NCJ Number
222535
Journal
Justice Quarterly Volume: 25 Issue: 1 Dated: March 2008 Pages: 132-162
Date Published
March 2008
Length
31 pages
Annotation
This article reports on an impact evaluation of the work of an interagency task force in Lowell, MA, which attempted to prevent gang-related gun violence through a program called "pulling levers," which focused criminal justice and social service attention on a small number of chronically offending gang members responsible for most of the urban gun violence.
Abstract
The evaluation determined that the "pulling levers" strategy was linked to a statistically significant decrease in the number of monthly gun homicide and gun-aggravated assault incidents in Lowell. A comparative analysis of gun homicide and gun-aggravated assault trends in Lowell relative to other major Massachusetts cities also indicated a unique effect associated with the "pulling levers" intervention. The "pulling levers" strategy was apparently successful in achieving deterrence by advertising to gang members the launching of the new law-enforcement strategy, specifically to individual gang members known to be involved in most of the gun-related violence in the city. The advertising emphasized the certainty, severity, and swiftness of sanctions associated with gun violence. In addition to deterrence, the strategy promoted desirable behavior through the provision of social services and the involvement of the community. The analysis of the program's impact followed a basic one-group time series design and a nonrandomized quasi-experiment that compared youth homicide trends in Lowell with gun-violence trends in other Massachusetts cities. The key outcome variable in the evaluation was the citywide monthly number of gun homicide and gun-aggravated assault incidents in Lowell between January 1, 1996, and December 31, 2005. October 2002 was selected as the official start date of the "pulling levers" intervention. 3 figures, 3 tables, and 82 references