This program is brought to you by Emory University. >> Hi. My name is Dean Dabney. I'm a professor of Criminal Justice and Criminology at Georgia State University. Here today to speak with you about focused deterrence model to combat gang violence. For starters, there's certain demographic features of gang violence that we're well aware of. First and foremost, active chronic offenders tend to commit the majority of violence that we see in our urban centers. It is not uncommon for less than 1% of the urban population to account for 75 to 80% of the serious violence in a jurisdiction. As you see here on the figure, these data were taken from Cincinnati, Ohio. Where they did a focus deterrence intervention. And you see here that several hundred chronic gang offenders were identified and they comprised about three-tenths of a percent of the Cincinnati population. But when the critical incident review was done of all homicides taken place in the city in 2010, you see that 73.5% of those homicides were committed or attributed to that 0.3% of the population. Whereas the 90, the other 99.7% accounted for the remaining 26.5%. The second factor that we know from the demographics of gang violence is that hardcore chronic offenders are usually organized in loosely featured cliques or gangs. Almost without exception gang members have serious felony arrests with many members having to their credit, ten, 20, 30 arrests. As you see here in this figure, this shows the criminal history of the identified group members from Cincinnati that we spoke about in the last feature. You see here in the circled items that the average offender had a little over seven felony arrests to his or her credit. With 30, almost a third of them, 32.3% having ten or more felony arrests to their credit. And then down below you see that 91% of the individuals in that sample had a violent felony arrest to their credit. There are also certain understood facets of the dynamics of gang violence. First and foremost we know that most gang violences results from perceived disrespect, group tensions, or violations of street norms. Now it's important to understand that these disrespect in behaviors are often very petory, petty in nature, and the resulting violence is impersonal in nature. Which means that individuals often take very serious responses to very small, what would be seemingly meaningless interactions between rival gang members, and that those responses are often done in ways where the individuals perpetrating the violence do not know the individual victim personally, but rather, simply know that they're a member of the group. We also, know about the dynamics of gang violence. That the code of the street, or the norms within the urban landscape, call for a lack of trust and respect for criminal justice system authorities in particular, the police. That they do not turn readily to the police to solve their problems but rather, solve their problems themselves. And what that leads to are cycles of retaliation. Here what we see is that individuals from one gang exact revenge for their fallen comrades against individuals from the rival group that is thought to be responsible for that. What this results in is a landscape of feuds and or violen, of alliances between groups. And you can see this in this slide illustration here, that demonstrates the Cincinnati Violent Street Groups in 2010. And what you see here are the red lines representing active feuds between two groups, and the green lines representing alliances between groups, and the blue lines identifying volatile situations that the law enforcement intelligence suggests are about to jump off. So we here that all of the dots are gangs or groups in the Cincinnati area, and the lines represent the relationships to the other games or groups which which they are interacting on a regular basis. So today we're going to talk about one way to address those volatile situations. Known as the focus deterrence model for gang intervention. This was developed by faculty member at John Jay University named David Kennedy. And Kennedy argues that group crime is best impacted through group pressure. And by putting support and pressure and sustained communication with the individuals on the street. Now, on the street means both the gang and group members, but also the non-group involved individuals. The community members, the faith leaders and all of the other service providers that are there. So the idea is to use the group's consolidation or, or solidarity against it to change the street norms or behavior through creative public health and criminal justice approaches. In effect, it is a comprehensive, what we would call carrot and stick approach. Where your carrot is to lead people out of the problem and the stick is used for the individuals that, that don't choose to follow the carrot. The idea is to harness the power of social networks to reduce crime. So the focus through Turrent's model has several phases to it. First, when an jurisdiction considers using it someone like Kennedy or myself or other researchers, that are, that are doing this model currently. Would come in and do a systematic review of a specific problem. So the idea of the model is to focus in on one particular problem. In the case of gang violence, usually it's focused on gun violence. So you identify that specific problem and say we are going to put gun violence above all other problems in this jurisdiction. It's also been used with drug markets, open air drug markets and various other types of targeted criminal behavior. The first step is to conduct an intelligence review. And this involves trying to identify both the groups or gangs that are active in the area. The group members or gang members that are, that comprise those groups. And then the inner group dynamics. So, reflecting back upon the network analysis a diagram that was shown a few moments ago. It means identifying those groups and identifying the lines and whether or not their alliances or feuds or volatile. next, in the preparation stage, a comprehensive partnership comprised of law enforcement individuals, service providers, community members, and research partners are assembled to combat the problem in a comprehensive and partnership manner. Interagency cooperation across law enforcement and prosecution branches of the criminal justice system are critical here. And as they comprise the enforcement arm. You also though, need considerable buy-in from the service provider community, and the community members in general, faith leaders other just residents of, of the neighborhoods that are effected. The idea here is to come together as a consolidated group, to spread a message of non-tolerance of the problem. So, in a gang violence focus deterrence model, the idea is to say, no more shooting. Any bodies hit the ground, we have a problem with that among, above all other types of problems in our community. You see here from this diagram that structure model structure. This is one from Cincinnati's in ,Intervention that focuses on trying to keep the players moving in the same direction and organized around a common goal. At the top you see a governing board so, it is critical that you have the highest stake holders. This would include individuals like the District Attorney, the Chief of Police. Members of the African American community, if you've got a African American gang problem, Hispanic community members if it's a Hispanic problem. But these are the most respected, if you will, old heads in the community, the faith leaders and the individuals often from corporate sides that will be coming together to oversee the situation. The governing board is like the, the board of directors in a corporation so the idea here is to have the people that have overall responsibility to break down barriers that arise and will inevitably arise between the thousands of moving parts that are arrayed below. Next you have the, strategy and implementation team. The role of this group, is to develop and deploy strategy get resources, monitor results and make key decisions. This is the operational, heart of the, the strategy. The idea here is, you're going to have mid-level managers, for example, within law enforcement, community prosecutors, if you have community prosecutors in place, and your service providers. So, in effect, it's going to be the, the upper echelon of the, the boxes below. Below, you see four different boxes. First you have the enforcement team. This is going to be comprised of usually tactical units within a police department that are going to be allocated to specifically combat the problem. You may have some community police officers in this depending on what sort of arrangement you have. Next, the service team is going to be a comprehensive group of service providers. The goal here is to have a plan, and a comprehensive set of providers that can deal with the very difficult situation that is getting active gang member out of the gang lifestyle. So this would include educational opportunities, occupational opportunities, mental health, substance abuse providers faith leaders, a whole host of wraparound services that you are going to need to do case by case, to get individuals housing life skills, all of that which is needed to, to turn someone around from that very hardened, hardcore offending lifestyle. Next, you have the community team. This is comprised of outreach workers, almost universally in, in the focus deterrence model. They rely on community members that are hired and or volunteer outreach workers. These would be ex-gang members, ex-offenders, ex-hardcore offenders that are well versed in walking the walk and talking the talk and have street credibility to speak to directly and honestly and frankly to the gang members. You would also have crime victims here mothers of slain gang members faith leaders that group of individuals are going to be apart of the community team, that are charged with representing the community's interest. And then the systems team as it's referred to up in Cincinnati, is largely comprised of your research partners, your academics your upper echelon crime analysis folks within your law enforcement team. And these are the individuals that are going to crunch the numbers through the process and outcome evaluations. And direct the group from a, a systematic empirical standpoint. The role of the, that bottom tier of boxes is to develop and execute an action plan for the actual strategy implementation. Once you get through putting together the structure. And once you get through the diagnosis of the problems and have identified your group members, your gangs and the gang members that comprise those, and the feuds and alliances that exist. The next step is to do what's called an enforcement demonstration. Here the police vigorously gather information on involved group members and the groups that they comprise. And the idea is to identify a high priority list of gangs and conflicts. So this would be about identifying those red lines and the blue lines from the social network analysis figure we saw earlier. You have to thoroughly investigate all criminal conduct involved in that. That does not simply involve their violent behavior but also their involvement in drug crime, their involvement in domestic violence. The idea is to form as many solid criminal cases on the members that comprise the most volatile groups as possible, this is done primarily by law enforcement. But also involves the prosecutor's office and the research team of academics. Once you've assembled that information, you've got your high priority list of groups. And once the problem occurs, so if you're looking at gun violence. Once a body hits the street, you would them act swiftly to apprehend all possible members of the group that is engaging in that targeted behavior. Law enforcement arrests as many group members as their case files will allow. For everything from the shooting in question, through drug involvement, through domestic violence through property crime, all aspects of those cases that have been assembled. And the prosecutor's office steps in and vigorously prosecutes all those cases. This is followed up in short order, once you've got the cases into the criminal justice system and into the prosecution cue. By what's called a Call in Session. Now a Call in Session involves calling a group of known offenders, not from the group that you have just dismantled, but from other priority groups, into a public location. Usually this is done by acting upon the individuals that are on probation, parole or pre-trial detention. And have to come when you call them. Ideally it's done under a judge's order, and done within a courtroom but it's also been done in churches, or in community centers or wherever the model allows in the jurisdiction. But the step is to bring them in to a group and to sit them all in a, a room facing a broad array of members of the focus deterrence intervention strategy. So on one side of the room generally you'll have your formal criminal justice authorities, your police, your prosecutors. Both local, federal, law enforcement, prosecutors that you've assembled into your team. On the other side of your room you'd have your community and service team members. The idea here starts with the justice system individuals detailing the expected consequences that will be associated with continued invol, volvement in the criminal conduct. Here the enforcement action is play center stage. So, the idea would be to, usually it's done with PowerPoint slides, to identify the gang or group that had just been taken down in the enforcement intervention. And to detail what they did and what happened to the individuals that were involved in it. So, the idea is to say these were the individuals that committed this homicide. We then swo, swooped in arrested not only them, but also their fellow gang members for a wide array of cases. And then the focus is turned on the groups that are still active. Very honest, open conversation with the offenders, somewhat different from how law enforcement usually interacts. But the idea would be to say, we you know that you were involved in criminal conduct, often times they will put surveillance photos up showing here you are dealing drugs on the corner, here's your group involved in property crime. And the point is to say, our goal is to stand together against the targeted crime. Give you an example here. We're standing together against gun violence. So, the next step is the, the criminal justice system. The police lay out that. Then the prosecutor stand up and says, these are the charges that were brought against those individuals, and these are the sentences that they're facing. Everything from federal sentences, off that would involve long term, non-parole eligible time in federal facilities, but also local time in any cases that you have. The idea is to demonstrate the seriousness with which you will pursue arrest and prosecution for individuals that are involved in the targeted criminal conduct. After the enforcement team members are done giving their presentation, the conversation shifts over to the community and service providers. Here, what they are doing is detailing their commitment to a way out. And the message that we are no longer willing to tolerate this. Faith leaders, victims' families detail the moral outrage. Very powerful when you put the mother of a slain gang member in front of a bunch of gang members, and explain how she lost her little baby because of this senseless violence that's going on. Usually produces a, a, a non-dry eyed kind of a moment in the courtroom. You also have the faith leaders speaking to them. You also have the outreach work, workers and service providers making a clear promise to help these individuals get out who are willing to come out. At the end of the Call in Session, everyone is let free. Go home. Thank you. Think about what we've, we've talked to you about today. You have the carrot. Option of coming with the community members. Or you have the stick option of continuing to do what you've been up to and the justice system will follow through on its promise. So it's a two-prong promise, one of the stick and one of the carrot. Now, what you see here on this figure is a detail of a gang in Cincinnati before an enforcement intervention. So what you see here are the 25 key players that were identified through the intelligence review. They appear in blue. And you see the connections of each of those individuals to the non-players, if you will. The lower folks in the gang arrayed in red. And you can see various connections there, some individuals off to the right, are not connected to a major player. They're running a small drug ring or they're shoplifting, or whatever it might be. And the others are arrayed there. The enforcement action takes place, and this is what happens once those 25 players are removed. So, several months down the road they revisit the intelligence information and what we find is, by taking the key figures out of the equation, that the ability of the group to operate the way it used to is significantly impacted. What this means is when you take those, those key players out, the group is less apt to commit serious violence but also less apt to commit any host of criminal conduct. So while, you've told the group that you're high priority is gun violence in this example, you also impact any host of other forms of criminal conduct. After the Call in Session, you retool and repeat process over again. So now you're forming intelligence information on the next high priority group. And once a body hits the ground, you get prepared to do the enforcement action and subsequent follow-through. This requires consistent coordination among law enforcement, service, community and research team members and it also requires consistent messaging and delivery of that message by the justice system. For example, law enforcement and prosecution authorities need to be out on the street letting people know that we mean business. That we plan to come down hard any time that targeting criminal behavior, gun violence in this case, occurs. You also need ongoing follow through in the way of consistent messaging and delivering of the messaging from the service and community team leaders. So your outreach workers remain out on the street sending the message to the individuals given their street credibility, that law enforcement does mean business, that they will follow through on their promise. And we also mean business from a ser, from a service and community perspective to help you get out of your current situation. One of the keys to focus deterrence model is evolving and creative messaging and delivery by all teams, law enforcement, service, community, and the research team. And this involves switching it up if you will, these street offenders, spend a lot of time studying the ways of the criminal justice system. So, simply doing generic call-ins will grow stagnate over time. So what we see is jurisdictions trying street call-ins, jail visits, focusing on probationers as call-ins only. So switching it up, doing different sorts of activities in the community to get the message out and to demonstrate over and over again their promise for the carrot and their promise for the stick. Now, the focus deterrence model has been around for several decades now. It is now currently implemented in 50 plus jurisdiction, both in the United States from small, medium and large sized jurisdiction to also overseas in various countries and continents around the world. It is considered an evidence-based model that is, been shown to significantly reduce group-involved men in violence and also street-level drug dealing. And this is demonstrated best in the most recent, in the recently published [COUGH] meta-analysis of 11 studies of robust experimental designs that showed robust mean effect size reductions and key outcomes in all sized jurisdictions. Be that monthly shootings. Monthly arrests for gang violence. Drug dealing levels, calls for service, a whole host of different key outcomes have been measured. And what we see is that after a call in those problem behaviors and proxies of those problem behaviors drop off significantly. But, over time they creep back up. So, that is the, the reason why we need continuous and repeated implementation of the cycle. Some of the concerns with the model, it is not the end all, be all. It has its Achilles' heels like anything else. And as David Kennedy likes to say, it's about a thousand moving parts. So when you have a thousand moving parts, they tend to get out of sync from time to time. Sustainability of the model is a concern. As is what we commonly refer to as mission creep, where individuals start to focus on different types of problem behavior, or focus on expanding the network, the partnership, and that often produces break downs in the communication, and the stability, and, and veracity of, of the efforts they're done. But, that said, the focus of the deterrence model is one of the hardest evidence-based practices out there today for dealing with in particular, gang violence and also street-level drug dealing. With that, this concludes the lecture. Thank you very much.
