Community-Driven Violence Interruption Programs are Helping to Reduce Gun Violence. Let’s Keep Investing in Them.
Last Friday, I visited a Cure the Streets site in Washington Highlands in Ward 8. We sat down with the program managers, violence interrupters, and outreach workers during their daily briefing. We heard about their outreach plans in the community, discussed their successes and challenges, and learned more about the day-to-day work they do every day to stop gun violence in their neighborhoods and make their communities safer.
Their work is hard. But they do it because it’s important and makes a real difference. They love their communities and know that gun violence doesn’t have to be the future. They have stepped up to help make sure it isn’t. Their work isn’t linear — it comes with steps forward and steps backward. But day by day, they are having a real impact and making their neighborhoods safer.
What is Cure the Streets?
Cure the Streets is a pilot public safety program launched by OAG aimed at reducing gun violence. It operates in discrete high violence neighborhoods using a data-driven, public-health approach to gun violence by treating it as a disease that can be interrupted, treated, and stopped from spreading. We know, based on research and data, that empowering communities to interrupt violence, intervening with those most likely to commit or be victims of violence, and changing norms around violence can have long-lasting impacts. That’s why we launched Cure the Streets in several targeted neighborhoods in Wards 5, 7, and 8 that have historically experienced some of the highest rates of gun violence. Our staff manage grants to organizations that administer the program and monitor data regarding its efficacy.
Cure the Streets is based on the Cure Violence Global model, which employs local, credible individuals who have deep ties to the neighborhood in which they work. These Outreach Workers and Violence Interrupters de-escalate conflicts, attempt to resolve them through mediation, and avert potentially fatal shootings. They work to develop relationships with residents who are at high risk of being involved in gun violence so they can detect and mediate conflicts, prevent shootings, and improve public safety. After mediating a conflict, the violence interrupters remain engaged with the participants, in part to ensure the mediation results in a lasting peace, and to help connect the person with services and to help them live non-violent lives.
The Cure Violence public health approach to violence reduction has had success in cities across the country. But it is not solution by itself. Rather, Cure the Streets and violence interruption efforts are a needed piece in a much larger effort to reduce crime and violence, that includes the critical work of police, prosecutors, more involvement in trauma reduction services, and workforce development. Those larger efforts to improve public safety also should include aggressive gun safety reform, holding individuals accountable when they commit crimes and changing their behavior so they are less likely to reoffend in the future, and addressing the root causes of crime in our communities — including poverty, hopelessness, and trauma — to break the cycle of violence.
To learn more about the work of Cure the Streets, see this piece from NBC4 from May 2021.
How were Cure the Streets sites determined?
The Office of the Attorney General launched the program in the summer of 2018. In December 2019, four additional sites began preparing for operations. All six sites were fully operational by January 2020. Each site was chosen after an analysis of data regarding where the program is likely to have the greatest impact. Included in that analysis was MPD incident and shot spotter data, as well community intelligence regarding shootings, homicides, and warring neighborhoods. After identifying areas with persistent gun homicides and shootings, Cure the Streets staff reached out to community members in the areas to understand the nature of the violence.
We are excited the Council just included in its budget funding for a significant expansion of the program.
Has the COVID-19 pandemic impacted the work of Cure the Streets?
The work of Cure the Streets has continued despite the pandemic and the resulting challenges. These communities have been disproportionately impacted by COVID-19. They had more cases of COVID-19, many residents lost jobs, and kids in were not in school. But the Cure the Streets violence interrupters kept working — and that work helped save lives in some of the hardest hit neighborhoods.
In FY 2021, Cure the Streets conducted approximately 82 mediations across the District, helping prevent the escalation of violence where it may have otherwise occurred. That number reinforces the importance and impact of community-based efforts to stop gun violence.
Specifically, in late May 2021, Cure the Streets workers were able to help a participant — by definition, a person who was at high risk of being involved in gun violence — find full-time work and surrender his firearm.
What data is available about how Cure the Streets is doing?
Early data indicates this public health approach to treating violence is working in these neighborhoods. No program is perfect — but we are constantly looking at the data. To fully evaluate the program, we need the program to be up and running for at least three years to have enough numbers and patterns, and then we need to conduct a rigorous analysis of the data to see what is successful and what needs to be adjusted.
The metrics
The goal of Cure the Streets is to reduce the frequency of shootings and gun homicides within the target areas. We track gun-related violent incidents in the target areas year over year and as compared to gun violence rates in the District overall. We also track data associated with the activities of the program.
We also measure community perceptions of violence in the target areas to determine whether the program influences how residents feel about the level of violence in their neighborhoods. In the autumn of 2019, we contracted to conduct a community survey in the target areas, which will serve as a baseline of community perceptions of violence in the neighborhood. We have delayed conducting the follow up survey after learning that there was not a safe, effective, and reasonably priced methodology for conducting the survey during the pandemic. We plan to conduct an in-person follow-up survey this fall, if it is safe to do so.
Early data
When looking at this early data, bear in mind the following:
· The numbers are very small.
· Cure the Streets sites were specifically chosen because of their high rates of gun violence.
· Cure the Streets is designed to address certain types of gun crimes, those that result from reciprocal violence. It is not intended to address, for example, intimate partner violence or violence related to random crime.
· “Rest of District” includes all other non-Cure the Streets sites in the District (including any parts of the District that fall in ONSE sites).
In the Marshall Heights neighborhood, there has been a pretty dramatic drop in gun violence in the last year. There is a Cure the Streets target area in that neighborhood which just became fully operational in January 2020. According to data from Criminal Justice Coordinating Council, violent gun crime is down 39% in Marshall Heights in the first half of this year as compared to the first half of last year. And the number of violent gun crimes in the first half of the year is at its lowest point since 2008. MPD has recognized the success of this program and has expressed gratitude to the men and women for the difficult work they are doing to bring about this reduction.
We are proud of the work of Cure the Streets, and will continue to support and advocate for this needed public safety program.
