Behind LA's dramatic decline in gang violence

Misinformation and misunderstanding about the law can lead youth to have accelerating confrontations with the police. Cleveland’s Patrick Henry School offers Juvenile Justice Jeopardy, a game that orients middle school kids to the facts about criminal justice. The game enables youth to internalize the information through an enjoyable format.

The Mural Movement uses the power of art as a tool to help Black and brown communities heal when grappling with gun violence and racism. The group works with artists who create murals of victims of gun violence and now has 186 murals nationwide.

"Gang contracts" are used by many schools as a way to tell students they are suspected of gang activity and must avoid such activity or face discipline or expulsion. Gang contracts have been put to extensive use in the high schools and middle schools of two towns, Cicero and Berwyn, that underwent large demographic shifts toward more Latinx residents since the 1990s. Meant to make schools safer and put students on a better path, they have been based often on vague, unsubstantiated suspicions in Cicero and Berwyn. Critics cite evidence that young people are wrongly criminalized and denied educations.

Mexico City's 11-year-old video surveillance system, one of the most advanced in the world, was a massive investment in public safety: about $660 million to date to cover the city with more than 30,000 cameras and other devices. Like so much else in Mexico's law enforcement apparatus, it has done little to control crime but instead has become a tool of corruption and official impunity. While the cameras have helped keep tourists and elites safer, the vast majority of crimes go unreported and only a tiny number of police investigations benefit from the surveillance system.

In Detroit, Project Greenlight uses video surveillance technology to try to solve and deter street crime. Instead of the police requesting private security video after a crime occurs, businesses pay to install the Greenlight system, which then streams video live to police analysts. The police claim it has lowered crime, but researches have found no evidence that it affects violent crime rates. Critics see the system as a pay-to-play system in which businesses buy better police protection. And they say that the cameras, and the use of facial recognition software, bias enforcement against people of color.

When faced with a rise in gang violence, Ecuador tried an approach that was in complete opposition to "zero tolerance," the methodology America has been attempting to use to tackle the problem. Rather than target gang members as wrongdoers, the country "allowed the gangs to remake themselves as cultural associations that could register with the government, which in turn allowed them to qualify for grants and benefit from social programming."

Teens exposed to gang violence in Chicago have gained guidance from veterans. The mentorship program, operated through the YMCA, has helped young people connect with adults who can relate to their experiences.

Gang violence in Chicago is not uncommon, but one organization is working to change what happens in the aftermath of funerals. Dubbed a public health program, Cure Violence enlists the help of community members to attend funerals, provide food and build trust with those that have been impacted by this violence in order to deter future incidents from taking place.

The "Focused Deterrence" approach to lowering gang violence was hailed as a success in Philly when shootings went down, but is that the whole story? The strategy is also receiving some notable critiques, including the claim that the social services and employment opportunities it claims to provide have been less than forthcoming.

The city of San Bernardino adopted a strategy in 2017 from Stockton and Oakland that helped reduce homicides and violence in those communities. The Ceasefire model eschews blanket approaches like curfews and gang injunctions to focus on the places and people mostly likely to experience violence and then target them with outreach by leaders in the community, churches and criminal justice arenas. The idea is to build relationships and use data strategically to prevent crime.