Strategies for Change

“Social services cannot [reduce violence] alone. Community members cannot fight that battle alone…nor do I think police can. I think that we’ve got to work together.”

Reygan Harmon, Ceasefire Program

Director, Oakland Police Department

The Group Violence Intervention (GVI) reduces homicide and gun violence, minimizes harm to communities by replacing enforcement with deterrence, and fosters stronger relationships between law enforcement and the people they serve. National Network Executive Director David Kennedy and colleagues pioneered GVI’s evidence-based strategies with “Operation Ceasefire” in Boston during the 1990s. Subsequent GVI implementations across dozens of challenging cities, including Oakland, Chicago, Detroit, and New Orleans, have repeatedly demonstrated that violence can be dramatically reduced when community members join together with law enforcement and social service providers to focus a three-pronged antiviolence message on highly active street groups.

The GVI messages are simple: Community members with moral authority over group members deliver a credible moral message against violence. Law enforcement puts groups on prior notice about the consequences of further group-involved violence for the group as a whole. And support and outreach providers make a genuine offer of help for those who want it. A central method of communication is the call-in, a face-to-face meeting between group members and the strategy’s partners.

“I think the most important thing about the National Network and the focused deterrence strategy is that it’s a very powerful blend of a lot of the best of what we know about criminal justice today.”

Thomas Abt, Senior Research Fellow and Lecturer, Harvard University

When these three elements are in place, and partners across community, law enforcement, and support and outreach providers can work together, GVI fosters internal social pressure within groups that deters violence, elevates clear community standards against violence, offers group members an “honorable exit” from committing acts of violence, provides a supported path for those who want to change, and reserves strategic, group-based sanctions only for situations where group-involved serious violence persists.