Free Essay: Collaborative Initiative

The group violence reduction strategy in New Orleans, Louisiana, is the collaborative initiative that utilized collaborative community and criminal justice resources to deal with criminal issues in New Orleans (Corsaro & Engel, 2015). This initiative is a focused deterrence intervention that was implemented to address the persistent, citywide series of violence in New Orleans. It uses a data-driven approach to determine criminals in that region. The group violence reduction strategy follows the Boston Ceasefire model and is designed to analyze problems to identify offenders that pose severe threats to the community (National Institute of Justice, 2016).

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Most importantly, it is used to warn criminals that they risk being subjected to intensified enforcement and prosecution if they fail to change their behaviors. Key individuals involved in this initiative to provide a solution to criminal cases include New Orleans Police Department (NOPD) officers; special agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives; and members of Cincinnati Police Department (National Institute of Justice, 2016). They work with the community members to identify criminals in the region.

Proposed Solutions

One of the proposed solutions to the criminal acts in New Orleans was to implement the GVRS to target members of gangs and criminally active groups identified through multi-agency partnerships (National Institute of Justice, 2016). It was also proposed that the offenders identified through this strategy will become targets of a three-pronged approach, namely; law enforcement, access to social services, and threat to enhanced prosecution (The Center for Effective Public Policy, n.d.). Besides, the community and law enforcement proposed that for this strategy to be effective, the identified criminals must be under immediate, enhanced, law-enforcement scrutiny for any murders, shootings or other crimes that occur in the region. To show the seriousness of this approach, it would be imperative for the NOPD to use the previous gangs that were arrested and charged as examples. This will pass a message to the current groups and warn them of their actions.

Results

The first result of the Group Violence Reduction strategy was reduced cases of violence and other dangerous criminal acts in New Orleans. Due to this initiative, the homicide rate change in New Orleans was reported. Results showed a decrease in the rates of homicide by 17.3% (National Institute of Justice, 2016). The analysis of the interrupted time series found a reduction in the overall homicides from an average of 15.2% to 12.4% per month in New Orleans (National Institute of Justice, 2016). Multivariate analyses also reported that the group violence reduction strategy was associated with a decline in the average number of homicides per month.

The implementation of the group, violence reduction strategy, also led to a decline of firearm-related homicides and firearm assaults in New Orleans. According to the National Institute of Justice (2016), firearm-related homicides experienced a drop of around 17.4%, while firearm assaults in the region had a decline of about 16.2% (National Institute of Justice, 2016). The analysis also found that gang member-involved homicides experienced a significant decrease of close to 30.1% (National Institute of Justice, 2016). Overall, it was reported that gang violence reduction strategy is associated with a decline in crime, particularly homicide cases in New Orleans.

Most Impactful Partner

The most impactful partner to the solution was a working group consisting of NOPD officers, special agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, and members of the Cincinnati Police Department (National Institute of Justice, 2016). They organized data on violent street gangs into actionable intelligence that was classified based on the criminal's location, social networks, and participation in the wrongdoing. This partner identified suspected street gangs from six districts in the New Orleans Police Department.

The NOPD officials, who were most acquainted with the criminals in the area, collaborated with other working groups to identify potential street gangs from the region (National Institute of Justice, 2016). By identifying the criminals and the number of offenses conducted by these gangs, the working group saw the opportunity and the need to implement GVRS. Therefore, they are significant to the solution because they played a vital role in achieving this strategy to reduce the rates of crime in New Orleans.

Least Impactful Partner

Social service and community partners were the least impactful partners to the solution. They took part in the notification sessions and encouraged those who attended to sign up for services. Although the social service and community partners helped the working groups to identify potential gangs in the community, they were not directly involved in the implementation of GVRS. That is why they were the least impactful partners to the crime solution that consists of the enforcement of GVRS.

Improving the Outcome of Collaboration

The outcome of the collaboration could be enhanced by incorporating problem-oriented policing strategies to the implementation of the GVRS. Problem-oriented policing strategies are based on the primary principles of the deterrence theory. They target specific criminal acts committed by youth gangs and violent offenders who are susceptible to punishments and sanctions. This practice, combined with the implementation of the GVRS, will be promising for reducing crime, thus, improving the outcome of the collaboration.

References

Corsaro, N., & Engel, R. S. (2015). Most challenging of contexts: Assessing the impact of focused deterrence on serious violence in New Orleans. Criminology & Public Policy, 14(3), 471-505.http://www.strategiesforpolicinginnovation.com/resources/focused-deterrence-new-orleans

National Institute of Justice. (2016, September 16th). Retrieved from https://www.crimesolutions.gov/ProgramDetails.aspx?ID=490The Center for Effective Public Policy. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://cepp.com/collaborative-justice/