NCJ Number
238602
Date Published
January 2012
Length
47 pages
Annotation
This report presents data on the Safe Streets program in Baltimore and its impact on gun violence, youths' attitudes about the acceptability of using guns to settle disputes, and the lives of high-risk youth participants.
Abstract
Findings show that despite inconsistent effects in some Safe Streets sites, the estimates from the regression analyses indicate that the program was associated with 5.4 fewer homicide incidents and 34.6 fewer nonfatal shooting incidents during 112 cumulative months of intervention observations across four sites. (The estimate for the number of homicides prevented may understate the number of lives saved by the program because the estimate for the effects of Madison-Eastend program translates into 5.7 additional homicide incidents in addition to 3.9 additional homicides linked to program implementation on the border areas surrounding Elwood Park's program.) Safe Streets was implemented in four of Baltimore's most violent neighborhoods, engaging hundreds of high-risk youth, promoting nonviolence through community events, and mediating over 200 disputes with the potential to lead to a shooting. Program participants reported benefiting from their connections to outreach workers in numerous ways that could be protective against future involvement in violence. Three of the four program sites experienced large, statistically significant, program-related reductions in homicides or nonfatal shootings without having a counter-balancing significant increase in one of these outcome measures. Both program sites where Safe Streets was linked to large reductions in homicides mediated about three times as many disputes per month than did the other two program sites. Findings suggest that future efforts should focus on understanding and improving program implementation and discovering the conditions under which the program can be most effective in reducing violence. 8 figures, 15 tables, and 29 references