Opinion: Invest in violence prevention, not policing
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Tiffany Cabán. AP PHOTO/FRANK FRANKLIN II.
By Tiffany Cabán
As the tenth year of Peace Week wraps up, it’s time for New York to tackle violence as a public health issue and commit resources to build the infrastructure necessary to keep communities safe. For too long, too many lawmakers have been preoccupied with the optics of public safety at the expense of the actual safety of Black, Brown and poor communities.
The current strategies of over-policing and mass incarceration give the illusion of safety and make for news media b-roll that promotes a false good guy vs. bad guy narrative. Community-led violence prevention programs decrease violence and save lives. The choice for which to fund is obvious.
The effectiveness of violence prevention programs isn’t speculation. In 1996, Boston saw a 63% decrease in youth gun violence when it implemented Operation Ceasefire, a program, that utilized peer-to-peer interventions, and social services. The city went 29 months without a youth homicide, in what was dubbed the “Boston Miracle.”
Beantown is no anomaly. Baltimore’s Safe Streets program cut youth violence by more than 50 percent in certain neighborhoods. Similar violence prevention programs have dramatically reduced violence in California, Indiana, and Ohio.
New York has success stories of its own. A $36 million investment in violence interruption groups from the Crisis Management System led to a 15 percent drop in shootings in 17 precincts in New York City in 2017 and a 41 percent reduction in shootings from 2013-2018.
Violence prevention nonprofits like Life Camp, Inc., Cure Violence, Operation H.O.O.D., and Man Up! have documented and demonstrable success, achieving decreases in violence that increased policing and mass incarceration not only don’t accomplish but exacerbate. Despite this, the city and state still aren’t equipping these organizations with the resources needed to put an end to violence.
What we are seeing is New York officials talk out of both sides of their mouth when it comes to violence prevention. Elected officials will rightly applaud the success of violence interruption programs while wrongly increasing a police presence at subway stations in Black and Brown neighborhoods to the tune of $250 million over a four year period. For that quarter-billion return on investment, a string of viral videos of police standing around subways looking like an occupation force, guns drawn on unarmed teenagers, and the arrest of a churro vendor.
If we’re serious about really addressing violence, it’s time to do what works -- what we know works. We need a 1:1 ratio of violence interrupters -- community members who mediate and deescalate conflicts -- to youth at risk of gun violence.
Violence interrupters succeed where police and prisons fail because peace workers have a real investment in violence prevention outcomes. These front line workers have experienced the traumatic impact of violence and have done the work necessary to make themselves and their communities whole in its aftermath.
As Erica Ford, CEO and Founder of LIFE Camp, Inc. said, “This is not a job, this is my life.” Peace workers live in the areas they serve. There is no such thing as off the clock. Success or failure is a matter of literal life or death, not just stat lines in a research paper.
Proponents of increased policing, mass incarceration, and pretrial detention present the city and state with a false choice. It is not a question of either preventing crime or expanding community-minded models of violence prevention. The answer is preventing crimes and expanding community-minded models of violence prevention.
Public Advocate Jumaane Williams laid out the case for doing what works at the beginning of this year’s Peace Week.
“What I’m asking everybody, to join us in a revolutionary form of peace,” he said. “In a form of peace that actually works. A peace that does not mean 500 extra police officers in the subways. A peace that does not mean to peel back the gains that we’ve gotten from bail reform. A peace that does not mean we have to lock up as many black and brown people as humanly possible.”
To be clear, a real model of addressing violence as a matter of public health also involves transformational and targeted investments in housing, education, and employment for those who have been intentionally neglected and left in peril as other areas of the state have been given the tools and investments to prosper.
But a good place to start is asking why we have a million-dollar budget for proven violence prevention programs, but a billion-dollar budget for prisons and policing?
As we celebrate a decade of Peace Week, let’s build the infrastructure needed to keep us all safe and invest in the programs and people that work - that save lives.
Tiffany Cabán is a career public defender and former candidate for district attorney in Queens, New York. She is currently a national political organizer with the Working Families Party.
