Media

Highlights

 
News Round-Up
U.S. Attorney General Endorses Connecticut's Statewide Roll-Out of National Network Strategy
The National Network for Safe Communities' group violence reduction strategy (GVRS) received high-profile federal endorsement when U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder traveled to New Haven to launch Connecticut’s Project Longevity—a groundbreaking statewide implementation aimed at making GVRS "how we do business every single day," according to Governor Malloy.

 

New York Magazine
The Truce on Drugs 
A wide collection of efforts are trying to find new ways of balancing the costs of drug use and the costs of the drug war. Among them are thoughtful law enforcement officials who, in line with the National Network strategies, are moving from addressing the broad category--drug dealing, gangs etc--to the narrow one, the lethally violent.


NPR's Fresh Air
Interrupting Violence with the Message 'Don't Shoot'
National Network Co-Chair David Kennedy sets out the history of the group violence reduction and drug market intervention strategies and explains how they have been implemented with great success in many jurisdictions around the nation.




Peoria Magazines
Don't Shoot!
Peoria, IL, designed an extraordinary outreach effort to generate maximum community involvement and support for implementing the National Network's group violence reduction strategy, including the city-wide reading of David Kennedy’s book “Don’t Shoot” followed by a series of call-in radio shows hosted by Mayor Jim Ardis. Visit the ‘Don’t Shoot Peoria’ website for details, read this to learn more, and listen to the radio roundtable discussions.  After bringing federal charges against twelve members of the "Bomb Squad" gang, Peoria held its first call-in on December 10. A victim of an armed robbery decided to work with police as a direct result of the city's "Don't Shoot" campaign.

 
The Dylan Ratigan Show
A Time to Heal: Repairing America's Relationship with Young Black Men
There is growing support for the National Network's efforts to find ways of healing relationships between young black men, their communities, and law enforcement agencies that serve them.

 


The Dylan Ratigan Show
How Community Can Overpower Crime
National Network Co-Chair David Kennedy explains how combining clear community standards with a powerful deterrence message has helped cities around the nation overpower crime with minimal use of incarceration.


The Daily Beast
Liberal Academic, Tea Party Leader Rethinking Crime Policy
Odd alliances across the political spectrum are changing the way we think about crime, incarceration and their damaging effects on communities.


Governing
How Game Theory is Reinventing Crime Fighting 
Elected officials across the nation from both political parties have begun to examine ways to replace a tough corrections policy with a smart one. This article tracks the theories and successful approaches that are at the core of the new thinking, including the National Network's violence reduction strategies.    

The New Haven Independent

Photo: Thomas McMillan/New Haven Independent 
Fighting Back: Violence in Our Cities
This multimedia forum addresses how to rebuild trust between the community and police and stem the tide of murders in New Haven as the city's new police chief, Dean Esserman, prepares to implement the National Network's violence reduction strategies there.

Boston Public Radio
Unorthodox Ways to Stem Crime
National Network Co-Chair David Kennedy, in an extended interview with Boston Public Radio, sets out what it takes to reduce the number of violent deaths and the high levels of incarceration rates that beset America's most troubled communities.

The Boston Globe
Expanding the "Boston Miracle"
This Op-Ed argues that the National Network strategies, which grew out of the success of "Operation Ceasefire" in Boston in the mid-1990s, are "how we, as a nation, can and must finally back out of the rolling destruction, by death and mass incarceration, of our cities, our society, and our moral character.”  


New York Times Magazine
Prisoners of Parole
Law professor Jeffrey Rosen sets out how new deterrence approaches, including those underlying the National Network's strategies, hold real promise for addressing the criminal justice system's legitimacy crisis.
 

The New Yorker
Annals of Crime: Don't Shoot
Faced with record murder rates and deep distrust of law enforcement among minority communities, Cincinnati turned to the group violence reduction strategy. The result was a transformation of the relationship between the police and the community and a 50 percent drop in gang-related homicides.


ABC PrimeTime
Taking Back the Streets
Nassau County successfully replicated the drug market intervention strategy in a Hempstead neighborhood that previously had been home to more arrests, shootings, and deaths than just about anywhere else in the state of New York. Watch the summary report below on how police and community joined forces to eliminate drug-related crime or click on the title for the full-length program.
ABC Video


The Wall Street Journal
Novel Police Tactic Puts Drug Markets Out of Business
In pioneering the drug market intervention strategy, High Point, NC, forged a law enforcement-community partnership that continues to set the standard for other National Network jurisdictions. It not only eliminated drug markets citywide and dramatically reduced related crime, it also addressed and repaired historic racial divisions. Watch the video below to learn more about High Point's groundbreaking approach.
Video: Courtesy of Ash Institute at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government


The Economist
The Velvet Glove
High Point's success in closing down its drug market with a minimum of arrests and incarceration demonstrates that there is a real alternative to traditional drug law enforcement, this report argues, and there is a growing consensus among experts that crime can be prevented in a more cost-effective and less damaging way.


Seattle Channel
Youth Violence Prevention
A profile of Seattle's drug market intervention and its plans to also to put the group violence reduction strategy into place as part of a larger $8 million youth violence prevention program. The report includes an interview with National Network co-chair David Kennedy.


The Prospect
How to Really Hug a Hoodie
The Scottish city of Glasgow, the most violent city in Europe, implemented the National Network's group violence reduction strategy with considerable success, and there are growing efforts to apply it in other sites in the United Kingdom.


The Providence Journal
Closing Crack Highway
In 2007, Providence, RI, adopted the National Network's drug market intervention strategy to save its drug-infested neighborhood of Lockwood. As part of the process, the Providence Police Department and the neighborhood's community underwent a profound transformation.