Program Goals/Target Population
After Philadelphia, Pa., experienced a sustained increase in violence in 2010, the mayor, the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office, and the Philadelphia Police Department initiated a citywide effort to review potential violence reduction strategies that the city could implement. By fall 2012, this working group had become familiar with Operation Ceasefire in Boston (Mass.), the original “pulling levers” focused deterrence model, which is typically known as the Group Violence Intervention when directed at gang or group violence (Roman et al., 2020). (Philadelphia now implements the Group Violence Intervention model, which is distinct from this Focused Deterrence strategy. Please see the Implementation section below for information on the current Philadelphia Group Violence Intervention program). The “pulling levers” strategy involves deterring violent behavior by reaching out directly to gang members, saying explicitly that violence will not be tolerated, and by following every legally available route when violence occurs (Braga et al. 2001). The working group began to explore the feasibility of introducing the intervention model to Philadelphia, where it became known as the Philadelphia Focused Deterrence Strategy.
The general approach of the Philadelphia Focused Deterrence Strategy consisted of 1) law enforcement’s directed deterrence message (at “call-in” meetings), and follow-through to targeted individuals (“pulling levers”), 2) offers of social services and support, and 3) use of community moral voices to develop and maintain informal social control. The goal of the strategy was to reduce shootings by combining the threat of enforcement with the provision of services and targeting them to individuals committing violence in the community.
Target Area/Key Personnel
The South Police Division—which includes three police districts and encompasses most of South Philadelphia—was chosen as the geographic focus of the strategy, because of its known street gang involvement in gun violence and the preexisting interagency relationships among law enforcement in that area, including regular gang intelligence sharing between the District Attorney’s Office and Police Department. Further, the overall geographic area is relatively small, compared with other police divisions across Philadelphia, and was perceived to be manageable for problem-solving because the gang territories were clustered close together (Roman et al., 2019). The executive team for the focused deterrence strategy was formed in late 2012 and included leaders from the District Attorney’s Office, the Philadelphia Police Department, the Mayor’s Office, First Judicial District of Pennsylvania’s Adult Probation and Parole Department, Juvenile Probation, the Philadelphia Housing Authority Police Department, social service agencies, researchers, and the local federal prosecutor’s office. At the time of the first call-in meeting in Philadelphia in 2013, there were 16 active gangs that became the initial focal point of the initiative.
Program Components
The first step was the call-in meeting, which was conducted with individuals belonging to street groups identified as the drivers of violence. At these meetings, law enforcement conveyed a clear message that gun violence would no longer be tolerated and, if a shooting by a member of a group occurred after the call-in, law enforcement would use all enforcement options available to target the group involved in the shooting. Gang members also were asked to share these messages with other members of their groups (Roman et al., 2017). Individuals who were invited to the call-in meetings and did not attend had warrants issued for their arrest. Thus, when a shooting occurred and the Police Department and the District Attorney’s Office determined that it involved a member of a targeted South Philadelphia group, the District Attorney’s Office immediately furnished a current list of all members of that group and sent it to all the law enforcement partners. Numerous actions then occurred as part of an enforcement effort, each limited only to the identified members of the targeted gangs. The “levers pulled” included the execution of outstanding warrants; prosecutorial requests for high bail; requests for longer sentences; probation revocation; testimony by members of the South Gang Task Force (10 officers who were dedicated to the focused deterrence strategy) at the preliminary misdemeanor or felony case hearings; increasing the supervision of individuals on probation and parole; housing code enforcement; and increased enforcement of outstanding child support payments (Roman et al., 2020). The executive team that led the strategy also employed several levers beyond traditional law enforcement sanctions, including working directly with public utilities to terminate service for nonpayment or illegal electric and gas connections, and facilitating a review of public housing eligibility.
Social services and the involvement of community-based assets also played roles in the Philadelphia strategy. The purpose was to offer a positive incentive, in addition to the threat of severe consequences, for targeted individuals. Most individuals were recruited for services immediately after the call-in meetings. The Mayor’s Office also coordinated community outreach, which included developing and distributing materials that summarized the strategy and working with community leaders to promote an understanding that the strategy was focused not on arrest and incarceration, but on delivering a message of collective accountability and creating social pressure that could deter violence. A community outreach coordinator, who was a resident of the area targeted by focused deterrence, acted as the primary liaison between law enforcement and the community. The outreach coordinator ran monthly community meetings, where residents could voice their issues and concerns, and led the development of numerous prevention efforts to reach young children, which included a basketball league and neighborhood service projects.
Program Theory
The focused deterrence/pulling levers model is grounded in classic deterrence theory (Beccaria, 1986; Bentham, 1988). The basic premise of the theory is that when the costs of committing a crime outweigh the benefits, the crime should be prevented. Deterrence comprises three main principles: certainty, severity, and celerity of punishment (Nagin, Solow, and Lum, 2015). Specifically, in the Philadelphia Focused Deterrence Strategy, the deliberate, personalized communication and follow-up enforcement activity after shootings was designed to show targeted individuals that committing a shooting would be costly to them and their group (Roman et al., 2020), by demonstrating the high certainty of punishment. In addition, the model was designed not only to increase the certainty of punishment but also, with some levers, to increase the severity of punishment. The third factor of the focused deterrence model, celerity, included in the Philadelphia Focused Deterrence Strategy, was intended to show that combined resources of the partner agencies working together to solve shootings could yield swift outcomes (Roman et al., 2020).
