Evaluation of Baltimore's Safe Street Program: Effects on Attitudes, Participants' Experiences, and Gun Violence

• NCJ Number: 238604
• Author(s): Daniel W. Webster, Sc.D., M.P.H.; Jennifer Mendel Whitehill, Ph.D.; Jon S. Vernick, J.D., M.P.H.; Elizabeth M. Parker, M.H.S.
• Date Published: January 2012
• Length: 47 pages
• Sponsoring Agency: Ctr's for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC); Baltimore City Health Dept
• Corporate Author: John Hopkins Ctr for Gun Policy and Research
• Sale Source: John Hopkins Ctr for Gun Policy and Research
• Publication Format: Document
• Publication Type: Program/Project Evaluation
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

This evaluation of Baltimore's Safe Streets Program, which aimed to reduce gun violence, focused on the program's implementation, the program's effects on homicides and nonfatal shootings, community attitudes toward gun violence, and participants' perceptions of the program's impact on their lives.

Abstract

The Safe Streets Program was implemented in four of Baltimore's most violent neighborhoods, engaging hundreds of high-risk youth, promoting nonviolence through community events, and mediating approximately 200 disputes that had the potential to lead to a shooting. The program was linked to the neighborhood residents' becoming less accepting of using guns to settle grievances in the one intervention neighborhood where attitudes were studied. Program participants reported benefiting from their connections to outreach workers, such that their risk for involvement in violence was reduced. Three of the four program sites experienced large, statistically significant program-related reductions in homicide or nonfatal shootings. Both sites where the program was linked to large homicide reductions were able to mediate approximately three times as many disputes per month than did the other two program sites. Future efforts should focus on understanding and improving program implementation and identifying the conditions under which the program can improve reductions in violence. In attempting to replicate Chicago's CeaseFire multifaceted program for reducing gun violence among youth, the Baltimore Safe Streets Program features outreach workers serving as positive role models for the youth in their neighborhoods, steering them to resources such as job or educational training. Special outreach staff called "violence interrupters" identify and attempt to resolve potentially dangerous conflict in the neighborhood before they escalate into shootings. In addition, the program organizes community responses to shootings in an attempt to change social norms for the use of firearms. 15 tables and 29 references