Criminal Justice Interventions to Reduce Firearm-Related Violence
17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33
34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50
51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67
68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84
85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101
102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115
This chapter reviews the state of knowledge of the effectiveness of criminal
justice interventions aimed at reducing deliberate or accidental injuries
or deaths from firearms. The policies are: (1) gun courts, (2) enhanced
sentences for criminal uses of firearms, and (3) problem-oriented policing
to prevent firearm-related crimes. These interventions have had recent broad
bipartisan support and are a major focus of the federal government’s ongoing
efforts to reduce firearm-related violence. In particular, over $500 million
has been devoted to Project Safe Neighborhoods, a program designed
to provide funds to hire new federal and state prosecutors, support investigators,
provide training, and develop and promote community outreach
efforts (for further details, see http://www.psn.gov/about.asp\). The research
evidence, however, is mixed. In some cases, the committee found
evidence that programs may be effective, in others the evidence suggests
that programs may have negligible effects, and in others the evidence base
is lacking.
GUN COURTS
Gun courts, which are descendants of the drug court movement of the
1990s, generally target particular types of offenders for quicker, and sometimes
tougher, processing in community-based courts. Gun courts operate
differently across jurisdictions but typically feature small caseloads, frequent
hearings, immediate sanctions, family involvement, and treatment
services. Little research has been conducted on the operations and crime
prevention effectiveness of gun courts. Most available knowledge comes
from the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention’s examination
of a juvenile gun court operating in Jefferson County, Alabama.
The Jefferson County Juvenile Gun Court in Birmingham, Alabama,
focuses on first-time juvenile gun offenders. Its core components include a
28-day boot camp, a parent education program, a substance abuse program,
intensive follow-up supervision, and community service (Office of
Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, 2002). Birmingham’s juvenile
gun court is administered as part of the family court and provides
services to offenders and their families. The juvenile gun court seeks to
provide swift consequences by reviewing incoming cases within 72 hours
and trying them within 10 working days. The court also attempts to
provide certain consequences by providing judges with the authority to
impose mandatory detention of juvenile offenders, with judicial discretion
as to whether juvenile cases are eligible for diversion. All offenders attend
the 28-day boot camp, and the court can add more time to a youth’s stay
for various infractions. While the juveniles attend boot camp, parents
attend an education program that includes training on improving youthparent
communication skills and discussions of the impact of firearmrelated
violence on victims, perpetrators, and families. Parents who fail
to complete the program may be arrested and jailed. After the youths
return from boot camp, they are required to participate in substance
abuse classes for six weeks, take mandatory weekly drug tests during this
time period, and perform community service work, such as neighborhood
and graffiti cleanup. Probation officers and transition aides provide intensive
follow-up supervision, and parental involvement is required
throughout the adjudication process.
An evaluation of the Birmingham juvenile gun court compared the case
processing records and recidivism rates for three groups of juvenile gun
offenders: a group of Birmingham juveniles with limited prior offenses who
participated in the gun court’s core components, a group of Birmingham
juveniles with prior offenses who received short juvenile correction commitments
and did not receive after-care monitoring, and a comparison
group of juveniles from a nearby city who did not participate in a gun court
program (Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, 2002).
The evaluation revealed that the Birmingham gun court group had significantly
lower levels of recidivism (17 percent) than the Birmingham nongun
court group (37 percent) and the comparison group (40 percent). The
evaluators also found that having a prior gun offense (common to youth in
the nongun court groups) increased the odds of recidivism (Office of Juvenile
Justice and Delinquency Prevention, 2002). The evaluation did not
provide an estimate of the extent to which the differences among the groups
in prior gun offending could account for some of the observed recidivism
reductions.