“You Can Reduce Violence But Harm People”: A Conversation with Caterina Roman

By Greg Berman

“Libraries, parks, rec centers, pools, free internet — those are all crime prevention activities and resources,” Caterina Roman, a professor of criminal justice at Temple University, told the New York Times last year.

Over the course of her career in academia and at the nonprofit Urban Institute, Dr. Roman has taken a broad view of violence and how to prevent it. Among other topics, she has investigated reentry programs, community justice partnerships, and the social networks of at-risk youth.

I talked to Dr. Roman by phone in February, not long after she had published an op-ed in the Philadelphia Inquirer calling for deeper investments in evidence-based gun violence prevention programs. Much of our conversation was devoted to focused deterrence, an approach to reducing gun violence that emerged in Boston in the 1990s and has been broadly disseminated by the National Network for Safe Communities, under the leadership of John Jay College professor David Kennedy.  

Focused deterrence begins with a recognition that most of the violence in a given community is perpetrated by a small group of individuals. It seeks to target these individuals with offers of assistance, providing them with the job training, drug treatment, and other services they might need to avoid future offending. If they do not cease their violent  behavior, the focused deterrence model encourages the justice system to use all of the levers at its disposal–including arrest, prosecution, and incarceration–to halt the violence. The use of focused deterrence strategies has been associated with local reductions in homicides, according to a number of evaluations.

In addition to focused deterrence, my conversation with Dr. Roman touched on gaps in our collective knowledge base, particularly the need for more information about effective crime prevention. The following transcript has been edited for length and clarity.

Greg Berman: How concerned are you about the spike in homicides we have seen over the past year? Do you think that the increase is something that we need to be worried about?

Caterina Roman: I think we really need to be concerned about it. I think we’ve reached some kind of a tipping point. When you look at the reasons that people generally offer for any major spike in violence, all of them come into play with COVID. You have a little bit of everything. You have so many people buying guns. You have more hurt people who will hurt people. You have disinvestment that has been exacerbated. You have governments that aren’t funding parks, rec centers, summer jobs. You don’t have in-person religious services.

Police departments have the resources to do data-driven work that can be useful in communities. Where are the hot spots? How long have they been hot? What makes them different from other areas? What have we learned from both our successes, our failures in addressing hot spots from five years ago?

You don’t have outreach workers on the streets or the typical social services. And then you have compounded stress. All of these things are coming to a head together. There’s no place to go. Young people don’t have the access to pro-social jobs that will keep them busy and put them in contact with potential mentors.

Recent writing about the increase in violence seems to fall into two categories: an effort to score political points or a search for simple, silver-bullet answers to what’s going on.

I talk to my students a lot about the media. I’ve studied fear of crime, and I often ask, “Where does that fear come from?” Some of it is based in reality, but most of it is not. Having had many conversations with journalists over the years, I know that journalists often like to focus on just one thing to hang their stories on. Some of this comes from journalism itself, which requires stories to have a hook. It is also true that policymakers tend to want quicker fixes and easier answers. If you hang your hat on one cause, you have a straight line to a solution. In reality, it’s just not that simple.

You talk about the structural forces that lead to violence, including inequality and racism. The investments that we need to make to address these kinds of problems are probably generational. But we also have a need to move right now in response to an immediate crisis. How would you advise a mayor or some other political actor who wanted to make a difference? How should we balance long-term investments with short-term strategies to quell violence?

I think policymakers and politicians should be direct and transparent with regard to longer-term investments. Given that the world knows that poverty has some relationship to crime and that disadvantage has some relationship to crime, it would be great if policymakers and politicians would just be open and say, “We are optimistic that we can make longer term change, and we’re going to do it by investing in neighborhood infrastructure. We’re going to do this, we’re going to tell you where the money’s going, and we’re going to measure the incremental change over time.” 

We're only looking at the outcomes related to police data and changes in violence at the aggregate level. We're not asking who benefits from the intervention and who is burdened. We're only focused on the data we have at hand.

I recognize that people want a quick fix. I’m not going to tell you that I believe that X policing solution or Y law enforcement solution is an answer. But I do think that police departments have the resources to do data-driven work that can be useful in communities. Where are the hot spots? How long have they been hot? What makes them different from other areas? What have we learned from both our successes and our failures in addressing hot spots from five years ago? This is where I would advocate for practitioner-academic partnerships because we know even the best police departments with the most data aren’t necessarily applying it in a larger, theory-based way. By creating these partnerships, we can ensure that policing will be used for smart strategies and reduce the likelihood that we’re sending police out on calls that have nothing to do with violence.

One of the problems in New York at the moment is a decline in clearance rates for homicides. Do you have some thoughts about what police should be doing to improve this?

There’s very little research out there on how to improve clearance rates. It is a huge gap in our knowledge. There’s a whole gamut of programs that are trying to achieve community-level change, whether it’s a focused deterrence/pulling levers model or Cure Violence or something else. I would advocate for researchers who have studied these models to go back and look at whether clearance rates were differentially affected in the treatment versus control neighborhoods. That’s relatively easy to do. Maybe where there’s less violence on the street and less fear of crime, clearance rates go up.

You mentioned focused deterrence policing strategy. I’m curious to hear how you are thinking about focused deterrence these days and what we can say about its effectiveness as an intervention.

I’ve evaluated focused deterrence in Washington, D.C., in its first sort of iteration right after Operation Ceasefire in Boston. And I think the big issue for me about its effectiveness is that we’re only looking at the outcomes related to police data and changes in violence at the aggregate level.  We’re not asking who benefits from the intervention and who is burdened. We’re only focused on the data we have at hand. This tends to be what evaluators do. It’s easy to get arrest data, so that’s what we measure. And so we only know from the majority of evaluations of focused deterrence that it reduced violence at the aggregate level.

For every intervention we need to be asking who benefits and who is burdened ... What are the unintended consequences of using credible messengers to go into the community and be pro-social mentors and caseworkers?

We just know that we got the end result of reduction in violence. But what got us there? [John Jay professor] David Kennedy’s theory of change is that the threat of this very focused deterrence led to general deterrence. But we have no research that shows us that that is true. Yet everybody who advocates for focused deterrence is saying that it is an evidence-based program, that it’s working and this is what we should do. I don’t know if that’s true.

So, if you were going to sponsor research into focused deterrence going forward, what would that look like?

Any intervention that expects a community-level reduction in violence has to have enough research dollars behind it to fund a comprehensive survey to track individual-level behavior change. You want to be interviewing those who are targeted in the initiative, and following up with them, and then also interviewing potential high-risk individuals in the community. This won’t be cheap. You’re at a million dollars right there. But that’s where I believe we have to go. If we want answers, we need to be able to conduct the kind of studies that are going to let us measure what is really happening at the community level.

You talk about people advocating for more focused deterrence. Recently, I’ve seen a number of calls for deeper investment in Cure Violence. Do you think that the evidence merits this push?

I think you’re asking the question in the wrong way. I think for every intervention we need to be asking who benefits and who is burdened. If you frame the question that way, I would have to think long and hard about who is burdened by Cure Violence. What are the unintended consequences of using credible messengers to go into the community and be pro-social mentors and caseworkers?  I don’t think there is an obvious burden to funding Cure Violence as it’s intended to be implemented, whereas there are so many things that could go wrong with focused deterrence, given its complex implementation structure. You can reduce violence but harm people.

You are advancing a kind of “do no harm” argument on behalf of Cure Violence. But do we know that it actually does what it says it does, in terms of reducing shootings?

I’m not sure. It’s supposed to be increasing legitimacy by telling the community to be collectively accountable and bringing up the moral voice of the community. But I also think you have to ask whether focused deterrence works in the long run. Is focused deterrence successful at reducing violence if once everyone knows focused deterrence is going away, they start shooting again? Please answer that for me.

Instead of Cure Violence, you could put money into victim services to make sure that every single person that's a victim of violent crime has everything they could possibly need. Victim services are basically nonexistent in most urban communities.

I don’t want us to get locked into a focused deterrence versus Cure Violence conversation, because I don’t think that dynamic is helpful.

I wasn’t arguing for one versus the other. I am using those two models as an example of investment versus policing, surveillance, and deterrence. It does not have to be focused deterrence. It does not have to be Cure Violence. I think instead of Cure Violence, you could put money into victim services to make sure that every single person that’s a victim of violent crime has everything they could possibly need. Victim services are basically nonexistent in most urban communities.

Are there other programs out there that you feel are interesting, whether or not they’ve been evaluated with any degree of rigor?

Do you know about the Chelsea Hub? This is a model where community agencies work collaboratively with the police, probation, school, and victim services. Everyone is meeting weekly. Let’s say I am a victim service agency and in walks someone who witnessed a shooting and that individual seems like they are in a crisis moment. That victim service agency would ask that person, “Would you be willing for me to present your case to a group of service providers to talk about how we could strategize about what you might need holistically?” So the Hub is a method to provide holistic services to people who are in some type of crisis. It could be a domestic violence event. It could be after a hit and run incident. It doesn’t have to be violent crime, necessarily. Philadelphia is testing the model now through Temple med school. It’s voluntary for the individual. It is a positive, full-investment, collaborative model that cuts across systems so you can get to the complexity of the issues and offer an array of useful services and gain individuals’ trust. There hasn’t been a long-term evaluation of it, but it’s a very promising model. The GRYD model in Los Angeles is also worth checking out. I think they’ve had some impact evaluation work done that is pretty strong.

Let’s talk about some of the articles you have written. A few years ago, you wrote about gang research and how to get people to leave gangs. What did you learn?

The point of that article was to look across three very large studies to identify the kinds of pushes and pulls that get somebody out of the gang. A “pull” is pro-social. It is anything from “my significant other doesn’t want me involved in that anymore,” to “my grandmother says she’s not going to let me come home if I’m still hanging out with them.” A pull is some pro-social opportunity, like a job, that is getting me out of the gang. A push tends to be more negative. A push can be: they were victimized, or they were incarcerated, or they have gotten tired of being roughed up by the police. But it could also be they just realized that the gang wasn’t what they wanted. 

You have also looked at fear of crime in Washington D.C. Tell me about that research.

That piece came from my interest in social capital and collective efficacy.

How would you define collective efficacy?

Collective efficacy is the activation of social ties and informal social control among neighbors. So we ask people, “How likely are your neighbors to help out another neighbor in need?” Or, “If a group of teens is hanging out on the street corner, being rowdy, how likely are your neighbors to do something about it?” We aggregate information from questions like these to measure collective efficacy.  

We don't have good evidence on prevention, because we don't research prevention.

In the survey that I did in the northeast section of Washington, D.C, we looked at how collective efficacy was related to fear of crime as measured by people reporting that they were not going to go walk outside because they were worried about crime. At first, what we found jibed with the literature—older people and women tend to be more fearful. As we added different variables to the model, we looked at the interaction of collective efficacy on Black residents versus White residents. What we found was that there was an increase of fear when collective efficacy was higher among Black respondents. We did not find any significant effect among non-Black respondents. We posited that, as collective efficacy increased, Black residents in those neighborhoods were talking more and transmitting more information about violent crime and what was actually happening in the neighborhood. And that relaying of information in the neighborhood increased fear. So higher collective efficacy meant more fear for Black respondents.

What do you think is the biggest misconception that policymakers have about crime prevention?

The truth is that we know very little about what works because we don’t test prevention. We don’t test prevention mechanisms like Pre-K. In Philadelphia, where I live, we have 4,000 more kids in Pre-K each year over the last couple of years. We don’t know if that’s going to reduce violence, because we’re not testing that. So when a policymaker goes to the evidence base, they’re looking at the interventions that were more likely to be evaluated. As we have discussed, policing programs are relatively straightforward to evaluate: You get crime data, that’s really simple. What we’re not doing is funding the kinds of survey research that would give us evidence that legitimacy is increased, that moral cynicism is reduced, that more people are integrated with their neighborhoods. We have no idea how to increase collective efficacy. That’s why we can’t solve the violence problem. So, going back to your question, I think what’s not understood is that we don’t have good evidence on prevention, because we don’t research prevention.

If you were going to make a reading recommendation to an audience that is interested in community-based violence, is there a single book or single study that you would point to?

If someone is interested in this topic, they should spend a week with an outreach worker. They should spend a week in a victim services agency. They should be inside the neighborhood. You’re not going to learn anything from a book. If you want to change a neighborhood, be inside it, and see if you can feel it.

But to answer your question about a book, I would tell you to check out the Aspen Institute’s roundtable on community change, which was turned into a book edited by Karen Fulbright-Anderson and Patricia Auspos. Dennis Rosenbaum has a great chapter in there on promoting safe and healthy neighborhoods. I’d also encourage people to read Wes Skogan, a criminologist who studied policing and community change.

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Greg Berman is the Distinguished Fellow of Practice at The Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation. He previously served as the executive director of the Center for Court Innovation for 18 years. His most recent book is Start Here: A Road Map to Reducing Mass Incarceration (The New Press).

Views expressed are the participants’ own and not necessarily those of The Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation.

“Social Disruptions Reveal Who We Are”: A Conversation with Jeffrey Butts

By Greg Berman

New York City is at a crossroads moment.

In the 1970s and 1980s, New York City was an international symbol of chaos and disorder, with many observers concluding that the city had become “ungovernable.” That all changed in the early 1990s. Violent crime in New York City plummeted, with the number of murders reduced by close to 90 percent from its high of more than 2,200 in 1990. By the second decade of this millenium, it had never been safer to live, work, or visit New York City.

Of course, no one is throwing ticker-tape parades for the criminal justice system at the moment. Recent years have been dominated by Black Lives Matter protests, which have shined a spotlight on the enduring legacies of racism in the American justice system. These protests have added fuel to a number of local political movements—to close Rikers Island, to halt the building of new jails, and to defund the police.

All of these movements serve as backdrop for a disconcerting new development: a significant increase in the number of shootings in New York City. The New York City Police Department has reported that murders in the city rose to 462 in 2020—a 45 percent increase from 2019. The city recorded 1,531 shootings in 2020—a 97 percent increase from 2019.

Is this the beginning of a trend that will lead us back to the “bad old days”? Or is it just a COVID-related statistical blip?

Launched by The Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation, At the Crossroads takes a deep dive into the problem of community violence in New York City through a series of in-depth interviews with leading researchers, policymakers, practitioners, and advocates.

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At the Crossroads begins with a conversation with Jeffrey A. Butts, director of the Research and Evaluation Center at John Jay College of Criminal Justice of the City University of New York. Dr. Butts’s career has been focused on improving policies and programs for young people involved in the justice system. Prior to coming to John Jay, he worked as a research fellow at Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago, as director of the Program on Youth Justice at the Urban Institute, and as senior research associate at the National Center for Juvenile Justice. He began his career as a drug and alcohol counselor.

In recent years, Dr. Butts has worked on a number of studies exploring various aspects of crime and safety in New York City, including an evaluation of the Mayor’s Action Plan for Neighborhood Safety and the effects of the Cure Violence program in the South Bronx and East New York.

We spoke on the phone in mid-January. The following transcript has been edited for clarity and concision.

Greg Berman: I’d like to start with a fairly basic question. NYPD reports suggest that in 2020, shootings were up 97 percent from the previous year. We also know that lots of crimes, even crimes of violence, don’t end up getting reported. So things may be even worse than the numbers suggest. My question is: How bad a problem do you think we have in New York at the moment?

Jeffrey A. Butts: First of all, it’s not just New York. A lot of major cities around the country are seeing similar patterns. There’s a lot of misinformation and misunderstanding around, in part because the popular media tends to focus on percent change from year to year. A friend of mine once wrote a report called The Tyranny of Small Numbers. If your shootings go from two to four, that’s a 100 percent increase. So you have to keep in mind how low the numbers were to begin with. New York is still in a very good condition relative to 1994. But if you only look at a graph that starts in 2014, the increase in shootings that we’ve seen seems large. That’s not to dismiss the increase, because there is a definite increase. But it is also worth pointing out that you don’t see similar increases in other violent offenses, like robbery and sexual assaults.

What’s your sense of what’s going on? Why have shootings gone up?

It’s important to look at the distinction between shooting incidents, where a gun has been fired at someone, versus shooting victimizations, where someone has actually been hit by a bullet. In New York, attempted shootings have gone up more than victimizations. The fact that there are more unsuccessful shootings suggests that the people involved in these shootings are not your typical shooters.

My theory, and I’m not the only one who thinks this, is that what we’re seeing is a reflection of predominantly young men walking around with hand guns and deciding to use them, where a year ago, they may have thought twice, or they may not have been walking around with a hand gun because they were actually in school or had a job. Petty interpersonal grievances and insults are turning into bullets being fired because of the disruption to the social structure caused by the pandemic. If that’s correct, it explains why you are seeing similar increases in other areas around the country. It’s not a function of the stupid theories that people have advanced about bail reform. People tend to think that the criminal justice system is supposed to keep crime under control, so when crime goes up, they look at what’s going wrong with the criminal justice system. That is wrong-headed. That’s not how you explain social phenomena.

Having said that, you also said that a year ago, the would-be shooters might have thought twice about using a gun. Does this imply that they are making the calculus that there’s not going to be any consequence for their behavior?

No, I don’t think that’s how young people think. You don’t pull the gun out of your pocket and think, “What is the sentence range for this offense? What’s the probability of conviction if I am charged?” That’s not how things happen. You can’t explain short-term fluctuations in crime rates and behavior by looking to the criminal justice response or lack thereof. When your normal person says, “we need to fix the criminal justice system,” they’re thinking about cops on the beat, arrests, prosecutions, and incarceration. That has never been the way to explain changes in the crime rate.

What about the notion, popularized by Jane Jacobs, that having “eyes on the street” helps deter crime? Is it possible that we don’t have eyes on the street in New York in the way that we did pre-COVID?

I would agree that the day-to-day guardianship over shared space, which means people walking around the neighborhood, whether they have on police uniforms or bright orange outreach jackets or something else, helps keep things under control. I don’t know about you, but I haven’t stepped outside for three or four days. I think that’s true of a lot of people. You see scenes, especially during the freak-out months of April, May, and June, where there just wasn’t that kind of presence on the streets. I think it is true that people feel safer walking around if there are a lot of people around them.

Have you ever heard people talk about taking hallucinogens? People say hallucinogens don’t change who you are, they reveal who you are. I think social disruptions, like a pandemic, don’t make who we are, they reveal who we are. What it’s revealed for me is that we have a lot of young people who have no reason to believe in the social structure and civic behavior. They don’t benefit from it. They know they’re never going to be a part of it. This whole idea of, “Go to school, get a job, buy a house, have kids”—they don’t see that in their future. Protecting themselves and their friends in the short term with violence seems acceptable to them. I think the pandemic just revealed the extent to which that’s always been there. It’s been kept slightly under control by people being busier.

You say violence has been kept “slightly under control,” but we’ve just experienced essentially three decades of dramatic and sustained reductions in crime in New York City. Isn’t that more than just keeping things “slightly under control”?

It depends on how you talk about it. One of the reasons I criticize law enforcement is because they tend to say, “We reduced this. We slashed this. We cut this.” Whenever I have a chance, I always say to them, “You’re just setting yourself up to being exposed in the future as having exaggerated your own effectiveness.” Why not say, “We have benefited from a great reduction in crime”?

Definitely, things came down a lot from the 1990s, but you’re more impressed with the decline if you’re looking at citywide numbers. In some neighborhoods within our city, it would be hard to convince someone that things are incredibly better than they were 30 years ago, because they didn’t experience that much change.

The NYPD is also reporting that 70 percent of shootings were unsolved in 2020. Does that kind of clearance rate concern you?

The efficiency rate of investigations and arrests is an important thing. It is important to remember that clearance rates have a numerator and a denominator. You have to be careful when you accept the clearance rate because the denominator of a clearance rate can be reduced through administrative decision-making. When I was living in Chicago, I remember there was a scandal about the police manipulating the clearance rate by moving shootings across from one calendar year to another in order to even out the calculation. You have to have a very broad way of thinking about the overall efficiency and effectiveness of law enforcement and not just accept the numbers as they present them.

If you were going to respond to the increase in shootings with some sort of law enforcement intervention, what would you do differently? Or maybe you don’t believe there should be a law enforcement response?

I think anyone who thinks that the way to improve public safety is to invest in law enforcement is just pushing us further down the path toward a police state, where the only public safety we have is purchased and maintained through force and coercion.

I think anyone who thinks that the way to improve public safety is to invest in law enforcement is just pushing us further down the path toward a police state, where the only public safety we have is purchased and maintained through force and coercion.

That’s really disturbing to me. The police can’t prove that they have the effect on public safety that they claim. But they can definitely win the game of public safety theater with badges and cars and lights and perp walks and people in cuffs. The public sees that and thinks, “I’ll be safe because look at what they did.” I understand the impulse, but if that’s all we have, we’re never going to really make durable improvements in community well-being.

What about non-enforcement responses? Where should we be investing our energies?

You and I both know a little bit about the Cure Violence model. Programs like Save Our Streets—that’s where I would put all my investments.

I wanted to ask you about the state of Cure Violence research. It is a model that resonates very powerfully in the current political moment. How much do we actually know about whether it works or not?

These programs have shown that they can reach out and connect with a critical number of teenagers that you really need to influence if you are going to reduce neighborhood violence. But we need to have research that shows it’s effective. We’re nowhere near making Cure Violence merit the label “evidence-based.”

The problem with Cure Violence right now is that it has become a movement, as opposed to a strategy or an intervention plan. People talk about Cure Violence and the whole public health approach like people talk about religion. It’s hard to have a rational conversation about the need to build the evidence for the model. As soon as you say something like that, the believers in the model will reject you.

We’re not making enough progress, in my view, in terms of nailing down exactly how to make these programs effective. In particular, I think there has to be some connection between the formal system of law enforcement and the Cure Violence programs. I do appreciate the extent to which people try to keep that connection informal or out of the public eye. If the police take it over, then you’re participating in the creation of a police state. But if you don’t have a connection to the formal system and you don’t have professional management, the danger is that Cure Violence just becomes a bunch of well-meaning people who are not going to have an effect.

One of the pieces of Cure Violence research that you did that struck a chord with me was looking at the attitudes of young men who had been touched by the program. What did you learn from that study?

As you move through adolescence and into your twenties, at some point, you have to start assuming that not everyone is out to get you. You do have some responsibility to make your own life. A sense of community and mutual responsibility has to emerge from somewhere. If someone is growing up in an environment of violence and instability and you never know whose couch you’re sleeping on from one week to the next, it’s a struggle to build that. But it is critical.

What we saw from the study you referenced was a small increase in the willingness of someone to believe that the police have a role to play in community well-being, when we compared young men who lived in a neighborhood with a Cure Violence program to those without a Cure Violence program. I did find that very encouraging.

I’ve seen you talk in other settings about some of the biases and perverse incentives that shape the field of criminal justice research. Obviously, the need to publish is one. The bias toward evaluating projects that can show change over short time frames rather than long timeframes is another. You’ve also talked about how it is easier to measure interventions that are looking at individual change rather than broader community-wide change. Do you have hope that these dynamics will change in the years to come, or do you think they will be with us for the rest of our lives?

I begin from a base of pessimism about seeing things improve. The one thing that gives me hope is the increasing detail and ubiquity of administrative data. If we can start using it creatively, and not allow it to use us, we could look at non-individual-level interventions in a more sophisticated way.

The one thing that gives me hope is the increasing detail and ubiquity of administrative data. If we can start using it creatively, and not allow it to use us, we could start to be able to look at non-individual-level interventions in a more sophisticated way.

For example, if we were more creative with getting data from social media, instead of asking people in a given neighborhood, “Do you feel better?” you could track their cell phones and see how many people are using the local park and how many actually use their local train station. You can start collecting more rigorous data. We need to do more experiments along that line where we change something simple like improving the stairwell down into the train station to make it feel more engaging and more hospitable. Let’s do that in five stations and then compare that to another set of five that are just like them. We could see if there’s an effect over time with data that’s available passively through social media. I think that would be a way to start generating reliable, experimental data that a policymaker might listen to that’s not rooted in law enforcement and not rooted in helping individuals one by one.

I recently read a report that you did for Arnold Ventures called Reducing Violence Without Police. As it happens, I was reading the report at the same time that I was reading Robert Putnam’s new book, Upswing. Among other things, Putnam writes about massive declines, starting roughly in 1970, in churchgoing and in conventional, two-parent family structures in the United States. It struck me that your review doesn’t talk at all about the potential impacts of family or church on crime. It made me wonder if another bias in the field is a desire to avoid anything that could be interpreted as supportive of conservative ways of looking at the world.

That report was a look across the empirical literature to see if there were any findings that are respectable and strong enough to rely upon that are not part of a policing world. Both of the things you mentioned, religious affiliation and two-parent families, are proxies for stable, supportive, civic society. There’s nothing about belief in some super-being that has anything to do with public safety. But there’s a slightly increased probability that if you do belong to a congregation, that you’re not completely anti-social. Although, as we’ve seen, there’s a great overlap right now between so-called Christian Evangelists and the people who are trying to undermine our government. So, religious affiliation does not always correlate to prosocial behavior.

It has nothing to do with stability or supportive family relationships. By that logic, four parents would be better than two.

The two-parent family thing is a vestige of our economic structure. Single parent family means higher probability of insufficient income. It has nothing to do with stability or supportive family relationships. By that logic, four parents would be better than two.

Certainly it’s fair to say that people bring ideological and political biases to their work. The group that we formed to do the Arnold report, we all got together and started talking about what we should explore and what was useful or not. I think we probably did stay away from things that were conventional thinking that we didn’t think would be causal.

I was also struck looking at the Arnold report that when you focused on reducing substance abuse, you didn’t mention drug court. I think of drug court as a well-researched intervention that has shown an impact on reducing substance abuse. Am I reading the literature wrong?

No. I do know people that have done respectable work on criminal court drug courts and say they can be helpful. I became disenchanted with them because I think drug courts just help perpetuate the way Americans think about drug use. I would make all drugs legal so you can eliminate the black-market profit incentives. We should stop arresting people and start treating addiction as a health problem. Drug courts never talk about that.

Okay, last question. [Attorney General-nominee] Merrick Garland calls you up and says, “Jeff, I want you to be the head of the National Institute of Justice, and money is no object.” Where would you be investing research dollars right now, if the goal is to improve the state of knowledge about community violence?

First of all, if we continue to talk about violence and avoid discussing guns, that would be a tragedy. We don’t have to confiscate everyone’s guns, but we do need creative solutions. If we don’t deal with guns, we’re never going to solve these problems. That’s the biggest hurdle. I would invest everything in that right now.

If we don't deal with guns, we're never going to solve these problems.

After that, I would explore how to remedy crisis-oriented income issues. The fact that you could live in this country and be doing everything the way you’re supposed to do it and get laid off and two months later not have a place to sleep is just disgusting. Other countries have figured this out. Those are two easy things: fixing income inequities and firearms.

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Greg Berman is the Distinguished Fellow of Practice at The Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation. He previously served as the executive director of the Center for Court Innovation for 18 years. His most recent book is Start Here: A Road Map to Reducing Mass Incarceration (The New Press).

Views expressed are the participants’ own and not necessarily those of The Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation.

“People Who Do Harmful Things Are Reacting to Harmful Things”: A Conversation with Marlon Peterson

By Greg Berman

Marlon Peterson grew up in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. He experienced a difficult childhood, which culminated, at the age of nineteen, in his involvement in a robbery that led to the death of two people. Peterson ended up serving ten years in prison for his participation in this crime. While in prison, he earned a degree and became a writer and an activist on behalf of those who are incarcerated.  

I first met Peterson not long after his release from prison in 2009, during the years he spent working at the Crown Heights Community Mediation Center (now Neighbors in Action). At the mediation center, Peterson helped to implement Save Our Streets Brooklyn, New York’s first Cure Violence program, which trains credible messengers from the community to help interrupt violence on the streets of Brooklyn. 

In the years since then, Peterson has gone on to host his own podcast (Decarcerated), to give a TED talk (Am I Not Human?), and to write a memoir (Bird Uncaged: An Abolitionist’s Freedom Song), which will be released this month by Bold Type Books.A vocal critic of the American criminal justice system, Peterson has written about violence prevention for numerous publications, including Ebony, The Nation, USA Today, and The Root.  

I talked with Peterson by phone in late January about his unique history, his take on what’s going on in New York at the moment, and his predictions for the future. The following transcript has been edited for length and clarity.

Greg Berman: In honor of your forthcoming book, I thought I might read to you several excerpts of things that you have written over the years and ask you to elaborate on them. For example, a few months ago, you wrote, “Some are opposed to bail reforms, citing a jump in crime numbers from the first couple months after New York ended the practice as evidence of the need to repeal bail legislation.” I am assuming that you don’t think bail reform has led to the uptick in shootings. Do you have an alternative theory about what’s going on?

Marlon Peterson: It’s the COVID crisis and the racial upheaval. If you look at what happened last year, and is still happening, you had more young people out of school. And you had people cooped up in households with no outlet. All of this pushes some of these younger folks to go outside. It also pushes some people to articulate their frustrations online, whether it be on Snapchat, Twitter, Facebook, whatever. People have this misplaced anger and rage, and they go online and say stuff. And we know now that online beefs are leading to more street beefs than ever before. 

And then there’s just less money. People are out of work and struggling. So you had young people who had been supplementing their family incomes with whatever side jobs they may have had—Burger King, Wendy’s, whatever. And they either got less hours or no hours. And then summer youth employment opportunities flew away. 

So all those things add up. And then there is the trauma of the COVID crisis. Young folks have aunts and mothers and grandparents who are suffering from COVID or dying from COVID. And that’s a trauma that’s not being dealt with. So trauma and anger and frustration lead to conflicts with other people on the streets in their community.

And then there’s the police part. The police violence hit hard because it was unavoidable. There were no sports. There were no concerts. There were no clubs, no parties. So, even though we’re all aware [police shootings] have been happening for years, thanks to COVID, you are seeing it every day on the news and in your feed. Celebrities are talking about it. Rappers are talking about it. Athletes are talking about it. And it’s like a cauldron that’s being mixed all at once.

I made an Instagram post about this before the summer started. I just sort of outlined all these things I’m talking to you about right now, Greg, and I said that we should expect more violence in our communities in the next months. So nothing we have seen is surprising to me.

No one says, "Well, you know, they ruled stop-and-frisk unconstitutional, so now we can hang out."

What about the argument that people are no longer scared to leave the house with a gun because they feel like they won’t get caught. Do you think that’s behind some of the violence we have seen?

I don’t see that. I’m somebody who carried guns at one point in time. I grew up in the height of the stop-and-frisk era. I knew that I could be stopped and frisked at any point—and I was, often. But I wasn’t afraid that they would catch me with a gun. Young people don’t think about things in that way. When you’re at that age, when you’re out here hustling, you know you could go to jail for it. But that doesn’t factor into your thinking. You feel untouchable at that age. We in the field of criminal justice are aware of all these changes to policy and practice, but kids on the street aren’t aware of these changes. They’re not paying attention.No one says, “Well, you know, they ruled stop-and-frisk unconstitutional, so now we can hang out.“ They’re not doing that. So I don’t agree with the idea that there’s some sort of consciousness that police aren’t policing the way they used to, so we can walk outside with our weapons now.

You once wrote, “I grew up in a community where guns are easier to get than sneakers.” I’m assuming that was hyperbole, but how easy were guns to get when you were a kid?

The first gun I ever got was from the bodega around my way. I got it from a corner store. I didn’t have to do some special ops thing. I just went to the corner store and bought it through the slot. I still think it’s easy to get guns. Guns aren’t difficult. They’ve never been difficult. There are more guns in this country than there are people. They’re easy to get because there’s a huge supply.

This nation's inability to really do anything substantial and sensible around guns is because of racism.

You’ve written: “We know that guns kill, particularly Black people. Yet this nation has not cared enough to slow down gun production.” So you think that the failure to enact meaningful gun reform legislation is tied to racism?

Absolutely, I think so. The fact that Black and brown people are dying at these rates by this particular source has not impacted the nation enough. This nation’s inability to really do anything substantial and sensible around guns is because of racism. But I also want to put in a caveat, too, because this nation really believes in guns. I remember when the mass shooting in Newtown happened. I was sitting in the Crown Heights Community Mediation Center, and I was like, “Oh, they are going to do something now, because they shot these white kids in a white neighborhood.” And two or three days later, the NRA said, “We need more guns.” And at that point I was like, “Well, this nation’s committed to violence.”

When somebody decides to pick up a gun, it’s because there's something inside that they're dealing with ... Issues with trauma are always at the root before somebody picks up a gun.

You’ve talked about how gun violence is related to underlying trauma, writing, “At the individual and communal level, trauma is at the bottom of antisocial violent behaviors.” What do you mean when you say this?

When somebody decides to pick up a gun, it’s because there’s something inside that they’re dealing with. People think that gang beef is senseless. And there’s some truth to that, but we also forget that individuals in gangs are people who got sh– going on. They have issues. They have trauma. They got family stress. They got abuse issues, drug addiction. All these things are happening. And they bring all those things with them into the gang. And then, with that groupthink mentality that happens in a gang, there’s ample opportunity to act out what you got going on internally. Now you have a reason, you have a cause. A brotherhood. Issues with trauma are always at the root before somebody picks up a gun.

I think I get what you mean by individual trauma. But you’re also talking about trauma at the communal level. Give me a sense of what that means to you.

I think that police violence is a part of the trauma that causes people to do the things that they do. I wasn’t raised to not like police. I wasn’t raised in that type of household. But police, for whatever reason, would see me as a young kid and pick on me, and I wasn’t doing anything at that time. And it not only created this sort of animosity towards them, but it also created this feeling of, “All right, they treat me like a crook, I might as well do crook sh–.” You know what I mean?

And that’s just using police violence as an example. But there are other types of violence on the communal level that are always impacting people. Health disparities and not having adequate access to good healthcare, for example. Those are things on a communal level that people don’t associate with gun violence. But when things are happening within your body or are not being adequately taken care of, it leads to frustration. As an adult, you know how to deal with those sorts of things. But when you’re sixteen and you’re walking up your block, or you’re coming out of your project, and you got these things happening, and somebody looks at you kind of funny, you can snap. And from then on, the thing that was bothering you internally, whatever health issue you were dealing with, that’s no longer a factor anymore. You’re not even thinking about it. Now you just got beef, and that’s the only thing that matters. You’re not thinking about why you had it, what contributed to your mindset in the first place.

In your book, you write: “It’s not excusable for a victim to become a perpetrator, or for the perpetrator to claim victimhood, but they are realities.” How do you balance the harms you’ve been talking about against individual responsibility and individual agency when it comes to criminal behavior?

There should be an acknowledgement that people who do harmful things are reacting to harmful things but, as I said, it’s not an excuse. I always say you don’t absolve people for the harmful things that they do. But we have to acknowledge that perpetrators have been victimized before. I think that’s why restorative justice is on the tips of many people’s tongues now. 

Did you see the horrific thing that happened in Harlem last week? These guys tried to hit on a girl in a liquor store. And she turned them down, from what we can see from the video camera footage. They followed her outside, and they ended up beating her up. They are still looking for these guys. That is horrific. There’s no way to excuse that. But I do have to be able to understand that people don’t wake up out of their beds and just do stuff like that unless there’s some unaddressed mental issues. There’s a build-up to that type of action.

Your book is essentially a plea for prison abolition. The people who committed this act in Harlem … what should happen to them, in your mind? What should the consequence be for this kind of behavior?

That’s always the question. Should they go to jail? Right now, jail is all we got. That’s what we have at the moment. We don’t have any other type of solution to deal with egregious harm. We don’t. But what I am saying is that in order to work towards an abolitionist future, we have to invest in addressing the underlying traumas that people are dealing with in our communities.

I would love for there to be a future in which no one was harmed. But let’s just stipulate for a moment that we aren’t going to completely eliminate bad things from happening. In the future that you’re imagining, what would be a better response than incarceration as a response to egregious harms?

The abolitionist future, to me, is about really investing in resources to address the underlying issues that people have in these communities. Right now, jail is what we got. But we also know that jails are harmful places. Jail is all about get-back and vengeance. Everybody knows jails are f—– up places. They got millions of movies about it. It’s like, “You killed my father, I’m going to kill your father.” That sort of thing. We don’t really think that this person we are sending to jail is redeemable, that a person can change. What does it do to send a person to jail? It doesn’t do anything for them, other than to say we got you back.

You talked earlier about growing up in the stop-and-frisk era. The quote that I highlighted about your relationship with the police from one of your writings was, “I take a personal affront to law enforcement when they speak to me as if I am a toy to be played with.” Has every interaction you’ve ever had with the police been negative?

Of course not. As a professional, I’ve been to One Police Plaza. When I have on a suit and I represent an organization or an issue, obviously the police are looking at me in a different light. But if I come back home in my hoodie around Bed-Stuy, then they don’t know who I am. So, no, every interaction I’ve had hasn’t been negative. I had an interaction recently when I got locked out of my car down here in the Bushwick area. Cops came by and they called somebody who helped me out. It’s not that every interaction with the police is bad. But the most indelible interactions I’ve ever had with police have been bad. And also the most unwarranted interactions with police have been bad. I remember they stopped me someplace in my car, and they were just playing with me. They stopped me for no reason in my neighborhood around the corner from my house. And those are the types of interactions that always make me think about Eric Garner. It’s not so much that all police are bad. That’s a cliché. It’s more that the force they wield in our community doesn’t make me feel safe.

We need a hyper-local approach to investing in infrastructure to address issues of violence and also putting people in the community to work taking care of the buildings and parks that are falling apart. We have to engage the people in the community so that they feel like it is theirs, instead of contractors coming into the community from different places.

You’ve written that you think that police are inherently a racist, white supremacist organization. Is it impossible to imagine a police department in a place like New York being led by a Black police chief, with Black leadership commensurate with the size of the African American population in the city, and where street officers actually come from the neighborhoods where they are patrolling? Is it impossible to imagine a police department that is not a racist, white supremacist organization?

It’s not impossible to imagine. But I will say that to believe that corrupt or brutal policing is only enacted by white officers wouldn’t be true to history. The mere fact that we may have more Black folks, or brown folks, or people who live in the community as police officers doesn’t necessarily mean that police will be less brutal. Maybe they will. Maybe. But I also know that there’s evidence to show that they have been just as, and sometimes much more, brutal.

Here’s the thing. Policing, just like any organization, has a corporate culture. You know that no matter where you are, you’re either going to become embedded into that corporate culture or you’re going to be a rebel to that culture. And if you’re a rebel to that culture, well, then your time is going to be either really short or very difficult. Look at Edwin Raymond. You know the officer, the Black guy from Brooklyn who exposed all these bad things happening in the department. He received death threats from inside the police department. So I’m just saying that, of course, we can imagine a future where policing isn’t what we see today, just like I can imagine a world without prison. But I also have a right to say I don’t believe that policing will be the tool that gets us where we need to go. I don’t see policing as an institution being separate from corruption and brutality. I’ve seen police do the same thing in Trinidad, in Jamaica, in Ghana, in South Africa. There is a brutality to that corporate culture that always will clash with civility.

I want to talk a little bit about what we should do now to combat the uptick in violence in New York. You have written: “There is no Batman with a never-ending utility belt of crime-fighting tools. Community based programs aimed at prevention and intervention are the Caped Crusader.” So if we want to reduce community violence, where would you be making investments, if you were the mayor?

We obviously need to invest in community-based approaches to violence. Where we are at, in New York City, harkens back to the late 70s and early 80s in terms of businesses being in shambles, stores boarded up, graffiti everywhere. I think we need a hyper-local approach to investing in infrastructure to address issues of violence and also putting people in the community to work taking care of the buildings and parks that are falling apart. We have to engage the people in the community so that they feel like it is theirs, instead of contractors coming into the community from different places. 

Going forward, we also need to look for ways to reduce the militaristic form of policing. I think about the police and the way they dress, and the way that they look, and the weapons that they carry—those things are meant to intimidate. It’s unnecessary. There’s been an increase in shootings, yes, but this is not a war zone. I think the militaristic nature of the police culture incites an angst inside of these communities. I am thinking about ways to no longer have a need for police. That’s what abolition is, the need to no longer have police. But I’m also thinking about ways to incrementally shift how police approach their business on a daily basis—how they look, how they dress, and the weapons that they walk around with.

I don't think 2021 will be much better in the realm of community violence

A number of the candidates for mayor in New York City have spoken favorably about the Cure Violence model and expressed a desire for more violence interruption. I spoke with Jeffrey Butts at John Jay College not long ago, and he said that while he thinks Cure Violence is worthy of further investment, we are a long way from being able to say that we know for certain that the model works and is evidence-based. He also expressed the concern that Cure Violence has almost become like a religion where you can’t even criticize it. I’m curious, do you feel like people are starting to treat Cure Violence like it’s above reproach?

No, I definitely don’t think that. I even criticize Cure Violence at times for different things.

If you could wave a magic wand and improve one thing about Cure Violence, what would it be?

I think we need a way for the people who are working as violence interrupters to be able to rise out of [these jobs]. I think there’s a lot of re-traumatization happening. As a violence interrupter, I’ve seen that firsthand. Folks shouldn’t stay in those roles beyond a certain amount of time.  

Cure Violence itself is a model of suppression: Stop the violence, move on. You can stop beefs, and that’s obviously huge. You save lives when you stop beef. But you’re not addressing the underlying reason a lot of people have beef in the first place. I think New York has done a good job with trying to take a more holistic approach with the wraparound models. 

I also think Cure Violence has to be aware that it needs to be able to constantly rebrand itself. When I came home a decade ago, Cure Violence was cool. After a while, you just some old dudes, and it’s not as effective. It doesn’t speak to what young people are dealing with now. I can see S.O.S. becoming corny. I can see young people saying, “I don’t want to wear that shirt. That’s old. My father used to be down with that.” That’s another reason why violence interrupters need to be able to be moved up and out into other and bigger things.

Part of the goal of this series is to try to bridge the research-practice divide and make sure that researchers are asking the right questions about community violence in New York City. Are there questions about community violence that you wish you had answers to but don’t right now? Where should folks like Butts be focusing their energies?

I think we need a lot more [knowledge] about the education space and the interactions with school and community. How do you mitigate and eliminate the school-to-prison pipeline? At what age should we be engaging young people? What’s really bothering them?I think those of us who’ve been in the criminal justice space don’t really understand what education leaders understand. I think that’s a major piece of the puzzle that we should look into and interrogate.

Anything that I missed? Anything else you want to say on this subject?

Actually, yes.I don’t think 2021 will be much better in the realm of community violence. I was walking outside early this morning, and I was looking at streets that I know. And they’re barren. The stores are boarded up. And I see graffiti and all that sort of stuff. And I thought to myself, “If I was sixteen, how would I react to this store that’s just shut up?” And it seems like a field day right now. Because people aren’t really doing anything. There’s nothing for people to do. There’s also less money around. So young people are congregating in weird places with alcohol, with weed, and with all these different types of opiates now. When you have those sorts of things clouding your mind, it can lead to a lot of really opportunistic harm. I just think that it could become a little bit more dangerous this year because of that.

You started this last statement by talking about graffiti and boarded-up buildings. To my ears—

No, it’s not broken windows.

It sounds an awful lot like broken windows.

Well, here’s the thing about the broken windows theory. The reason why it was wrong was the way it was implemented, or the way that [former New York Mayor Rudolph] Giuliani spoke about it. It said that police had to come in and they’re the ones that are going to take care of things from a law enforcement perspective. I think we need to take care of the boarded-up windows and such, but not through enforcement. What I’m saying is that we should invest at a hyper-local level and get people in the communities who have a vested interest involved in taking care of things. I think that approach is different, and you are more likely to get buy-in from it.

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Greg Berman is the Distinguished Fellow of Practice at The Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation. He previously served as the executive director of the Center for Court Innovation for 18 years. His most recent book is Start Here: A Road Map to Reducing Mass Incarceration (The New Press).

Views expressed are the participants’ own and not necessarily those of The Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation.

“True Equity Means Everyone’s Life Has Equal Value”: A Conversation with Shani Buggs

By Greg Berman

In 2019, The New York Times discovered a new trend: “Gun Research Is Suddenly Hot,” the paper of record declared. One of the up-and-coming gun researchers featured in the story is Shani Buggs, an assistant professor at the University of California, Davis.

Dr. Buggs completed her doctorate in health and public policy at Johns Hopkins University. In Baltimore, she studied community-based violence prevention programs and measured public attitudes about guns and the criminal justice system. She also worked with the Baltimore mayor’s office, the police department, and other city agencies to enhance local violence reduction strategies and policies. This work has led to her growing visibility in the field, including a recent call to consult with White House Domestic Policy Advisor Susan Rice and other Biden officials about how to reduce gun violence.

The following conversation took place in late March, not long after violent incidents in Boulder, Colorado, and Atlanta returned mass shootings to the front pages of newspapers around the country. This transcript has been edited for length and clarity.

Greg Berman: What is your origin story? How did you get involved in this field?

Shani Buggs: Prior to my current career, I spent a decade in corporate management. I found myself working for a healthcare firm in Atlanta that began to venture into the workplace-wellness space. I was helping individuals with lifestyle change and behavior modification. I decided that public health was absolutely where I wanted to be and that I wanted to obtain a master’s in public health. So, I enrolled in the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. This was the summer of 2012.  

I arrived in Baltimore with a heightened awareness of violence in the city, because as I was moving from Atlanta, people expressed concern about my safety based on The Wire. And then, just a couple of weeks into my program, a gunman shot up a movie opening in rural Colorado, and the national media was transfixed by that tragedy. I was very aware that there were regular shootings happening in Baltimore and that it was not even garnering local attention. And so I was really shocked and outraged by the disproportionate attention and response to shootings depending on who was shot, where they were shot, and who the media and policymakers and the general public saw as being deserving of sympathy and attention. 

I happened to be at Johns Hopkins, which at the time was the one academic institution in the country that had a research center devoted to gun violence. And so I shifted my focus to gun-violence prevention. This was 2012, and the conversation about gun violence as a public health issue was still very much a fringe idea. I shifted my graduate studies and ultimately my entire career. I decided to stay at Hopkins beyond my master’s program. I was accepted to the doctoral program and continued to train and work with folks in Baltimore thinking about violence reduction and prevention. For a couple of years, I worked in the mayor’s office, helping the city to coordinate their violent crime reduction strategy.

We know that some types of violence increased in many American cities over the past year. But my sense is that the pattern is not uniform—some places it’s up a lot, some places it’s up a little bit, and in some places it’s flat. Have you taken a step back and looked at the city-by-city numbers? What jumps out at you?

I think the thing of greatest interest is how consistently violence has spiked in cities around the country. Gun violence increased while we started to see lower rates of theft and lower rates of robbery and lower rates of rape. To your point, the data is still coming out, and we know that every city did not experience the same rate of increase, but many cities saw large spikes.

Where we saw spikes in gun violence were places that had previously experienced higher than average rates of gun violence and that had all of the social factors that are associated with gun violence —high rates of unemployment, high rates of poverty, high rates for criminal justice contact, housing insecurity, food insecurity.

There’s a lot to unpack, and it will take months or years for us to really be able to untangle all of the many factors that were associated with last year’s increase. I have some theories and some ideas, but it is going to take some time before we’re able to really understand what was at play.

Don’t make me wait. Give me a theory or two.

So, where we saw spikes in gun violence were places that had previously experienced higher than average rates of gun violence and that had all of the social factors that are associated with gun violence —high rates of unemployment, high rates of poverty, high rates for criminal justice contact, housing insecurity, food insecurity. The pandemic and the shutdown severed social ties and economic ties for many individuals. Different from other economic downturns, the pandemic really hit certain employment sectors and certain subpopulations differently. We’ve seen higher-income positions bounce back better than what we’ve seen for individuals who are at the lowest rung of economic opportunity and financial stability. And you also had social supports that were basically shut down. Violence intervention strategies were curbed. Job training, subsidized employment, mentoring, case management, financial assistance, social assistance—those were all shut down. And then the fear and anxiety and frustration over the coronavirus and the lack of trust in institutions among communities of color—I think all of those things came together in a perfect storm kind of way.

I wonder whether you could talk for a second about what you see as the links between a history of discriminatory policy making and the communities where we see high rates of gun violence?

There’s a direct through-line. We have not invested in communities of color for decades. There’s been research done on the relationship between redlining and the discriminatory housing practices of the 1930s and 1940s and how that relates to gun violence today. We continue to see that relationship, but we have not done enough research into that relationship. Increasingly, there are more people starting to connect historical factors to contemporary phenomena, particularly as they relate to structural racism. The communities that have been the least invested in and the least supported through financial opportunity, through housing stability, through quality educational systems, and through the development of our children—those are the same communities that are experiencing high rates of gun violence today.

I’ve seen some data that suggests that there’s been an increase in gun sales over the past year. Do you think that has any relationship to increases in gun violence around the country?

It’s an important question that we don’t yet know the answer to. We know that gun sales have increased, but the data available do not tell us anything about who’s buying the guns. Researchers are trying to better understand if the increase in gun sales translates to increases in gun violence. I think that’s still to be determined. What we do know is that in the communities that are experiencing high rates of gun violence, firearms are still far too prevalent, including firearms that were illegally possessed, illegally sold, and trafficked into these communities prior to March of 2020. We don’t yet know how many more guns there are in these communities, but it was a problem before last year.

Let’s turn to Baltimore, and let’s start by talking about Cure Violence. This is a violence prevention model that has generated a lot of excitement in recent years. It is also a model that can be challenging to implement. How has the model fared in Baltimore?

The Cure Violence model, and the theory behind it, we don’t know if it actually works in every community and every city. I think what we saw in Baltimore is that there were some communities where the nature of the violence fit that model, but other communities within Baltimore where it did not. 

The Cure Violence model was designed in the 1990s with the understanding that violence is contagious. It was also designed with the understanding that if you can intervene with group leaders, you can then use the social and political capital of those leaders to help curb violence among their followers. 

Violence has evolved in a number of different ways since the 1990s. The Cure Violence model may not fit the times any more. In many cases, you don’t have structured, hierarchical groups with traditional leaders. That’s not what we see today. You have much more loosely formed, smaller groups that may be fighting against each other, even though they’re under the bigger umbrella of a known gang or group. 

Individuals carry today because it's better to be caught with a gun than to be caught without a gun. People carry weapons because they perceive that the system doesn't keep them safe.

On the other hand, there are elements of the model—having credible messengers to mediate conflict and connecting individuals to services and supports to address trauma and help create lifestyle change—that are absolutely important and should be strengthened and used more widely, in my opinion.

I think in many ways, where Cure Violence had success in Baltimore, it was really on the strength of the individuals leading it and doing the frontline work. There was little city investment up until the last couple of years. The program had been supported by grants, which meant that Cure Violence was a program rather than a network of services and support. It was just kind of operating on its own. There has to be greater support, and the city just didn’t provide that for the longest time. That is changing. I’m optimistic and hopeful. Because whether it’s Cure Violence, or focused deterrence, or a hospital-based violence intervention program—none of these programs can really be successful at creating sustained violence reduction without a broader infrastructure of support.

You were part of a team that did some survey research about the underground gun market in Baltimore. One of the findings that stood out for me was how many of the respondents said that they carried guns for protection because they felt vulnerable.

We did not ask for people’s status, but many of these were individuals who were very likely to be legally prohibited from carrying firearms. The fact that so many carry is alarming. They carry because they do not feel safe in their communities. And they carry despite knowing that there are legal risks if they get caught, although some of the research that we’ve done suggests that the legal consequences of carrying in Baltimore are inconsistent. But we have also learned that increased penalties for gun carrying do not necessarily impact day-to-day behavior. The research coming out of Chicago and coming out of the Center for Court Innovation in New York has been consistent: Individuals carry today because it’s better to be caught with a gun than to be caught without a gun. People carry weapons because they perceive that the system doesn’t keep them safe. That’s the real story.

You’ve expressed some skepticism about the deterrent effect of policing. You’ve also talked in other forums about the harms that over-policing can do. I’m wondering whether you think that there is a role for police to play in attempting to respond to the recent increase in gun violence.

I believe that people should be held accountable for their actions. I believe individuals who do harm must be held accountable. There needs to be deterrent effects for risky behaviors, such as carrying a firearm. I also have healthy skepticism that policing, as structured today, is the appropriate deterrent for what I’ve just described.  

We have handed over the idea of public safety to police. All the police can do is respond after something happens. Or they can occupy a neighborhood and be visible to deter crime. But that’s not what keeps a community safe. I live in Sacramento. The police aren’t keeping my community safe. My community is safe because homes are stable, the environment is healthy, and there are opportunities for youth and for families. I’m not trying to paint this rosy, idyllic picture, but it’s true. 

We also need to be investing in researchers who are engaging in community-based, participatory research that is not just extracting information from the community or studying individuals in the community as subjects.

I think the conversation needs to focus on the fact that policing is not serving communities equally. What we have seen, over and over again, is the harm done by unethical policing. We need to be thinking about how to invest in the kinds of supports that allow for communities to stay together and stay safe and healthy. But it can’t be an either/or conversation, because we still have harm being done today. And we don’t have alternate systems right now other than law enforcement. If someone is harmed right now, the only number that I can call is 911. I can’t access a credible messenger. I can’t access a community paramedic. I can’t access non-traditional mental health workers who can deescalate or support someone who’s having a mental health crisis. So we have to talk about the systems that we have today, but we also need to recognize that police don’t prevent violence, police respond to violence.

So we’ve talked about the need to reform the criminal justice system. I’d like to pivot and talk about the ways that your field needs to reform going forward. How do researchers need to change in order to stay relevant and to pursue an agenda that’s truly responsive to the problems on the ground?

I’ll start with policing because that’s where we just left off. There are communities of color that have for decades said the police do not keep us safe. We have ignored that. And even today in the conversations around what we do about policing, we’re continuing to ignore a non-trivial percentage of the population that are saying these people that you keep sending my way don’t help me feel safe and they actually cause more harm. Ignoring those voices is effectively saying we don’t value you in the same way that we value these other voices that say keep sending the police. That has to change. True equity means everyone’s life has equal value. We need to recognize that we have not valued a large number of people in our community. There are a number of researchers who have been centering community voices, but the field overall has not. And there are a number of reasons why that may be true. The ivory tower is a barrier in and of itself. There is also the fact that we have focused on criminal justice outcomes, as they relate to violence prevention, rather than on health and wellbeing. If all we’re doing is looking at whether the homicide numbers went up or down, then we’re not thinking about the societal costs of the interventions.  

There’s also a problem with one- or two-year grant cycles. Some of the problems we are dealing with are decades in the making. We’re not going to solve these problems with some quick studies and some quick intervention. So we need to have long-term investments in longitudinal studies that allow for community-based, community-driven strategies to gain footing, to have growing pains, and to really support the community in ways that are healing and transformative. We also need to be investing in researchers who are engaging in community-based, participatory research that is not just extracting information from the community or studying individuals in the community as subjects.

One of the things I have learned from doing community-based work is that communities don’t speak with one voice. Within any given community, you’ve got people who hate the police. And you’ve got people who want more police. So engaging the community is not a simple matter because the community is not going to speak uniformly about issues like safety and policing that are incredibly complicated. In the desire to listen to the folks who say “The police aren’t making me safe,” we shouldn’t compound the error by ignoring those who say, “The police do make me safe.”

Absolutely. It’s messy like democracy is messy. But we have to give equal voice and equal attention to the many different voices in our community and the values that they’re expressing, presuming that these are anti-racist and equitable values that they’re expressing. As it relates to research, it takes time to do community-based participatory research.

I’m hopeful that for the first time, we will have large-scale investments at the federal level into communities, specifically for violence prevention that doesn't look like more law enforcement, more punishment, more oppression.

It takes time to engage communities in a meaningful way. If people are saying, “I absolutely want the police,” we need to be asking them what they are getting from that safety and have an honest conversation about that, but we cannot ignore the people who say, “The police don’t keep me safe.”

Are you feeling optimistic or pessimistic as you look to the next year or two in terms of gun violence? You started off by saying that you were attracted to this field, at least in part, because you saw that some victims got more attention than others. Arguably we’re seeing that dynamic play out right now with a lot of attention to recent shootings in Boulder and Atlanta and not so much attention to the more quotidian victims of violence in places like Baltimore, Chicago, and New York.

Unfortunately, it feels like we haven’t learned lessons from last year. If you look at Atlanta and Boulder, I already know more about the victims in Boulder than I know about the victims in Atlanta.

Why is that? I don’t hear the media talking about that. I don’t hear them talking about the 15 people shot at a pop-up party in Chicago last weekend, or the five people shot in Philadelphia over this weekend. The mass shooting conversation that’s happening right now is maddening to me because the definition that is being used—four or more killed when the shooter is perceived to be a stranger—erases the trauma that is experienced from shootings that don’t meet this criteria. When multiple people are shot in any given experience, regardless if four or more die, the experience of everybody involved is not trivial. It matters. There needs to be attention and resources placed there. I’ve been disheartened by the way the last couple of weeks have played out in the media. The shootings in Atlanta and Boulder have just dwarfed the conversation about community violence. 

But there are glimmers of hope. There are conversations happening at the federal level with both the White House and Congress around investing in community violence prevention. I’m hopeful that for the first time, we will have large-scale investments at the federal level into communities, specifically for violence prevention that doesn’t look like more law enforcement, more punishment, more oppression.

Different cities around the country are thinking about how to do safety differently. How do we actually invest in people’s safety rather than invest in their failure? It gives me hope. I’m hopeful that we can continue to think more broadly about what safety looks like, who deserves to be safe, and how we hold everyone accountable for wrongdoing, including those who were supposed to be in charge of making policy that keeps us safe.

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Greg Berman is the Distinguished Fellow of Practice at The Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation. He previously served as the executive director of the Center for Court Innovation for 18 years. His most recent book is Start Here: A Road Map to Reducing Mass Incarceration (The New Press).

Views expressed are the participants’ own and not necessarily those of The Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation.

“We’re Losing a Sense of Accountability”: A Conversation with Richard Aborn

By Greg Berman

Richard M. Aborn has been a player in the New York City criminal justice world since 1979, when he began his legal career as a prosecutor in the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office. In the 1990s, Aborn served as president of Handgun Control, Inc. (now the Brady Campaign) and the Center to Prevent Handgun Violence, using these platforms to advance gun control legislation. In 2009, he ran unsuccessfully for Manhattan District Attorney.

Aborn currently serves as the president of the Citizens Crime Commission of New York City, a non-partisan, nonprofit organization that works with law enforcement, government agencies, community-based organizations, and academia to improve public safety through innovation. He is a managing partner of the law firm Constantine Cannon.

Much of Aborn’s work over the years has focused on reforming the New York City Police Department. In 1999, he was commissioned to conduct an investigation of the NYPD’s disciplinary system, as well as its response to civilian complaints of misconduct. He was also commissioned to investigate the NYPD’s disciplinary decisions concerning the officers involved in the 1999 fatal shooting of Amadou Diallo. 

As he surveys the current landscape, Aborn is deeply concerned about the rising levels of violence in New York City—and the negative impact of the movement to defund the police.

This At the Crossroads conversation between Aborn and Greg Berman, the Distinguished Fellow of Practice at The Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation, is framed around two inter-related crises now facing New York City: the urgent need to improve both public safety and police legitimacy. The discussion, which took place in mid-April, has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Greg Berman: We’ve gotten to a point where no one really denies that there is a problem of increased violence in New York. But we’re now dealing with a war of competing narratives about how to explain the increase in violence. I’m hoping that you can help me parse the conflicting stories. You’ve got Mayor Bill de Blasio blaming the courts. You’ve got the NYPD pinning it on too much criminal justice reform. You’ve got the advocacy community saying, “Don’t even suggest that bail legislation was responsible.” You’ve got everyone pointing the finger at COVID. What’s your sense of what’s really going on out there?

The expression that we have a ‘problem’ with violence is really an understatement. I think we are now getting close to a crisis of violence. It is obviously well past a blip.

Richard Aborn: Nothing like starting out with an easy question. First of all, I think the expression that we have a “problem” with violence is really an understatement. I think we are now getting close to a crisis of violence. It is obviously well past a blip. The current trend is exceeding the trend from last year, which was already a sharp reversal of the declines from previous periods. So I think we’re in a crisis moment, and I’m very worried about it.

The truth of the matter is that no one knows what the real cause of the rise in violence is. It probably has multiple causes. In thinking about the rise in crime, one needs to go back to mid-2019, so that’s pre-pandemic. And we begin to see some uptick in serious crimes. Not a sharp rise, but a definite rise. That uptick comes down when we go into lockdown and then goes right back up as we start to come out of lockdown in mid-2020. And then we get these terrible shootings that start, which continue unabated, and in fact are increasing to this day.

The bulk of the conversation about criminal justice in New York City in recent years has been about much-needed reforms—what laws are we getting rid of, how are we reining in police behavior, what cases shouldn’t be prosecuted, where is jail no longer being imposed? All of these reforms are geared towards de-emphasizing the involvement of the criminal justice system. Now a lot of that is very healthy, but what I’m concerned about is whether this de-emphasis on accountability has signaled that we’re taking our foot off the gas on violent crime. If you commit violent crimes, the system should respond.

We have lost some of that, both in reality and in the narrative. And I think that’s one of the things that’s leading to the rise in crime. This goes back to 2018 when we started decriminalizing marijuana, de-emphasizing quality-of-life enforcement, talking about bail reform, closing Rikers…. We did all of these things which sent a message of decreased accountability. If one believes in deterrence theory, in essence, it means you believe that people engage in a risk analysis before they commit crime: “Is there a high likelihood that I’m going to be apprehended and punished if I engage in criminality?”

Two of the people that I’ve talked to so far for this series, Jeffrey Butts and Marlon Peterson, are very dismissive of the idea that people on the street are making the kind of nuanced calculation that you just described. Are people really saying to themselves, “Oh, I wasn’t going to carry a gun, but I just read in the New York Times that bail reform passed, so now I’m going to carry a gun”?

I think that the would-be offending population is actually quite aware of what’s going on. We do know from the research that visible policing can act as a deterrent to crime. If visible policing does act as a deterrent, that reinforces the notion that if people perceive the risk of apprehension, they’re not going to engage in criminality. Why do they perceive the risk of apprehension? Because they see cops out there doing their job. My worry now is that we’re focused strictly on reforms, plenty of which I’ve supported and many of which are very necessary, but some of which go too far. I think we’re losing a sense of accountability.

Is the 2019 bail legislation an example of a reform that goes too far?

Some of the problems with that particular piece of legislation have already been fixed, but I think one of the big mistakes we made was not giving judges discretion to consider dangerousness to the community, as is done in the federal system. I think that part of the bail statute needs to be amended. The bail reform discussion is a classic example of what I’m talking about. Because I think a lot of people perceive that there’s no longer bail for any offense, that you just get arrested and you get released. I think that’s a common understanding.

Violent crime is now reaching a crisis level. I’m using the word “crisis” with precision. People are becoming very alarmed about the rise in violence.

One of the narratives out there is that what we’re seeing is the consequence of police retreating from proactive policing. Do you think that’s a factor in the rise in violence?

Virtually every time we’ve seen an uptick in crime, we hear this argument. And the true answer is that, I don’t know. I don’t know if the cops are pulling back or not. But let’s be honest, the police have been the target of an enormous campaign against them. The New York City Council is trying to make their job harder to do. There’s been a big effort to undermine their funding. Whether that is right or wrong, the police are going to personalize that. They’re human beings. We see record numbers of senior officers leaving the NYPD in droves. That’s a big problem. The experience is going out the door. It’s happening because cops are getting fed up with the amount of abuse they’re taking. 

Parenthetically, I should say that the cops have brought some of this on themselves. The cops need to change their behavior. I have no doubt about that. But at some point, the cops are going to say, “Enough is enough.” I mean, how much abuse can they take? Does that result in a slow down? It could.

You ran for Manhattan District Attorney a few years ago. I’m sure that you are following the current race for DA closely. I’m curious whether you share my sense that crime has not been a major issue in either the DA race or in the mayoral race thus far.

I think that would have been a fair characterization at the beginning of these races. But I think there is a shift taking place.Violent crime is now reaching a crisis level. I’m using the word “crisis” with precision. People are becoming very alarmed about the rise in violence. As we are having this discussion, we are now into our fifth week of a mass shooting having occurred in each of the preceding five weeks. And we’re doing this on the 14th anniversary of the mass shooting at Virginia Tech, where some 32 people were killed. So the violence is very much in the air now, and I think you see a shift taking place among some of the candidates, both at the mayoral level and at the DA level, because people are getting very worried. 

I speak with a lot of the mayoral candidates and their staff and a lot of the DA candidates. Not all, but a lot of them. And I do detect a change in their attitude. I get more and more questions about how to respond to the sharp rise in violence. People are asking whether we have gone too far with reforms, whether we’ve gone too far with cutting back on cops. I’m getting many more of those questions now than I was getting three or four months ago.

Some of the criminal justice system’s most vocal critics don’t believe that we should be turning to police to help curb violence. Do you think that there is a role for the police to play in addressing violence?

One hundred percent. I think they’re the first line of defense. They absolutely have a role. If we’re talking about responding to violent incidents and trying to deter violence, of course they have a role. Do they have the sole role? No. I think the responsibility for curbing violence is a city function and that all of the relevant city agencies need to be involved with that, not just the police. But I do think the police will continue to have the primary role for the foreseeable future. I think we need to think about how we structure the police. I think that needs to undergo significant reform. But I really don’t see the police being taken out of this role.

My read of the research is that the evidence is pretty strong that proactive policing makes a difference. Do you have a different take on the research?

Neighborhoods want cops, they understand the safety that comes from having cops, but they want much more respectful policing to address things like bias and over-aggressiveness.

Not at all. I think the research around visible policing, hot-spot policing, and precision policing all show effectiveness. But I think the second layer to the conversation has to be asking the question: How much harm is done in the execution of what the police do? And I think that’s where we’ve gone astray. The NYPD generally gets pretty high marks for helping with violence, but very low marks on bias questions. And I think that’s the problem we need to address. As I move around different communities, I don’t hear a big cry to get police out of neighborhoods. What I hear is that neighborhoods want cops, they understand the safety that comes from having cops, but they want much more respectful policing to address things like bias and over-aggressiveness.

So let’s pivot and talk a little bit about the challenges of police legitimacy. What are the signs that indicate to you that there is a crisis of legitimacy for police right now?

I’ve been saying now for close to a year that we’re experiencing twin crises. We have a crisis of rising violence and a crisis of legitimacy. That’s a toxic mix. The political manifestation of the crisis of legitimacy is when the New York City Council starts to defund the NYPD. They’re doing that because the police have lost their legitimacy with the public—

Let me just interrupt you there. The political class in our city has shifted to the left, and the movement to reduce the budget of the police is one indication of that. But I have some questions about how much the opinions of the general public have actually shifted on this issue. 

Well, one can only know the answer to that question at the next election—or by very astute polling. But what we do know is that elected officials generally engage in conduct that they believe is reflective of the desires of their constituencies. So at the very least, I think [the Council’s move to reduce the budget of the police] is reflective of where some people are.

Biden coming into office has created space, because the president's been saying ... that we have to engage in reforms, but we're not throwing out the cops while doing it.

I think the position of the public keeps shifting because of the rise in violence. I don’t think that the public dislikes or rejects the police as much as the actions of the City Council would indicate. But I do think there’s deep concern within communities about police legitimacy, and that’s being reflected. Political leadership will respond to the loudest voices. And the loudest voices right now are all about denigrating the ability of the police department to do the work that it needs to do. 

There’s no question that until relatively recently, there’s been a bit of a binary in the public dialogue: Either you’re pro-cop or you’re anti-cop. There hasn’t been the room to say that there are reforms that are very needed while still arguing that there’s a legitimate role for police. I think that window is now opening up, which is healthy. I find reporters asking more balanced questions. And I notice more and more of what they’re printing tends to be a little more balanced. I also think, frankly, that Biden coming into office has created space, because the president’s been saying what many of us have been saying, which is that we have to engage in reforms, but we’re not throwing out the cops while doing it.

One of things that the NYPD is famous for is CompStat, their computerized system that uses data to identify problem areas and promote precinct-level accountability. Is CompStat part of the solution or part of the problem when it comes to the crisis of police legitimacy?

When it was first introduced, CompStat really was a game-changer. When Commissioner [William] Bratton came in, he understood that centralizing power at police headquarters was not an effective way to control crime in the streets. Instead, he sought to empower precinct captains who knew their own crime patterns best and give them control over the deployment of their own resources. CompStat became the way to recognize crime patterns but also to hold police leaders accountable for the extra authority they had been given. So yes, they had been given much more authority, but they were then held accountable for getting results. CompStat became a way of creating a results-driven organization.

CompStat is one of the best ways to drive change, but it’s got to be measuring actual activity that’s taking place. CompStat can be a way of articulating the values of a police agency by articulating what it’s going to measure. In policing, the famous mantra, “inspect what you expect,” reigns supreme.

I've long been a proponent of expanding the metrics so that the police department measures the things that we really want police to do to build legitimacy … And I don't believe that's being done, at least not in any systematic way.

So would your argument be that we need to change what the NYPD is counting?

I’ve been saying that for years. Metrics are very important in policing. Policing agencies are quasi-military organizations. The cops are going to do what you ask them to do. If you measure the number of summonses, arrests, et cetera, that’s what you’re going to get. I’ve long been a proponent of expanding the metrics so that the police department measures the things that we really want police to do to build legitimacy. Things such as positive interactions with the public, the ability to de-escalate conflicts, and the ability to engage in developing joint remedial plans with neighborhood leadership, et cetera, et cetera. We need to develop metrics that allow the department to take into account those sorts of police activities in addition to measuring the more traditional things that the department looks at. And I don’t believe that’s being done, at least not in any systematic way.

You’ve written recently about the differences between having a police force and a police service. If the NYPD were to become a police service, what would the implications be out on the street?

I think it could be huge. At the core of converting from a police force to a police service lie two notions. One, that policing agencies should be much more service-oriented, and secondly, that we need to change the composition of who we are recruiting into the agency. In a police service, in addition to looking for enforcers, we would also recruit people that have a variety of skills that are very relevant to urban policing. We would look to bring in people that understand conflict resolution, that have training in de-escalation, that understand family dynamics. We would bring in people that have mental health backgrounds. We would bring in people that understand urban architecture. We would bring people that have social work backgrounds. We would bring in skills that are much more people-centric, much more focused around resolving issues rather than strictly enforcement. 

The reason that I think that would have a beneficial impact is that we know from data that training around police bias can impact the knowledge that police have towards bias, but that it doesn’t necessarily change behavior. What does change behavior is facilitating positive interaction between different groups, in this case, the police and communities of color. In the model that I’m proposing, you’d have much more interaction in a much more positive way. We know the same thing about aggressiveness: The more you interact with a given group, the less likely you are to be aggressive with that group.

There are long-term issues that the police can't address. They can't fix housing. They can’t fix the schools. But there are short-term issues which the police can be trained to identify and then act as a coordinating agency to bring in the other agencies of government.

The third piece, which is premature to move forward at the moment because there is so much concern about the cops, is that I would also get the police more focused on prevention. Of all the agencies of city government, the police probably have the most consistent and in-depth look at the issues that are driving crime. Why? Because they’re responding to them day in and day out. And they are interfacing with individuals that commit crimes and with the families that those individuals come from, on a daily basis. It wouldn’t be too far-fetched a notion for police to begin exploring the short-term drivers of crime. The causes of crime are embedded in deep, long-term social issues: homelessness, food insecurity—

Pause there for a second. I hear versions of this argument a lot—that what causes crime is poverty. But we’ve just undergone a dramatic transformation over the past 30 years in New York. Public safety has improved dramatically during those years, but we haven’t made significant progress in reducing poverty. Does that complicate the idea that what’s driving criminal behavior is poverty?

I think if you look at where crime is coming from in New York, it tends to be the more impoverished areas. So I believe there’s absolutely some connection [between crime and poverty]. You have youth that have suffered deep trauma because of the violence they have seen. You have schools where there is violence and instability. You have acute joblessness and an acute lack of hope.

I don’t disagree with any of that. But I guess I am skeptical about the notion that we can’t make a meaningful dent in crime unless and until we somehow magically transform society and end racism and poverty and a host of other ills.

That’s good, because if you did believe that, you’d be wrong. Over the last 20 years, we have sustained reductions in crime through some very tough economic conditions in New York. What I’m suggesting is that there are two levels. There are long-term issues that the police can’t address. They can’t fix housing. They can’t fix the schools. But there are short-term issues which the police can be trained to identify and then act as a coordinating agency to bring in the other agencies of government.

Do you worry that the vision you’re articulating can be read as essentially expanding the remit of the police at a moment when many people want to defund the agency?

That’s exactly why I say it’s premature right now. But what we have failed to wrestle with is that no matter how many reforms we do, the cops are still going to be there. We’re not going to disband the police department. I’m sorry, that’s just not going to happen. So we really better focus on how police agencies are structured, because if we don’t do that, I promise you, ten years from now, we’ll be having this exact same conversation.

I’m somewhat optimistic that in the next few years we will see a bunch of criminal justice reforms put in place. I think that we’ll see significant movement toward improving police practice and shrinking the negative footprint of the police. But I guess my concern is that many people will look at this as a failure, because it will read as incremental reform rather than transformative change.

I think there’s another factor that will be part of the calculus about whether we succeed or not and whether your optimism is warranted.It is not happenstance that all the efforts that we’re currently experiencing around police reform have occurred at a moment when crime was at a record low.It’s not a coincidence. What I’m concerned about is that many of the good reforms that we’re putting into place will be lost if violent crime continues unabated. I think you will then see a backlash and we could see many of the reforms reversed. Already the number of people that are getting bail instead of being released on violent offenses is going up.

But given your concern that bail reform went too far, wouldn’t your argument be that this increase is appropriate?

I’m not knocking the increase. If people are getting bail in appropriate violent offenses, I don’t have a problem with that. But people are saying we should get as few people at Rikers as possible. What I’m saying is that you can’t achieve that if violent crime continues to go up. What happens with violent crime over the next three or four years will have a lot to do with setting the pathway forward. 

What’s been lost in the public debate, because we have very short memories, is that, because of the good work of groups like the one you used to lead [the Center for Court Innovation], and numerous other nonprofit organizations, going into 2019, we had record low numbers of arrests in the city of New York, record low numbers of people at Rikers, and record low numbers of state prisoners. All of the data was trending in the right direction. Cooperation between the cops and the community was going up. The neighborhood policing program was catching on. Contrary to all expectations, cops were applying to be in that program. Things were really going in the right direction, and then it just blew up. We’re now a full year into rapidly rising violent crime. Right now, violent crime is up 20% over last year, and last year was up 50% over the previous year.

[Do] people perceive that the criminal justice system writ large—police, prosecution, courts—is responding in the way it should. Or has accountability been lost?

What do you think is the biggest misconception that the public or the media has about the uptick in violence in New York City?

I don’t think they have a misconception. I think they are perceiving the uptick quite accurately. We see crime rising on the subways. We see numerous more cases of shots being fired. The murder rate is rising. People are also correctly perceiving that we’re seeing a record number of illegal guns being seized in the city. Now does that mean there are a record number of illegal guns in the city, or is it just that more guns are being seized? We don’t know. But we do know that 2020 was a record year for gun sales nationwide, and generally as gun sales go up, we see more illegal guns in New York. And 2021 is continuing to see that record rise in the sale of guns. So that’s a big issue. I think people are correctly perceiving all of that. I think the question around correct perception is whether or not people perceive that the criminal justice system writ large—police, prosecution, courts—is responding in the way it should. Or has accountability been lost? I think you’re seeing a rise in the sense that people can act with impunity in New York. And that’s problematic, but that’s something that can be reversed.

I think there’s a social justice analysis, which I largely buy into, that argues that the criminal justice system has been a tool of oppression against Black people in this country, that it has been the sharp end of the stick enforcing an unjust social order. I also think there’s a lot of truth to the argument that there are conditions in the world—poverty, racism, mental illness and such—that contribute to criminal behavior. And then there’s the reality of the criminal justice system, which operates on a case-by-case basis, having to assess the criminal responsibility of each individual defendant. And I feel like those two things are in tension with each other. We are asking those within the criminal justice system to hold individuals to account, but also keep in the back of their mind these larger systemic issues. How should the history of racism in this country—or the fact that, through no fault of their own, some people are poorly educated or come from dysfunctional families—how should that influence the individual cop’s behavior on the street, the individual prosecutor’s decision whether to bring a case, and the individual judge’s decision about whether to detain a defendant?

You know, I actually don’t think they’re in tension. I believe that a system that is perceived as being just, transparent, and legitimate is a system that will be more highly respected and will encourage greater compliance with the law. I think when the system is perceived as being unfair and unjust, you see increased levels of criminality.

The more we can filter out racism in policing and the criminal justice system, the fairer the system will be both in reality and in perception. The more we can inject legitimacy and transparency into the system, the more the system will be accepted.

You’ve talked about the need for people to understand that they can’t act with impunity. But there are many who believe that any administration of punishment is essentially racist. Maybe I’m caricaturing this argument slightly. But only slightly. I do think there are many people who feel that if the system administers a punishment, that it’s doing a moral wrong.

If that’s what they’re really saying, then I sharply disagree. I understand the notion that a history of racism and injustice undermines the moral integrity of the system. The challenge is to address racism and restore justice. I think it’s very important for people to understand that bad acts have consequences; accountability is important. I think that’s a fundamental precept in keeping order in a society. Consequences must be proportional, swift, evenly applied, and hopefully remedial. Prison should be a very last resort, reserved only for those where necessary. Consequences must be administered in a fair and just manner, without regard to race. The more we can filter out racism in policing and the criminal justice system, the fairer the system will be both in reality and in perception. The more we can inject legitimacy and transparency into the system, the more the system will be accepted. That in turn makes the individual administration of justice easier to do. I think the effort to instill justice, legitimacy, and transparency into the system reinforces the ability to treat individual cases individually and fairly. The justice system really should be about individual rights and individual responsibility. Decisions should be made on an individual basis. If we’re starting to make those decisions because of fear of political repercussions or out of a desire to be politically correct, then we’re undermining fundamental justice.

Does how government discusses public safety impact public safety?

One last question: Are there areas where you think we need more information, more data, more research? If you had an army of criminologists at your disposal, where would you point them?

We started this conversation by talking about competing narratives. I’m fascinated with the intersection between narrative and crime. I think one of the interesting areas for someone to do some really good research is to start exploring more precisely the connections between narrative and rises or falls in crime. Put slightly differently, does how government discusses public safety impact public safety? For instance, in a time of heightened focus on reform and curtailing police activity, if government rhetoric is exclusively around reform and the ills being addressed by the reforms, and neglects to also discuss that, simultaneously, government is keeping a sharp focus on violent crime, does this negatively impact public safety? In my view, we’ve lost some of the foundations of deterrence, but the research around deterrence is mixed. Deterrence is based on a high likelihood of apprehension, i.e., the police doing their job, the certainty of prosecution, the administration of firm and swift justice. Not an emphasis on severity, but an emphasis on swiftness and certainty. We’ve lost some of that. What impact does that have on crime? I’d like to know the answer. If the way we narrate criminal justice policy has an impact on criminal behavior, we really need to understand that, and we need to make sure that we create narratives that have the highest likelihood of both serving justice and increasing public safety.

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Greg Berman is the Distinguished Fellow of Practice at The Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation. He previously served as the executive director of the Center for Court Innovation for 18 years. His most recent book is Start Here: A Road Map to Reducing Mass Incarceration (The New Press).

Views expressed are the participants’ own and not necessarily those of The Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation.