"Gotta keep my head on the swivel," says 18-year-old Lavish as he constantly looks over his shoulder.

A bullet-riddled van is metres away, as well as a sign that reads "Drug Free Gun Free School Zone".

Any car driving slowly by is viewed with suspicion even in broad daylight.

Welcome to Richmond — an industrial city across the bay from San Francisco which in 2010 was ranked sixth-most-dangerous city in America because of an epidemic of gun violence.

The failure to control guns in America has led some authorities to take their own measures to stop the violence.

Lavish is the latest participant in a program that pays young African American men to stop shooting each other.

"It's hectic, it ain't nothing as close as Chicago, but it's hectic for a young black male out here. It's hectic, really gotta be on your toes no lacking, don't lack out here, if you outside don't do no lacking," Lavish says.

I ask him if he means you can never let your guard down.

"Everybody knows why, it's on the 2 o'clock news, hear your mum crying, you don't wanna be in six feet deep, don't wanna be cremated, you don't want your name on a shirt or chain, if you don't want that don't be lacking," the 18-year-old says.

Sorry, this video has expired US city offers men cash not to shoot each other ( North America correspondent Michael Vincent )

"They got all kinds — all kinds of artillery out here," says Sam Vaughn who runs the Office of Neighbourhood Safety or ONS.

"Just like in any urban American city — how they get it I have no idea, but they have. Sometimes they have military weapons — like you got assault rifles and fully automatics and hundred-round drums and — those things aren't necessary for protection for sure. The weapons that these young people have are strictly meant to kill and maim."

Cash incentive a 'marketing ploy'

In 2009 the majority of Richmond's homicides were carried out by a small group of men in a small number of neighbourhoods.

So the city created the ONS which targeted that group.

"In 2009 we had 45 homicides by 28 folks. We had 11 homicides last year because we dealt with those 28 people differently," Sam Vaughn says.

Those 28 men were offered cash — $US1,000 — to turn their lives around, finish school, get a job, enter a training program for parenting skills or a rehab program, and stop the shooting.

In part the big amount of cash was a marketing ploy — to make sure everyone in the affected neighbourhoods knew about the program.

"What was really funny was taking them to the bank and cashing the cheques and somebody was like 'give me two $100 bills, 10 twenties, 40 tens, 50 fives, and 35 ones,' and they walk out with this bundle," Sam says, laughing.

Space to play or pause, M to mute, left and right arrows to seek, up and down arrows for volume. Listen Duration: 9 minutes 50 seconds 9 m Gangs and guns in Richmond: How one US city paid its shooters to stop Download 18 MB

"The cashier is like, 'What?' That was funny — to ask precisely, 'I want two big bills because I can't spend them in the hood — if I got too much then I got the fives when folk ask for money and the ones just make my pocket look fatter.' They had some reasoning for all of this, they had reasoning for everything they did, it was very humorous."

The effect was powerful.

The young men signed up to programs to complete their education, get a job, get parental skills or enter rehab.

The money being offered now is only a few hundred dollars a month, and it's harder to get.

"We started the fourth round of the Peacemaker Fellowships in March — we haven't had a new fellow get a stipend yet," Sam Vaughn says.

'I got to put work before education'

Not even Lavish, who has been a promising member of the fellowship.

He worked a summer job the ONS organised so he could pay for food and school supplies for his seven brothers and sisters.

Fontino 'Tino' Hardy died because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time ( Supplied )

"I got to put work before education — money needs to be put on the table so my family we can eat. It's cool to go to school, there's nothing wrong widdit, but certain people have certain things they got to do," Lavish says.

An assessment by the National Council on Crime and Delinquency found that since the program started 94 per cent of the participants currently remain alive, and 79 per cent of participants had not been arrested or charged for gun-related offences.

It also highlighted the positive interactions and personal development the participants had undergone; that they'd even travelled outside their communities, even out of the country — to Mexico and South Africa — to get different experiences.

Critically, the city council and the local police support the program's continuation.

But a major criticism of the program is that the money they are giving to these young men could instead be going to promising students.

The city of Richmond pays the wages of those who run the program. The money for the participants actually comes from charitable foundations.

Sam defends who the money is going to and the reasons behind it.

"There's so much money that comes into this community for at-risk youth, what we decided is, why don't we take a little bit of that, those resources, and deal with the risk that makes everyone else at risk?" he says.

"Therefore there's no-one at risk. So if you work with 50-75 folks effectively — you actually change the lives of 15,000 to 20,000 in one community."

There are still way too many gunshot victims in Richmond — we hear about a mother who lost both her sons in the space of five hours.

Another young man we meet through the program, but who doesn't want to speak to us on the record, has only just returned to his community after barely surviving a shooting.

Young people hungry for change

We see a van with multiple bullet holes in it and hear the story of an innocent young man, Tino, who came back from college to visit friends only to be randomly gunned down.

"He was in the wrong place at the wrong time," says James Houston, a 'change agent' in the ONS program.

"His life affected so many other lives there was standing room at his funeral."

There were fears the killing would spark another round of violence.

"Exactly, so now it's even worse when you kill someone who the community sees as innocent. Now, because I was involved in something, now I feel guilty and so you took my innocence and so now I have to respond even more than if it was somebody active."

"Does it make it hard to tell the young men not to take up arms and avenge their friend?" I ask.

"It's not hard to tell them — the difficult part is how to tell them — I say if you want to honour this young man, do something different. We ceased this feud because of him — we don't want nobody else to lose what we lost."

That's from a man who served 18 years in San Quentin prison for second-degree murder, and is now trying to make amends.

"I think about it every day when I come to work and that's what motivates me every day because I knew I wasn't a bad kid, and sort of like when you talk to a young person like Lavish and you see how open he is and how starving he was for some adult role model, something that I felt I lacked growing up," James Houston says.

Lavish is clearly hungry for a change and an opportunity to be "a man that doesn't have to be outside slanging (dope). A man who doesn't have to be outside looking around all the time. A man who can just go out on an adventure sometimes, go out of state, take his family out away, to live life. I mean there is way more life than this. For 18 years, I'm telling you, my whole mindset has being inside these gates, until I got into the program and I really started listening.

"I'm doing this so I can better myself, so when my brothers come out they can see that it's better, and actually doing stuff with our lives. I also have peers that are above me giving me guidance to better myself, you know what I mean?"

In a nation where gun violence has become so ingrained, so normalised, it's clear some Americans are prepared to try something different, radically different, to stop the killing. And there are young men who are clearly willing to listen.