Public health approach to gun violence
As we should be, our city, state and country are engaged in a full-scale public health response to COVID-19. Our governor and all elected officials are listening to the public health experts and implementing public health policy. We will spend billions of dollars in Maryland to save lives and we are engaged in rigorous social distancing. As this takes place, we must also focus our efforts on containing the gun violence plaguing our state. We must treat it like the public health crisis that it is.
The epidemic of violence started before COVID-19 arrived and, if left untreated, will continue after we reopen our economy. Reviewing evidence from practices in Maryland and around the country, it is clear that treating the spread of violence like the spread of disease is sensible, more effective and less costly than trying to jail our way to safety.
As we all practice social distancing and our students struggle to learn remotely, violence in Baltimore has continued. Just as we know what tools work to stop the spread of COVID-19, so too do we know that implementing strategies to stop the violence and rebuild communities requires not just good police work and enforcement, but also proven practices to deter perpetrators from choosing to engage in violence and giving them clear alternatives.
Fortunately, Maryland has a program — the Maryland Violence Intervention and Prevention Program (MD VIPP) — created by the Maryland General Assembly in 2018 that invests in public health approaches to stopping violence. Unfortunately, it has been funded for only one of the three fiscal years since its passage. To bring peace to our city, we have to fund these efforts.
For instance, in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Baltimore, Safe Streets workers, or “violence interrupter,” as they are called, understand the power of relationships beyond heat-of-the-moment confrontation. These trained mediators come from the community, spend every day building relationships and earning trust from would-be perpetrators and community members, who in turn seek out these workers to ease tense situations that might otherwise lead to violence.
Until March 2, the Brooklyn Homes community had gone 116 days without a shooting — and this is in one of the biggest and one of the most violent housing projects in Baltimore. Last year, a young man’s mother brought him into the Brooklyn Safe Streets center. He was on home monitoring. Building trust helped him turn from the criminal system to a path toward graduation and employment. Now that young man brings his own friends to the Safe Streets office for help. During this current crisis, Safe Street workers continue to be out in communities as front line workers, stemming violence, distributing food, and educating communities about the need to practice social distancing.
In addition to Safe Streets, other proven models include hospital-based violence intervention programs, Ceasefire and the cognitive behavioral therapy work being done by Roca Baltimore to stop would-be shooters from pulling the trigger and training them to make better decisions. This program is therapeutic, done individually or in groups, and focuses on the highest risk individuals. When the most effective form of cognitive behavioral therapy is used — as practiced by Roca — recidivism declines 52%.
These public health approaches work: in Boston, Operation Ceasefire is credited with a 63% reduction in youth homicide; New York has seen a 41% reduction in gun homicide rates since 2010; and in California, cities where evidence-based programs are funded have seen times the reduction of shootings as other areas. In Baltimore, three-fourths of the Safe Streets sites have had periods of more than a year without a shooting. The hospital-based intervention program at Shock Trauma Center found an injury recidivism rate of just 5% for participating patients, compared to 36% for non-participants.
Baltimore Police Commissioner
Michael Harrison also extols the importance of these programs. He understands that policing is just one tactic of a larger strategy to create a safe city. The cost to fund the Maryland Violence Intervention and Prevention Program is negligible compared to the loss incurred without it, in both human and economic costs. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, gun violence in Maryland costs over $3.3 billion each year. Our Baltimore small businesses who are hurting now will also attest to the decrease in tourism and spending over the last several years that resulted from Baltimore’s unacceptably high homicide rate.
Shootings and deaths are robbing our city of its human capital, traumatizing children and preventing the growth of thriving communities and businesses. When we stop a shooting from occurring, rather than just jailing the shooter, we have saved not just the victim’s life, but also helped to prevent lasting harm to families, communities and our economy. As Marylanders continue to die from gun violence, we must refocus on programs and policies that work.
This year, the General Assembly passed legislation to provide some mandated funding for these programs — it is our hope that the governor will sign that legislation into law. Despite historically tight budgets, we cannot afford to leave COVID-19 untreated and we cannot afford to leave gun violence untreated either. Pairing enforcement with a public health approach focused on prevention and intervention offers immediate, effective, common-sense solutions that we can all support. Our children, communities and businesses are watching and waiting for us to invest in solutions to create safe and healthy communities in every corner of the city and state — we have no time to lose.
Del. Brooke Lierman (brooke@brookelierman.com) represents District 46 in Baltimore City in the state legislature. Corey Winfield (cwinfield@cc-md.org) is Safe Streets manager in the Brooklyn and Curtis Bay neighborhoods of Baltimore.