Three Things To Read This Weekend On Gun Violence Intervention
(1) Data For Progress has a new national poll on gun violence produced in partnership with the Health Alliance for Violence Intervention. Here’s what you need to know.
Nearly two-thirds (62%) of voters are concerned about gun violence in the community where they live. There’s a stunning racial gap in these responses—over half of white voters (58%) express concern about gun violence in their community, but that number skyrockets to nearly four-in-five Black (79%) and Latino/a (78%) voters.
But Here’s Some Better News:
(2) Dallas CRED program receives praise as the long-time “number one violent crime hot spot” in the city drops off the police department’s most violent places list.
Last year, spurred by Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson, the Dallas City Council approved $1.6 million to launch a community violence intervention program known as Dallas CRED. The program relies on trained community experts, known as credible messengers, to build relationships with people at high risk of becoming either a victim or perpetrator of gun violence. The model leverages the fact that gun violence is contagious, spreading through cycles of retaliation between groups of people within the same social network. Thus, Dallas CRED works to intervene in brewing conflicts to prevent violence before it happens.
Dallas CRED is operational in a handful of neighborhoods, including Oak Cliff, where the team includes people who live and grew up in the community. For decades, the Dallas Police Department considered the area around an apartment complex in Oak Cliff to be the single most violent place in Dallas. But no longer. The area just dropped off the police department’s list of top hotspots for violent crime, and Police Chief Eddie Garcia credits community leaders from Dallas CRED for contributing to the reduction in gun violence:
“I credit the hard work of the men and women of the Dallas Police Department but also our community partners …. That [drop] didn’t happen by accident. That happened because of the great community support of people that live in that neighborhood.”
(3) Check out Yale Medical School’s new hospital-based violence intervention program, which aims to stop the next shooting before it happens.
Built on the same idea that fuels Dallas CRED and other gun violence intervention programs, Yale’s hospital-based violence intervention program targets children admitted into the emergency room with firearm injuries to decrease the odds of retaliatory gun violence. The program takes a holistic approach to reducing trauma including providing psychiatric care, substance use treatment, and assistance with victim compensation, housing, and other stabilizing services.
As Kirsten Bechtel, a physician and professor of pediatrics at the Yale School of Medicine explains, “When children are physically assaulted, they are much more likely to be involved in a homicide or an assault with a firearm in the next six months … Having hospital-based violence intervention programs can make the difference in the lives of our kids who are impacted by firearm homicides.”
An important factor fueling this work: “Connecticut recently became the first state in the nation to sponsor Medicaid reimbursement for community services to do violence intervention outreach.”
Related: Thomas Stuckey, a former police officer and current professor of criminal justice at Indiana University-Purdue, published a piece in the Chronicle of Philanthropy this week that discussed “a large Indianapolis hospital, Eskenazi, [that] runs several important anti-violence programs [including] Prescription for Hope [which] assists people treated there for gunshot wounds.” As Stuckey explains:
“Like similar hospital-based programs around the country, the one based at Eskenazi helps participants develop effective life skills and connects them with community resources to reduce criminal and risky behaviors. An initial study of the program showed that only about 3 percent of participants returned to the emergency department with a repeat violent injury within the first year, compared with 8.7 percent when the program wasn’t underway. This translates to a two-thirds reduction in the likelihood that someone with a violent injury will need similar emergency medical assistance in the future.”
