A LOOK AT ... REACTING TO VIOLENCE

But Boston Proves Something Can Be Done

BOSTON - There is something understandable about the spasm of instant
prescription that has gripped the country since last month's school
shootings in Littleton, Colo. Social ills from adolescent angst to national
cultural issues have been held up for both diagnosis and treatment. But
whatever the causes, it is fundamentally incorrect to suggest that the
school shootings represent "youth violence." They have more in common with
adult spree killings than with the youth gun violence that plagues America's
inner cities.

Still, the lesson we learned in the Boston Gun Project, which drastically
reduced homicides in the city, is that the youth violence problem was not a
condition--bad kids, bad neighborhoods, bad drugs--but rather a dynamic that
could be interrupted. The same is likely true of the school shootings,
though the dynamic is different.
Understanding it, and addressing it, is essential.

That's what we did in Boston, and the results speak for themselves. But the
process didn't happen overnight. When youth violence began rising sharply
with the crack cocaine epidemic here and in other cities nearly 15 years
ago, society moved, as it is doing again now, directly from a recognition of
the problem--kids killing one
another--to the favored prescriptions of various ideological camps. Kids
clearly needed more discipline (or more help); society needed fewer guns (or
more); poor neighborhoods needed more assistance (or less welfare); juvenile
offenders needed to be treated like adults (or more like kids); the drug war
needed to be fought mercilessly (or abandoned). None of those instant
solutions stopped the killing.

Then, in 1995, several of my Harvard University colleagues and I started the
gun project--a collaboration by researchers, police, prosecutors, the
probation and parole system, social services and the Bureau of Alcohol,
Tobacco and Firearms (ATF). And finally, in this city at least, researchers
and practitioners took a close look at what was actually happening.

What we found was in many cases unexpected--even astonishing. The violence,
for example, was not random, and it followed a logic that allowed for
powerful preventive action. Even in dangerous neighborhoods, only a tiny
minority--fewer than 1 percent--of the city's juveniles and young adults
were caught up in the violence. They
were largely chronic offenders with robust criminal histories: Seventy-five
percent of victims and offenders had prior arrests (on average, 10), and a
quarter of homicide offenders were on probation when they committed murder.
They (almost all were male) were involved in drug-dealing street groups and
enmeshed in shooting disputes with other chronic offenders. Most of the
violence was not about the drug business, but about respect, boy/girl
matters and standing vendettas, the origins of which were often unclear even
to the participants.

Boston tackled it head-on. First, the gun project looked carefully at where
youth offenders were getting their guns. We learned a lot. Contrary to
expectations, many of those weapons were trafficked illegally rather than
stolen. And, while there was an assumption that many of the guns would be
linked to trafficking from southern states with weak gun laws, just as many
had come from Massachusetts gun stores. City police and the ATF then cracked
down on gun traffickers identified by tracing the guns used in crimes and by
using information gathered by debriefing offenders and from confidential
informants.

Second, the local and federal authorities, as well as gang-outreach workers,
the clergy and community groups, worked with the gangs and delivered a
strong, simple message: The streets are going to be made safe again; the
violence stops today; if someone in your group commits a violent crime,
sanctions--from strict probation supervision up to federal drug
enforcement--will be focused on the group's other members; if you want
help--job training, drug treatment and so on--we're offering it. Never
before had these agencies shared intelligence and cooperated to this extent.
Though the project had begun with a focus on juveniles, the strategy
ultimately expanded to include adults who were part of the street dynamic.

Some crews didn't listen; the authorities clamped down--the most violent
crack cocaine gang in the city was essentially dismantled in a joint Boston
Police/Drug Enforcement Administration operation--and, as a deterrent, the
authorities made sure other gangs knew about it. The goal was to interrupt
the cycle of violence and make it safe even for gang members to put down
their guns.

It worked. In the years preceding the Boston intervention, the city averaged
about 100 homicides a year. In 1997, the first full year after the
intervention, the toll fell to 43; in 1998, to 35; this year, to date, the
count is 10. The number of shootings also fell dramatically.

A one-time grant from the Justice Department's National Institute of Justice
paid for the initial collaborative work, research and design of the
intervention and its evaluation. Another grant supported the Boston Police's
gang unit. Otherwise, there was no specific funding for the work of member
agencies.

Similar operations appear to have been effective in Minneapolis (where the
summer homicide count fell from 42 in 1996 to seven after a Boston-style
intervention was launched in June 1997), in High Point, N.C., and in
California's San Joaquin County. New programs are being set up in Los
Angeles, Indianapolis and Baltimore.

What would we conclude if we took the same kind of look at school shootings?
Two years ago we had no such problem; then, suddenly, we did. Nothing in the
usual menu of causal factors has changed so suddenly: not parenting, movies,
music, access to guns, adolescent alienation or the difficulties of high
school life. These are therefore unlikely explanations.

The school shootings are not the urban youth violence problem leaching to
the suburbs. They are like spree killings by adults--from the 1966 Texas
Tower shooting to the 1993 Long Island commuter train murders. School
shootings are very likely happening in a wave simply because the first one
happened, making the possibility real to kids in a new and very occasionally
compelling way. The engine, inadvertent but powerful, is the media's
systematic amplification of the contagion. It ensures that with each event
the very small number of potential school shooters is well and truly
awakened. We have, for good reason, few mechanisms to control the media.
Nonetheless, we must sort this out: What might the media do to report the
news without also provoking the next copycat killer? The dynamic of the
school shootings seems to be actions begetting attention, which beget more
action and more attention. If we can stop this, we had better do so.

David Kennedy is senior researcher at the program in criminal justice,
policy and management at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government
and director of the Boston Gun Project.

City Tolls

Here are the per-capita murder rates (per 100,000) of selected American
cities, based on 1997 FBI uniform crime reports.

Baltimore 43.4

Boston 7.7

Chicago 27.4

Detroit 45.9

Houston 14.1

Los Angeles 16.3

Miami 26.3

New York 10.5

Pittsburgh 14.2

Wash., D.C. 56.9

SOURCE: 1997 FBI Uniform Crime Reports