What Works To Reduce Crime And Violence

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Improving The Justice System

“We improve the criminal justice system by exposing and correcting its flaws, not by pretending those flaws don’t exist.” The Marshall Project.

Edited Quotes

All quotes are edited for brevity.

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Violence is skyrocketing. Fear of crime is at an all-time high. Gun and security sales are skyrocketing. People are leaving cities. Lower-income African Americans and others are being hammered by crime.

Most are shocked to understand that there is no universally agreed-upon strategy to prevent crime and violence. There is no body of replicated research by independent evaluators indicating that anything reduces violence with some exceptions.

Most of what you read and hear is opinion, nothing more, nothing less. The Internet is filled to the brim with articles from advocates proudly proclaiming that their suggested modality will reduce violence when all available evidence indicates that they are wrong. They are stretching or ignoring the truth to advance a cause.

Mayors are now calling for law enforcement to return to arrests (arrests and incarceration have been plummeting). But concurrently, they promise their constituents a “balanced” approach to crime that is principally based on supposition, not facts.

Mayors and others want to invest in the economies of communities when businesses are leaving high crime areas and no one will invest unless violence is reduced. Amazon is moving employees out of downtown Seattle because of crime.

Mayors want social workers to respond to 911 calls which is a worthy idea “if” they are properly funded and trained, which most aren’t. There are media accounts of social workers being victimized or murdered.

They want violence interrupters (three have been murdered in Baltimore) when evidence of success is iffy at best. We already have tens of thousands of “violence interrupters” through parole and probation agencies. Yet the recidivism rates of people they supervise are dismal.

Baltimore and Violence Interrupters: The city doesn’t have a pulse on what’s going on at the sites,” said Joseph Richardson, a University of Maryland anthropologist who is studying Safe Streets. “You have had three people killed. You might want to pump the brakes.” Since Richardson began studying Safe Streets in 2021, he has come to wonder whether the model needs to be adjusted to fit the changing realities of street violence. He is also looking to see if there is a disconnect between how City Hall views Safe Streets violence interruption and how those workers are seen in neighborhoods across Baltimore.The Trace

Mayors want mental health and substance abuse treatment. Does anyone understand that this means hundreds of millions of dollars that cities cannot afford? Yes, it’s a worthy and wonderful idea “if” you understand that failure rates are massive and people will usually go through multiple repeat treatment episodes. It’s simply a reality that states and cities can’t afford that level of intervention. If they could, and if it worked, it would have been done decades ago.

How Do We Know What Works?

CrimeSolutions.Gov is a project of the Office Of Justice Programs of the US Department of Justice evaluating programs and practices. They should be your first stop to evaluating programs.

Seek assessments of multiple studies known as a meta-analysis or literature reviews. There are a ton of studies that work beautifully in one location only to discover they don’t work well when replicated at different locations. See Project Hope in CrimeSolutions, a widely supported program with favorable national publicity dealing with offenders on probation that didn’t work in other locations.

There are nationally known organizations with tens of millions of dollars in funding that claim to be nonpartisan that are nothing more than misleading advocacy organizations. There are Pulitzer Prize-winning news sources focusing on crime who wear their bias like a badge of honor; a violation of journalistic ethics. Getting impartial information as to what works is almost impossible when ninety percent of what I read is advocacy, not facts.

What Works

What’s below are universally accepted strategies and concepts that have strong research foundations:

Target hardening (good doors-windows and locks plus other security devices) reduces burglaries and other crimes.  We are quick to dismiss something as mundane as physical security but it works. Victims of burglary and theft (and related violence) are traumatized by their encounters. We can ease their pain.

Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design means that communities will have natural or manmade barriers (including street lights and video cameras) to reduce the ease of access to criminals and to increase informal social control. Think of fences surrounding schools or daycare centers or physical security and checkpoints at airports. Entire communities are designed to embrace these principles.

One of a few efforts indicating reductions in street crimes are proactive police strategies via the US Department of Justice and the National Academies of Sciences. Proactivity means that officers will take their own initiative to approach someone when they have the legal right to question or search. Proactive policing embraces a variety of tactics. Unfortunately, recent massive riots and protests demanded an end to this practice. News reports suggest that the cities where protests and or riots have occurred are being hit the hardest, Governing.Com.

Criminologists state that a small number of blocks and offenders are responsible for most violence and that data is correct. But every time a city comes up with a list of locations and high-risk people, the ACLU and similar organizations go nuts and file lawsuits indicating that law enforcement is targeting neighborhoods and groups. We’ve discovered that what works (and what’s politically feasible) are two different things.

Long-term incarceration of violent offenders per the US Sentencing Commission reduces crime. Correctional numbers are at record lows. The majority of state prison inmates are violent or have violent backgrounds. They have extremely high rates of recidivism (rearrests and incarcerations after release). If they are out of their communities, people are safer. Advocates will dispute this claiming that we over incarcerate; they are destroying communities in the process.

The problem of growing violence and crime applies to an array of groups: African Americans are especially hard hit, Asians as it applies to violence and hate, the disabled have much higher rates of violent victimization, the gay and lesbian communities suffer higher rates of violence, and lower-income communities regardless of race have higher incidents of violence and overall crime (well documented by the Bureau of Justice Statistics). Some Hispanic communities are heavily victimized. Per the Bureau of Justice Statistics, crimes against women in recent years are roughly equal to or exceed violence against men. We need strategies focusing on groups.

Per the Bureau of Justice Statistics, violent offenders serve less than three years in prison. We need to rethink the incarceration of violent offenders and how long they stay in prison to save lives.

What Doesn’t Work

Everything else. But that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t try new initiatives.

Everything should be on the table as possible solutions. Nothing should be ruled out “if” they are evaluated by independent researchers using approved methods and “if” they are replicated. Programs cannot evaluate themselves; it borders on unethical. Advocates have a way of distorting any positive data.

Rehabilitation programs either don’t work or they don’t work well (they create small percentage reductions). Saying this gets me into a multitude of heated discussions from people who are desperate to believe that they do work; that they must work.

No one is suggesting that we should not provide educational or vocational programs to prison inmates along with mental health and substance abuse treatment based on cognitive-behavioral therapy. Just don’t lie to the public by saying that they reduce crime. They don’t or the reductions are very small.

Insisting that rehabilitation programs work to reduce recidivism condemns millions of prison inmates to failure. Rather than admit that they don’t reduce recidivism, advocacy groups insist that they do thus creating an ethical dilemma of monumental proportions. We should create a national conference to improve results and create new and aggressive research endeavors which will never happen if people cannot come to grips with the truth.

GPS survivance has an impressive track record of reducing violations and new crimes but the modality is too harsh for many people.

There are endless additional examples of programs where advocates claim they work (but don’t) or that “justice” demands fewer arrests and less incarceration thus “imprisoning” millions of law-abiding Americans in high crime and surrounding communities.

The Official Position Of The Department of Justice

You can read the official positions addressing violence from the US Department of Justice titled “A Comprehensive Strategy For Reducing Violent Crime.” It principally supports police initiatives through Project Safe Neighborhoods (proactive policing) which does have a research base indicating success.

There was a study from the Department of Justice in 1998 titled “Preventing Crime-What Works-What Doesn’t And What’s Promising” that summarized crime prevention practices. It’s a relatively quick summation; just be warned that some suggested programs are no longer considered credible or have iffy results (i.e., rehabilitation programs-DARE). But it’s a great starting point for any discussion of crime prevention.

The Best Root Causes Approach To Violence

Eliminate or lessen the impact of child abuse and neglect. I interviewed hundreds of offenders and prison inmates throughout my career, principally through my radio and television shows, and to gather information for crime summits and projects. The one commonality they all expressed is abuse and neglect. It’s well substantiated through the literature. Many (most?) female offenders describe being sexually abused by people they knew. There isn’t a school-to-prison pipeline. There is a family (or lack thereof) to prison pipeline.

Economic distress and substance abuse is experienced by millions of Americans who live in low to moderate crime areas (i.e., Appalachia). It’s true that crime is concentrated in high poverty areas but the connection is far from direct. There are millions of people living in distressed communities who don’t engage in crime.

Guns

There are between 350-400 million firearms in the United States. The vast majority of crime and mass shootings involved pistols, not long guns. Most violent crime doesn’t involve firearms per the Bureau of Justice Statistics. You would have to eliminate hundreds of millions of Constitutionally protected handguns to have an impact, and that would take generations. Using the term “gun violence” is just someone’s way of stating that we don’t know what to do about violence. Blaming guns allows society to escape responsibility for increasing violence. Most Americans want “restrictions” (i.e., universal background checks) but the vast majority of criminals don’t get their firearms through gun stores or shows.

Mayors-Make More Arrests

Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell gave a deeper look at his crime prevention initiatives Friday, touting recent successes in law enforcement, but no progress on services promised in his “holistic” approach.

In February, Harrell announced he would direct the Seattle Police Department to focus their efforts on areas of town with concentrated criminal activity. Friday, he and law enforcement partners from the region introduced “Operation New Day” to do exactly that.

But on Friday — at a news conference with five law enforcement representatives and no service providers — Harrell made clear that the administration is making arrests first, offering services second, The Seattle Times

It’s impossible for me to summarize decades of research without exercising some bias which is what I accuse so many others of doing. So yes, I’m a hypocrite to a degree.

But after spending decades at US Department of Justice funded organizations (the Department of Justice’s clearinghouse-National Crime Prevention Council) answering similar questions and after spending thirty-five years of responding to media inquiries about crime, I feel that I’m on solid ground as to my assessments.

We embrace “data” that fit our preconceived views. Want evidence that cops are racist and target groups? You can easily find correlational numbers while ignoring what offenders did to get that attention. Is incarceration based on groups or what people have done or their criminal histories? Are cops supposed to stay away from high crime communities to make sure that arrests are not disproportionate?

We need to make good decisions because violence and fear of crime are rising to record levels thus destroying communities and people in the process. Lower-income African American communities are being very hard-hit by violence and crime.

We also need to be realistic as to what cities and states are willing to or capable of spending. There isn’t a state in the nation that fully funds rehabilitation programs in prisons. Why? Because the data indicate that they don’t work. States could save billions if they did.

Cities simply can’t afford to offer state-of-the-art mental health and drug treatment. I suggested an attack on child abuse and neglect but that would require social workers and nurses to enter thousands of homes to make sure that the child is treated properly. The outcry from people suggesting that the government is interfering in the rights of families would be deafening. Coming up with the money would be a monumental task.

My final point is offender accountability. Unless criminals believe that there is a better than average chance of being caught and held accountable, little of the above is relevant.  The reason for the vast increase in urban violence is that victims don’t believe that their attackers will be held accountable. They shoot others because they feel they have no choice.

Yes, law enforcement MUST be fair and equal treatment under the law MUST be enforced. But thousands of cops are leaving per the Bureau of Labor Statistics, recruitment is plummeting per the Police Executive Research Forum and cities don’t have enough officers to respond to 911 calls per endless media accounts, all because of unrelenting and harsh publicity (yes, some of it was deserved). We probably don’t have enough police officers and those remaining are very hesitant to engage in the only thing that works; proactive policing.

Many say that we can’t arrest or incarcerate our way out of violence. What they really are saying is that communities control crime which is criminology 101. No amount of policing will stop you from using heroin or beating your wife or buying stolen goods or attacking someone in a private space. It’s up to communities to set standards as to appropriate behavior. Not holding communities accountable is a cop-out. But politicians won’t do this.

By the way, the increase in crime isn’t directly related to COVID. Per the Bureau of Justice Statistics, violence (and serious violence-a 28 percent increase) started increasing in 2015, years before the arrival of the pandemic.

This isn’t an academic exercise. Real people are being massively hurt every day. To get to where we need to be, the data and our willingness to embrace research must be a priority.

Funding must accompany results. There are no other options.

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