Researchers investigated whether drug arrests in neighborhoods are associated with changes in community well-being.
“When COVID hit we saw this spike, so from 2020 to 2022 it was bad but… it still came nowhere near where we were in the 1990s,” Butts said, noting crime soon began to drop again as expected.
“I see it becoming a faith-based movement,” Dr. Butts said. “There has to be really transparent professional research in order to stand up in public and say this works.” When it comes to community-based interventions, he added, “we are nowhere close to having that.”
Surveys conducted in five cities as part of the Research and Evaluation Center’s project for the National League of Cities and its Institute for Youth, Education, and Families.
Overall, the interrupter model appears to be effective, according to a 2017 study by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice. In one Bronx neighborhood, the number of shooting victims fell 63 percent during a period when interrupters were active compared with rates before the program began, the study found.
Racial differences in police contacts are not de facto evidence of bias, but monitoring could help guard equity.
