Three Things To Read This Week
1. White House Touts Two Milestones For Community Violence Intervention.
“First-ever dedicated federal funding stream for Community Violence Intervention programs, which have been shown to reduce violence by as much as 60%.”
Last year, the Biden White House launched the Office of Gun Violence Prevention to address the “root causes of gun violence,” which is the “leading cause of death for all youth and Black men” and “the second leading cause of death for Black women” in America.
This week, for Community Violence Intervention Week, a new fact-sheet from the White House notes that the Administration’s investments in evidence-based programs like Community Violence Intervention, “yielded a 12.4% reduction in homicides across the United States.”
As the White House explains: “[T]hese programs are effective because they leverage trusted messengers who work directly with individuals most likely to commit gun violence, intervene in conflicts, and connect people to social, health and wellness, and economic services to reduce the likelihood of violence as an answer to conflict.”White House Hosts First CVI Leadership Academy Graduates. For Politico, Shia Kapos reports that Vice President Kamala Harris hosted the graduation ceremony for the first class of the University of Chicago Crime Lab’s Community Violence Intervention Leadership Academy.
The cohort spans 21 cities across the country; and, as Safer Cities reported in September, the academy “equips senior and executive leaders working in community violence intervention with the skills and knowledge needed to alter their communities and the organizations they lead … [It is] overseen by expert practitioners and scholars.”
Charlie Beck, the revered former chief of both the Chicago and Los Angeles police departments, lauded the academy and predicted that “intervention groups are the answer to reducing violence.” Beck continued: “If you want to solve the problem of violence in the community, you have to work with people in the community… If CVI can get young people to lay down guns, I’m 100% behind that—and everybody else should be, too.”
Related: The Department of Justice hosted a webinar worth your time— “Catalyst for Change, Approaches to Community Violence Intervention” on Feb. 12, the DOJ launched The National Community Based Violence Intervention and Prevention Initiative Resource and Field Support Center (National CVIPI Center) a resource hub for individuals, organizations, and municipalities interested in planning, implementing, or expanding CVI approaches. The webinar was led by experts in the field and offers guidance, history, and insight into the future of CVI efforts.
2. “New Anti-Violence Initiative Aims to Reduce Chicago Shootings By 50% in 5 Years.”
For WTTW, Chicago’s PBS affiliate, Amanda Vinicky reports that Chicago has witnessed an over-30% reduction in shootings since the city began reinvesting in community violence intervention two years ago. Now, the city looks to double down on its success, launching a Community Violence Intervention effort called Scaling Community Violence Intervention for a Safer Chicago.
As Governor Pritzker told the Chicago Tribune, “scaling community violence intervention for a safer Chicago [reflects] an unprecedented effort to gather government stakeholders and community organizations, private stakeholders to meet the needs of those most at risk of gun violence … This has been years in the making, and no other city or state in the nation has a partnership as robust as this one.”
Chicago’s approach to CVI “include streets outreach, behavioral health, workforce development, legal aid, and organizational development” and other “training and support of multiple kinds, from life coaches to career counselors over the course of about a year, until they can be employed and become positive contributors to society.”
Over the next ten years, the initiative aims to ensure that at least 75% of people at high-risk of being a gun violence perpetrator or victim are provided with the kind of comprehensive services proven to reduce a shooting before anyone pulls a trigger. By comparison, only roughly 15% of those at high-risk of shooting or being shot receive CVI services today.
SC2 is launching as a public-private partnership and seeks to raise $400 million through a public-private partnership for the initiative. For the Chicago Tribune, Olivia Stevens reports that “a number of Chicago corporate interests and major foundations have chipped in including the Pritzker Foundation, the Hyatt Hotel Foundation and Crown Family Philanthropies.”
“We recognize that the business community has a role to play in making Chicago safer,” said Hyatt Hotels CEO Mark Hoplamazian, the business community’s public safety task force co-chair, explaining why the company he leads is investing heavily in CVI. “Our goal is to be the safest big city in America.”
The CVI initiative also has support from Chicago Police Superintendent Larry Snelling, who told the crowd at the launch that this program is important because, “as the police, we can’t arrest our way out of the situation, and we shouldn’t be trying to do that. What we should be trying to do is build our communities and build our children.”
Related: New research published by the Center for Neighborhood Engaged Research and Science shows that participants in Chicago’s partner CVI programs experienced a 44% decrease in gunshot victimization after 12 months. It also shows a similar sustained decrease for the following 18 months, which suggests a decline over the longer-term in arrests for violent crimes. “From July 2017 through December 2021, CP4P potentially prevented at least 383 Fatal & non-fatal shooting victimizations [and] 605 arrests for violent crime,” the researchers note.
3. More CVI News From Across The Country:
In Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Mayor Kenney credits the city’s investments in community violence intervention for the fact that “homicides [are] down by 26 percent since 2021 and shootings overall down 22 percent citywide compared to previous year-to-date totals.” David Muhammad reports for the Philadelphia Inquirer that “a recent external academic evaluation found that the city’s group violence intervention program has been successful at engaging very high-risk [gun violence perpetrators or victims] and supporting them in not participating in gun violence.”
Maryland. For WBAL TV 11, Baltimore, Maryland’s NBC affiliate, Jason Newton reports that “violence interrupter models [are] spreading to more locations” around the city of Baltimore. Moreover, building on Baltimore’s success, neighboring Anne Arundel County will launch its own CVI program in Annapolis’s Eastport neighborhood.
The City of Albuquerque Teams Up with Foot Locker To Give New Shoes to West Mesa High School Students Enrolled In Its School-Based Violence Intervention Program. Beyond the sneakers, Jordan Honeycutt reports for WRQE that Foot Locker and Albuquerque’s Community Safety Department teamed up to help students who face the highest risk of gun violence by providing therapy and a safe space to talk to peers.
