Career
During the 1980s Kennedy worked as a case writer in the Case Program of the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. [2] While visiting the Nickerson Gardens neighborhood of Los Angeles on an assignment, he became acutely aware of ravages of the crack epidemic and gang-related violence on poor communities of color in the United States. This initial experience inspired his lifelong commitment to combating these problems. [4]
In the mid-1990s, as part of the Boston Gun Project, Kennedy and colleagues Anthony A. Braga and Anne M. Piehl from Harvard worked in Boston to apply new problem-oriented policing ideas to Boston's violence epidemic. Through working with the Boston Police Department gang unit, Kennedy and his colleagues came to understand that gangs were at the heart of the problem and that an extremely small number of highly active offenders was responsible for a majority of the city's serious crime problem, a principle that has informed his interventions ever since. Together with Boston law enforcement, city officials, community and faith leaders, and street outreach workers, Kennedy and his colleagues developed the “call-in,” a face-to-face meeting with gang members in a forum setting, during which this partnership of city stakeholders "clearly communicates (1) a credible, moral message against violence; (2) a credible law enforcement message about the group consequences of further violence; and (3) a genuine offer of help for those who want it." [5] The immediate result of Operation Ceasefire was a 63 percent reduction in youth homicide and a 30 percent reduction in homicide citywide, what has been called the "Boston Miracle." [1] The call-in and other forms of direct communication with active offenders remain the central features of the Group Violence Intervention and Kennedy's overall approach to reducing violence and community disorder. One important element of the call-in message is that it provides what Kennedy calls an "honorable exit" from violence and the street code that promotes it, "a way to step back without losing face." [4]
After the initial success in Boston, Kennedy found stakeholders in Minneapolis willing to replicate his research and he led another successful implementation of the still developing strategy. Next, he assisted Stockton, California, and Baltimore, among other cities. The Baltimore intervention, begun in 1998, proved to be a particular challenge and highlighted some of the difficulties of implementation, especially in working with rival political officials and sustaining the strategy. After an initial decline in violence, the project faced political resistance and came to a halt. [4]
In Baltimore, Kennedy also began to refine the terminology used within the strategy: Kennedy uses the term "group" rather than "gang" because all gangs are groups, but not all groups are gangs. His research has found that many high-rate offenders associate in groups - such as neighborhood cliques, sets, or drug crews - that do not fit the statutory definition of a gang or share such characteristics as a name, common symbols, signs or tags, an identifiable hierarchy, or other identifiers. [4] [5]
Using the principles developed in his previous research, Kennedy began to craft an approach to eliminating overt drug markets, a problem poisoning America's most troubled communities and driving violence. "It's not about the drugs," writes Kennedy, "it's about the drug market. Drug use doesn't cause much violence, much public chaos. It can be very bad...But the community can handle that. It's the street scene that tears the community apart." [4] He theorized an approach to eliminating drug markets that would combine formal and informal social control, using call-ins to communicate an antidealing message from community leaders and a promise of swift, certain sanctions from law enforcement. [4]
High Point, North Carolina, a city already using Kennedy's approach to reduce violence, was the first to pilot the new strategy for eliminating its overt drug markets. As in the Group Violence Intervention, Kennedy designed a strategy for High Point to focus on the core population driving the problem. High Point law enforcement arrested the small number of dangerous drug dealers, those with a history of violent offenses. Law enforcement built prosecutable cases on the dozen or so remaining dealers and "banked" the cases, or held them unless the dealer continued dealing. At call-ins, the banked case allowed law enforcement to put the dealer on notice that any known future dealing would result in immediate arrest and prosecution and community representatives communicated clear standards against overt dealing and violence. The Drug Market Intervention in High Point closed the city's overt markets with no sign of displacement. The city saw a 44 to 56 percent reduction in Part 1 Uniform Crime Reports data in three out of four neighborhoods that implemented the strategy and a four to 74 percent reduction in drug offenses in all four neighborhoods. The strategy has now been widely and successfully replicated throughout the U.S. [1] [6]
Within the Drug Market Intervention, Kennedy also developed the concept of "racial reconciliation" necessary to heal relations between law enforcement and communities of color before their collaborative work could proceed. "The real issue was the way the relationship between the police and community was being poisoned by toxic racial narrative,” Kennedy has written. [4] In his work, Kennedy points out that law enforcement and communities have fundamental misunderstandings about one another. He notes that many in communities of color, especially poor black communities, have experienced state-sanctioned police oppression within living memory, and that they believe current enforcement practices such as street stops, drug arrests, and mass incarceration to be a deliberate conspiracy against black communities and an extension of this history. Law enforcement, on the other hand, does not hear the community objecting to violence and drug markets and often believes that the community likes what's going on, is living off drug money, has lost its morality, or does not care enough to work for change. While both viewpoints are incorrect, says Kennedy, they make collaboration impossible. However, Kennedy believes that law enforcement and communities share important aims and common ground and that when they can meet and both acknowledge past harms and the ineffectiveness of their current positions, they can make progress toward eliminating not only violence and overt drug markets, but intrusive and damaging law enforcement practices, as well. High Point was the first site of formalized meetings to put the racial reconciliation process into practice and these powerful meetings laid the groundwork for the effective intervention. [4] [7]
The process of racial reconciliation was also the subject of a national U.S. Department of Justice working session in 2012 and has been a topic of increasing interest for communities and law enforcement agencies nationwide. [7]
Kennedy currently directs a research center at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City, a position he has held since 2005. In 2009, Kennedy and John Jay College President Jeremy Travis founded the National Network for Safe Communities to link cities using Kennedy's strategies to reduce violence, minimize arrest and incarceration, improve legitimacy, and strengthen relationships between law enforcement and distressed communities. Through the National Network for Safe Communities, Kennedy is currently assisting numerous cities to implement the Group Violence Intervention, including Chicago, IL; Detroit, MI; Baltimore, MD; New Orleans, LA; Baton Rouge, LA; South Bend, IN; Chattanooga, TN; and three cities in the state of Connecticut. [8] Kennedy also remains a professor of criminal justice in the Criminal Justice Department of John Jay College. [2]
Kennedy and his work have been profiled in New Yorker , [9] National Public Radio, [10] 60 Minutes, and the Dylan Ratigan Show.
His distinctions include receiving two Webber Seavey awards from the International Association of Chiefs of Police, two Innovations in American Government awards from the Kennedy School of Government, and a Herman Goldstein Problem-Oriented Policing Award. Over his years of practice, Kennedy has influenced the approaches to drug enforcement by the administrations of presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. He has spoken to many organizations, including the United States Congress, Scotland Yard, the National District Attorneys' Association, and the United States Conference of Mayors. [4]
