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ALIVE AND FREE: RETHINKING HOW WE HELP AND
SUPPORT YOUNG PEOPLE AT HIGHEST RISK OF
GUN VIOLENCE
Vaughn Crandall, Stewart Wakeling, Daniela Gilbert
California Partnership for Safe Communities
Julia Reynolds, Editor
Introduction
This working paper describes an outreach and support approach to reducing the impact of
violence on young men of color that also makes progress on important public safety objectives
such as reducing shootings and robberies.
This approach draws on elements of what is often referred to as street or gang outreach (for
example, violence interruption, mediation and conflict resolution) and intensive case-management
(high-contact case managers with small case loads, who broker an array of services and supports).
But it also represents a rethinking of conventional outreach and social services, which generally
have not been designed for individuals at the highest risk of violence.1
More specifically, this report:
•
Shares four principles that are guiding the working partners in Oakland, Salinas and Stockton
to modify their approach to street outreach and revamp the design of conventional services.
•
Describes the main operational capacities these cities are developing to make a difference in
the lives of young men at the very highest risk of violence and incarceration. These capacities
together form a robust theory of change.
•
Discusses the tools and processes being developed to support quality implementation and
help manage change in these cities.
•
The experience of cities across the country informs this approach, but it is based most
directly on violence reduction work under way in Oakland, Stockton and Salinas. This seats
the paper’s recommendations in the concrete progress that three quite different cities have
made on longstanding and serious street violence in the face of severe financial constraints,
complicated political environments, and the impacts of major criminal justice system reform efforts.
This working draft is the second in a series of reports describing ongoing work by the
California Partnership for Safe Communities (CPSC) with community and criminal justice
system stakeholders in the cities of Oakland, Salinas and Stockton to develop and apply
partnership-based strategies to reduce violence community wide, improve outcomes for
young men at highest risk of violence, and strengthen community-police relations.
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I. Guiding Principles
At its core, the outreach and support approach is based on partnership. The stakeholders in
these cities – service providers, formerly incarcerated people, community leaders, clergy and
criminal justice agencies – acknowledge that making meaningful progress toward reducing
violence requires working together.2 In particular, working from a shared understanding of local
violence, and a shared set of values and principles. Implicit in this agreement is the recognition
that partnership-based work, while more effective, is more complicated and challenging than working
alone and requires ongoing reflection and openness to change. Drawing from partners’ experience,
four principles guide the design and implementation of this outreach and support approach.
•
To save lives and achieve community-wide reductions in violence, the focus must
shift from individuals at high overall risk to individuals at the very highest risk of
violence. Most people in generally high-risk populations never get involved in gun violence.
That is, even within high-risk groups, involvement in gun violence is highly concentrated
and more closely related to the characteristics of individuals’ social networks than to the
categorical risk factors such as living in a tough neighborhood or having a substance abuse
problem or a troubled family.3
As a result, violence prevention efforts that focus so broadly diffuse their already limited
resources and fail to reach the individuals most likely to be involved in violence. The outreach
and support partners in these cities are drawing on well-tested but often underutilized
tools – including problem analyses, shooting reviews and social network analysis – to better
understand and monitor risk of involvement in shootings and focus their efforts where they
can make the most difference.
•
The partners must affirm their commitment to procedural justice and treat the
highest-risk young people with dignity and respect, value them as members of
the community, and provide them with structured opportunities to voice their
concerns. The concrete benefit of incorporating these principles into the work of the
partnership has been to gradually strengthen the credibility of the initiative in the eyes of
individuals and communities most affected by violence – and to unify the efforts of the working
partners, many of whom have longstanding differences and might otherwise have reverted to
positions of mutual distrust.4 This reflects significant recent research on procedural justice.
•
Lowering the risks of death, debilitating injury, and incarceration is the first
priority for the partners, but not the only priority. In-depth analyses of violence
in these cities indicates that the very highest-risk young men are at extremely high risk
of violence and incarceration. So lowering the risks of death, debilitating injury, and
incarceration is a priority for the partners. For young men in actively violent networks, risk
levels approach those of war zones. In addition, young men involved in homicide as either
victims or suspects typically have been arrested extraordinarily frequently, and many of those
arrests have been for serious crimes.
•
Successful outreach and support efforts depend on intensive and enduring
engagement – that is, on relationships. The experience of partners in these cities
indicates that better outcomes depend less on conventional services than on committed
outreach workers (with small caseloads) who can invest intensively in building supportive
relationships focused on the near-term reduction of risky behaviors. Those relationships then
serve as the foundation for long-term progress toward positive outcomes such as education
and employment.
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II. The Overall Program Strategy – Essential Operational Capacities
Following the above principles, CPSC and its partners are crafting an outreach and support
strategy with four basic operational components, or capacities:
1.
Identify the individuals at very highest risk of violence through ongoing and systematic data
collection and analysis.
2.
Engage these individuals through face-to-face, respectful and compassionate communication
with an alliance of concerned community leaders about the risks involved in violence.
3.
Work quickly to reduce the immediate risk of violence and incarceration while laying the
groundwork for a long-term supportive relationship.
4.
Build a “community of support” that provides individuals at very highest risk with a voice in
partnership governance and respected roles in partnership work, supports progress toward
important outcomes such as income stabilization, education, mental health and employment,
and helps monitor risk of violence in the long term.
These program capacities together form a robust theory of change.5 Each one is integral to the
overall strategy, but they all can be varied to accommodate differences in local resources, values
and priorities.
Capacity 1. Identify those at the very highest risk of violence through
ongoing and systematic data collection and analysis.
The partners in these cities are developing their ability to use three data collection and analysis
tools to understand precisely who is at risk of being involved in violence and to intervene more
quickly and effectively with that person. The first is an in-depth retrospective analysis of homicide,
referred to as a “problem and opportunity analysis,” that produces a comprehensive account of
local violence. The second, called a shooting review, is a regular, frequent meeting devoted to
the analysis of recent shootings and, based on that analysis, development of strategy. The third is
social network analysis, which maps the likelihood of being shot based on an individual’s links to
people involved in violence.
The problem and opportunity analysis systematically investigates a large sample of
homicides, typically 100 to 200. The method of analysis has been developed and refined over
the past 20 years, as partnership-based violence reduction strategies have been employed in
cities across the country.6 Though it is informed by research, the analysis is primarily a practice
document, with implications for local policy and strategy.
A problem analysis has five steps:
•
Analyzing basic contextual and trend data regarding violence;
•
Reviewing and analyzing demographics and criminal histories of suspects and victims
to understand how they are coming to the attention of the criminal justice system (and
determine their risk of incarceration);
•
Reviewing each homicide in depth – learning who was involved, what happened, the
circumstances, the motives and the role of group or network involvement and relationships;
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•
Analyzing group dynamics, including relationships within and across groups, involvement in
violence and other activities, and any geographic associations; and, finally,
•
Mapping homicides and shootings.
This process identifies patterns of violence and the geographic and social concentration of
violence within groups and networks. It also shows who is at the highest risk of violence, describes
their justice system involvement, and provides an understanding of the near-term drivers of
violence.
Shooting reviews are regular and frequent meetings, either weekly or semi-weekly,
during which experienced and knowledgeable practitioners come together as a
working group to analyze recent shootings. Currently, the most well-developed shooting
reviews are conducted by representatives from criminal justice agencies, but Oakland also is
convening, and Stockton and Salinas will soon convene, a promising version of a shooting review
for outreach and support staff. While there are variations, a shooting review combines analysis,
strategy development and implementation. In this way, it performs a useful management function
for outreach and support.
Analysis: understanding and monitoring risk. Practitioners begin their discussion of
each incident with basic information available on each shooting, including the date, time,
location and individuals involved. Then, a mid-level manager, often assisted by a researcher,
facilitates the meeting, systematically working through a series of analytic questions
regarding those involved in the shootings, shooting circumstances and motives, and
information on the individuals’ involvement in relevant street networks and relationships with
a particular focus on potential retaliation.
Strategy Development: shaping and managing a near-term response. The facilitator
follows this analysis with a purposeful but exploratory discussion of how to respond. One of
the most important products of shooting reviews is the identification of individuals at highest
risk of violence and the development of a plan for addressing that risk, along with a work
plan describing who will do what and when. Subsequent meetings begin with a review of the
prior meeting’s work plan.
In summary, a problem analysis is conducted periodically (every year or two) to tailor the overall
approach to local needs, priorities and resources, laying a foundation for strategy development
and evaluation. In contrast, shooting reviews – whether convened by criminal justice agencies
or outreach and support staff – are used to refine strategies in real time and manage their
implementation. The findings of problem analyses and shooting reviews often defy conventional
wisdom – not only because they reveal the relatively small number of individuals who drive
local violence but because they show that those at the very highest risk of homicide tend to be
older than is often assumed – on average in their late 20s – and the motives for shootings are
infrequently tied to the drug trade or other illegal economic activity.
Cities can also use these tools for program planning and to align efforts to reduce the risk of
violence and incarceration for the highest-risk individuals and to reduce shootings citywide. In
Oakland, for example, the most recent problem analysis indicates that actively violent networks
are associated with up to 85 percent of all homicides. These networks involve approximately
1,000 to 1,200 individuals. Furthermore, the shooting reviews reveal that a very limited number
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of individuals are involved in violence at any one time and not all are open to services. Based on
estimates drawn from 2014 shooting reviews, as few as 250 individuals at the very highest risk of
gun violence would be a priority for outreach and support staff in Oakland over the course of a year.
Capacity 2: Engage these individuals through the face-to-face respectful
and compassionate communication by an alliance of concerned community
leaders about the risks involved in violence.
The respectful, direct communication of an anti-violence message is linked to outreach and
support based on the experiences of Boston and Chicago. The Boston Re-entry Initiative and
Project Safe Neighborhoods in Chicago each combined respectful communication of an antiviolence message with transitional services and supports, resulting in striking long-term reductions
in recidivism. The BRI intervention led to reductions in recidivism of 30 percent after three years
and the evaluation of the Chicago PSN initiative showed reductions in recidivism of 50 percent
after three years.5, 8 Building on these findings, the Oakland, Salinas and Stockton partnerships
are incorporating this communication as a starting point for engagement with as many young men
at very highest risk as is possible. The modes for communicating this message are call-ins and
custom notifications.
Call-ins – demonstrating community commitment to a different future for individuals
at highest risk of violence. Call-ins are hour-long meetings of community members, local
leaders, and police and representatives of other criminal justice agencies with ten to 20 young
people at highest risk of violence. These meetings are convened at houses of faith, schools,
community centers and libraries – places that are safe and familiar where residents typically come
together for meetings of importance.
Speakers and participants sit in a square or circle with supporters and service providers. Other
invitees are held to a minimum and limited to those who have an outreach and support role. The
result is that all those attending are playing some significant role in helping the participants stay
alive and out of jail or prison. In this sense, the meeting is convened to express the community’s
commitment to ending violence and to changing the odds for young men at highest risk of violence.
The call-ins in Oakland, Salinas and Stockton have three parts.
Call-in Part 1: Messaging. First, there is a messaging portion, during which six to ten
speakers, about half of them community representatives and about half drawn from criminal
justice agencies, have about three minutes each to share information about the risks and
costs of gun violence for young men and their community, including examples of people
the young men know who have chosen to engage in violence and the consequences they
experienced; communicate the partnership’s deep commitment to keeping them alive and
free from jail and prison; and explicitly request they share this information with their broader
groups and networks and act as messengers.
Speakers include at least one current outreach client or participant from a prior call-in. In
their own words, they share how participants are not being compelled to “join a program” or
sign up for services but are being empowered through information on risk and the support
of those assembled. And the direct or past participant may talk about his experience with
follow-up by the outreach workers, adding to the credibility of the partnership.
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Call-in Part 2: Outreach and service provider statements of commitment. After
community and justice system partners convey their carefully prepared anti-violence
message, service partners each talk very briefly about what’s informally called a statement of
commitment. The essence of this message is that the formal resources available through an
agency, while important, are secondary to that agency’s commitment to tailor its approach –
for example, to alter eligibility guidelines – to the young men. The hope is that participants
hear that the assembled partners will do whatever is possible to keep them alive and free.
Call-in Part 3: Giving voice, breaking bread, making the first connection. Finally,
the partners – community leaders, clergy, law enforcement, outreach workers and service
providers – engage one-on-one with each young man over a meal with two purposes in
mind. They solicit participants’ thoughts on the meeting, asking what the participants heard,
what they think about the message and the overall effort and what ideas they have for
reducing violence. This conversation doesn’t have to be long or forced but it signals that the
partnership values their perspective. This is reinforced by inviting participants to a facilitated
focus group meeting, over a meal and including a financial incentive, a few weeks later.
During this conversation, the community partners ask about any immediate needs each
young man has, including needs to minimize risk of violence and incarceration. Filling these
needs quickly becomes a priority for outreach workers and the other partners as a first step
in establishing a longer term supportive relationship. In this way, this conversation sets in
motion follow-up and engagement work by outreach-oriented case managers and their
partners, as described in the next two sections.
Over two years of working in these cities, the proportion of individuals who have signaled a
serious interest in a supportive relationship has increased from about one-third to more than 90
percent. After each call-in, the working partners meet to discuss the input from participants and
reflect on how the call-ins can be further aligned with the goals of outreach and support.
Custom notifications – one-on-ones to explain risk, share perspectives and initiate a
supportive relationship. Custom notifications are carefully prepared, like call-ins, but they are
much smaller conversations involving one or two partners and, typically, just one individual at
high risk of violence; they are used at times and in situations where the individual is at increased
risk but also may be more open to intervention. These situations include points in the re-entry
process, hospitalizations following shootings, and the days and hours immediately following
shootings. These conversations are evolving into an important element of outreach. They’re often
used to respond quickly to flares in violence between groups, and to stem retaliation, and they’re
often conducted with victims of nonfatal shootings or people close to them and to homicide
victims. They can be delivered on the street, in parks, homes, churches and hospitals.
Whereas call-ins typically communicate with young men from different neighborhoods who have a
variety of life histories, a custom notification can be fine-tuned to one person’s particular risk and
circumstances. Custom notifications incorporate information on specific risk and enlist as many
positive supports as possible to reduce that risk. Partners often try to educate themselves about
a young man’s criminal history and know whether he has been shot before and is close to other
shooting victims and whether he or his friends have been incarcerated. They know whether he
has children, positive family relationships, and a connection to a faith tradition. Partners use that
information in talking about the heightened risk the young man faces and what the partnership
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can do to help him and his friends and family. Sometimes community or clergy members and
police do these together, sometimes community, clergy or outreach workers do them alone.
The Stockton Reentry Initiative: The Stockton partners have designed a reentry component
of their strategy, the Stockton Reentry Initiative (SRI), which focuses on individuals likely to be at
the highest risk of violence and recidivism during their first few months after release from local jail.
Modeled on the Boston Reentry Initiative, SRI will employ the respectful, direct communication
of a violence-prevention message to young men as they move through the reentry process.
This communication will be coupled with intensive pre- and post-release services, support, and
supervision. Realignment has significantly increased the proportion of sentences served in local
jails, compared with prison, providing new opportunities to engage young men while they’re in custody.
The importance of scale. These communication efforts convey the commitment of a broad
partnership to: (a) keeping these young men alive and out of prison and jail; and (b) providing
them the long-term support they need to move toward positive life goals. To be effective, these
efforts must not only be tailored to those at very highest risk but also operate at a significant
scale. In both Oakland and Stockton, for example, the goal is to do four call-ins per year, one
every two to four months, and at least three to four custom notifications each week. There
appears to be a strong correlation between the number of high-quality custom notifications and
reductions in shootings. The number of quality interventions (with follow through) also increases
the credibility of civic commitment to changing the odds for young men of color who are at the
highest risk of violence and incarceration.
Capacity 3. Work quickly to reduce the immediate risk of violence and
incarceration while laying the groundwork for a long-term supportive
relationship.
Intensive work at the individual level – using a safety plan to reduce risk and build a
relationship: In Stockton, information on a participant’s top risks of violence and re-incarceration
and strategies to reduce those risks are captured in a safety plan. As the outreach workers there
(known as Peacekeepers) generate trust and build a relationship with each client, they gather
information through everyday conversations and interactions with family members and friends,
and from other support partners. The safety plan is a living document (because risk is fluid)
that helps the peacekeepers and their partner organizations stay focused on harm reduction,
coordinate around each individual’s greatest risks and work together to address those risks. Safety
plans also are the focus of the case conferences described below. Over time, the data captured in
the safety plans will help identify patterns in risk and service needs among the highest-risk clients
and reveal gaps in services and support, and that information will guide additional outreach and
fundraising.
Complementary work at the group and neighborhood level. While case managers and
support partners work with participants to build their understanding and perception of risk,
outreach workers – guided by data – are addressing those same sources of risk at the group and
neighborhood level, often through conflict resolution, mediation and violence interruption.
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Addressing the immediate risk of incarceration and stabilizing the lives of young
men at highest risk. Young men at the highest risk for violence often have an array of current
legal issues – outstanding warrants, challenges with meeting conditions of probation or parole,
holds on their driver’s license, unpaid fines, etc. Case managers help them understand their legal
risks and help them resolve their legal problems, including meeting conditions of probation, and
ensure they show up for court appearances. This work has the dual benefit of keeping young men
out of custody and building trust. It begins the process of stabilizing the lives of these young men
and is closely followed or accompanied by intensive case management to address housing and
financial needs.
Capacity 4. Build a community of support that provides individuals with a
voice and roles in the partnership; that supports progress toward important
outcomes such as income stabilization, education, mental health and
employment; and that helps monitor risk of violence in the long term.
As the highest-risk clients begin taking concrete steps to reduce their day-to-day risk of violence
and re-incarceration, the focus of partners’ work turns to longer-term life outcomes. Two types
of relationships are central to this ongoing process: case-management and interlocking social
supports, including mentoring relationships and mutual support groups. Woven through these
durable and expanding relationships is the process of following up on the partners’ commitment
to value young men at highest risk as members of the community and provide them with
structured opportunities to share insights, support others, voice concerns and join partners in
program design.
1. A continued intensive case-management relationship. Outreach-oriented case managers
maintain small caseloads over an extended period, enabling them to invest in multiple quality
contacts each week over a year or longer. They are a consistent presence, ensuring service
referrals are successful, introducing the clients to the community of support and working with
a variety of community members, all while monitoring and acting on the risk of violence and
incarceration.
The Oakland partners have developed an array of approaches to this longer-term work. Once a
working relationship is established, the lead case manager develops a plan with the participant
and other partners that identifies the participant’s needs and goals and that names programs and
resources to address them. After making some small gains, such as securing a state ID card, case
managers refer clients to organizations that address larger challenges such as substance abuse,
job training, or leadership development.7
2. Engaging the client in a community of support to facilitate the process of personal
change. A community of support – for example, mentors and mutual support groups – helps the
highest-risk young people build a new sense of community, develop leadership, and assist one
another through the change process.
Support groups provide a sense of community and peer support for change. For young
men seeking to transition from the lifestyles, peer groups and behaviors that put them at extreme
risk of violence, support groups provide opportunities to assist one another through the change
process. The Mentoring Center in East Oakland, which specializes in mentoring and support
groups for at-risk youth and young adults, incorporates a variety of evidence-based approaches,
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including cognitive behavioral therapy and trauma care. Oakland Unite and The Mentoring Center
provide twice-weekly support groups to help the highest-risk young men process trauma and
violence, make better decisions and manage the challenges they and their families face.
Community mentors provide individual support and guidance for participants. The
Oakland and Stockton partnerships are developing mentoring approaches to complement their
overall work. Initial mentor pools come from community leaders committed to positive community
change and from faith leaders already doing informal outreach. For example, Oakland Unite, the
Mentoring Center and Oakland Communities Organizing faith partners are collaborating on a
custom orientation and training, including shadowing street outreach workers so that mentors
are prepared for this work and understand the partnership they’re entering. Finally, matching will
occur through a variety of avenues, including the case conference, barbecues, call-in follow-up
dinners, Mentoring Center groups and other means.
Participation in social activities, cultural events, public meetings and civic life. Partners
regularly hold events to keep in contact with participants and their families. These include
barbecues, summertime Nights in the Park (modeled on Summer Night Lights in Los Angeles),
community dinners, Thanksgiving meal distribution, and holiday gift giveaways for family members
and children. The partners view these as ongoing expressions of support as well as opportunities
to continue to build strong relationships with these young men, their families, and their networks.
Over time, the partners will more intentionally focus on leadership development through
participation in public meetings and civic life, keeping in mind the significant role this has played
in programs such as Richmond’s Operation Peacemaker Fellowship.
Giving voice. Both Oakland and Stockton are convening focus groups with the young men
and their families to elevate the young men’s voices and better understand their perspectives
on the problem of violence. These meetings already have proven valuable. Their ideas are being
incorporated into program design, particularly with regard to the call-ins; their perspectives on
local violence – and their experience of risk – have confirmed important findings from the problem
analysis; and their experience with the criminal justice system is important to the partners’ efforts
to reduce the risk of incarceration. Equally important, they’ve shown a deep commitment to
participating in a community change process as partners in reducing violence and the risk of
incarceration. In Stockton, participants in recent call-ins have shared their experience of the
outreach and support process for other young men in subsequent convenings.
A note on the value of stipends and incentives. Most of these young people are living in
or on the edge of poverty, many have unstable living situations and do not have regular income.
The cost of bus and train fare can keep them from taking advantage of services and support. So
a small amount of money can directly ease their participation, and it can be enough to compete
with the distractions of their home and street lives.
More to the point, incentives, income supports, stipends, and part time work can be combined
by a skillful case manager to stabilize living situations and enable highest-risk young men to
focus their attention on making consistent progress toward employment and education goals
(such as completing job-readiness training or obtaining a GED), greatly reducing their risks of
both violence and incarceration. Oakland case managers and outreach workers often use gift
cards, but cash has proven to be a more versatile and efficient tool, adaptable to a wider variety
of objectives in a participant’s case management plan. Incentives are also used when clients
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work on behalf of the partnership, participating in outreach and support activities. In Stockton,
recent call-in participants have been provided with a small stipend for taking time off work to
share at subsequent call-ins. This helps these young men make ends meet but also reflects the
partnership’s assertion that they are valued members of the community.
Other programs that have combined some or all the above functions include The Fortune
Society’s Castle Thursday Night Meeting (NYC), The Council on Thought and Action (Hempstead,
NY), The Mentoring Center (Oakland, CA), the Operation Peacemaker Fellowship (Richmond,
CA), the Office of Violence Prevention (Stockton, CA), which is fostering a partnership between
its Peacekeeper outreach program and Friends Outside. The Stockton and Richmond efforts
are notable for their orientation to those at highest risk of violence, the degree to which they’ve
integrated outreach and support strategies, and their alignment with a city-level public safety
strategy.
III. Tools to Support Practice and the Change Process
The program capacities described above maximize the quality, frequency, and duration of
interactions that committed outreach workers and their community and service partners have
with those at very highest risk of violence and incarceration. For most communities, this way of
working represents a significant change in practice and policy. CPSC and its partners in Oakland
and Stockton are adapting a number of tools to support this change process. We are revising
conventional case planning tools to focus more directly on the risk of violence and incarceration,
modifying Shooting Reviews and case conferences to support frontline practitioners as they shift
emphasis, and testing a partnership-focused performance management assessment designed to
inform the ongoing design and management of the initiative.
A. Safety, Case and Life Plans: In Stockton, outreach workers and violence interrupters are
transitioning from a general case management format to Safety Plans, a case planning tool
designed to focus on the reduction of risk of violence and incarceration and on relationshipbuilding. The Safety Plan is not intended to be completed in any single interaction or meeting
but over a series of interactions in the natural course of an emerging relationship with a client.
As described below, the agenda for the case conferences in Stockton include significant
time to the collaborative development of this tool to ensure it accommodates the reality of
the day-to-day work of staff and the real-life experience of clients. As the lives of individuals
at highest risk of violence are stabilized, the reliance on Safety Plans as the primary case
management tool shifts to standard case plans and a similar but more aspirational tool, Life Plans.
B.
Shooting Reviews and Case Conferences: Oakland and Stockton both convene forms
of shooting reviews and case conferences at least monthly. Case conferences, which are
attended by outreach workers, community partners with existing relationships with young
men at highest risk, concerned clergy, and related service-providers, have five goals:
✔✔
Ensure staff is working with those at very highest risk of violence and incarceration and
support them as necessary in the transition of their caseload to this focus.
✔✔
Review and support the risk reduction, relationship-building, and related casework
being carried out with clients.
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✔✔
Coordinate collaborative work with community and service partners.
✔✔
Listen carefully to the challenges these frontline practitioners and community leaders
are experiencing in the course of the above work and problem-solve accordingly.
✔✔
Think jointly about service gaps and opportunities for innovation and continued
program development.
The agenda for each case conference tracks these goals, beginning with in-depth presentation
and discussion of the highest risk cases, moving to a discussion of possible service gaps and
opportunities for innovation and ending with a discussion on the pressures on staff with a focus
on wellness and managing stress. Over time, this agenda could be modified to include a review of
recent shootings while also focusing on a review of Safety Plans for those individuals thought to
be “closest” to these shootings.
Stockton, which incrementally expanded the focus of its outreach efforts to a younger and lower
risk pool, has devoted its initial case conferences to in-depth review of Safety Plans that build
the skills of outreach staff to work with individuals at very highest risk. At the same time, it is
undertaking a careful “audit” of its caseload and gradually transitioning lower-risk cases to partner
organizations. In addition, it is using the basic shooting reviews described above to focus core
outreach activities – for example, conflict resolution, mediation, and violence interruption – more
intentionally on very highest-risk young men and groups.
C. The Performance Management Assessment: CPSC has developed a set of
complementary performance measures closely tied to the guiding principles described
above. The performance management assessment incorporates ongoing qualitative and
quantitative data collection and analysis to help outreach and support partners understand
how effective their efforts are and how they might be improved. One aspect of this exercise
is to develop performance indicators that are affordable to collect, that are related to
outcomes (i.e. that are valid) and that are meaningful to political stakeholders. Specifically, it
is designed to respond to four questions:
✔✔
Are we successfully reaching out to and engaging young men at the very highest risk
of violence? For example, CPSC is coding the criminal histories of the young men the
partners engage with to compare them with victims and suspects involved in homicides.
✔✔
Are we reducing these individuals’ risk of involvement in shootings or being reincarcerated; that is, are we doing a good job of harm reduction? This also involves
review of the pre- and post-intervention arrests and victimization of participants.
✔✔
Are we successfully forging meaningful outreach and support relationships with these
young men? This will involve the review of case files and interviews with case managers
and outreach workers to determine how long and how intensively participants are
staying engaged with case managers and outreach workers. When a young man’s risk
escalates significantly, how successful have the partners been at “holding on” and
stabilizing him?
✔✔
From the perspective of these young men, have we successfully translated the procedural
justice values we are committed to into our day-to-day engagement with them? This
is being explored through structured, ongoing focus groups and through individual
interviews with participants about their experiences engaging with the partners.
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As with the program components above, the design and mix of the above tools can vary from site
to site to accommodate local capacities and resources but the three following tests have cross-site
value. First, do case planning tools incorporate harm reduction and life change goals in specific
and concrete ways? Second, are there analogs for shooting reviews and case conferences that
align outreach and support activities with individual change and public safety goals? Third, does
the partnership have and use performance indicators that are tied to its guiding principles and
stated goals?
Conclusion
This working paper describes an outreach and support approach designed to reduce the impact
of violence and over-incarceration on young men of color and the communities in which they live.
This outreach and support approach reflects the experience and values of diverse partnerships
and represents a rethinking of conventional outreach and social services, which generally have not
been designed for individuals at the highest risk of violence.
A final version of this initial working paper will be released later in the spring of 2015, along with
a shorter policy brief. As this approach matures and the interim learning assessment is completed,
CPSC will issue additional related updates and brief reports.
The California Partnership for Safe Communities
CPSC works with civic and community stakeholders to achieve sustainable communitywide reductions in violence, to reduce the reliance of cities and counties on enforcement
practices that contribute to over-incarceration, and to strengthen trust between criminal
justice agencies and the communities they serve.
In each city where it works, CPSC conducts an in-depth and systematic analysis of local
violence and fosters working alliances including a broad cross-section of community
stakeholders – criminal justice agencies, faith leaders, community organizers, young
people and their advocates, street outreach teams, service providers, victims of violence,
residents of neighborhoods affected by violence and the formerly incarcerated.
CPSC has long-term partnerships with the cities of Stockton, Salinas, and Oakland,
all
of which have reduced violence significantly over the past two years. In addition to
helping form civic and community partnerships, CPSC offers substantive expertise in the
systematic analysis of local violence, community engagement, procedural justice, reentry,
strategic policing and the development of outreach and support strategies.
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Acknowledgements
The work described in this report and the report itself would not have been possible without the
generous support of The Andrus Family Fund, The California Endowment, Kaiser Permanente
Northern California Community Benefits, and Californians for Safety and Justice. David Muhammad,
Reygan Harmon, Josie Halpern-Finnerty, Peter Kim, Friends Outside and the City of Stockton’s
Peacekeeper outreach staff all contributed to the content of this report.
Endnotes
1. Conventional service strategies for at-risk youth and justice system populations have generally not produced
significantly better outcomes for program participants – which are lower risk than the highest risk of gun
violence target population. For relevant research, see:
• Ivry, Robert and Fred Doolittle. “Improving the Economic and Life Outcomes of At-Risk Youth.” MDRC
Publication. Spring 2003.
• “Building Knowledge About Successful Prisoner Reentry Strategies.” MDRC Publication. February 2013.
• Bloom, Dan. “Employment-Focused Programs for Ex-Prisoners. What Have We Learned, What Are We
Learning, and Where Should We Go from Here?” MDRC Publication. July 2006.
2. Braga, Anthony, David Weisburd (2012). “The effects of “pulling levers” focused deterrence strategies on
crime.”
Campbell Systematic Reviews 2012:6. Also see, Papachristos, Andrew V. (2011). “Too Big to Fail, Too
Small to Succeed: The Science and Politics of Violence Prevention.” Criminology & Public Policy.
3. Papachristos, Andrew V., Anthony A. Braga, and David M. Hureau (2012). “Social Networks and the Risk of
Gunshot Injury.” Journal of Urban Health : Bulletin of the New York Academy of Medicine 89.6.
4. Mazerolle L, Bennett S, Davis J, Sargeant E, Manning M. “Legitimacy in Policing: A Systematic Review.”
Campbell Systematic Reviews 2013:1
5. Braga, Anthony A; Anne M. Piehl ; David Hureau (2009). “Controlling Violent Offenders Released to the
Community: An Evaluation of the Boston Reentry Initiative.” Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency.
Delinquency. Volume:46 Issue:4
6. The analysis examines homicide incidents rather than nonfatal incidents because homicide investigations offer a more detailed, in-depth, and reliable pool of information from which to draw.
7. In Oakland, these organizations have been through a competitive bidding process to demonstrate that they can
work effectively with young men at highest risk of violence, and their payment for the work is based on meeting
performance benchmarks.
8. Papachristos, Andrew V. , Tracey Meares, and Jeffrey Fagan (2007). “Attention Felons: Evaluating Project Safe
Neighborhoods in Chicago,” Journal of Empirical Legal Studies.
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