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Community Violence Intervention Plan

The City of Syracuse has persistently high levels of violent crime. Its 2021 murder rate of 19.85 per 100,000 residents is three times that of the United States (6.52). Moreover, despite different interventions from government agencies, civil society, and its non-profit network, the city’s average number of homicides per year rose by 31% over the last decade.

The Syracuse Violent Crime Assessment identified three main causes of this problem:

Law enforcement activity alone is not able to prevent criminal activity
Continuous social conflicts between gangs and groups of young people that spiral into gun violence
High-risk environmental features and dynamics within neighborhoods.

The Mayor’s Office to Reduce Gun Violence seeks to address violent crime produced by gang conflicts, implement a conflict mediation and socialization and economic opportunity plan for gang associates. The strategic goal of this plan is to reduce conflicts between gangs and groups of young people by engaging with the highest-risk individuals among these groups, those driving the gun related violence in Syracuse, and helping them acquire personal fulfillment and economic opportunities through legitimate means.

What is the Community Violence Intervention Plan?

The Community Violence Intervention (CVI) plan(PDF, 274KB) will start as a pilot program in 2023, engaging with fifty (50) individuals identified by both community gun violence intervention program staff and law enforcement as the drivers of gun violence in Syracuse. This represents about 4% of all people associated with gangs in Syracuse. A pilot approach will allow the Mayor’s Office to Reduce Gun Violence to improve current methodology and introduce and test national strategies new to our community. This process will strengthen our ability to further assess and evaluate the services delivered in order to expand services deemed effective and modify of eliminate those that are not. Such an approach allows us to develop an effective and cost-efficient program that meets the ultimate goal of saving lives.

Background

One of the leading causes driving violent crime in Syracuse is conflicts between gangs and groups of young people. This violent dynamic revolves around personal disputes and historic feuds between these groups. Therefore, gun-related violence in Syracuse is not most likely a conflict over money or territory; it is about hostile interactions, aggressive reactions, and vengeance.

According to the Central New York Crime Analysis Center, gang-related homicides represented 34% of last decade’s homicides. Moreover, conflicts between gangs drove the recent increase in violent crime; more than 50% of the last two years’ homicides were gang-related.

What We Learned

Our violent crime assessment included workshops and focus groups with community-based organizations that work on these issues. Based on evidence and information gained through these interactions, our implementation plan will focus on the following:

Cognitive and behavioral health conditions predisposing gang members to violent behavior. Examples are unaddressed trauma, restless aggressiveness, and cognitive-emotional states of anger, low problem solving skills, resentment, and defiance.
School absenteeism, low educational attainment, and scarce professional opportunities.
High levels of concentrated poverty.
Gaps in the overall coordination of anti-gun violence service delivery which hinders overall effectiveness of the work of the agencies providing the service. Specially identified gaps include mental health service delivery, education and training, employment networking and housing stability.
Expanding use of Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED) strategies.

We identified that gun violence is heavily concentrated in eleven specific clusters on the city's north, near west, and southwest and lower east side neighborhoods. In those clusters, we detected eight physical features including overgrown vegetation, illegal trash setouts, inadequate lighting, blighted properties, which increase the risk of violent crime in three ways:

By increasing opportunities to commit crimes
Creating a state of generalized disorder that nudges people into breaking other norms and rules
Damaging the social capital of communities and their capacity to exert social control over their neighborhoods

Why This Works

Why This Works: Supporting Evidence
Over 100 studies in the U.S. and across the globe demonstrate the success of this approach. These are the facts:

Conflict Management: Conflict interruption and outreach have helped to prevent violent crime across the U.S. 13 successful cases show the highly beneficial effects of this approach, with reductions in crime that go from 30% to 60%. This approach was implemented in cities such as Baltimore (MD), Chicago (IL), Philadelphia (PA), New Orleans (LA), Kansas City (MO), and NYC.

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT): More than 50 documented successful experiences show this therapy's effectiveness in reducing crime. On average, CBT reduces reoffending by 25%, and the most successful experiences go as far as 50%. This approach has been implemented in many cities nationwide, such as NYC, D.C., Sacramento (CA), Chicago (IL), Boulder (CO), and Atlanta (GA).

Stipends and economic support: Mental health services are much more effective when combined with stipends, subsidized jobs, and economic support. Three highly successful experiences demonstrate this:

Advance Peace (Sacramento, CA): This project enrolled 50 high-risk individuals into an 18-month developmental program. The program provided mentorship, mental health, personal development, and supportive services such as job development or stipends. This program achieved a gun violence reduction of 18% citywide and 29% in targeted areas.
Rapid Employment and Development Initiative (Chicago, IL): This program provided subsidized jobs, cognitive behavioral therapy, and stipends to high-risk individuals. In one of the largest and most rigorous studies, researchers found that this program reduced homicides and shootings arrests by 64%.
Sustainable Transformation of Youth (Monrovia, Liberia): This program provided cognitive behavioral therapy and small cash transfers to high-risk individuals actively involved in crime and violence, 38% of whom were former members of armed militant groups. A 10-year study found that this program reduced reported crime by half. More importantly, these positive results continued over the long term only when therapy was provided with stipends.

Mentorship: 46 case studies of mentorship demonstrate that this approach helps to reduce aggression and drug use among at-risk youth.

Goal

The persistently high levels of violent crime in Syracuse are a unique challenge. Multiple causes drive this issue. Also, it doesn’t have a straightforward solution and requires collective action and experimentation. With this policy, we will identify solutions this problem requires.

This is a plan to help gang associates change their negative thoughts and behaviors while we provide them with opportunities to improve their lives. The approach relies heavily on collective action and intends to build capabilities within community-based organizations. Ultimately, our goal is to discover an approach to reduce violent conflicts while we strengthen the communities that have suffered violence disproportionately in the past. If we are successful in 2023, we will have a clear path to enduring peace in the streets of Syracuse.