Gun violence affects far more people than those wounded directly. Victims’ families suffer mental, emotional, and financial costs as well. The cost of gun violence extends beyond the immediate medical consequences and the public pays.
An ongoing evaluation by John Jay College of Criminal Justice found one neighborhood experienced a 63% drop in monthly shooting victims from 2009 to 2016, based on New York Police Department data. New York spends approximately $40 million a year on Cure Violence programs. Slutkin estimates that big cities require about $15 million to $30 million to run an effective program, and small cities need $5 million to $10 million.
In October 2018, the U.S. Department of Justice announced that it had “smashed records” by charging more than 15,300 defendants with federal firearms offenses, 17 percent more than the previous record. The press release from the Justice Department didn’t cite the year or number for the previous record, and we were unable to reach a Justice spokesperson by deadline.
Jeffrey Butts of John Jay College of Criminal Justice says studies show those with guns are at greater risk of becoming victims of gun violence.
A John Jay College study compared a South Bronx neighborhood served by Cure Violence with a demographically similar neighborhood that did not have violence interrupters. But perhaps more promising than the decrease in shootings were the shifts in attitudes toward violence the John Jay survey found among young men in the neighborhood.
The John Jay College of Criminal Justice Research and Evaluation Center analyzed the New York City experience with the Cure Violence model in 2017, seven years after the strategy was adopted. It found reductions in gun injuries of 37–50 percent in the South Bronx and Brooklyn. The center also documented a 14 percent reduction in attitudes supporting violence, with no change in control populations. However, more research is needed.
by Jeffrey A. Butts JohnJayREC DataBits 2018-01 (revised Jan 2020) Policy debates about gun violence focus on cities. Every year, when federal law enforcement authorities release the latest compilation of U.S. violent crime statistics, news media across the country publish stories ranking cities on the severity of violence, with some labeled as “America’s deadliest cities.” [...]
Shootings per 1,000 population by Sheyla Delgado, Kevin Wolff, and Jeffrey Butts Research & Evaluation Center July 28, 2015 With funding from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) and the New York City Council, the Research & Evaluation Center at John Jay College is conducting a program of studies known as NYC Cure. One study [...]
