Program Goals/Target Population
Kansas City (Missouri) No Violence Alliance (KC NoVA) is a focused deterrence violence-reduction strategy. The goal was to lower the city’s exposure to violent crime, including reducing the numbers of homicides and aggravated assaults committed by those who commit chronic violent offenses within organized groups and other social networks.
Kansas City is a large city in the Midwest with a population of around 500,000. KC NoVA was developed in response to an increase in violent crime. The city averaged more than 100 homicides a year from 2010 through 2013. In 2015, the city was 1 of 10 cities experiencing the greatest increases in homicide numbers in the United States (Fox and Novak 2018; Rosenfeld 2016).
Program Components
The program was organized by an interagency coalition of law enforcement, social services, and community and research organizations. It was determined that a disproportionate number of violent crimes involved a relatively small number of individuals and groups. Therefore, KC NoVA set out to design messaging, service delivery, and enforcement elements to reach out directly to those known to be involved in violence. Police relied on “group audits” to identify and locate the groups and individuals most likely to be involved in violence. Group audits consisted of facilitated meetings where frontline police officers shared and documented what they collectively knew about current violent groups and their members, relationships, and activities. The intelligence that came from these meetings was analyzed and used as a basis for planning and directing targeted enforcement activities. Quarterly group audits were held to obtain an ongoing stream of intelligence from street-level officers about violent crime in the community. Social network analyses provided additional information useful for developing targeted solutions to violent crime.
In addition, an interagency enforcement group was formed to lead the program’s coordinated response to all violent incidents that qualified as “triggers” for enforcement action. A triggering event was defined as a group-member-involved homicide. All enforcement responses followed a generalized template designed to guide the agencies in quickly planning specific actions whenever triggering events occurred. The objective was to ensure rapid apprehension and sanctions for these individuals and key members of their social networks. The enforcement responses were expected to influence each group member associated with them in some legally appropriate way (such as arrests, warrants, administrative jail sanctions, or enhancement of probation terms).
Another aspect of the program was the delivery of clear, direct messaging about the new policy to chronic violent group members and their peers. This allowed individuals to decide between facing certain, stringent sanctions if they (or a close associate) engaged in violence, or remaining nonviolent and receiving support from local service providers offering assistance with education, job training, employment, and other types of services. The main forum for the direct messaging was the “call-in”, where targeted individuals were invited to hear about these options while participating in a structured, risk-free, face-to-face discussion with enforcement personnel, community members, and service providers. Call-ins occurred four times a year at churches in the urban core of the city where most of the violence was occurring. KC NoVA staff reached out to these people and their victims at their homes, in police stations, and at probation and parole offices.
Program Theory
Focused deterrence strategies (also referred to as “pulling levers" policing) are problem-oriented policing strategies that follow the core principles of deterrence theory. Deterrence theory posits that crime can be prevented if certain people believe the costs of committing a crime outweigh the benefits (Zimring and Hawkins 1973). According to Kennedy (2006), there are six elements essential to the implementation of focused deterrence strategies: 1) selecting a particular crime problem; 2) assembling an interagency enforcement group; 3) conducting research to identify key suspects, with the help of frontline officers; 4) forming a special enforcement operation directed at those who commit further violence; 5) matching enforcement with supportive services and community encouragement; and 6) communicating directly and often with them, letting them know they are under close scrutiny and how they can avoid sanctions (as described in Fox and Novak 2018).
