Fighting violence on many fronts

By David Muhammad

I have constantly referred to the problems that produce violence and the potential solutions as complicated and complex. The causes have been developing for decades, and therefore the solutions will not be quick-fix overnight wonders. Though the public and even politicians seem to want immediate relief from violent crime, real longer-term solutions require intense, protracted, long-term remedies.

This is where the need to understand the difference between prevention, intervention and suppression come in. In response to a surge of violence, a town hall meeting or city council meeting may call for action. The response is often “we need more police” or “we need more mentoring programs.” Neither one of these will result in an immediate impact on violence. To add officers to the force, you have to recruit, hire and send cadets through the academy. That’s often a year’s process. And mentoring is violence prevention, but it will rarely if ever net immediate results in crime reduction.

There are two fronts in combating violence that need just as much attention, resources and expertise. These two fronts are often lumped together but require different approaches and understanding. There are the existing circumstances that cause violence now, and then there are persisting conditions that cause individuals to grow up and make poor decisions to engage in violent behavior.

The existing conditions are the easy availability of guns, along with young men and women who have dropped out of school, don’t have meaningful employment, are involved in a gang or street crew, are under-educated, and/or have experienced some trauma and pain in their life. As complex as that list of current circumstances sounds, that’s still oversimplified.

Engaging in a 10-year effort to improve schools, and raising money to one day fund many more community programs, like providing inhome nursing to poor single mothers with newborns, family counseling and tutoring, are all vitally necessary, yet will not affect the mostly 18-30- year-old black males living in one of the Bay Area hot spots who are victims one day and perpetrators the next in the deadly cycle of violence that engulfs the inner cities.

Violence prevention often comes in the form of programs, but is mostly about changing the underlying conditions that most of those involved in violence come from: poverty, substandard schools, unemployment and systematic racism. Violence prevention programs include early childhood education, youth development, family counseling and other mental health services, drug treatment and employment training. There is significant under investment in violence prevention programs, and the more important work of eradicating the underlying conditions that cause violence has been nearly ignored.

Intervention is working directly with those involved in violent behavior or at high risk of engaging in violence. Intervention includes conflict mediation, street outreach workers who canvas high crime areas and provide opportunities to individuals in those neighborhoods, and case management that comes along with a “hot spot” campaign.

Suppression is just that — putting a temporary lid on crime. This is mostly the job of law enforcement and includes tactics like borrowing police from other jurisdictions and focusing patrols on a particular area, or serving all outstanding warrants and conducting parole and probation sweeps in which the slightest violator is arrested. Oakland’s recent, infamous “Operation Nutcracker” is a suppression tactic. These initiatives are short-lived, are sometimes effective and come at great cost to the taxpayers.

There are successful tactics, strategies and programs in prevention, intervention and suppression. But there has to be an understanding of the difference, an appreciation for the complexity of each area and a clarity that one doesn’t produce the other — violence prevention doesn’t produce an immediate reduction in crime, and suppression doesn’t result in long-term solutions.

Serious investment and understanding of these three areas is vital to a successful effort to combat violent crime. Short attention spans, political expediency, emotionalism and lack of knowledge of best practices all often thwart the implementation of an effective overall strategy to successfully reduce violence.

The Globe has dedicated this series and its resources to educate and inform politicians, practitioners and the public on these issues so we seek and utilize real solutions to the epidemic of black on black crime.

Originally published Aug. 13-19, 2008