A community-leveraged, public health approach to CVI is likely the best, most cost-effective strategy for building safe and healthy communities. But, evidence for the approach is not yet durable. It is just flimsy enough to be cast aside by conservative lawmakers and unimaginative funders dazzled by the decades of research on more easily proven, individually-oriented approaches to public safety. Continue reading Social Harms of the CVI Binary
Jeffrey Butts, a professor at John Jay College who has studied CMS’s impact, said that research supports continued investment. But he said it is difficult to predict the exact effect an expansion would have on shooting rates, and that it would depend on the implementation. Continue reading Mayoral Candidates Share Their Plans to Combat Gun Violence
Maryland takes a comprehensive approach to youth justice. In 2023, Governor Moore recruited Vincent Schiraldi to be Secretary of the Maryland Department of Juvenile Services (DJS). Schiraldi is one of the nation’s foremost public safety experts and agency leaders. He was familiar with the numerous policy tensions involved in youth justice. He knew elected officials and the general public look instinctively to law enforcement and punishment in response to youth crime concerns. However, he also knew that punishment-only approaches inevitably fail to protect the public. Effective crime prevention must work on multiple fronts simultaneously and must do so without causing undue harm. Continue reading Investing in Maryland Safety
“When you answer questions about violence and point to individuals at high risk, that makes politicians happy because they can blame those other people,” Butts said. “There are politicians who live off of getting one group of people to vote against the other group, and this individual-level approach sustains that political energy.” Continue reading The Untold Impact of Nonviolence Work: How Success Gets Measured in Chicago’s Hardest-Hit Neighborhoods
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