HFG At The Crossroads Forum

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The Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation held At the Crossroads, a forum which examined the rise in gun violence in New York and other cities, on Tuesday, March 29, 2022.

ATC Report | ATC Series

Directed by HFG’s Distinguished Fellow of Practice Greg Berman, the forum is an extension of the At the Crossroads (ATC) editorial series which examined the disturbing phenomenon of violence in New York and other U.S. cities in recent months. The series has fostered public conversation in the last year through in-depth interviews with twelve leading researchers, policymakers, practitioners, and advocates who have studied and considered the problem from numerous angles. 

The March 29 forum was an in-person and virtual gathering bringing together ATC interviewees and others to discuss the causes of gun violence, what has worked to curb it, and where additional research is needed to understand the problem.

Panel One: “What’s Happening?”

Over the past two years, gun violence has increased precipitously in many American cities. This panel posed a series of questions about this phenomenon: What’s gone wrong?  What are the underlying forces, both long-term and short-term, that have led to the historic increases in violence?  And how big a problem do we have exactly?  Is the health and vitality of New York and other American cities in peril or is this just a temporary blip?

• Peter Moskos, Professor of Law, John Jay University of Criminal Justice
• Marlon Peterson, Writer, Activist, Host, Decarcerated Podcast
• Elizabeth Glazer, Founder, Vital City
• Aaron Chalfin, Assistant Professor of Criminology, University of Pennsylvania
• Greg Berman (Moderator), Distinguished Fellow of Practice, Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation; Co-Editor, Vital City

Panel Two: “What Works and What We Don’t Know”

In figuring out how to address violence, we are not starting from scratch — a range of interventions, some grounded in law enforcement and others rooted in community-based crime prevention — have shown encouraging results over the years. At the same time criminal justice research has come a long way from the days when people thought that “nothing works” to reduce crime or change behavior. Still, significant gaps in our knowledge remain. What do we know about what works? Where should researchers be focusing their energies in the days to come if the goal is to advance knowledge about reducing violence? 

In conjunction with the forum, the Foundation published the interview series as a print anthology and report.