Awards and recognition
In 2003, the program received the United States Department of Justice's "Outstanding Comprehensive Strategic Plan Award". [19]
Operation Ceasefire (also known as the Boston Gun Project and the Boston Miracle [1] ) is a problem-oriented policing initiative implemented in 1996 in Boston, Massachusetts. The program was specifically aimed at youth gun violence as a large-scale problem. The plan is based on the work of criminologist David M. Kennedy.
Through the late 1980s and early 1990s, Boston, like many cities in the United States, experienced an epidemic of youth gun homicides. Violence was particularly concentrated in poor inner city neighborhoods including Roxbury, Dorchester, and Mattapan. [2] Youth homicide (ages 24 and under) in Boston increased 230% - from 22 victims in 1987 to 73 in 1990. [2] Between 1991 and 1995, Boston averaged about 44 youth homicides a year. [2] Operation Ceasefire entailed a problem-oriented policing approach, and focused on specific places that were crime hot spots. Focus was placed on two elements of the gun violence problem: illicit gun trafficking [3] and gang violence. [2]
At the outset, the strategy was sponsored by the National Institute of Justice and was co-directed by David M. Kennedy, Anthony A. Braga, and Anne M. Piehl of Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government. The project, over the course of time, became unique, as it:
A core participating agency was defined as one that regularly participated in the Boston Gun Project Working Group over the duration of the project. [4] The participating core agencies included the Boston Police Department; Massachusetts departments of probation and parole; the Suffolk County district attorney; the office of the United States Attorney; the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms; the Massachusetts Department of Youth Services (juvenile corrections); Boston school police; and gang outreach and prevention streetworkers attached to the Boston Community center program. Other important partners with more intermittent participation include the Ten Points Coalition, the Office of the Massachusetts Attorney General, the Drug Enforcement Administration, and the Massachusetts State Police. [2]
Design on the project began in 1995. It led to what is now known as the Group Violence Intervention (GVI), typically overseen by the National Network for Safe Communities, out of John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City, but has also been implemented independently by several jurisdictions. The Boston project launched in 1996 with an innovative partnership between practitioners and researchers. These groups came together to assess the youth homicide problem and implement the intervention, and found a substantial near-term impact on the problem. Operation Ceasefire was based on "pulling levers policing" deterrence strategies, which focus criminal justice enforcement on a small number of chronic offenders and gang-involved youth who were responsible for much of Boston's homicide problem. [5]
Early impact evaluations suggested that the Ceasefire intervention was associated with significant reductions in youth homicide victimization, [6] shots fired, calls for service, and gun assaults in Boston. [2] Within two years of implementing Operation Ceasefire in Boston, the number of youth homicides dropped to ten, with one handgun-related youth homicide occurring in 1999 and 2000. [7] After a change in supervising personnel within the Boston police department and city government, this first site was abandoned. Youth homicides began to climb again with 37 in 2005 and reaching a peak of 52 in 2010. [8]
Research on the Ceasefire method has found a profound and so far invariant connection between serious violence and highly active criminal groups. [5] A typical city-level finding is that groups collectively representing under 0.5% of the city's population will be connected as offenders, victims or both, with between half and three quarters of all homicide in the city [9] —an example of the Pareto principle: a large proportion of the effects comes from a small proportion of the causes. This is likely to be an underestimate, as only incidents known to be connected to street groups are counted as such; a substantial portion of those not known will also be group connected. [9]
In Boston, for example, which at the time had a population of roughly 556,180 people, approximately 1,500 individuals were identified as comprising 61 separate groups. This 0.3% of the population was responsible for 60% of the city's homicides. [2] [10] Similarly, in Cincinnati in 1997, which had a population of about 333,210, between 800 and 1,000 individuals—less than 0.3% of the population—were identified as being group related, and were responsible for 75% of the city's homicides. [11]
Studies of Boston Operation Ceasefire found a 63% reduction in youth homicide. [12] Since then, Operation Ceasefire has evolved into the National Network for Safe Communities' Group Violence Intervention. The Group Violence Intervention (GVI) has been deployed in dozens of cities – from Los Angeles to Providence, from Chicago to Nashville – over almost 20 years. A 2011 Campbell Collaboration Systematic Review of the strategies, and others related to them, concluded that there is now "strong empirical evidence" for their crime prevention effectiveness. [13] Stockton's Operation Peacekeeper produced an overall 42% reduction in gun homicide in the city. [14] The Chicago extension of the national Project Safe Neighborhoods initiative, has shown 37% reductions in homicide, [15] while the Lowell, Massachusetts, Project Safe Neighborhoods efforts have produced 44% reductions in gun assault. [16] A 34% reduction in homicide has been recorded in Indianapolis after the launch of the Indianapolis Violence Reduction Partnership. [17] The Cincinnati Initiative to Reduce Violence (CIRV) has shown a 41% reduction in street group member-related homicides. [18]
In 2003, the program received the United States Department of Justice's "Outstanding Comprehensive Strategic Plan Award". [19]
The crime drama series City on a Hill shows a fictionalized account of Operation Ceasefire.
The Emmy nominated documentary Operation Ceasefire gives an inside look at the creation and implementation of the program through the testimonies of its key figures.
Articles related to criminology and law enforcement.
Project Exile is a federal program started in Richmond, Virginia, in 1997. Project Exile shifted the prosecution of illegal technical gun possession offenses to federal court, where they carried a mandatory minimum sentence of five years in federal prison under the federal Gun Control Act of 1968, rather than in state court. Note that federal law provides for a penalty of ten years in federal prison for being a "prohibited person", i.e., a convicted felon in possession of a firearm, as well as for falsifying information in order to obtain one, or furnishing a gun to a convicted felon.
Crime in the Northern Territory is managed by the Northern Territory Police, the territory government's Department of the Attorney-General and Justice and Territory Families.
Daniel F. Conley is an American attorney and politician who served as the district attorney for Suffolk County, Massachusetts from 2002 to 2018. Appointed to the office in February 2002, Conley was later elected on November 5, 2002, and again in 2006, 2010, and 2014. He retired in 2018 to enter private practice.
Gun violence is a term of political, economic and sociological interest referring to the tens of thousands of annual firearms-related deaths and injuries occurring in the United States. In 2022, up to 100 daily fatalities and hundreds of daily injuries were attributable to gun violence in the United States. In 2018, the most recent year for which data are available, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) National Center for Health Statistics reported 38,390 deaths by firearm, of which 24,432 were suicides. The national rate of firearm deaths rose from 10.3 people for every 100,000 in 1999 to 11.9 people per 100,000 in 2018, equating to over 109 daily deaths. In 2010, there were 19,392 firearm-related suicides, and 11,078 firearm-related homicides in the U.S. In 2010, 358 murders were reported involving a rifle while 6,009 were reported involving a handgun; another 1,939 were reported with an unspecified type of firearm. In 2011, a total of 478,400 fatal and nonfatal violent crimes were committed with a firearm.
Project Safe Neighborhoods(PSN) is a national initiative by the United States Department of Justice with the help of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) to reduce gun violence in the United States. The project's aim is to improve neighborhood safety and decrease gun violence in American communities. Project Safe Neighborhoods was established in 2001 through support from President George W. Bush. The program expands upon strategies used in Boston's Operation Ceasefire, and in Richmond, Virginia's Project Exile.
Crime in Chicago has been tracked by the Chicago Police Department's Bureau of Records since the beginning of the 20th century. The city's overall crime rate, especially the violent crime rate, is higher than the US average. Gangs in Chicago have a role in the city's crime rate. The number of homicides in Chicago hit a 25-year high in 2021.
Crime in Toronto has been low in comparison to other major cities. In 2024, a ranking of 60 large cities by The Economist ranked Toronto as the 6th safest major city in the world, and the safest major city in North America. In the same year, CEOWORLD magazine, which includes some major medium-sized cities, ranked Toronto as the 160th safest city in the world, running behind several other major cities including Taipei, Munich, and Jerusalem, as well as, in Canada, Quebec City and Ottawa, but safer than most cities in the United States.
Crime in Brazil involves an elevated incidence of violent and non-violent crimes. Brazil's homicide rate was 21.26 per 100,000 inhabitants in 2021, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). Brazil has one of the highest number of intentional homicides in the world with 57,358 in 2018. In recent years, the homicide rate in Brazil has begun to decline. The homicide rate was 20.89 per 100,000 in 2019 with 43,073 killings, down from 30.59 per 100,000 with 63,788 killings in 2017.
Lawrence W. Sherman is an experimental criminologist and police educator who is the founder of evidence-based policing. Since 2022 he has served as Chief Scientific Officer of the Metropolitan Police at Scotland Yard, as well as Wolfson Professor of Criminology Emeritus at the University of Cambridge Institute of Criminology Wolfson Professor of Criminology.
The Scottish Violence Reduction Unit is a Police Scotland initiative established in January 2005 which uses a public health approach to target all forms of violent behaviour including street/gang violence, domestic abuse, school bullying and workplace bullying.
Cure Violence is a public health approach to violence prevention and reduction. It aims to stop the spread of violence in communities by using the methods and strategies associated with epidemic disease control: detecting and interrupting conflicts, identifying and treating the highest risk individuals, and changing social norms.
Crime in Oakland, California began to rise during the late 1960s after the King assassination riots, and by the end of the 1970s Oakland's per capita murder rate had risen to twice that of San Francisco or New York City. In 1983, the National Journal referred to Oakland as the "1983 crime capital" of the San Francisco Bay Area. Crime continued to escalate during the 1980s and 1990s, and during the first decade of the 21st century Oakland has consistently been listed as one of the most dangerous large cities in the United States.
David M. Kennedy is an American criminologist, professor, action researcher, and author specializing in crime prevention among inner city gangs, especially in the prevention of violent acts among street gangs. Kennedy developed the Operation Ceasefire group violence intervention in Boston in the 1990s and the High Point Model drug market intervention in High Point, North Carolina, in 2003, which have proven to reduce violence and eliminate overt drug markets in jurisdictions around the United States. He founded the National Network for Safe Communities in 2009 to support cities using these and related strategies.
A Crime concentration is a spatial area to which high levels of crime incidents are attributed. A crime concentration can be the result of homogeneous or heterogeneous crime incidents. Hotspots are the result of various crimes occurring in relative proximity to each other within predefined human geopolitical or social boundaries. Crime concentrations are smaller units or set of crime targets within a hotspot. A single or a conjunction of crime concentrations within a study area can make up a crime hotspot.
Evidence-based policing (EBP) is an approach to policy making and tactical decision-making for police departments. It has its roots in the larger movement towards evidence-based practices.
Lucerne Street Doggz are a street gang in the Lucerne Street area of Mattapan neighborhood in Boston. In 2006 Lucerne Street Gang was involved in 37 shootings in Boston counting for 10% of all shootings that year.
Anthony Allan Braga is an American criminologist and the Jerry Lee Professor of Criminology at the University of Pennsylvania. Braga is also the Director of the Crime and Justice Policy Lab at the University of Pennsylvania. He previously held faculty and senior research positions at Harvard University, Northeastern University, Rutgers University, and the University of California at Berkeley. Braga is a member of the federal monitor team overseeing the reforms to New York City Police Department (NYPD) policies, training, supervision, auditing, and handling of complaints and discipline regarding stops and frisks and trespass enforcement.
Focused deterrence is a crime prevention strategy which aims to deter crime by increasing the swiftness, severity and certainty of punishment for crimes by implementing a mix of law enforcement, social services, and community mobilization. This approach also aims to identify underlying causes of gun injury-related problems and tailors specific solutions to each of them. The available evidence indicates that these programs are notably effective at reducing gun violence, though this may not be due to the provision social services. Among the focused deterrence programs that have been implemented in the United States is the Operation Ceasefire program in Boston, which aimed to concentrate law enforcement efforts on violent criminals in crime "hot spots". This was the first program, created by criminologist David M. Kennedy. From there, inspired focused deterrence programs were applied, including Operation Peacekeeper in Stockton and other forms of Operation Ceasefire in Rochester, Newark, and Los Angeles.
The National Network for Safe Communities (NNSC) is a research center at City University of New York John Jay College of Criminal Justice. The NNSC works with communities to reduce violence, minimize arrest and incarceration, and increase trust between law enforcement and the public. Working in partnership with cities around the country the NNSC provides advising on implementing evidence-based violence reduction strategies. Additionally, the NNSC provides guidance on how to build trust between law enforcement and the communities it serves, facilitates connections between practitioners within and across jurisdictions, and serves as a resource for knowledge about violence prevention and reduction strategies.
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