The National Network for Safe Communities' group violence reduction strategy holds that violent crime can be dramatically reduced when law enforcement, community members, and social services providers join together to directly engage with violent street groups and gangs to clearly communicate: (1) a law enforcement message that any future violence will be met with clear, predictable, and certain consequences; (2) a moral message against violence by community representatives; and (3) a genuine offer of help for those who want it. For the strategy to achieve its desired outcomes, stakeholders must be authentic and their messages credible. For law enforcement this means making good on the promise of swift and meaningful consequences for a group or gang as a whole when a prohibited violent act (usually shooting or killing) is committed by one of its members. Group Violence Reduction Strategy: Four Case Studies of Swift and Meaningful Law Enforcement Responses captures examples of successful and creative law enforcement responses to group violence as carried out by police departments and their partner agencies in key National Network jurisdictions.

This publication provides comprehensive guidance on how to implement GVI step by step, discussing the role and responsibilities of the core representatives in law enforcement, the community, and social services. It explains the logic and basics of the strategy before taking the reader through the initial planning stages, design, and execution of all key strategy elements, such as problem analysis and the call-in. This guide also includes methods to maintain program integrity and ensure sustainability in the long-term.

For years proposals for gun control and the ownership of firearms have been among the most contentious issues in American politics. For public authorities to make reasonable decisions on these matters, they must take into account facts about the relationship between guns and violence as well as conflicting constitutional claims and divided public opinion. In performing these tasks, legislators need adequate data and research to judge both the effects of firearms on violence and the effects of different violence control policies. Readers of the research literature on firearms may sometimes find themselves unable to distinguish scholarship from advocacy. Given the importance of this issue, there is a pressing need for a clear and unbiased assessment of the existing portfolio of data and research. Firearms and Violence uses conventional standards of science to examine three major themes - firearms and violence, the quality of research, and the quality of data available. The book assesses the strengths and limitations of current databases, examining current research studies on firearm use and the efforts to reduce unjustified firearm use and suggests ways in which they can be improved.

From a Harvard scholar and former Obama official, a powerful proposal for curtailing violent crime in America Urban violence is one of the most divisive and allegedly intractable issues of our time. But as Harvard scholar Thomas Abt shows in Bleeding Out, we actually possess all the tools necessary to stem violence in our cities. Coupling the latest social science with firsthand experience as a crime-fighter, Abt proposes a relentless focus on violence itself -- not drugs, gangs, or guns. Because violence is "sticky," clustering among small groups of people and places, it can be predicted and prevented using a series of smart-on-crime strategies that do not require new laws or big budgets. Bringing these strategies together, Abt offers a concrete, cost-effective plan to reduce homicides by over 50 percent in eight years, saving more than 12,000 lives nationally. Violence acts as a linchpin for urban poverty, so curbing such crime can unlock the untapped potential of our cities' most disadvantaged communities and help us to bridge the nation's larger economic and social divides. Urgent yet hopeful, Bleeding Out offers practical solutions to the national emergency of urban violence -- and challenges readers to demand action.

The remarkable story of David Kennedy's crusade to combat America's plague of gang- and drug-related violence - with methods that have been astonishingly effective across the country. 'If you want to read a book on urban gangs and find out why they exist and why they kill each other, read this ... this is a sociology book, but it's like immersing yourself in The Wire ... When Kennedy says something, you believe him' Scotsman Gang- and drug-related inner-city violence, with its attendant epidemic of incarceration, is the defining crime problem in our country. In some neighborhoods in America, one out of every two hundred young black men is shot to death every year, and few initiatives of government and law enforcement have made much difference. But when David Kennedy, a self-taught and then-unknown criminologist, engineered the "Boston Miracle" in the mid-1990s, he pointed the way toward what few had imagined: a solution. Don't Shoot tells the story of Kennedy's long journey. Riding with beat cops, hanging with gang members, and stoop-sitting with grandmothers, Kennedy found that all parties misunderstood each other, caught in a spiral of racialized anger and distrust. He envisioned an approach in which everyone-gang members, cops, and community members-comes together in what is essentially a huge intervention. Offenders are told that the violence must stop, that even the cops want them to stay alive and out of prison, and that even their families support swift law enforcement if the violence continues. In city after city, the same miracle has followed: violence plummets, drug markets dry up, and the relationship between the police and the community is reset. This is a landmark book, chronicling a paradigm shift in how we address one of America's most shameful social problems. A riveting, page-turning read, it combines the street vérité of The Wire, the social science of Gang Leader for a Day, and the moral urgency and personal journey of Fist Stick Knife Gun. But unlike anybody else, Kennedy shows that there could be an end in sight.

Culmination of a survey and review conducted by a U.S. Department of Justice Work Group and COSMOS Corporation.

This second edition of the Handbook of Crime Prevention and Community Safety provides a completely revised and updated collection of essays focusing on the theory and practice of crime prevention and the creation of safer communities. This book is divided into five comprehensive parts: Part I, brand new to this edition, is concerned with theoretical perspectives on crime prevention and community safety. Part II considers general approaches to preventing crime, including a new chapter on the theory and practice of deterrence. Part III focuses on specific crime prevention strategies, including a new chapter on regulation for crime prevention. Part IV focuses on the prevention of specific categories of crime and the fear they generate, including new chapters on organised crime and cybercrime. Part V considers the preventative process: the methods through which presenting problems can be analysed, responses formulated and implemented, and their effectiveness evaluated. Bringing together leading academics and practitioners from the UK, US, Australia and the Netherlands, this volume will be an invaluable reference for researchers and practitioners whose work relates to crime prevention and community safety, as well as for undergraduate and postgraduate courses in crime prevention.

In this book, Irving Spergel details the efforts of his Chicago youth gang project, a comprehensive, community-based model designed to reduce gang problems, including violence and illegal drug activity. He offers an in-depth description of the Little Village Gang Violence Reduction Project, revealing the successes and failures of intervention at each level: individual youths, the gang itself, and the community at large. Spergel relates how a coalition of criminal justice, neighborhood, and academic organizations_along with a team of tactical officers, probation officers, former gang leaders, and a neighborhood organization_developed strategies for dealing with hardcore violent male youths from two gangs: the Latin Kings and Two Six. This well-known project has become the model for a series of national initiatives. Policymakers, criminologists, and gang researchers will find this model valuable for assessing gang programs and reducing gang violence.

Reviews innovations in policing over the last four decades, bringing together top policing scholars to discuss whether police should adopt these approaches.

'Oxford Textbook Violence Prevention' brings together an international team of experts to provide an extensive global account of the global mortality and morbidity burden caused by violence through examining the causes of violence, and what can be done to prevent and reduce violence.