{"id":54742,"date":"2020-05-11T12:59:58","date_gmt":"2020-05-11T17:59:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=54742"},"modified":"2020-05-11T12:59:58","modified_gmt":"2020-05-11T17:59:58","slug":"54742","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=54742","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

The Long-Term Failures Of Violence Prevention Programs<\/a><\/p>\n

As a Second Amendment supporter, I tend to believe that the answers to solving the issue of violence in our inner cities aren\u2019t gun control. Obviously, I\u2019m biased to a significant degree, but my bias is based on observation. After all, look at the 10 safest states and the 10 most dangerous states. You have gun-controlled states in both lists and you have gun-friendly states in both lists as well.<\/p>\n

That suggests the issue is a bit more complicated than something that can be solved with a simplistic answer like gun control.<\/p>\n

However, it also seems that popular gun violence reduction programs\u00a0aren\u2019t producing the long-term results<\/a>\u00a0proponents hope for.<\/p>\n

In 2018, Portland started to rethink how it addresses gun violence. The police bureau sent representatives to Oakland, California, to observe Ceasefire, that city\u2019s gun violence prevention program. Oakland\u2019s program, which targets social services at people most likely to commit violence, is credited with dramatically\u00a0reducing Bay Area gun violence<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat is something that we\u2019re using as a foundation to try to build something similar to that here in Portland,\u201d Shearer said in an interview with Guns & America.<\/p>\n

Cities across the country \u2014 from Baltimore to South Bend, Indiana and Stockton, California \u2014 have adopted similar models. And while these programs often have an impact in the year or two after launch, long-term reductions in gun violence can be fleeting.<\/p>\n

Ceasefire is based on the idea that even in cities with high homicide rates, the number of people committing acts of violence is actually very low.<\/p>\n

\u201cAbout 70% of all gun violence includes people who are in their 20s to early 30s who has significant criminal justice histories, seven or more arrests, who are part of some sort of crew or clique or gang,\u201d said David Muhammad, executive director of the\u00a0National Institute for Criminal Justice Reform<\/a>, a nonprofit that helps cities implement gun violence reduction programs like Oakland\u2019s.<\/p>\n

Typically, Muhammad says, people who commit gun violence have been victims of gun violence themselves, or someone close to them has been a recent victim. Intervene with this small group directly by providing social services or an alternative to violence, the theory goes, and\u00a0you can have a major impact on gun violence<\/a>. At least in the short term.<\/p>\n

\u201cCeasefire is about immediately reducing gun violence,\u201d Muhammad said. \u201cAnd the type of community transformation that is desperately needed is a very long-term prospect.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Now, this approach actually makes a fair bit of sense. You target people who are most likely to end up committing violent crimes and offer them alternatives to the kind of lifestyle. The idea is to stop violence at its source.<\/p>\n

It should work, right?\u00a0Well, it has and it hasn\u2019t. Maybe.<\/p>\n

The problem is that it\u2019s hard to see any long-term results from these programs. It doesn\u2019t help that some communities stop funding the program once violence decreases, thus allowing it to flourish once again.<\/p>\n

To me, that suggests the solution isn\u2019t really a solution, but a band-aid. It\u2019s not really getting to the root of the problem, it\u2019s simply hiding the problem like a toupee.<\/p>\n

In some cases, though, it doesn\u2019t even do that.<\/p>\n

Elsewhere in the country, in city after city, declines in the near term evaporated over time.<\/p>\n

In 2014, the first-year South Bend had\u00a0a program<\/a>\u00a0in place, homicides dropped from 78 to 66. The next year, that number ticked back up to 85, down to 81 in 2016 and in 2017 was over 100.<\/p>\n

Detroit, where city leaders have\u00a0credited Ceasefire<\/a>\u00a0with reducing violent crime, started rolling out its program to police precincts in 2015. That year it had 295 homicides. Since then homicides have bounced up to 302, down to 261, and back up to 272, according to FBI data. Meanwhile, the city\u2019s population shrank by 1%, according to U.S. Census Bureau data.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Those aren\u2019t the other places, either. Stockton, CA has been heralded as a success after the program did wonders there. Then they cut off funding and the number of murders returned. Now, the average number of homicides is pretty much right were it was to begin with.<\/p>\n

So what gives?<\/p>\n

Clearly, there are a lot of theories, some of which are going to be dismissed by many typical\u00a0Bearing Arms<\/em>\u00a0readers outright. I know I rolled my eyes when I read this:<\/p>\n

\u201cThe whole approach is, \u2018This is a problem person,\u2019\u201d said Aaron Roussell, an associate professor of sociology at Portland State University. \u201cNot \u2018We have systematically and intentionally underfunded these communities and we refuse to deal with issues of race and classism that actually keep these places marginalized.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2026<\/p>\n

But Roussell said the focus on data can distract from deeper societal issues that cause violence in the first place.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a weird idea that you just want less crime in poor neighborhoods,\u201d he said. \u201cThey don\u2019t want to change anything else about the world, but you want to just bring that down. Because it\u2019s basically a series of crimes that made those neighborhoods poor to begin with and we don\u2019t ever deal with that.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Roussell attributes many of those dips noted before as potentially being cyclical variations rather than evidence they worked.<\/p>\n

Like I said, it\u2019s hard not to eye-roll at this kind of thing, but Roussell may actually be onto something. These high-violence neighborhoods are typically places that most folks otherwise don\u2019t care about. They wouldn\u2019t care about them now if folks there would just behave. No one really\u00a0does<\/em>\u00a0seem to care about changing anything else about those neighborhoods. They just want the crime to go away.<\/p>\n

And yet, what do we do?<\/p>\n

Programs like Ceasefire seek to address these neighborhoods and the individuals most likely to become violent criminals which should, by extension the neighborhoods in question. Yet it\u2019s not working.<\/p>\n

Roussell would seem to say that racism and classism are to blame, but I find that a simplistic answer yet again for a complex problem. Or, more specifically, adding a couple of complex issues as the cause for another complex issue is simplistic.<\/p>\n

So what\u2019s the answer?<\/p>\n

I honestly don\u2019t know. What I do know is that we need to figure it out because people are being killed and that\u2019s being used to justify infringing on the civil liberties of others. That shouldn\u2019t be tolerated by anyone, regardless of what neighborhoods they live in.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Long-Term Failures Of Violence Prevention Programs As a Second Amendment supporter, I tend to believe that the answers to solving the issue of violence in our inner cities aren\u2019t gun control. Obviously, I\u2019m biased to a significant degree, but my bias is based on observation. After all, look at the 10 safest states and … Continue reading “”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-54742","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rkba","category-safety"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54742","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=54742"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54742\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":54743,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54742\/revisions\/54743"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=54742"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=54742"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=54742"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}