Final Report on the Indianapolis Violence Reduction Partnership

The author(s) shown below used Federal funds provided by the U.S. Department of Justice and prepared the following final report: Document Title: Strategic Approaches to Reducing Firearms Violence: Final Report on the Indianapolis Violence Reduction Partnership Author(s): Edmund F. McGarrell ; Steven Chermak Document No.: 203976 Date Received: January 2004 Award Number: 99-IJ-CX-K002 This report has not been published by the U.S. Department of Justice. To provide better customer service, NCJRS has made this Federally- funded grant final report available electronically in addition to traditional paper copies. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice. Strategic Approaches to Reducing Firearms Violence: Final Report on the Indianapolis Violence Reduction Partnership Edmund F. McGarrell School of Criminal Justice Michigan State University Steven Chermak Department of Criminal Justice Indiana University Final Report Submitted to the National Institute of Justice* Grant #1999-7114-IN-IJ and #1999-7119-IN-IJ January 2003 Revised October 2003 *Points of view or opinions expressed in this document are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official position or policies of the National Institute of Justice or the U.S. Department of Justice. Strategic Approaches to Reducing Firearms Violence: Final Report on the Indianapolis Violence Reduction Partnership Executive Summary The Indianapolis Violence Reduction Partnership (IVRP) was a multi-agency, collaborative effort to reduce homicide and serious violence in Marion County (Indianapolis), Indiana. The IVRP was part of the U.S. Department of Justice’s Strategic Approaches to Community Safety Initiative (SACSI) that was originally implemented in Indianapolis and four other jurisdictions and later expanded to five additional cities. The SACSI model is based on a data-driven, strategic problem solving approach whereby the firearms violence problem is analyzed, interventions based on the problem analysis are crafted and implemented, the strategies are assessed and evaluated, and there is a continual feedback mechanism to allow ongoing refinement of strategies. An additional component of the SACSI model is that a research partner is included as part of the multi- agency working group to assist in analysis, strategy design, assessment and evaluation. This report is based on the evaluation of the IVRP by the research partners involved in the IVRP initiative. The report attempts to achieve three goals. First, to tell the story of the IVRP as a multi-agency effort to reduce firearms violence. Although any such story is idiosyncratic to the specific site, we hope that description of the problem solving process will be useful to other jurisdictions considering data-driven, strategic problem solving. Second, we present findings on the problem solving process. Third, we present findings on the impact of the initiative on firearms violence in Indianapolis. Key Findings Interview and observational data suggest that the IVRP was successful in achieving many of the goals of strategic problem solving. The most consistent finding from the interviews was that the IVRP structure and process resulted in unprecedented sharing of information among officials from all the local, state, and federal criminal justice agencies serving Indianapolis. As time went on, this sharing of information extended to key community partners as well. The problem solving process was also described as providing a focus to the IVRP that made the process different from many multi-agency task forces, commissions, and similar structures in which criminal justice agencies are routinely involved. The regular meeting structure whereby problems were analyzed and interventions designed appeared to provide a data-informed focus that blended strategic analysis with an action orientation. The value of this process to criminal justice officials was suggested by the fact that participants made a very substantial commitment to the process. Indeed, a group of 20-30 officials representing local, state, and federal agencies, a research team, and key community partners have continued to meet every other week since the program began in January 1998. The problem analysis was dynamic and based on a wide variety of official and unofficial data sources. These included offenses known, calls for service, court records, probation and parole records, and firearms tracing data from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms. Many of these data sources were also available for Geographic Information System (GIS) mapping analyses. The research team also collected data through participant observation, focus groups, and interviews. Additionally, a technique that proved very useful was the systematic incident review. This involved case-by-case review of homicide incidents (expanded to include firearms assaults) by teams of detectives, street level officers, prosecutors, probation and parole officers, and other criminal justice actors. The incident reviews took advantage of the detailed knowledge of cases possessed by criminal justice officials as well as their knowledge of the social networks in which many offenders and victims are involved and the areas where street violence frequently occurs. The incident review findings revealed patterns of violence in Indianapolis that were not available in official data sources. The problem analysis revealed that homicides and gun violence in Indianapolis were largely characterized by the following: • Young men • Using firearms • Suspects and victims sharing extensive criminal histories • Concentrated in particular geographic areas • Suspects and victims that are involved in known groups of chronic offenders • Associated with drug distribution and use The overall strategy developed by the IVRP was a focused deterrence approach that included an attempt to increase the linkage of high-risk individuals to legitimate opportunities. The focused deterrence approach involved an attempt to increase the certainty and severity of sanctions for illegal possession and use of firearms, to communicate this message in as many ways as possible to individuals and groups believed to be at high-risk for involvement in gun violence, and to impose group accountability to known groups of chronic offenders. The focused deterrence approach also recognized the resource constraints on the criminal justice system and thus involved an attempt to focus limited resources on the problem of firearms violence. Among the key interventions that were utilized to implement the focused deterrence strategy were the following: • Offender notification meetings (lever pulling meetings) with groups of high-risk probationers and parolees • Multi-agency responses to areas or groups involved in specific incidents • Joint federal-local police and prosecution firearms crime case screening unit • Chronic violent offender program • Probation/parole - law enforcement teams conducting home visits • Public education campaign involving billboards, posters, public service announcements Additionally, the IVRP included prevention and intervention efforts through partnerships with community groups such as Weed and Seed, members of the faith community, and various service providers. A key element of the strategy was to make direct contact with high-risk individuals as a way of increasing the likelihood that they would access support and services. In terms of impact on crime, the most positive finding was that the monthly rate of homicides declined over 40 percent when comparing the intervention period with the pre- intervention period. Time series analysis indicated that this was a statistically significant decline. The largest absolute decline in homicides, measured in both the number of victims and suspects, was for African-American citizens, the group most heavily affected by homicide. Gun assaults and armed robberies similarly declined although the time series analysis did not indicate a statistically significant decrease. The nature of homicides changed in the intervention period. Fewer homicides involved guns, groups or gangs, drugs, and incidents were more geographically dispersed. Given that these were the key dimensions upon which strategies were predicated, these shifts were suggestive of strategic impact. The findings also revealed that offenders perceived an increase in the likelihood of sanctions for violent crime following the implementation of offender notification meetings. Offenders attending these meetings were also more familiar with the IVRP strategies and were more likely to believe that they were effective. Yet, there was little evidence that the offenders attending the meetings changed their offending behavior when compared to other probationers and parolees that did not attend the meetings. To the extent that the meetings were intended to significantly change the behavior of those attending (selected on the basis of being at “highest risk”), there was not strong evidence of impact. On the other hand, to the extent that the meetings and related communication strategies were intended to communicate to a broader offender population, the results were more promising. The outcome findings must be considered in light of the methodological limitations of evaluating change in a single site. With this qualification in mind, the findings are encouraging, particularly when considered in light of similar findings in Boston, Minneapolis,

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