Program Profile: Project Safe Neighborhoods (Tampa, FL)

This initiative involves proactive policing, enhanced enforcement, sentences for individuals who repeatedly offend, and collaboration among multiple stakeholders. The program’s goal is to reduce violent crime and gun violence. The program is rated Promising. The implementation of the program led to a statistically significant reduction in violent crime in the treatment group relative to the control group. However, there was no statistically significant impact on the rate of gun crimes.

A Promising rating implies that implementing the program may result in the intended outcome(s).

A Promising rating implies that implementing the program may result in the intended outcome(s).

Program Goals

The Project Safe Neighborhoods (PSN) initiative involves proactive policing, enhanced enforcement, and sentences for persons who commit repeat offenses, as well as collaboration among multiple stakeholders (such as police, prosecutors, probation/parole officers, community leaders, judges, and academics). PSN involves identifying, deterring, and/or prosecuting individuals deemed most responsible for the increase in gun crime and violence in a jurisdiction. The goal is to reduce violent crime and gun violence.

The PSN program was implemented in Tampa, Fla., by the Tampa Police Department starting in 2016 following a rapid increase in violent crimes in the city from 2014 to 2015, including a dramatic spike in homicides and firearm offenses (Fox, Allen, and Toth, 2021).

Program Components/Target Population

The program in Tampa combined components from the PSN initiative (i.e., increased police enforcement and sanctions to deter persons who have committed repeat offenses) with a new risk assessment tool that is used to better identify individuals who frequently commit violent and firearm crimes who can be targeted by the PSN strategy.

The risk assessment is called the Violent Impact Player List (VIP List). The VIP List draws on evidence-based risk factors weighted to reflect the behaviors predictive of future violence and gun offending. It was designed to identify those individuals most likely to commit additional gun crime and violence. Those who qualify as “top scorers” on the VIP List (based on the sum of points for the behaviors included on the scoring criteria) are labeled as “VIPs.” The identified group of VIPs is then subject to the PSN strategy that aimed at deterring or incapacitating them from future offending. Examples of risk factors used to calculate the offending risk in the VIP List are prior firearm offense/arrest, violent criminal history/affiliation with a gang within the past 5 years, being a suspect in a shooting, and probation or release from prison within the past 3 years (Fox, Allen, and Toth, 2021, Appendix A).

To implement the program in Tampa, the Tampa Police Department adhered to five key program elements of the PSN strategy: 1) leadership, 2) partnership, 3) targeted enforcement, 4) prevention and outreach, and 5) accountability.

1. Leadership. The Violent Crime Bureau (of the Tampa Police Department) served as the centralized unit in the PSN program. The Bureau is based in the Tampa Police Department headquarters and leads efforts to score, maintain, and monitor the VIP List. It also leads proactive investigations and builds cases on crimes committed by those on the VIP List, in conjunction with the FBI, the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), and the United States Attorney’s Office, with an emphasis on increasing the certainty and swiftness of arrest. The Bureau also meets regularly with the U.S. Attorney’s Office to review VIP cases and decide the best forum for prosecution, with an emphasis on enhanced enforcement of the law for individuals who repeatedly offend.
2. Partnership. The Violent Crime Bureau works with federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies (including the FBI, the ATF, and the Florida Department of Law Enforcement) to coordinate efforts and share information on individuals who have frequently committed crimes operating across jurisdictions and committing multiple statutory violations. The Tampa Police Department also works with the U.S. Attorney’s Office during investigations to build cases and ensure the certainty and severity of sanctions for persons who repeatedly offend. The department also partnered with members of the academic community to develop the risk factors used to identify those on the VIP List, to help implement the PSN program, and to evaluate the implementation and effectiveness of the program.
3. Targeted enforcement. The focus of PSN is on persons who have committed violent offenses who are identified as responsible for a disproportionate amount of violence and gun crime in the city, using the VIP List assessment. The VIP List is intended to make targeted enforcement more precise, accurate, and objective relative to other broader or more subjective approaches. All individuals who exceed the scoring cutoff (using the VIP List scoring criteria) are subjected to enhanced enforcement and sanctions.
4. Prevention and outreach. The Tampa Police Department implemented strategies to influence the perceptions of those who have frequently committed crimes (who are identified using the VIP List) of the certainty, severity, and swiftness of enforcement. The strategies include centralizing violent crime investigations within the Violent Crime Bureau; enhanced investigative efforts and interagency collaborations aimed at increasing the swiftness and certainty of response if an individual identified using the VIP List commits a subsequent violent or serious crime; and close collaboration with the U.S. Attorney’s Office and State Attorney’s Office to increase the certainty and severity of punishment if an individual on the VIP List commits a subsequent violent or serious crime. The Tampa Police Department also engaged in messaging with news media outlets about the PSN program. Further, detectives from the Violent Crime Bureau notified those on the VIP List that any future violence and gun crimes would result in swift and enhanced enforcement, prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
5. Accountability. This component involved collaboration with academic partners to evaluate the Tampa Police Department’s implementation of PSN (Fox, Allen, and Toth, 2021, Appendix B).

Program Theory

The PSN program in Tampa is based on the notion that deterrence can reduce crime. Deterrence is a key concept in the rational choice theory of criminology, which asserts that those contemplating committing a crime weigh the costs and benefits of offending. General deterrence strategies are based on the notion that any sanction that increases criminals’ perceived risks of committing an offense can deter them from carrying out the act. PSN strategies focus primarily on increasing the perception of the certainty and severity of punishment that occurs when one considers committing a crime (Papachristos, Meares, and Fagan, 2007).

The PSN strategies also attempt to deter specific individuals, because a small number of people is usually responsible for committing the majority of violent crimes. The PSN program in Tampa relied on the VIP List to identify the top scorers, who were then targeted by the PSN intervention (Fox, Allen, and Toth, 2021).

Study

Fox, Allen, and Toth (2021) used a quasi-experimental design to examine the effects of the Project Safe Neighborhoods (PSN) initiative in Tampa, Fla., on gun crime and violence over a 6-year timeframe (3 years pre-implementation and 3 years post-implementation).

The unit of analysis in the study was the police department and associated jurisdiction. The Tampa Police Department served as the treatment group, and the associated jurisdictions (the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office, the Polk County Sheriff’s Office, the St. Petersburg Police Department, the Fort Myers Police Department, and the Orlando Police Department) served as the control group. The control group agencies were selected based on their similarity to the Tampa Police Department on factors such as geographic proximity, agency location, population size, and total police officers. The total violent crime rate and gun crime rate were collected in each agency’s jurisdiction before and after the PSN program was implemented in Tampa from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE) and the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms and Explosives (ATF).

Violent crime included murder, robbery, and aggravated assaults; gun crimes included all violent offenses committed with the use of a firearm. The pretest period was 3 years, from Jan. 1, 2013, to Dec. 31, 2015. The PSN program began in Tampa on Jan. 1, 2016; the follow-up period includes the 3 years through Dec. 31, 2018. All crime and other covariate data were collected every 6 months for the treatment group and control group agencies (following ATF and FDLE reporting guidelines) and transformed into per-capita rates to facilitate uniform comparisons across agencies. There was a total of 72 data points in the study—36 points in the pretest period and 36 points in the follow-up period. This total is based on data collected two times per year over six years from six agencies (2 x 6 x 6 = 72).

There were no statistically significant differences in violent crime rate, gun crime rate, index crime rate, population size, and officer-to-citizen ratio between agencies in the treatment and control groups during the pretest period. However, there was a statistically significant difference in violent crime arrest rates; the treatment group had a higher violent crime arrest rate than the control group.

To examine whether the PSN program reduced violent crime and gun crime rates, the evaluators used a synthetic control method. They used conditional zero-truncated negative binomial regressions to estimate the effect of the PSN strategy on violent crime and gun crime rates while controlling for index violent crime rate, violent crime arrest rate, officer-to-citizen ratio, and lagged violent or gun crime rates. No subgroup analysis was conducted.

Information about training and technical assistance that is available for the Project Safe Neighborhoods initiative is available at the Bureau of Justice Assistance website: https://bja.ojp.gov/program/project-safe-neighborhoods-psn/overview.

These sources were used in the development of the program profile:

These sources were used in the development of the program profile:

Papachristos, Andrew V., Tracey L. Meares, and Jeffrey Fagan. 2007. “Attention Felons: Evaluating Project Safe Neighborhoods in Chicago.” Journal of Empirical Legal Studies 4(2):223–72.

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Focused Deterrence Strategies

This practice (also referred to as “pulling-levers policing”) includes problem-oriented policing strategies that follow the core principles of deterrence theory. The strategies target specific criminal behavior committed by a small number of individuals who chronically commit offenses, such as youth gang members or those who repeatedly commit violent offenses, who are vulnerable to sanctions and punishment. The practice is rated Promising for reducing crime.

Evidence Ratings for Outcomes

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