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NCJ Number:
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NCJ 188741
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Title:
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Reducing Gun Violence: The Boston Gun Project's Operation Ceasefire
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Series:
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NIJ Research Report
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Author(s):
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David M. Kennedy ; Anthony A. Braga ; Anne M. Piehl ; Elin J. Waring
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Date Published:
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09/2001 |
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Page Count:
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77 |
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Sponsoring Agency:
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Grant Number:
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94-IJ-CX-0056 |
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Sale Source:
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National Institute of Justice/NCJRS
Box 6000
Rockville, MD 20849
United States
NCJRS Photocopy Services
Box 6000
Rockville, MD 20849-6000
United States |
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Document:
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Text PDF |
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Agency Summary:
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Agency Summary |
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Type:
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Program/project description/evaluations |
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Language:
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English |
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Country:
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United States |
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Annotation:
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This report describes the issues and processes involved in
implementing the Boston Gun Project's Operation Ceasefire, which
focused on countering homicide victimization among youths in
Boston; and the report discusses the design and findings of the
evaluation that assessed the impact of this intervention. |
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Abstract:
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The Boston Gun Project Working Group began meeting in January
1995, and by the fall of that year, the project's basic problem
assessment had been completed and the elements of what is now
known as the Operation Ceasefire intervention mapped out;
implementation began in early 1996. The two main elements of
Ceasefire were a direct law enforcement attack on illicit
firearms traffickers who supplied youths with guns, as well as an
attempt to generate a strong deterrent to gang violence. The
effort to counter illicit firearms trafficking expanded the focus
of local, State, and Federal authorities to include intrastate
firearms trafficking in Massachusetts in addition to interstate trafficking. Attention was given to traffickers of the makes and calibers of guns most often used by gang members. Further, the effort focused on traffickers of guns that had short
time-to-crime intervals and were thus most likely to have been
trafficked. The project attempted to restore obliterated serial
numbers of confiscated guns to aid investigations of trafficking.
Enforcement priorities were enhanced through an analysis of data
generated by the Boston Police Department and the Federal Bureau
of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms' comprehensive tracing of crime
guns and by developing leads from the systematic debriefing of
gang-affiliated arrestees or those involved in violent crime. The
effort to deter violent gang behavior involved the targeting of
gangs engaged in violent behavior; reaching out directly to
members of the targeted gangs; delivering an explicit message
that violence would not be tolerated; and by using every legal
means to apply sanctions for violent behavior. The evaluation
analysis of impacts within Boston associated with the Ceasefire
intervention followed a basic one-group time-series design. In
addition, a nonrandomized quasi-experiment was used to compare
youth homicide trends in Boston with those in other large cities
in the United States. The time series showed a 63-percent
reduction in the mean monthly number of youth homicide victims
from a pretest mean of 3.5 youth homicides per month to a
posttest mean of 1.3 youth homicides per month. Analyses suggest
that the Ceasefire intervention was associated with statistically
significant reductions in all time series. 28 notes and 7
exhibits |
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Main Term(s):
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Juvenile gangs |
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Index Term(s):
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Illicit firearms ; Firearms ; Firearm-crime relationships ; Firearm tracing ; Violence prevention ; Juvenile gun ownership ; Gang violence ; NIJ grant-related documents ; Massachusetts |
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To cite this abstract, use the following link:
https://www.ncjrs.gov/App/Publications/abstract.aspx?ID=188741
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* A link to the full-text document is provided whenever possible. For documents
not available online, a link to the publisher's web site is provided.
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