by Ari Ephraim Feldman
March 30, 2022
NY1

… This week, frustrated over continued violence, [Mayor] Adams also pressed the NYPD to revive “broken windows”-style policing, making more arrests over quality-of-life infractions. The moment has many questioning whether the city will strike a balance between policing and direct investment in health care, housing and social services in communities facing near-constant violence.

“If all we ever do is call the police in, and we never invest in those other things, we’re just living in a police state,” said Jeffrey Butts, a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. “We sort of did that in the ’80s and ‘90s, and didn’t get much back from it.”

… Researchers say that they are still working on understanding which Cure Violence programs actually work and why. With many such programs in the city, it is difficult to compare an area with a team to one without, and see whether the program has a measurable difference in violence.

As the city added more Cure Violence programs in pre-pandemic years, gun violence and deaths declined, said Sheyla Delgado, the deputy director of analytics at John Jay’s Research and Evaluation Center. “Can we say that is solely due to the appearance of these programs? Absolutely not,” Delgado said. “But they’re certainly a factor to consider.”

[ read the article at NY1 ]