More NCJRS Abstracts, December 16, 2007

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NCJ 220486
Paul D. Steele; Lisa Broidy; Jerry Daday; Nell Damon; Kristine Denman; Kerry Edwards ; Colin Olson; Teresa Schellhamer; Lisa Ortiz; Vanessa Salazar; Salim Khouyami
Strategic Approaches to Community Safety Initiative in Albuquerque: Project Activities and Research Results
University of New Mexico

This report describes the development, implementation, and results of Albuquerque's Strategic Approaches to Community Safety Initiative (SACSI), a federally led coordinated effort to reduce and prevent firearm and firearm-related violent crime. The featured program intervention by a working group of Federal, State, and local representatives was "Turning Point" (TP), a program that targets violent repeat felony offenders who are under community supervision as probationers or parolees in the Albuquerque area. The program relies on positive support resources and sanctions in order to achieve greater compliance with probation/parole conditions and achieve lower rates of criminal reoffending. These measures include service delivery from selected providers, close monitoring, and rigorous response to probation violations and reoffending. Since the TP is in its initial stage of implementation, the only program component that has been fully implemented is the initial TP session, in which representatives from neighborhood groups, criminal justice and service provider agencies, and others present information to probationers/parolees. Probationers/parolees complete questionnaires and meet service program staff. It is too early in the program's implementation to estimate its effectiveness or impact; however, it is unlikely that the program will have a positive effect on public safety unless substantial changes are made. It must involve more probationers/parolees in order to have an impact among violence-prone probationers. Further, since only a portion of firearms-related crimes are committed by those who are, or have been, on probation, TP would have to saturate the target population in order to have a discernable reduction of violent crime. Recommendations are to implement all aspects of the TP model, maximize deterrence through program credibility, address human resource issues, improve the sharing and use of critical information, maintain and expand research activities, and expand the TP program to all eligible probationers. 35 tables, 159 references, and appended data-collection instruments

NCJ 220487
Timothy S. Bynum; John D. McCluskey
Strategic Approaches to Community Safety Initiative (SACSI): Detroit, Michigan
Michigan State University

This report documents the process by which one Detroit precinct implemented the Strategic Approaches to Community Safety Initiative (SACSI), which involved a team of Federal, State, and local agencies systematically addressing gun violence. SASCI focused on the eighth precinct, which had large numbers of nonfamily gun homicides and gun robberies in 1999-2000. Understanding the dimensions of gun violence and the factors underlying it became the first step in providing technical assistance to the working group for the design of an intervention. The first intervention agreed upon by the working group was "Operation 8-ball," which was planned during the summer of 2001. This operation used a warrant enforcement team in order to identify and apprehend warrant violators who were likely to have guns because of the type of crimes they had committed. The effort was unique in its focus on offenders likely to carry guns. This focus was aided by enhanced Federal penalties for felons in possession of a firearm. Increased attention to offenders likely to carry guns also included greater coordination of the processing of these cases in the criminal justice system, so as to make sanctions more certain. One of the challenges that faced the SASCI initiative was difficulty in maintaining momentum within the working group over the life of the project. This was due largely to the transfer of personnel across the police department, which led to turnover in working-group members from the Detroit Police Department. This challenge, among others, however, did not prevent significant achievements by the SACSI initiative. For the first time in this precinct, a data-driven strategy was established to address gun violence. The working group continues its work in forging an interagency effort to identify, apprehend, and effectively sanction those offenders who carry and use guns. 6 tables, 18 figures, 34 references, and appended list of agencies participating in Detroit's SACSI

NCJ 220488
John M. Klofas; Christopher Delaney; Tisha Smith
Strategic Approaches to Community Safety Initiative (SACSI) in Rochester, NY
Rochester Institute of Technology

This report describes the development, implementation, and results of Rochester's (New York) Strategic Approaches to Community Safety Initiative (SACSI), a federally led coordinated effort to reduce and prevent firearm and firearm-related violent crime. Evaluation of the overall SACSI strategy, which focused on homicide as the crime problem to be addressed, shows promising results, with significant declines in homicides over the past 12 months, particularly among the target population of young Black males. Process evaluation shows that the strategies have involved significant involvement in collaborative problem solving and many instances of change in agency activity and system improvements. The violence prevention interventions are being institutionalized through training in the key criminal justice agencies involved in SACSI. Researchers continue to have a significant role in these efforts. The process used in Rochester is the model used for problem analysis in national training for Project Safe Neighborhoods. It is also being used in New York State as a model for enhancing local analytical capacity and implementing intervention for reducing violence. An extensive and multifaceted study of homicide in Rochester was undertaken by the SACSI research team under the direction of the leadership group. Analyses showed that homicide victimization and offending was concentrated geographically in a small section of the city, where homicide rates for young Black men were nearly 70 times those in the Nation as a whole. A complex of strategies that involves nearly all aspects of the criminal justice system evolved and has been in place for over a year. Strategies include changes in prosecution practice, group-focused intelligence gathering, targeted law enforcement efforts, delivery of a deterrence message and service alternatives through offender call-ins, intensive supervision of designated probationers, and saturated patrol practices. 20 references