Program Goals/Target Population
In 2012, the homicide rate in Oakland, Calif. was almost seven times that of the national homicide rate (Braga et al. 2018). As a result, the City of Oakland engaged the California Partnership for Safe Communities (CPSC) to help design an intervention (the Ceasefire intervention) that could help reduce serious gun violence. The Ceasefire intervention uses focused-deterrence group violence reduction strategies (GVRS) to reduce or control gun violence. Problem analysis research showed that gang members were involved in nearly two thirds of gun homicides in Oakland between 2012 and 2013 (Braga et al. 2019); therefore, the Ceasefire GVRS intervention focused on gun violence related to gang members in the city.
Program Components
Ceasefire uses the key elements of the GVRS, which include trying to change behavior by understanding the underlying crime-producing dynamics and conditions that contribute to recurring crime problems, and implementing a blended strategy that involves law enforcement, community mobilization, and social service actions.
The CPSC partnered with the Oakland Police Department (OPD) to understand the underlying nature of gun violence in the city. A gang audit was used to identify specific gangs (including their rivalries and alliances with other gangs), and social network analysis was used to target gangs and determine the potential diffusion of the deterrence message to socially connected gangs.
The OPD leads an interagency Ceasefire enforcement group consisting of federal law enforcement agencies and state and county criminal justice agencies. The broader Oakland Ceasefire Partnership includes the mayor’s office, social service agencies led by the human services department, and community-based leaders and organizations. Enforcement actions are coordinated through OPD Ceasefire units, which consist of five centralized units of eight officers each and a gang investigations unit (Braga et al. 2019).
When the Ceasefire GVRS intervention is implemented (in response to serious gun violence from specific gangs), the OPD develops special enforcement strategies tailored to the vulnerabilities of the targeted gangs. The Ceasefire partnership communicates directly and repeatedly with the targeted gangs to 1) inform them that shootings will no longer be tolerated, and continued gun violence will receive special enforcement attention; 2) describe the kinds of increased enforcement and sanctions that will be focused on them; and 3) offer services and opportunities to gang members who want to stop their violent behavior. These direct messages are distributed to targeted gangs through custom notifications to individual gang members in the street, at their homes, or during group “call-ins,” which are face-to-face meetings with law enforcement, social service providers, and representatives from the community. The Ceasefire partnership not only communicates to target gangs, but also to their rivals and allies, to ensure that they also understand the violence prevention intervention being implemented.
Program Theory
The Oakland Ceasefire GVRS intervention is based on deterrence theory, which suggests that some are discouraged from crime involvement when the perceived cost of criminal activity exceeds the perceived benefits (Zimring and Hawkins 1973). There are two types of deterrence—specific and general deterrence. Specific or focused deterrence involves applying sanctions directly to individuals to dissuade them from committing future criminal acts. General deterrence concentrates on preventing crimes by the public through the threat of punishment. Research has found that person’ perceptions of punishment are critical in generating deterrent effects (Nagin 1998). Thus, by targeting particular criminal offenses perpetrated by a small number of highly active persons who are exceedingly susceptible to criminal justice sanctions (Durlauf and Nagin 2011), focused deterrence has been characterized as having important crime control characteristics. Focused deterrence strategies, such as Ceasefire, communicate directly to targeted persons that their continued criminal behavior will no longer be tolerated and that the criminal justice system will apply a variety of punishments when these behavioral standards are violated (Braga et al. 2019). Focused deterrence strategies intentionally exploit social ties among gangs and criminally active groups to produce “spillover” violence reduction impacts. This concept is consistent with general deterrence theory and suggests that individuals are discouraged from committing crimes because of their knowledge of punishments experienced by other law violators (Stafford and Warr 1993).
