It was once notorious as the murder capital of the US. In 1991, when George HW Bush occupied its most famous residence, a record 482 homicides were perpetrated in Washington DC.

By 2012, the total had dropped to 88, but a worrying resurgence since then has left local politicians searching for fresh solutions. One came up with something both unexpected and provocative: pay people not to commit crimes.

The Washington DC council voted unanimously on Tuesday to approve a bill that would see 200 young people a year identified as being at risk of committing or becoming victims of violent crime. They would be required to participate in life planning, behavioral therapy and other programs and, if they stay on the right side of the law, would receive a stipend.

Participants would remain anonymous in the program run independently of the police department. The idea is based on a similar project in Richmond, California, which organizers claim has reduced crime and saved lives, but which was condemned by one expert as “the moral equivalent of giving up”.

Kenyan McDuffie, a Democratic member of the council who wrote the legislation, said it was one component of a wide-ranging approach to crime prevention in the nation’s capital, which suffered a 54% increase in homicides last year. Spending $9,000 a year in stipends “pales in comparison” to the costs involving the victim and putting the offender behind bars, the former prosecutor contended.

“I want to prevent violent crime – particularly gun violence – by addressing the root causes and creating opportunities for people, particularly those individuals who are at the highest risks of offending,” McDuffie wrote in a letter to constituents last week.

Whereas the Richmond project is funded by private donors, the Washington one would come from local government and cost $4.9m over four years, including $460,000 a year in payments, according to the district’s independent chief financial officer. If Democratic mayor Muriel Bowser does not commit to funding, the council would have to find the money through new taxes or cuts to existing programs.

The council heard evidence from Devone Boggan, who designed the program in Richmond, a city of about 100,000 that in 2007 was the ninth most dangerous in the US. Boggan, founding director of the office of neighborhood safety, says he learned that an estimated 70% of shootings and homicides were caused by just 28 people, primarily African American and Hispanic American men aged 16 to 25.

He recruited staff with street cred to identify and build relationships with these individuals, then invite them to join a fellowship program. “We offered those young men a partnership deal: we would pay them – yes, pay them – not to pull the trigger,” Boggan wrote in the New York Times last year.

“The deal we offered was this: if they kept their commitment to us for six months – attended meetings, stayed out of trouble, responded to our mentoring – they became eligible to earn up to $1,000 a month for a maximum of nine months. Predictably, this was controversial: not everyone was a fan of this cash-for-peace strategy. We had skeptics and critics aplenty, including on the city council. It was a bold measure, but would it work?”

The answer is clear, he claims. A study by the National Council on Crime & Delinquency in July last year found that 94% of fellowship participants remained alive and 79% of participants had not been arrested or charged for gun-related offenses since enrolling in the fellowship. Richmond also experienced a 77% drop in homicides between 2007 and 2014, although the study did not examine whether this was causally linked to the fellowship scheme or other factors.

Boggan said that the stipends are just one of seven program elements that include daily interactions, fostering relationships and taking rival gang members on trips together within the US and overseas. “I want them to walk on the campus of a university,” he explained on Friday, “I want them to see what a university feels like and say, ‘You know what, I want to go to college.’”

The average spend of $2,000 per fellow per month is a much better deal than the estimated $400,000 cost of each firearms-related crime, he added.

Boggan denied that he was in effect rewarding people for past criminal behavior. “We don’t ask them to stop shooting and put their guns down. It’s a youth program designed for young men who happen to be involved in shootings. None of this is original. It’s just providing young men with what middle class kids get organically day in and day out. If you do it right, you can’t help but have a positive effect.”

But although Toledo, Ohio, and Oakland, California, are said to be weighing similar experiments, not everyone is convinced. Critics argue that claims of success are anecdotal and lack academic weight, and there is a risk of diverting resources from proven methods.

John Roman, a senior fellow in the justice policy center at the Urban Institute thinktank in Washington, said: “I’m skeptical because the evidence base isn’t there to support it. Normally, I try to apply market principles to solve social problems, but I think the idea of paying people to behave better is the moral equivalent of giving up. Instead of fixing the problem, you’re going to put on a Band-Aid, and that, to me, is extremely unproductive.”

Roman called instead for proven programs, such as cognitive behavioral therapy delivered in the presence of family members in the home, to be scaled up, and for innovation. There is a danger that payments will “divert attention and resources from programs that we know will work”, he added. “I applaud the idea of shining a spotlight on this population, but I think there are much more effective solutions.”

The capital should reapply the formula that slashed the murder rate to a fifth of what it was in the dark days of the early 1990s, he argued. “Washington DC is progressive and has a terrific government and terrific police chief. To just throw up our hands and say we’ll pay kids not to do this is ignoring all the good work of recent years.

“This is a city that has experienced great success. In the last couple of years, the homicide rate has crept back up, and instead of looking at what worked in the past, we’re grasping at solutions.”

Republicans, a minority in the city, have also condemned the plan. Patrick Mara, executive director of the DC Republican party, which has no representation in the DC council, said: “It’s crazy. They have so much money from taxes and fees it’s just not real, like Monopoly money.

“You’re basically saying to someone, ‘Hey, you committed a crime, here’s some money.’ Any time someone is paid a [in] government program, it should be for work. I don’t know how paying someone not to commit a crime is ever a good thing. It just doesn’t make sense.”