What Is This?

Six categories of work define what community violence intervention does on the ground. What follows draws on reporting from ProPublica, named program officials in cities from Minneapolis to Orlando, and evaluations from the University of Chicago Crime Lab and Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

What Actually Happens on the Street

A 2023 ProPublica investigation by Alec MacGillis documented how the work operates in practice. In one case, a sex video involving high school students surfaced online, “angering a rival group of teenagers, who had beat up one participant, stealing his designer bag and sunglasses, then fired shots at a car belonging to another participant’s mother.” A violence interrupter “reached out to the mother of a member of the retaliating group, fearing that she might be a target, and, for several days, he accompanied her on the bus to work.” He then arranged a 2 a.m. meeting on an abandoned block, going through “the superiors in the crew that the father belonged to.” As the interrupter explained afterward: “We were able to resolve it. That’s what we do out here… We squashed it. But nobody knows about those kinds of stories.”

In Minneapolis, a violence interrupter with the MinneapolUS program described talking down a man holding two guns who was preparing to shoot another young man. Sasha Cotton, who heads the city’s Office of Violence Prevention, reported in 2022 that in the program’s first six months, violence interrupters had more than 8,900 contacts with the public and mediated more than 1,500 incidents before they became violent.

In Orlando, an Advance Peace worker named Raysean Brown described checking in with assigned high-risk individuals “three times a day,” according to WESH reporting. In Baltimore, the Safe Streets Penn North site went 478 consecutive days without a single homicide in a neighborhood that the Baltimore Banner described as historically one of the city’s most violent. In Chicago, the CRED (Creating Real Economic Destiny) program provides what it describes as “job training, counseling, and real opportunities” alongside the READI (Rapid Employment and Development Initiative) program’s combination of “subsidized, supported work combined with group cognitive behavioral therapy.”

Who Does This Work

Programs describe their core workforce as “certified violence prevention professionals” who are “trained in conflict mediation, crisis intervention, and trauma-informed care.” These workers are “from the neighborhoods they serve” and have “built the trust it takes to walk into a room and change the outcome.”

The distinction from other “lived experience” roles matters for design purposes. A peer support specialist on a mobile crisis team draws credibility from experience with mental illness or substance use. A peer recovery specialist on an overdose response team draws credibility from personal addiction and recovery. A credible messenger in CVI draws credibility from experience with violence, incarceration, or gang involvement — a different trust mechanism serving a different population.

The University of Chicago Crime Lab operates a CVI Leadership Academy, a six-month intensive program that has trained leaders from 21 cities. The Chicago Defender reported the academy provides “immersive training in program management, workforce retention, data literacy, evaluation techniques” culminating in a “community-focused capstone project.” Executive Director Dr. Chico Tillmon oversees the program, which is building a pipeline of credentialed violence prevention professionals from a workforce that historically relied on informal community recruitment.

Programs also employ case managers, cognitive behavioral therapy facilitators, job coaches, behavioral health specialists, and legal aid providers. But as Commander Andre Parham of the Chicago Police Department put it, CVI workers have “the ability to communicate and build relationships in a way that us, the police, we just can’t. It just is not possible.”

The workforce model creates a structural hiring challenge. Background check requirements designed for other public safety roles can screen out the people CVI programs need. As program leaders describe them, these are “trained experts in conflict resolution and trauma response who are saving lives” — but their lived experience, which is the qualification, often includes criminal records. Programs in Chicago, Baltimore, and Orlando have created exemption frameworks for CVI positions to address this.

The 2023 ProPublica investigation documented the personal risk workers accept: physically accompanying threatened individuals, mediating between armed parties, maintaining presence in the most dangerous neighborhoods in their cities.

How It Differs from What Police Do

Three structural differences separate CVI from law enforcement, and several law enforcement leaders have described them directly.

On timing: Baton Rouge Police Chief Murphy Paul told WAFB that “over 47% of our shooting incidents happen inside of a house or on a property. I could have 200 more officers on the streets and it wouldn’t solve the problem.” CVI operates in the hours and days before a shooting, in spaces — private conversations, social media threads, the emotional aftermath of a previous incident — where law enforcement presence would shut down the conversations workers need to have.

On mechanism: Chicago Police Superintendent Larry Snelling has said directly: “We can’t arrest our way out of this.” Chief Charlie Beck, who led both the LAPD and Chicago Police Department, called “intervention groups the answer.” Commander Parham described CVI workers as people who “build relationships… police just can’t.” These endorsements come from law enforcement leaders who have worked alongside CVI programs operationally.

On the complementary relationship: Aqeela Sherrills, advisor to the White House Community Violence Intervention Collaborative, stated: “You can’t have public safety without the public. Police can’t do this job by themselves. Community violence intervention complements law enforcement. They are both vital for public safety.”

A structural tension exists within the complementary relationship. CVI workers access information through trust. Police seek information through investigation. When those two streams cross, the trust that makes CVI effective can be destroyed. The operational protocols governing what CVI workers can and cannot share with police are not well documented in public sources. The 2023 ProPublica investigation described this tension but noted the challenge remains largely unresolved across the field.

The Ecosystem: More Than Street Outreach

CVI operates across at least six intervention points, each documented through specific programs.

Pre-conflict outreach. Orlando’s Advance Peace assigns specific workers to specific individuals for intensive daily engagement, with check-ins “three times a day” per WESH reporting. Workers identify risk through street intelligence, social media monitoring, hospital referrals, court and reentry referrals, and community relationships.

Active conflict mediation. Baltimore Safe Streets, Charlotte’s Alternatives to Violence (which logged more than 1,500 hours canvassing neighborhoods, per a 2023 UNC Charlotte Urban Institute evaluation), and dozens of sites replicating the Cure Violence model — founded by epidemiologist Gary Slutkin, who first applied disease-containment methods to violence — operate this approach.

Post-shooting hospital intervention. When prevention fails and someone is shot, credible messengers deploy to the hospital bedside. Hospital-Based Violence Intervention Programs (HVIPs) operate at this intervention point. As Baltimore hospital leaders have described it, hospitals have moved beyond simply treating wounds and discharging patients back into the same conditions. Pittsburgh’s Reimagine Reentry program innovated with QR codes on business cards that nurses scan, providing “name, age, where they were shot and whether they’ve consented to receiving services,” per Public Source reporting. HVIP is CVI work deployed in a hospital setting — same workforce concept, same trust mechanism, different intervention point. A city with street CVI but no HVIP has no mechanism to intervene at the bedside when prevention fails. A city with HVIP but no street CVI intervenes after violence but does nothing to prevent the next shooting.

Post-crisis wraparound services. Chicago’s READI program offers what the University of Chicago describes as “subsidized, supported work combined with group cognitive behavioral therapy” providing “a stable source of income to deter illegal work, an incentive to participate in therapy, a place to build and reinforce new skills and norms, and a reason to spend less time in dangerous settings.” CRED reports that 400 participants have earned high school diplomas across nine graduation ceremonies, and more than 40 companies in 17 industries hire graduates. As Blommer Chocolate Senior VP Bob Karr wrote in a 2023 Chicago Tribune op-ed: “Business leaders cannot sit back and hope that others will solve crime.”

Youth and school-based prevention. Pine Bluff, Arkansas went 543 days without a juvenile homicide using what THV11 described as “custom in-person visits to individuals identified as high-risk” before the streak ended in June 2025. In Albuquerque, the West Mesa High School program provides what the Albuquerque Journal described as “on campus peer-to-peer support” in partnership with Foot Locker, which provides retail employment pathways for program participants. The school’s principal told the Journal that “being reactive is not working. We cannot rely on a single solution.” Baltimore has expanded Safe Streets into schools.

Community accompaniment. The ProPublica investigation documented workers physically accompanying threatened individuals as a form of protection — riding the bus with a mother for several days, maintaining physical presence alongside people under threat.

Where This Fits in the Broader System

Three structural properties distinguish CVI from every other alternative response model, each documented through the programs described above.

First, proactive activation. As program descriptions put it: “When someone sends a text that sounds like revenge, they’re the ones who get the call.” CVI identifies risk and goes to people rather than waiting for a 911 call.

Second, trust through violence-specific lived experience. Workers “live in and are members of the community” and “get access to information about conflicts before they boil over” — access that badges and clinical credentials cannot replicate.

Third, sustained engagement over months and years. A mobile crisis encounter lasts minutes to hours. A police encounter lasts minutes. CVI engagement, as documented from Orlando to Chicago, lasts as long as needed.

The closest structural relatives to street CVI are HVIPs and Trauma Recovery Centers. Together, the three address different stages of the violence cycle: street CVI before the shooting, HVIP at the bedside, TRCs for long-term recovery after discharge.

What This Is Not

CVI addresses community violence patterns — retaliatory cycles, gang dynamics, interpersonal disputes within high-risk networks — not behavioral health crises, domestic violence, or random crime. The evidence base measures outcomes primarily in firearm metrics (shooting reductions, homicide declines, reinjury rates), but the model addresses the broader violence ecosystem. A community experiencing retaliatory cycles may be a candidate regardless of whether the violence involves firearms.

As workers describe their own limits: they are “treating the bleeding, not curing the disease.” CVI does not claim to replace investments in housing, education, employment, or mental health infrastructure.

The Scale of the Problem CVI Addresses

The epidemiological framework behind CVI holds that “most gun violence isn’t random” but instead “often spreads through small groups of people who know each other” — the contagion model first applied by Gary Slutkin at Cure Violence. Seventy-three percent of respondents in a 2024 national survey of 2,503 registered voters found this description convincing.

In Chicago, fifteen neighborhoods account for roughly half of the city’s gun violence, per the Chicago Tribune. Within those neighborhoods, CRED currently serves approximately 15% of the individuals it has identified as highest-risk, with a stated goal of reaching 75%, according to the SC2 initiative. That gap between identifiable need and current capacity exists in every documented city. CVI programs operate in most of the largest U.S. cities — including New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Detroit, Dallas, Baltimore, and Orlando — but within those cities, coverage remains partial.

The workforce pipeline constrains scale. The University of Chicago’s Leadership Academy takes six months per cohort. The pool of people who have the specific combination of lived experience, community trust, and willingness to do dangerous work at low pay cannot be expanded by simply increasing training capacity.

BOTTOM LINE: Community violence intervention deploys “certified violence prevention professionals” — people with lived experience in violence, incarceration, or gang life — into the neighborhoods where shootings concentrate. The 2024 READI RCT from the University of Chicago found a 65% reduction in shooting and homicide arrests among 2,456 participants (though the study’s pre-specified primary outcome did not reach conventional statistical significance; a 40-month follow-up is forthcoming). Johns Hopkins tracked Baltimore Safe Streets from 2007 through 2022 and found 22% fewer homicides than predicted in program areas. As Superintendent Snelling put it: “We can’t arrest our way out of this.” As Chief Beck put it: “Intervention groups are the answer.” As Commander Parham put it: CVI workers “build relationships… police just can’t.” CVI does not replace policing. It reaches the spaces and moments that policing cannot.

Source Appendix

Minneapolis MinneapolUS program — 8,900 contacts, 1,500 mediations, Sasha Cotton, two-guns incident. KSTP, May 2022. https://kstp.com/kstp-news/top-news/minneapolis-violence-interrupters-report-on-1st-year-of-progress/ Also: MinnPost, August 2022. https://www.minnpost.com/metro/2022/08/how-a-minneapolis-pilot-program-aims-to-foster-long-term-safety-of-the-citys-communities/
Baltimore Safe Streets Penn North — 478 days without a homicide. Baltimore Banner, March 2024. https://www.thebanner.com/community/criminal-justice/safe-streets-penn-north-JLZH6TGFJFAYHCIIMMTT4J4OD4/ Also: CBS Baltimore, March 2024.
ProPublica investigation — interrupter riding bus with threatened mother, 2 a.m. meeting, “shot caller” father, sex video incident, worker risk. ProPublica, Alec MacGillis, May 2023. https://www.propublica.org/article/are-community-violence-interruption-programs-effective
University of Chicago CVI Leadership Academy — six-month program, 21 cities, Dr. Chico Tillmon, curriculum details. Chicago Defender, Tacuma Roeback, September 2023. Also: University of Chicago Crime Lab, September 2023. https://crimelab.uchicago.edu/2023/09/university-of-chicago-community-violence-intervention-leadership-academy-hosts-first-cohort-of-leaders-from-21-cities-across-america/ Also: UChicago News, February 2024.
Chicago CRED — 400 diplomas across 9 graduations (cumulative through August 2025), 40+ companies in 17 industries, Bob Karr quote. Chicago Tribune, August 2025. Also: Chicago CRED press releases. https://www.chicagocred.org/ Also: Chicago Tribune, Bob Karr, “Hiring workers from the South and West sides is a win-win for Chicago,” July 23, 2023. https://www.chicagotribune.com/2023/07/23/bob-karr-hiring-workers-from-the-south-and-west-sides-is-a-win-win-for-chicago/
Orlando Advance Peace — three check-ins per day, Raysean Brown. WESH, 2023. Also: ClickOrlando/News 6, November 2023. https://www.clickorlando.com/getting-results/2023/11/08/shootings-are-down-by-37-in-orlando-city-credits-new-crime-prevention-program/
Chicago — fifteen neighborhoods, roughly half of city gun violence; CRED serves 15% of highest-risk, goal 75%. Chicago Tribune, February 2024. https://www.chicagotribune.com/2024/02/01/foundations-business-interests-raise-66-million-to-fight-crime-in-chicago/ Also: SC2 initiative. https://www.scalecvichicago.org/
Superintendent Larry Snelling — “can’t arrest our way out.” Chicago Tribune, February 2024. Also: Chicago CRED, Arne Duncan op-ed, December 2025. https://www.chicagocred.org/blog/arne-duncan-community-violence-intervention-is-working-in-chicago/
Chief Charlie Beck — “intervention groups are the answer.” Chicago Defender, “UChicago Launches Initiative to Help Combat Gun Violence Across America,” September 2023. https://chicagodefender.com/uchicago-launches-initiative-to-combat-gun-violence-across-america/ Also: Newsweek, Beck, Ludwig, and Tillmon, “A New Way To Address Gun Violence You’ve Never Heard Of,” February 8, 2024. https://www.newsweek.com/new-way-address-gun-violence-youve-never-heard-opinion-1868323 https://crimelab.uchicago.edu/2024/02/community-violence-intervention-leadership-academy-cvila-graduation-of-inaugural-cohort/
Commander Andre Parham — “relationships police just can’t build.” Chicago media reporting. Also cited in SC2 materials and Chicago CRED. https://www.chicagocred.org/blog/arne-duncan-community-violence-intervention-is-working-in-chicago/
Baton Rouge Chief Murphy Paul — 47% quote. WAFB Baton Rouge. Also cited in multiple CVI reporting sources.
Aqeela Sherrills — “You can’t have public safety without the public.” White House CVI Collaborative. White House CVI Collaborative reporting.
Pine Bluff, Arkansas — 543 days without juvenile homicide (streak ended June 2025). THV11 (Arkansas), May 2025. https://www.thv11.com/article/news/local/pine-bluffs-gun-violence-intervention-program-500-days-no-juvenile-homicide/91-371d5b84-ded6-438d-b0b7-8a2df3cec869 Also: KARK, June 2025.
Albuquerque West Mesa High School — on-campus peer support, principal quote, Foot Locker partnership. Albuquerque Journal, March 2024. https://www.abqjournal.com/news/giving-hope-to-high-risk-youths/article_c47eee78-b979-11ee-8a6d-2b9ad65a8bf3.html Also: City of Albuquerque SBVIP. https://www.cabq.gov/acs/vip/sbvip
CVI-police information sharing tension. ProPublica, Alec MacGillis, May 2023 (source 3 above). Also discussed in multiple CVI reporting sources.
Workforce descriptions — “certified violence prevention professionals.” Term used across HAVI, University of Chicago Crime Lab, and multiple program descriptions.
National CVI survey — 2,503 registered voters, 73% convincing, 65% effective. 2024 survey. https://safercitiesresearch.com/
Charlotte Alternatives to Violence — 1,500+ hours canvassing. UNC Charlotte Urban Institute evaluation, May 2023. Rachel Jackson-Gordon and Angelique Gaines. Report: https://ui.charlotte.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/1003/2023/05/UNCC-UI-ATV-Evaluation-Year-One-Report_link_5.10.23_Compressed.pdf Summary: https://ui.charlotte.edu/story/alternatives-violence-program-offers-promise-lessons-preventing-gun-violence/
Cure Violence model — Gary Slutkin, disease-containment methods. Cure Violence Global. https://cvg.org/
Baltimore hospital leadership on violence intervention. LifeBridge Health/Center for Hope. The concept of hospitals moving beyond treating-and-discharging is widely described by Baltimore violence intervention leadership. See also: NPR, Andrea Hsu, “Baltimore Sees Hospitals As Key To Breaking A Cycle Of Violence,” April 8, 2016. https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2016/04/08/473379238/baltimore-sees-hospitals-as-key-to-breaking-a-cycle-of-violence
Pittsburgh Reimagine Reentry — QR code innovation. PublicSource, Venuri Siriwardane, September 12, 2023. https://www.publicsource.org/allegheny-county-anti-violence-initiative-reimagine-reentry-human-services/ White House CVI Collaborative reporting.
READI program description — “subsidized, supported work combined with group CBT.” University of Chicago Crime Lab. https://crimelab.uchicago.edu/ Also: READI RCT, QJE 2024.
READI RCT and Johns Hopkins evaluation (Bottom Line). Heller et al., QJE 2024. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10898100/ Johns Hopkins: Baltimore Banner and Bloomberg School of Public Health reporting.