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Volume 6
Issue 25
Sept. 2 - 8, 2009

Richmond Memorial Civic Center Grand Reopening

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Two years of seeking solutions: Crime series bids adieu

By David Muhammad

David Muhammad After two years of the Globe’s “Seeking Solutions to Black on Black Crime” series, we will be taking what we hope is a brief break.

During our run, we have covered, discovered and learned much. Each week the Globe has brought you a featured column, a profile of a program or organization successfully combating violence, a statistical graph depicting some aspect of the challenge and a first-person testimonial, mostly from youth struggling to get out of a life of crime. We began with a commitment to focus two straight years solely on the issue of violence — something many residents of Oakland and Richmond consider their number one issue.

Violence is a problem that affects many inner cities across America and has been an epidemic in the country for nearly three decades. Drugs, incarceration and violence have been a three-way tandem that has terrorized our communities. Unfortunately, there has not been the political will to marshal the appropriate resources to effectively address the immediate and root causes of violence. The political apathy is much to do about the main victims of this crisis — young black men. The face of violence, both perpetrator and victim, is young black men ages 16-30, where a handgun is involved on a known hot spot block in the inner city.

Violence engulfs black and Latino neighborhoods of concentrated poverty. Violence permeates unorganized, disjointed neighborhoods. No matter how good a program or service is that helps individuals come out of a life of crime and violence, if you grow up and live in an environment of destruction, you are likely to engage in destructive behavior. If you grow up in an impoverished, blight-infested community with high unemployment rates, substandard schools, a liquor store on nearly every corner, drugs readily available and guns easily accessible, you will have uncontrolled violence. So while we search for the programs that are effective, which is critical, we can never lose sight of the root-cause factors that must be eliminated.

Over the past two years we have learned much about what works and what doesn’t work. Across the county, jurisdictions have begun implementing “evidence-based programs” — program models that have stood up to rigorous research and have been found successful. One of the most popular and effective programs is Multi-Systemic Therapy — or MST — an intensive in-home family counseling service that addresses all aspects of the family and the systems the family must navigate. MST must be culturally competent, though.

We have heard much about the incredibly successful Boston model — also called the “Boston Miracle.” Facing horrifying levels of violence in the early 1990s, like most big cities in America, a movement began in Boston, starting with churches and community-based organizations. Then law enforcement and researchers joined in. What was created was an extremely well-coordinated effort to identify the individuals, families and crews who were responsible for most of the violence; to target those individuals and groups with intensive services (jobs, counseling, mentoring, treatment, etc); to collect detailed data on the individuals and on the services; and to effectively use law enforcement, not only to temporarily suppress pockets of violence, but to learn the hot spots, help keep the targeted individuals on track and when necessary, arrest individuals who are serious risks to the public safety.

It worked in Boston and many other cities that have correctly initiated similar models have experienced success. But Boston, like other cities, did not keep a protracted focus on the coordination and the fidelity to the model was lost, as was the lasting peace. Richmond is facing a similar challenge with its inability to adequately support the Office of Neighborhood Safety.

The five tenants of effective violence prevention are: Having and collecting good data, using and sustaining appropriate resources, building a rapport with those involved in violence, developing coordination and communication with all the various agencies and organizations and having a true partnership between government, law enforcement, community, clergy and business.

Violence is expensive. Just one shooting can cost as much as a million dollars when you add all the associated costs of emergency response, medical treatment, trial, incarceration, etc. Elected officials and community members must be smart enough to support spending money on the front end to prevent violence so that we are not forced to spend so much money on the back end — especially for ineffective responses like incarceration, which most often make the problem worse.

The last two years have been a learning experience. We thank you for the many letters, postcards, emails and calls of support that we have received on this series. Ultimately it is up to each individual to make their own contribution (see last week’s online column, “What you can do to stop violence”).

Much progress has been made, but this is still an uphill battle. The good news is when we are truly ready, we can eradicate violence from our communities.