Boston Ceasefire. Employing a very similar analytic approach, the Indianapolis researchers found that after a crackdown on one violent street group and a series of offender notification meetings had occurred with probationers and parolees involved in gangs and violent street groups, homicide declined by approximately 34 %, and this decline was greater than that experienced by other similar size Midwestern cities (McGarrell et al. 2006). Subsequent analyses revealed that the reductions were highest for gang homicides (Corsaro and McGarrell 2009) and for the groups most at risk for homicide victimization, in the case of Indianapolis, this involved young African-American males in five specific hotspot areas (Corsaro and McGarrell 2010).

Another DOJ-funded site during the SACSI period, Los Angeles, followed a similar approach to address homicide and gun violence largely associated with gangs. Although the East Los Angeles site struggled with implementing all components of their strategy, they did implement a focused deterrence approach targeted at two rival gangs. Their evaluation found evidence of at least short-term declines in violence when comparing this target area to other parts of Los Angeles (Tita et al. 2003).

The positive findings from the SACSI jurisdictions seemingly had a policy impact as the Department of Justice developed a new initiative in 2001 that became known as Project Safe Neighborhoods (PSN). The PSN program incorporated elements of Boston Ceasefire and SACSI but also provided more flexibility to task forces operating out of each US Attorney’s Office to adapt the strategy based on local problems and resources. Among the elements incorporated were the creation of multiagency teams, adoption of a problem-solving approach based on analysis of the local gun crime problem, and the incorporation of research partners into the PSN task forces. Two additional components related to Boston Ceasefire but also were influenced by an initiative developed in Richmond, Virginia, known as Project Exile. Whereas Boston had utilized selective federal prosecution of gun offenders as example for other potential felons, in the Exile program there was a commitment on part of the US Attorney’s Office to prosecute as many illegal gun possession cases in the federal court as possible. Similarly, whereas Boston sought to communicate a deterrence message to at-risk individuals through call-in meetings, Richmond officials utilized a broad public education campaign involving multiple forms of media (radio, television, billboards, bus posters, etc.). PSN task forces were encouraged to use any and all of these strategies.

Several of the PSN sites followed the Boston Ceasefire model fairly closely and generated evaluation findings that suggested an impact. Although initiated before PSN, Stockton, California, worked with one of the original Boston researchers and followed a very similar approach focused primarily on gang homicide and violence. This study found a significant reduction in gun homicide that was much greater than that observed in eight comparable California cities (Braga 2008). Officials in Lowell, Massachusetts, followed the offender-oriented pulling levers approach to reduce youth violence. An interesting twist in this initiative was that Lowell officials applied an additional lever to adult offenders involved in illegal gaming activities with the goal of having the adults exert influence over youths involved in street violence. The results of an evaluation indicated a reduction in gang violence that was much greater than that observed in other Massachusetts cities (Braga et al. 2006). One of the most sophisticated evaluation designs was utilized in Chicago’s PSN initiative that targeted specific geographic areas of the city. A twist on the pulling levers strategy was that Chicago included former inmates returning to the target areas in its offender notification meetings. The researchers found that homicide declined approximately 37 % in the PSN target areas. Further, they reported that the evidence suggested the most influential component of the strategy was the impact of the offender notification meetings (Papachristos et al. 2007).

Several additional jurisdictions, some involved in PSN and others distinct from PSN, also observed declines in homicide and/or gun crime following the implementation of the offender-oriented pulling levers strategy. Most of these studies employed limited designs involving pre-post trend analyses with either no comparison group or a weak comparison (e.g., remainder of city). However, the consistency of these findings from cities including Minneapolis, High Point, Baltimore, Greensboro, Omaha, and Winston-Salem was at least suggestive of impact on homicide and gun crime.

As would be anticipated given the latitude provided, there was considerable variation across PSN sites in terms of the implementation of the Ceasefire model generally and the pulling levers components specifically. All of the PSN task forces reported establishing new criminal justice partnerships although there was considerable variation in density and scope. All of the task forces received funds for a research partner. Officials from the majority of sites reported that the research partners brought value to the task force, though there were task forces where research was never integrated and it was difficult to discern a strategic problem-solving model. An estimated 45 % of the PSN task forces reported using offender notification meetings. The vast majority (98 %) reported increased federal prosecution of firearms cases and over 90 % utilized joint federal-local prosecutorial screening of gun cases, although the analysis revealed considerable variation across the 94 districts in terms of levels of federal prosecution of gun crimes. Over 40 % of the task forces reported other components of the Operation Ceasefire approach with respect to probation/parole home visits and firearm supply side interventions. Finally, approximately 58 % reported using directed patrols in hotspot locations and over 40 % utilized street-level firearms enforcement units, interventions that might be part of a “pulling levers” strategy (McGarrell et al. 2009).

Consequently, across the 94 PSN task forces, there were components of Boston’s Operation Ceasefire’s pulling levers strategy. The evaluators of PSN also found that there were significant differences across the task forces in the implementation dosage of three components: level of federal prosecution of gun crime, integration of research into the task force, and partnerships. Further, these implementation levels related to differences in the trend of violent crime with PSN target cities in high-dosage districts experiencing a significant decline in violent crime when compared to target cities at lower levels of dosage as well as with non-PSN target cities (McGarrell et al. 2010). Given that PSN was not implemented with a randomized design, the researchers were not able to exclude the possibility that some other characteristics of these high implementation cities produced the decline, but the results did appear to be consistent with the prior research on offender-based deterrence strategies.

As is evident in the above review, almost all of the research that has examined the offender-oriented pulling levers strategy has focused on the impact at an area level (either the entire city or particular neighborhoods or police districts). Two studies have included a focus at the individual level. The first is an ongoing study conducted by Papachristos and colleagues in Chicago. The results are not yet available. The second was an extension of the above-described Indianapolis initiative conducted by Chermak (2006). In 2002 Indianapolis conducted an experiment to assess the impact of two types of pulling levers meetings compared to traditional probation supervision. The first meeting was modeled on Boston Ceasefire and included the criminal justice deterrence message coupled with a message of opportunity provision. The second meeting was a type of meeting that had been developed by community groups who sought to deliver their own message urging participants to stop the violence and emphasizing the social support message. Probationers were randomly assigned to the three conditions. The population consisted of all felony probationers convicted of specific violent, drug, gun, and property offenses. There were a total of 540 probationers in the study with180 probationers in each group (Boston Ceasefire-style meeting, community support meeting, traditional probation). Interviews revealed that both types of meetings made an impression on the probationers and, consistent with the goal of the meetings, the Ceasefire meeting attendees were most likely to report that law enforcement was cracking down on violent crime and they were more likely to believe that illegal possession of a firearm was likely to result in stiff sanctions. Meeting attendees also reported that they discussed the message with their friends. Despite these differences in perception of message, no differences were found between the treatment groups and the control group on re-offending using both self-report and criminal history records. Caution was urged in interpreting these findings, however. There were two critical distinctions between the Boston Ceasefire and earlier Indianapolis pulling levers strategy and what occurred in the experiment. First, the selection of participants in the experiment was based on their probation status as opposed to their selection as being at high risk of violence based on their behavior and their group affiliations. Second, the study found that there was very little follow-up when violence occurred that may have involved meeting attendees and their associates. Similarly, there was very little follow-up in terms of delivery of service. Thus, although there was a threat of pulling levers and an offer of assistance, there was little actual implementation of either component.

Extensions Of The Model Beyond Gun And Group Violence

As noted above, one of the first cities to implement the Boston Ceasefire pulling levers approach to addressing gun and gang violence was High Point, North Carolina. High Point followed virtually all of the components with a multiagency team of criminal justice, social service, and community partners, a research team, a data-driven problem-solving orientation, and the use of offender notification meetings. Having experienced what the police department and community partners considered success in addressing violent group crime, High Point extended the approach to addressing other problems. This, in turn, has resulted in innovative adaptation of the pulling levers approach in other communities as well.

On the basis of continuous monitoring and analysis of crime patterns, the High Point Police Department (HPPD) decided that the next major problem driving crime, violence, and disorder was overt drug markets. The analysis suggested that drug market activity was creating such problems in specific neighborhoods. Detailed analysis, street-level intelligence, and subsequent undercover operations revealed that a relatively small group of offenders were responsible for these discrete drug markets. Specifically, in the initial four markets targeted for the pulling levers approach, the number of identified dealers ranged from a low of 13 to a high of 26. This finding has since been replicated in over 20 communities where the number of individuals involved in the drug market has ranged from a low of 7 to a high of 59 and an average of 27 (Hipple et al. 2009). This manageable and specific network of street drug dealers suggested that the pulling levers approach had merit.

The main distinction between the drug market approach and the gang and group-based approach was that many of the dealers were not on probation or parole so the question arose of how to get them to attend the offender notification call-in meeting. The strategy that emerged involved a traditional undercover operation in which undercover buys would be made from all, or as many as possible, of the individuals believed to be involved in the specific market.

Following the undercover operation, police and prosecutors convened to decide who would be subject to aggressive prosecution and who would be called-in to a meeting and offered a second chance. The criteria agreed to by the High Point team were based on prior involvement in violence as well as extensive criminal histories for drug selling and other serious offenses. Individuals with histories of violence and gun use as well as chronic offenders were prosecuted as would normally occur. These individuals comprised the “A list.” They would serve as examples for those diverted from prosecution. The diverted individuals, without histories of violence, were often the retail street-level sellers and lookouts who could be expected to continue to sell and to “backfill” for the drug-selling network as others were removed from the community. This group comprised the “B list.”

Adopting the same approach as developed in Operation Ceasefire, the B list group was invited to attend a call-in session along with “influentials” in their lives. Here they were presented with the evidence against them, often including video of their drug sales, and informed that the drug market was closed. Continued involvement in drug selling and other crimes would result in arrest and prosecution similar to that of the A list. The meetings included opportunities for the community to express their exasperation with drug dealing and its impact on the neighborhood, their support for the criminal justice authorities, and their support for the individuals attending the meeting and being offered a second chance. The meeting also included social service representatives describing available services and offering support to the attendees.

Following the call-in meeting the police would provide an increased presence for a short period of time to send the message that dealing would no longer be tolerated. Substantial effort went into community engagement with the idea that the community would ultimately be responsible for asserting informal social control that would preclude the reemergence of the drug market (Kennedy 2009).

An evaluation of the High Point experience with the implementation of what has come to be known as the Drug Market Intervention (DMI) in the initial four neighborhoods found evidence of impact on violent crime. Using trajectory models that compared chronic high crime street blocks in the DMI target areas with comparable high crime street blocks in the remainder of the city, there was a significant decline in long-term violent crime trends in the DMI areas (Corsaro et al. 2012).

Given the frustration with traditional drug enforcement efforts, the High Point DMI has generated significant interest. The Bureau of Justice Assistance has supported training and technical assistance on the DMI model to 24 communities and at least 33 communities have implemented or are in the process of implementing the DMI approach. In addition to the High Point evaluation, studies have been completed in Rockford, Illinois, and Nashville, Tennessee. Both studies compared the pre-post trend in crime in the drug market target area with the trend in crime for the rest of the city. In the case of Rockford, there was a large decline in violent, property and drug crime following implementation. A careful evaluation utilizing growth curve modeling indicated that the target area had a statistically significant decline in property crimes relative to the rest of the city and a decline, though not statistically significant, in violent crimes (Corsaro et al. 2009). In Nashville, there were large declines in all offenses, although when compared to trends in the remainder of the city and controlling for preexisting trends, only the reduction on drug crime was found to be statistically significant (Corsaro et al. 2010). In both Rockford and Nashville, interviews with residents of the target neighborhood suggested perceived improvements in the quality of life, levels of crime, and support for the police. Given these promising findings the National Institute of Justice awarded the RAND Corporation a grant to carefully evaluate the DMI model. That study is ongoing.

High Point also extended this approach to the problem of street robbery when they experienced an increase in street robberies. Crime analysis and street-level intelligence identified groups involved in these robberies. Individuals involved in the groups under probation or parole supervision were ordered into very similar call-in meetings. Although no formal evaluation was conducted, HPPD officials report that the spike in street robberies declined soon after these call-in sessions.

An additional adaptation of the offender-oriented, focused deterrence model has involved former inmates returning to the community. Indianapolis was the first known community to implement this approach. The model was based on findings that a significant proportion of homicide victims and offenders had previous prison and parole experience. The meetings were organized geographically so that a group of returning former inmates from the same part of the city would be invited to a call-in meeting. A pilot evaluation of the project compared recidivism for former inmates attending a call-in meeting with similar former inmates in other neighborhoods who were not afforded this treatment. The results indicated a potential delay in the time to re-offending, although the results were not statistically significant in a multivariate analysis (McGarrell et al. 2003).

The most promising results suggesting the potential use of call-in meetings with returning former inmates comes from the previously mentioned Chicago PSN program (Papachristos et al. 2007). This program included returning parolees in the PSN target areas, and these areas experienced very significant declines in homicides and gun crime. As noted above, there is an ongoing analysis that is assessing the impact of the meetings on individual re-offending. A similar approach in Boston found very positive results in terms of reduced re-offending (Braga et al. 2009).

Finally, although it has not been evaluated, another variation of this approach in the reentry context comes from the PSN program in Dallas. Very large numbers of probationers and parolees (N ¼ 400–500) from throughout the city are invited to an offender notification meeting. The message delivered is very similar to that of the smaller call-in meeting and includes the deterrent threat, the “felons cannot possess a gun” message, and the offer of social support.

Summary Of The Research Findings

In the late 1990s when the results from Boston Ceasefire first came to the attention of the research community, the findings seemed too good to be true. A 60 % reduction in youth homicide and a city going two and a half years without a youth homicide caught the attention of researchers, policymakers, and law enforcement leaders. Yet it stood as one city’s experience. Since that time a number of other studies of the group-based violence reduction strategy have been completed from cities including Baltimore, Chicago, Greensboro, High Point, Indianapolis, Los Angeles, Lowell, Minneapolis, Omaha, Stockton, and Winston-Salem. The evaluations associated with these efforts have varied in terms of approach and methodological rigor but have been consistent with an interpretation of the pulling levers approach having a desired impact on levels of homicide and gun violence. Although the research base is much more limited, the studies of the pulling levers extension to drug markets conducted in High Point, Nashville, and Rockford are also encouraging, at least for some types of offending. The results from the PSN research are also encouraging although more difficult to interpret given the multiple components of the interventions and the variation across cities.

Importantly, a systematic review of the focused deterrence model has been conducted as part of the Campbell Collaboration. This review was based on ten quasi-experiments and one randomized controlled trial. Although noting the need for more rigorous testing, the authors found an “overall statistically significant, medium-sized crime reduction effect” for these focused deterrence strategies (Braga and Weisburd 2012: 324). At a minimum, this series of studies suggests at least a short-term impact on lethal violence at the community level. Given the human, social, and fiscal costs associated with homicide and gun violence, these are important findings.

The research assessing the impact at the individual level is even more limited and leaves in question whether the pulling levers approach can significantly alter individual level patterns of behavior.

Limitations And Issues For Further Study

Despite this promising evidence, there remains uncertainty and perhaps skepticism that the pulling levers strategy has been the cause of the reductions that have been observed in these studies. One of the reasons for this skepticism is that the period during which this research has occurred has witnessed an overall decline in homicide and violent crime since the peak levels of the early 1990s. Given that the strategy was often implemented when a particular jurisdiction was experiencing a “homicide problem,” the question arises whether there was a “regression to the mean” coupled with the long-term reduction in violence observed throughout the country. A number of the studies employed statistical techniques that are designed to minimize the impact of preexisting trends in the crime patterns but that cannot completely rule out the possibility that the decline would have occurred absent the intervention.

These concerns relate to the limitations of the evaluation designs that have been employed in the various studies. Although a number of the studies have employed quasi-experimental designs that provide a comparison group, they have not involved a true experimental design that can eliminate the threat that the decline in crime is based on some unmeasured factor rather than the pulling levers strategy.

Questions also arise due to the complex nature of the intervention. For example, one study comparing three strategies that emerged in the mid-1990s, Boston Ceasefire, Richmond Exile, and New York City’s Compstat, found evidence that both Ceasefire and Exile were associated with reductions in violence (Rosenfeld et al. 2005). Similar results emerged in Exile-type strategies in Mobile and Montgomery, Alabama (Hipple 2010). Given that both Ceasefire and Exile included the threat of federal prosecution for illegal gun possession and use, it becomes difficult to disentangle the impact of the role of focused federal prosecution of gun crime from the impact of the pulling levers meetings.

Finally, a common threat to interpreting a series of studies like those described above is “publication bias.” It is more likely that evaluations finding an impact for a strategy like pulling levers will be written up and published than evaluations that did not find an impact. Given the attention to the group-based pulling levers and Drug Market Intervention programs, it is possible that jurisdictions have implemented these strategies without an evaluation component or where the findings were ambiguous and did not show an impact and thus never made it to the research community.

In addition to these methodological questions, a series of theoretical issues arise. The theoretical foundations of the pulling levers strategy are multifaceted and include focused deterrence, procedural justice, social support, and community coproduction of order (Kennedy 2009). The focused deterrence component is based on the idea of a small group of individuals being responsible for a large amount of crime and being subject to a direct message that may shift their perceived risk of sanction. The procedural justice component is based on research that finds that compliance with the law is most likely when individuals believe that they have been treated fairly and with respect (Tyler 2003). Social support links to the procedural justice component but also may include psychological, social, and tangible resources that may reduce strain or increase incentives to comply with the law. It may also involve informal social control as those most influential with the target population are included in the process. This aspect of informal social control includes both the network associated with individuals deemed at risk and the role of the broader community in coproducing order. This component involves collaboration with individuals, networks, and institutions in the community to increase the collective efficacy within the neighborhood (Sampson et al. 1997).

The logic model of the pulling levers approach builds on these multiple theories (see Rivers et al. 2012), yet there is very little research actually testing these theoretical components in the context of the offender-focused pulling levers strategy.

In addition to further research on the theoretical foundations of the offender-oriented, focused deterrence model, there are several areas deserving of further investigation.

As noted above, one of the lingering questions is the impact of the offender notification meetings on those selected to attend. A parallel question is the impact on their associates. From a human capital standpoint, the hope is that the meetings will result in reduced levels of offending, reduced levels of serious and violent offending, and reduced victimization among meeting attendees and their associates. At this point the evidence simply does not exist to answer whether this is the case. Having said this, if research continues to point to significantly reduced levels of community violence, then the approach may be considered successful even if there is minimal impact at the individual level of meeting attendees.

A second question relates to the sustainability of the violence reduction. Other types of police crackdowns have generated short-term declines but that were not sustained over time (Sherman 1990). Both Boston and Indianapolis experienced increases in homicide years after their initial findings of reduced violence. In contrast, High Point officials report sustained declines. At this point, there is insufficient research evidence to clarify whether implementation of the offender-oriented, focused deterrence strategy can yield long-term sustained reductions. There appear to be two sets of questions related to sustainability. The first is theoretical. Can this approach produce a long-term shift in perception about the relative costs of criminal justice sanctions and victimization risk, or are the findings to date driven by short-term impact that decays in the period after the offender notification meetings? The second question relates to the system capacity to sustain the efforts. By their very nature, the multiagency partnerships are fragile and can suffer from turnover at both the leadership and implementation levels. Responsibilities for intelligence gathering, undercover operations, organizing call-in meetings, and community collaboration are diffused across organizations and often are “addons” to the normal responsibilities of the various actors. Action may be driven by a sense of crisis, such as that generated by high levels of youth homicide in Boston and record levels of homicide in Indianapolis, but may be difficult to sustain when peak violence levels decline. Thus, research is needed both on the capacity of the model to have long-term impact and on the system capacity to sustain these strategic, data-driven, multiagency coalitions.

As noted above, prior studies found evidence that both Boston Ceasefire and Project Exile were associated with declines in homicide and violent crime (Rosenfeld et al. 2005). The PSN research found that case studies consistent with both approaches (Ceasefire and Exile) showed evidence of violence reduction. Both strategies include a focused deterrence message supported by the actual and threatened use of federal prosecution for very select behaviors (illegal gun possession and use). From this point the approaches diverge with Boston Ceasefire relying on direct communication of the message to at-risk groups and Exile using a broad public media campaign to communicate the message. Boston Ceasefire also placed greater emphasis on community engagement. The existing research, however, cannot distinguish which of these various components are critical for impact. Is the threat of federal prosecution a necessary ingredient? Is the direct communication of the message in face-to-face meetings the necessary ingredient? Does the community actually change in terms of increased collective efficacy and informal social control, and if so, is this a critical ingredient in violence reduction? Is it the combination of deterrence threat and social support that generates the impact, or can one or the other component have a similar impact alone? How do all of these components relate to the sustainability issue? Ultimately, multisite investigations with longer-term follow-up are needed to address these types of issues and to inform policymakers and professionals on the key elements needed to maximize violence reduction.

The focused deterrence approach is largely a people-based strategy. During the same years that these models have emerged, there has also been progress in the development of place-based strategies (Braga and Weisburd 2010). Both people-and place-based approaches are based on principles of situational crime prevention (Clarke 1997). Given that violence is highly concentrated in terms of both people and places, an extension of the offender-oriented focused deterrence model might attempt to link this people-based strategy with a variety of place-based interventions. In reality this may already be occurring. For example, Rockford, Illinois, included a place-based intervention focused on problem properties following its initial call-in meeting with individuals involved in street-level drug dealing. Similarly, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and Roanoke, Virginia, conducted code enforcement surveys and landlord education sessions along with their offender call-in meetings. Although this further complicates evaluation issues, it does seem to offer a promising set of interventions based on research understanding of crime patterns (Tillyer and Kennedy 2008).

Summary

The National Academy of Sciences review of strategies intended to reduce violent crime noted that Boston Ceasefire represented a promising intervention that deserved further research (Wellford et al. 2005). The accumulation of evidence of the impact of the offender-oriented, focused deterrence model since the initial findings of Boston Ceasefire warrants at least a label of “promising,” if not “evidence-based,” practice. For police and criminal justice officials and their various community partners, these strategies offer an approach to reducing violence that offers significant promise for reducing high levels of violence, at least in the short-term. Further, there is some evidence that the greatest impact will be on those communities that suffer the most from high levels of violence. For scholars, it is an approach that also offers a host of unanswered research questions. Answering these questions will not only advance theoretical knowledge about violence and violence prevention but will also likely contribute to practice in ways that further maximize the likelihood of violence reduction.

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